Why Do Cops Feel At Liberty To Abuse Citizens ?

The Rule of law must be respect­ed, with­out it we have no buffer between us and those who would us harm. It is a fright­en­ing irony when those we employ to stand between us and those who would bring harm to us, are the ones doing harm to us.

We must ask our­selves “why is it that Police Officers feel empow­ered to kill a mem­ber of the pub­lic over some mis­de­meanor offense”?

Every per­son run­ning for office in the United States from Presidential can­di­dates to dog-catch­er runs on a law-and-order plat­form. It is so crit­i­cal that a juiced-up-cop wrong­ly harassed and assault­ed an emi­nent Ivy League Professor, wide­spread con­dem­na­tion erupt­ed from many quar­ters includ­ing the President of the United States. In the end the cop gets invit­ed to the White House for a beer summit.

What is it which makes the American cop untouch­able? What gives the American cop the invin­ci­ble, untouch­able persona?

As a for­mer Law Enforcement offi­cial myself, I under­stand the dif­fi­cul­ties of the job. I also under­stand that I am not a God ! Police offi­cers in the United States do not see them­selves as peace offi­cers. In fact watch­ing cops in action in instance after instance, con­vinces me that cops delib­er­ate­ly dis­re­spect some cit­i­zens with the express intent of esca­lat­ing an issue which if dealt with calm­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly would sim­ply dissipate.

There are Ivory Tower dwellers who believe that Urban dwellers hate cops and are opposed to the rule of law. Recently one reporter went on an irra­tional rant about young black men after a young cop was killed. The Network had the good sense to dis­ci­pline him. Having been around inner cities all my adult life , I must con­fess there are cer­tain hos­til­i­ties to Law Enforcement. This is true whether you are in New York or Rio, DC or Kingston.

Police Officers must be trained to under­stand these issues and deal with them appro­pri­ate­ly. Most of these hos­til­i­ties come from some involved in crim­i­nal behav­ior. However the Police are not blame­less. Much of the hos­til­i­ties direct­ed at them are of their own mak­ing. This too runs the geo­graph­i­cal gamut. What is true of many Police Departments , hav­ing spo­ken to friends who are Police Officers, is that offi­cers are actu­al­ly encour­aged to have acri­mo­nious rela­tion­ships with minor­i­ty communities.

What’s shock­ing is that some Department heads actu­al­ly encour­age offi­cers to be cold and dis­re­spect­ful to even law abid­ing mem­bers of minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties. Let’s not kid our­selves, when large quan­ti­ties of black and brown men are locked away in the prison indus­tri­al com­plex, America’s race prob­lems are half solved. Prisons are big busi­ness­es , many are run by pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies which kick back huge sums of cash to the polit­i­cal cam­paigns of those dogs bark­ing the loud­est on the law and order issue.

You do see how this cycle is per­pet­u­at­ed? Cops and their Unions know this. So the cen­tral ques­tion then becomes,“who will bell the cat”? The sim­ple answer is no one! This is an issue so tox­ic and explo­sive , even the White House will not get involved in a local mat­ter involv­ing Police Departments. At least not a White House where the occu­pant is a black President.

Forty three year old Staten Island res­i­dent Eric Garner was killed by NYPD cops who placed him in a choke-hold, sup­pos­ed­ly to arrest him for sell­ing un-taxed cig­a­rettes. The police claimed Garner was pre­vi­ous­ly arrest­ed for doing the same thing. 

UN-TAXED CIGARETTES

Whether or not he was arrest­ed before for sell­ing cig­a­rettes, why was it nec­es­sary to place him in a choke hold to effect an arrest? They knew him, why was a tick­et not appro­pri­ate? The offence was not a felony! In fact from some accounts, no offense was even committed.

Why are these tat­tooed Black-water-type mer­ce­nar­ies being allowed to inter­act with the black com­mu­ni­ty? I don’t see any cops look­ing like this in some oth­er com­mu­ni­ties. Look it is impor­tant that if you are told you are under arrest that you sub­mit to being arrest­ed. But is it nec­es­sary to pile onto some­one press­ing his head into the pave­ment for sell­ing un-taxed cig­a­rettes? These are the ques­tions we must ask! Or is the arrest jus­ti­fied , irre­spec­tive of the cost, even at the cost of a life lost? Are these Pyrrhic arrests that impor­tant to the States and Municipalities?

It is a trag­ic irony when death becomes the penal­ty for a minor infrac­tion. When absolute com­pli­ance with the law becomes so fun­da­men­tal a shack­le that it mat­ters not whether you live or die. It is tyran­ny when the State becomes the great­est enti­ty of fear, it is time to be very fearful.