OK, this one is out of the news now, but some things still need saying.
The uproar has subsided, with a talking head consensus that "this isn't about cops
trampling on the rights of black citizens, it's just about cops trampling on the rights of all citizens", as if that makes the problem go away.
Black people certainly do experience more than their share of such incidents, which may lead them to conclude, falsely, that only members of minorities are so imposed on.
A couple of stories you haven't heard on the national news:
In Easton, PA, a man heard about an altercation between his son and a classmate at school. He responded to this by getting his gun, taking his son to meet the classmate,
and then threatening the boy to prevent him from leaving or defending himself while his son beat the kid up. The prosecutor investigated the case, and could find nothing to prosecute! Irrelevant detail: the man was a cop. Irrelevant detail: everybody involved was white.
In the jurisdiction of this same prosecutor, Bethlehem, there was another notable case of unwarranted police violence. The details are sketchy, but if you've got nexus access, you can find a column that Paul Carpenter of the Morning Call wrote
about it.
Here's the sordid fact that the press hasn't told you - prosecutors do not rein in
cops. Why? because they are elected officials. They get elected by winning cases.
They have to have police cooperation to do that. They don't last if they piss off the
police. Which means that cops are free to also be crooks. For the benefit of idiots,
I hasten to say that I am not suggesting that all cops are crooks. What I am saying
is that their system does not meaningfully encourage them not to be. And that's a
problem. If people always did "the right thing" without consequences for doing "the
wrong thing", there would be no point in having cops in the first place. To suggest
that it's a tolerable thing to have a system where cops are not meaningfully
accountable is to argue for the abolition of their jobs.
So it is that we have a cop who falsely arrested a citizen for the non-crime of
speaking his mind, on his own property, even. Rather than serving hard time for his
crime against the First Amendment, not to mention assault with a deadly weapon, he's
drinking beer on the White House lawn.
In a free country, we would have a system where those who break the highest law, the
constitution, would be called to account for those crimes as surely as those who
break the more mundane laws. Don't hold your breath.
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3 comments:
a few weeks ago in Riverton, a self described neighborhood watch guy began following, in his pickup truck, some girls who were out walking late at night. The girls became frightened and one called her dad to report a guy was following them. When the girls arrived home the father loaded his gun and daughter into their pickup truck and set out to find the "pervert" When they found him both men faced off with guns and shot at each other. The "neighbor hood" watch guy is in the hospital and paralyzed waist down. The prosecuter is not prosecuting anyone for anything. Here's a case were no cops were involved at all.
In my opinion both men where wrong and should be prosecuted. But here in Utah, it is being fought out on the editorial page as to who was wrong-er. I don't think the prosecutor dares touch it. Guns rights etc.
This is hardly surprising in a country where congress is allowed to pass laws that exempt members of congress. Members of congress do not participate in Social Security and we wonder why it's broken. Think it might be a problem that they won't participate in national health care either? Time to clean house!
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