For what my opinion may be worth, I don’t believe in hating police officers, and generally value their presence as a deterrent to various crimes such as robbery. But as human beings working within human institutions, police officers can, like the rest of us, be flawed in terms of their attitude about how to enforce the laws, their skills with dealing with various situations, and their knowledge of the laws they have power to enforce.
Some of us might be aware that yesterday two California police officers were acquitted of charges related to the beating death of a schizophrenic homeless person
But a discussion about our experiences with law enforcement in Columbus and comparing that with other cities and nations might be useful.
Having pedicabbed in more than 20 US cities and participated in protests in about a dozen US cities, I’ve had generally good experiences with police. Due to the fact that cops don’t make the laws and are themselves working or middle class folk (and have had their unions attacked ) most fellow activists I’ve spoken with think it’s bad strategy and just wrong to antagonize cops and wrong to seek to dehumanize them by referring to them as ‘pigs.’ (Would that offend a vegan cop ?)
But a few of them say my stance has at least something to do with being a middle-aged, generic looking white guy.
Well, at any rate, regarding the video and audio recording of Kelly Thomas saying he was sorry, begging for his life, and crying out for help from his father as police officers continue to beat him, one commenter on the New York Daily News site regarding this case asks how it is that we have allowed our country to become like this.
That’s a tricky question, because it assumes that it wasn’t like this at some former time. My guess is that there are at least a few cases in just about any decade of the 20th or preceding century of police officers or other law enforcement agents getting away with torturing and murdering people on US soil.
Leave a Reply