When Will It End?

OFF THE WIRE
I know it seems like I’m totally being unfair but the truth has got to get out there. It’s never pretty and the gang-like “bully” alpha dog mentality is everything we are spending millions of dollars on with a national anti-bullying campaign to educate our children not to be and teach them that this behavior is unacceptable in our society. We teach them that bullying is archaic and animalistic and that it hurts people to their core. We teach that this behavior will not be tolerated, however, we not only overlook this aggressive behavior in our law enforcement officers but we promote it, embrace it, and even broadcast it to millions of homes worldwide. Americans have come to expect this behavior in our policing agencies. We’re so numb to the abuses that we don’t even recognize when someone’s civil, natural, and God given rights are being trampled on.Our great grandfathers sat around a table in a small tavern sipping ale and smoking ganja while they drafted, designed, and breathed life into this idea of a government of the people! By the people! For the people! This government we call a democracy where every man has an equal vote and an equal say in how he feels the nation should be governed. In this great democracy ALL men are created equal, prince or pauper. Somewhere, somehow we’ve deviated from that.
This war on drugs has inadvertently created what our forefathers tried so hard to dismantle. The war on drugs has created a cast system in America. The drug war has created a lower than low class citizen: the addict, the junkie, the crack head, meth head, and so on. We give them less-than-human names to match our less-than-human attitude towards the refugees in this war on a commodity. How do you defeat a thing? The victims of this mass genocide are our sisters, mothers and brothers but we no longer see them as human. We look the other way while the less-than-human get beaten, tazed, and often killed by our law enforcement officers. The treatment and turn-a-blind-eye attitude we’ve adopted towards our lowest class citizen has opened the door to our police treating more and more citizens just like they treat the second class citizens.
Who’s the second class citizen now? The videos of lawless cops are endless. I’m not anti police; I’m anti abuse of power. No man should be made to submit to another man’s abuse. When I fist came across these videos, the first one I saw was of a guy named Paster Anderson; he was at a checkpoint in Arizona 100 miles from the Mexican boarder. This was like his 5th checkpoint in 30 minutes. After the fourth time he was stopped, questioned, and searched, he had enough. He refused to answer their question and refused to be searched, AGAIN.   When I saw what they did to that poor man I was in disbelief. A peaceable man of God was beat like Jesus before he was crucified. I was angry and ashamed that federal agents would treat a dog that way much less an American Citizen in America, nowhere near the border. I began to watch more videos and much to my dismay I discovered that I was in the G rated section. Paster Anderson got a slap on the wrist and he is lucky to have been treated so well compared to most videos on YouTube. A head full of glass and stitches is nothing compared to dead, disabled, or mentally scarred.
Probably 15%-20% of police abuse videos end up with the guy/girl wearing the handcuffs also sporting a brand  new toe tag. There are thousands of people each year who are healthy, and non-violent at the beginning of their police interaction but are mysteriously killed in the field, on the way to the station, or shortly after being booked. We then ask the involved department to investigate itself or we ask an outside private agency who, by the way, is quite well compensated for their unbiased evaluation of the facts and evidence. How can you possibly get an unbiased rendering of the facts from an agency that is policing its own officers? A showing of misconduct certainly means a large cash settlement to the victim’s family, which ultimately effects EVERY person including me and you. There are court settlements, legal fees, and the cost associated with investigating the incident (sadly this is the least costly of the incidentals  in most cases).
The private sector suffers as well. Money to hire private contractors is decreased, road maintenance suffers, city services decline; one person’s bad choice affects a whole community, but if the death or injury is deemed justifiable then all this can be avoided. Which way do you think they’re leaning at the onset of the investigation? From that point on, they are looking for evidence to clear the involved department by any means necessary and they may not even consciously realize their doing it. I think police should operate in pairs. Specifically, the cop you would normally be harassed by whose job it is to produce revenue for their city, county, state, or the federal government and a sort of devil’s advocate to interpret and protect the constitution. He would guarantee that the people’s constitutional rights are intact and advise the officer as to proper procedure.
Or give the officer a firearm with a remote trigger lock and give the remote to the people’s advocate, making state sponsored murder a two party decision. Let the man who’s not holding the gun decide when to use it. The cop is often drunk with power and the thrill of the hunt. A person in that state of mind is not thinking clearly. He is thinking in an aggressive, Alpha-type manner and he feels that he is God; how dare you challenge his power. What is it that guarantees that he maintains power? The gun gives him the power over life and death and the badge legitimizes his use of it. Days, months, and years of carrying your “service weapon,” constantly reminded of its presence due to its shear bulk alone takes a psychological toll on you, regardless of who you are. I used to carry concealed everywhere I went before my permit expired. When you’re carrying, you walk a little slower, you stand a little taller, and you speak with a particular “fuck you” in your voice. You find yourself walking towards altercation just hoping somebody makes a stupid decision. “I just hope they give me a reason to shoot one of them.” You play all these scenarios out in your head and of course you always end up victorious in the theatre of the mind thus emboldening you, increasing testosterone levels and reinforcing that warrior mentality. That combined with that roid rage aggression plus a badge and gun can be deadly, for me and you.
I feel that an entry level street cop should never be given the power of life and death. When the police respond to any call, they show up with an army. Give the majority of them tazers and make them shut down after a reasonable amount of time. These are used as torture devices and this has been shown to be the case in most all tazer involved incidents – but it is better than dead. They record the length of time they are active and it’s obscene the amount of shocks they expose people to. If the person is on the ground why shock them time and time again? I’ve seen police shock a man while telling him to roll over. “Roll over and I’ll stop shocking you.” Everyone knows you have no control over body movement when being tazed, but according to the officer, the man refused to comply with his order. That was his excuse for the 30-45 second continuous discharge of his tazer. Stick your finger in a light fixture for 30 seconds and then see how much voluntary movement you have during and immediately after.
Extensive psychological testing and field observation should be conducted on any officer that carries a fire arm. There should be a weapons certification program initiated that not all officers will qualify for; only the officers that are the most stable are certified and the ones that are need regular re-certification. Psychological testing needs to be the primary determining factor in whether you carry a lethal weapon or a flashlight. This would weed out most of the cops that have an affinity towards violence. If those cops can’t carry guns, then their not going to want to be cops. I’m not trying to pretend that I have all the answers but at least I’m able to see what’s going on and realize that there is a problem. I feel like there are solutions to the problems of abuse that should be initiated, but if no one can admit that there is a problem then there will be no attempts at rectifying the gross abuse of power witnessed across the nation everyday. The problem is everywhere. Not one of us is immune.
Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
This post was authored by Grayson Miller and sent to CopBlock.org via our submission tab. Feel free to send your views, interactions or police abuse stories to CopBlock.org by clicking here.