This country is losing its grip
by the minute. Donald Trump—who reportedly is losing his mind over the latest
election poll numbers—is said to be considering giving a speech about racial
peace and understanding. Given the fact that his principle domestic issues
speechwriter, Stephen Miller, is a well-known racist, this is unlikely to go
down well, and even more likely anything he would say that sounds “reasonable”
will be reversed the following day anyways; Trump just can’t change his spots. The
fact that Trump is putting forward the ludicrous conspiracy theory that a
75-year-old man who was hospitalized after being shoved to the ground by
Buffalo police is an Antifa “plant” shows that he and his “advisors” just don’t
have it in themselves to be human, and never will.
Meanwhile, there is this “movement”
to defund the police, and even “disband”
them in cities like Minneapolis, where the “get tough on crime” approach has
led not to less crime, but less cooperation with police. In 2019, Minneapolis
police had just a 56 percent “solved” rate of homicides, somewhat below the
two-thirds rate nationally; potential witnesses to murders (particularly in the
black community) apparently see police as less worthy of their “trust” than the
gang members who are typically involved in these murders—or at least they
“trust” gang members to exact retribution more than they expect police to
protect them.
Camden, New Jersey has been
held-up as an example of a “defunded” and “disbanded” police force. Camden had
67 homicides in 2012 when the city decided to disband the police force. But it
wasn’t necessarily because of police brutality, it was because the city felt it
need more police on the street, and
it could not afford the additional funding to pay the high salaries and
benefits. So what the Camden powers-that-be did was fired the entire police
force, and hired the county sheriff’s department to do its policing, with most
of the former Camden police officers rehired. The result was that Camden was
able to increase the presence of law enforcement on the streets at a lower pay
scale.
According to a story in Bloomberg, “The higher number of
officers on the streets was uncomfortable at first, says Nyeema Watson, Rutgers
University at Camden’s associate chancellor for civic engagement, who helped
connect the new department to local youth in its early days. ‘You felt that
this eye was on you. It took me some time to adjust to having police cars
stationed on major thoroughfares. That still raises the hair on my neck
sometimes, but I know their approach is an attempt to say ‘We’re here, we’re
visible.’” This visibility has led to a decrease in violent crimes, but others
note that arrests for low-level crimes has increased. Law enforcement officers,
however, are required to abide by rules to use minimal force unless absolutely
necessary, and if an officer does not abide by the rules, fellow officers are
required to report it, or be punished themselves.
Meanwhile, Ali Velshi at MSNBC,
in reference to a call to pass an anti-lynching law, says “none of us are free while
black Americans live in fear.” What does that mean, exactly? Unfortunately, we
live in a society where some people think that the opposite dynamic is true. Me,
I just want to mind my books, music and videos, and other people mind their own
fucking business, although for some people that seems to be a hard thing to do.
I know I don’t exactly feel “free” in
this country, and have reason to feel “fear,” and not just from paranoid people
who think I’m up to no good just because of my “ethnicity,” like “prowling” in
their cars, assuming that 90 percent of people who look like me must be
shoplifters, or people thinking I just don’t “belong” in certain places, like
an office building. You’d be amazed (or maybe not) of how many complete
strangers I encounter who assume I am a drug dealer; just the other day I was
just out walking when I encountered somebody who asked me if I had any “cream”
on me, or if I knew where to get some. I didn’t even know what this “cream” was
until I googled it.
People in this country actually act
as if Hispanics (or other “ethnic” types) are more “deserving” of getting beat
on by society and the police. As an “ethnic” person, here are some
“interactions” I have had with local police:
Driving home from work, I was
waiting for oncoming traffic to pass so that I could make a left turn. I then
heard car horns honking; looking behind me, I noticed a Kent police car sitting
in my blind side, apparently waiting for an excuse to pull me over. However,
the officer was forced to move and drive ahead because of irate drivers he was
blocking behind him.
After leaving the Kent library, I
found myself surrounded by a whole squad of Kent police who claimed that they
had received a call from a “concerned citizen” who claimed to have seen someone
with a gun. We had a discussion about why they thought I would be the one
carrying a gun, and eventually they let me go, acting as if it was a “joke.”
Another incident with Kent
police: I was walking early one morning to catch a bus to a job at the airport
when a cop ambushed me on the sidewalk. I told him where I was going and showed
him my DHS-approved airport ID badge. He grudgingly let me go, but when I
crossed an empty parking lot as a short-cut, he sprang into action again,
claiming he could detain me because I was “trespassing” on private property. He
didn’t detain me long, because my name on my driver’s license wasn’t “Spanish”
either, and he acted pretty downcast about it, too.
Sea-Tac Airport: I was waiting
with about 30 other people at a bus stop location outside the terminal when a
Port of Seattle police officer approached me and demanded I show him where my name was on
the laptop he assumed I had in a side bag for laptops. Out of 30 people there,
he picked me out for harassment. I did pull out my laptop, fired it up and to
show him it really was mine I typed in the password to gain access to it.
Afterward I was so angry about this I filed a complaint with the Port police
and was able to provide witnesses. A month later I received a response telling
me that the officer was “justified” in what he did, but afterward the same
officer harassed me on two subsequent occasions, apparently to get “even,” which
I also lodged a complaint about. The day after my third complaint against him,
a different officer approached me at the bus stop and told me that he was “sorry”
about what happened, and that officer wouldn’t bother me again.
Renton: I was on my way to a
Fry’s Electronics store when I found myself cutoff on the sidewalk by three
police cars. They claimed that they were looking for a bank robber. I told them
I just got off a bus from work; why did they think it was me? They dumped my
backpack and found nothing of interest. In order to “explain” themselves, one
of the officers got his phone so I could hear the description of the robber:
5-10, white, gray hair and beard, wearing dark clothes. “You see,” the officer
exclaimed, “You are wearing dark clothes,” meaning my work uniform with the
company logo prominently displayed. They continued the charade, however, and a
fourth police car showed up with a bank teller sitting in the back; I saw her
shake her head, and literally within minutes they were all gone without even as
much as a “sorry,” with the contents of my backpack still strewn on the sidewalk.
Bellevue: I was driving down a
road and made a right turn at some point. On came the lights, and a white
female cop pulled me over. Reason? I hadn’t turned on my turn signal “fast
enough.” The real reason she pulled me over, of course, was because I was a “Mexican”
to her, at that automatically suggested I was a likely “criminal” who had a
warrant or something of that nature. She let me out of jail free after finding
nothing on me.
Another Bellevue police officer:
I was returning from a swing-shift job and was driving on I-90 and traveling at
exactly the speed limit. I noticed at one point that there were headlights at
least a half-mile behind me, but literally within minutes the vehicle was not
only already behind me but was “signaling” me to pull over. I asked the cop why
he pulled me over because I wasn’t speeding; he told me that he had “observed”
that I had allegedly crossed the “fog line” while pulling into the exit onto
the freeway, which “normally” indicates DUI. I angrily told him I just got off
work and had not had a drop of alcohol then or in years. The cop admitted that
he didn’t smell any alcohol on me, and went back to his car. And so what was I
supposed to do then? I waited for ten minutes until he finally decided to leave
the scene.
You will observe that in none of
these incidents did the police have any real cause to harass me personally;
they just did so because my “ethnicity” automatically made me a “suspicious”
person. One thing I didn’t do was be physically aggressive or just walk away, mainly
due to the “confidence” in being in the right, and they being in the wrong, and
there was nothing they could do about it but let me go on my way.
That, I suspect, isn’t often the
case in many interactions between police and “suspects” in high crime
areas—especially when the police are called by convenience store employees who
tell them about someone who just engaged in strong-arm robbery (i.e. Michael
Brown), or passing bad money, where people think they have a right to get away
with crimes. I recall working at a Fred Meyers store where the in-store
security person observed a woman pulling a wheeled travel bag, and filling it
up with various items. When she brazenly tried to leave the store without
paying for the items, both the security person and story manager followed her
out into the parking lot and tried to wrest control of the travel bag from her.
But she was having none of it; whenever one or the other retrieved it, she even
more aggressively grabbed it back. After a few minutes of this the security
person and the store manager just decided to let her go with the loot, “reasoning”
that she probably didn’t want the goods for “herself,” but to sell it—as if
that was supposed to be a “reason” to look the other way when people break the rules of civilized society.
No comments:
Post a Comment