See other Resistance Articles
Title: Police state: When did police become servants of power?
Source:
[None]
URL Source: http://www.salon.com/2015/09/06/pol ... lice_become_servants_of_power/
Published: Sep 6, 2015
Author: GERRY SPENCE
Post Date: 2015-09-06 12:14:33 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 181
Comments: 5
Members of the police culture are hatched from the same political womb. And politics has diseased the womb Excerpted from "Police State: How America's Cops Get Away With Murder" Please hear me clearly: We need the police. We need prosecutors and judges as well. And I make room for the proposition that we are well served by our fear of their power. Indeed, we have been taught to fear power from our earliest times— fear of parents, of teachers, of our bosses, fear of rejection by our peers. In short, fear plays a controlling role in the lives of all of us. And fear causes us to make lawful choices in our lives. Fear helps provide an orderly society. We want to be safe. We fear chaos and crime, and we’re willing to overlook occasional police misconduct as the price we must pay for a predictable, safe society in which to pursue our lives. At the outset we believe most police and prosecutors are working to achieve a peaceful, crime-free community. We believe that they have our best interests at heart. Some may occasionally cross the line, but they are only human. We are all prone to err. Sometimes the police themselves are faced with circumstances in which fear takes over, and to protect themselves they may overreact. I would be doing the police as well as society a gross disservice to argue that all police are villainous crooks wearing a badge, and that the words “cop” and “killer” are synonymous. Such is not my belief. But what, then, am I saying? The police tell us their truth: They say we, the people, have no understanding of a cop’s everyday encounters with drunks, muggers and thugs, the marginally and utterly insane, the wife beaters and drug peddlers, to mention only a few of the dirty, dangerous discards of society the police daily face. Do we question their truth? How many times have you embraced that argument when you read in the morning paper about a current spate of police brutality? And have you ever asked yourself, how have I come to accept the cop’s argument as the whole truth without questioning how I came to believe it? But who tells the people’s truth? The large majority of law-abiding citizens know little about “what goes on out there.” What we think we know we’ve been taught by decades of fictional TV cop shows sponsored by Power—the insurance companies, the mammoth oil corporations, international banks, car manufacturers, national loan sharks, pill pushers, and the various other offspring of Power. We’ve been provided entertainment, not the whole truth, by the voice of Power—the media. We’ve come to believe Power’s propaganda in much the same way that we believe our religions— that our police and prosecutors will not prosecute and convict the innocent. Such would be un-American. But blind beliefs, cultural brainwashings, can hasten the end of a free people. At the same time, the justice system lumbers along at the speed of a crippled worm while the prosecution chalks up conviction rates in our venerable federal courts as high as 97 percent, mostly attributable to the bargains made with guilty pleas. That statistic, on its face, boldly belies the proposition that America provides its citizens with fair trials. Until we become “the subject” of a serious, life-threatening encounter with the police, we try to just get along, to raise our kids, love our grandkids, watch our favorite TV programs in the evening, take our deserved two weeks’ vacation, and hope for a comfortable retirement and a merciful death. Then one day one of our own, even one of us, becomes the subject. We are arrested. We are thrown in jail, and if we cannot be bonded out we will be imprisoned for months, even years, awaiting trial. We will lose our identity as a member of society. We are provided a number underneath our mug shot, and our history will be forever besmirched by a criminal charge blaring out at the world from our police record. Innocent or not, we will most likely become another number in a penitentiary or a convicted murderer on death row. Such a transforming process puts me in mind of the hawk sitting in a treetop waiting for the sparrow to fly by. At the precise moment of the hawk’s strike, the sparrow loses its identity as a fellow bird and becomes the prey. To the police, when we become “the subject,” we are no longer persons, and we’ll be de-feathered, ripped apart, and disposed of in one way or another. Members of the police culture—the police, the prosecutors, and too often, the judges themselves, are hatched from the same political womb. And politics has diseased the womb. The poor, along with our revered middle class, do not hire or fire our police. Police, prosecutors, and sometimes judges— even those on our highest court— too often are indebted to Power and become the servants of Power. I argue that political debtors are disqualified from delivering justice. One thing soon becomes clear: The quantum of justice available to most Americans is in direct proportion to that individual’s social and economic status, which is to announce the controlling rule of law in America: Little money, little status— little justice. The problem is simple to define. Power does not serve the people. Power serves itself. The personal needs of those who make up Power— from the police officer to the banker and corporate executive— all are in service of the self. Too many police have chosen their work in response to a personality that craves to dominate other human beings. Bankers who throw a widow out on the streets in winter are bullies diseased by a love of money. The corporate executives who will cut their employees to starvation wages in their psychotic quest for profit are bullies. Or the same executives will, at the expense of the health and lives of customers, ignore standard safety practices hoping to acquire yet more profit.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 3.
#1. To: Ada, Gerry Spence, Salon barf (#0)
The correlation between a growing local government, complete with countless new laws, should answer that question. Want less cop interaction? Shrink government.
I'd prefer it if the cops and all law enforcement officers ,would just do their damn job properly and arrest the politicains. Their crimes are numerous and publicly flaunted. So why are they given a free pass of wider degrees than police themselves? Crooked DA? Arrest them Corrupt judge? Arrest em. Hillary Clinton? Arrest her for evidence tampering. Obama? Arrest him for war crimes and constitutional violations. As long as the dogs serve politicians they wont be public servants that serve the people. Can't have two masters.
no heads roll when the elite commit crimes. crime pays for them.
#4. To: christine (#3)
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestPolice state: When did police become servants of power?
#2. To: Jethro Tull (#1)
Want less cop interaction? Shrink government.
#3. To: titorite (#2)
Replies to Comment # 3. 
End Trace Mode for Comment # 3.