A question worth asking...

[Mythsaje]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

This is from Real Time with Cornell West and Mos Def.

Bill asks Mos Def "What, you don't believe there are people out there who want to hurt Americans?"

Says Mos "Yeah, the Po-lice."

I'm not African American, but I can sympathize with what he's saying. I was a long-haired metalhead in the suburbs in my teens and on more than one occasion I was harassed and, yes, even threatened, by the police for simply going about my business. Perfectly legal business, much of the time. They didn't know me from Adam, yet, based on nothing but how I looked, they thought it worth their time to harass me.

The Police seem increasingly on-board with more and more authoritarian bullshit... Long gone is the neighborhood cop everyone knows--who has time to stop and chat with an ordinary citizen about the weather or the time of day. They're increasingly segregated from the communities they serve and are encouraged (if not trained) to see themselves as somehow separate from everyone else. To look at all of US as potential criminals and not the citizens they're supposed to "serve and protect."

This distrust and dislike of the police is nearly universal in black neighborhoods...often with good reason. But rather than doing anything positive to counter it, we simply hear them and their spokespeople griping about it. "People are against us."

No shit? Ever wonder why?

Probably not.

It's not necessarily the individual cops who are the problem, it's the whole CULTURE. Rather than step up to condemn corruption and bad acts by cops, they and their defenders will step in and DEFEND themselves as if THEY are personally being attacked.

They almost universally oppose any kind of citizen oversight group--saying there's "no way civilians can understand what it's like."

With that attitude, we have to wonder if the opposite is ALSO true. If it's US and THEM, who's in the right?

A question worth asking. Hard to say if it'll ever get an answer.

[Nomad559]

1. Check out this video

Cop Gone Wild

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2715792117793977759&

Missouri: Police Threaten, Detain Motorist for Parking After Hours
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/19/1961.asp

A St. George, Missouri police officer is caught on tape threatening to invent charges to arrest a motorist for parking after hours.

A motorist who refused to discuss his personal business with a St. George, Missouri police officer was threatened with arrest last Friday. Brett Darrow, 20, no stranger to unconventional encounters with police, caught a St. George Police Sergeant named Kenline stating that he had the power to invent charges that would put Darrow behind bars.

"Try and talk back... to me again," yelled Sergeant Kenline. "I bet I could say you resisted arrest or something. You want to come up with something? I come up with nine things."

The incident began at around 2am. Darrow was to meet a friend who was working late and was going to pick him up. Darrow headed toward a 24-hour commuter parking lot in an unincorporated part of Saint Louis County in his 1997 Nissan Maxima. He put on his turn signal and entered the lot which, aside from Kenline's cruiser, was essentially vacant. After stopping the car, the police officer approached and began questioning Darrow about what he was doing. When Darrow declined to discuss his personal business, the police sergeant exploded. Although the video clearly shows Darrow driving properly and using his turn signal, the police officer insisted that Darrow had broken the law.

[Mythsaje]

2. No surprise.

I posted this earlier this evening in GD, but no one was willing to touch it.

I was raised to be suspicious of authority. I may respect cops, but I don't trust them. Not as a group.

I got into an argument last week with a DUer whom I suspect is a cop. He called me a moron because I posted a partial list of corrupt cops in a thread where he was defending them with more of the whole "you don't know what it's like" and "you don't have the guts to be a cop" crap.

The fact is that I like people too much to be a cop. My wife was a Correctional Officer for a few years and she says it's NOT good for your perception of other people. I believe her.