A Cavity in the Fourth Amendment. 4

4 comments

1. George Smith

   August 19, 2015 at 5:21 pm

   Despite the daily tide of really bad reports from the corporate dictatorship/police state, I haven’t noticed any positive change, even if minor. Instead, the opposite. It’s virtually like the increasing unavoidable news of brutality and police state behavior is pushng those responsible for it to even more of it.

   There’s plenty of historical precedent for it. History is full of examples of state systems that became even crueler, unreasonable, vengeful and predatory as they were exposed and condemned. As if they recognized a reckoning was coming, they would be held responsible, but would go down taking as many with as possible until it arrived.

    
2. Frank

   August 19, 2015 at 10:07 pm

   Pretty much. It will get worse. Whether or not it gets better is still a question mark.

   Just when did sadistic rapists take over police departments? I’ve known a lot of cops over the years and none of the cops I have known would have done anything like this.

   “Cavity search” my ass.

   The scariest bit in Pitts’s article was the quote from the cop at the end: “I can do anything I want.”

    
3. George Smith

   August 20, 2015 at 12:01 pm

   Yesterday’s LA Times had an opinion page interview with some head of training in the LAPD and he was asked about simple traffic stop procedure and so on. Of course, he said what kinds of things were improper, things that are now seen as routinized behavior resulting in escalations and he sounded reasonable while saying training was being altered at the police academy to take it into account. And then it hits the critical reader that it’s all eyewash, like every opinion piece the “good cops” have been writing in about this summer.

   The LAPD has gunned down people on video this summer. No changes are occurring. Blood payments to family members are made. Sometimes.

   The problem is not just police culture and what militarization and the war on crime and drugs have done. It’s much deeper and has to do with the character of the country. Americans, a majority — white people, want a fascist police state that preys on and suppresses people not-white, the poor, everyone they see as undesirable.

    
4. Frank

   August 20, 2015 at 3:01 pm

   I’m not sure I agree completely. I think it’s loud, organized, and united minority of white people, egged on by Fox News. Lyndon Johnson’s statement

   If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you.

   is still correct. It’s the tactic the planters used to convince Southern peasants farmers to become cannon fodder in the War To Preserve Slavery, now used by corporations and the white Southern power structure, beleaguered though is might be from the Civil Rights Movement, to preserve power and to distract persons from their own interests. But I don’t think it’s a majority.

   I think the majority is too apathetic or desperate or distracted by their electronic gadgets or a combination thereof to pay attention.

   It’s probably like the old saw about the American Revolution–a third were for it, a third were against it, and a third didn’t care.

   That’s why I’m so annoyed by purists on the left. The left’s circular holier-than-thou firing squad prevents unity, while the right’s hate promotes unity.

   I fear that this quote is much more on target than I would like to admit.