Enforcers category archive

Invisiblelad adds:

It’s the unsaid there that’s truly chilling though. It’s the “do whatever cops say because they’re allowed to kill you otherwise” implication that genuinely shatters any notion of liberty this country claims to have.

Stolen in its entirety from PoliticalProf.

Historiann, an academician who is necessarily on campuses (campi?), recounts her experiences with campus cops. Here’s one (emphasis added); the rest aren’t pretty either.

My second encounter with campus “police” was in the late 1990s when I was teaching at the University of Dayton. Arriving at campus early one morning, I was confused by the maze of parking lots where my parking permit now allowed me to park. I drove the wrong way for 15 feet, into an exit-only lane for one parking lot–that was wrong, but there were no other cars moving in the lot at the time, so there was no danger to anyone because I missed the “exit only” sign. I was immediately pulled over (lights flashing and siren blaring!) by a campus “police” officer. When I (naively) moved to get out of my car to have a conversation with the “police” officer, I was screamed at “Get back in the car! Get back in the car!” by the overwrought cop. His anger and apparent lack of judgment and personal control scared me, so I got back in the car. Imagine what might have happened if I were in my teens, and/or African American, and/or male, and/or not wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase?

Read the rest.

Video via Raw Story.

As I heard persons say back in the olden days, when I was a young ‘un growing up white under Jim Crow, “What’s the big deal? It was only a [insert slur of choice here].”

Wear blue. Get a license to kill.

An ex-cop, now a law professor, weighs in at TPM (emphasis in the original):

As a former police officer, and now as a legal scholar who studies policing, I know the law is not a moral compass. An officer’s actions can be entirely lawful, and yet fail to meet the high standards that we should expect from our law enforcement professionals, our community guardians. When we focus on whether the police acted lawfully, we are missing the chance to ask whether they acted appropriately. As I watch the dash camera video of the traffic stop, I can’t help but think of the distinction between lawful policing and rightful policing.

Read the rest and understand why Sheriff Andy would not have given this Barney Fife the bullet.

Via Raw Story.

A Missouri judge has ruled that the cultists of death must reveal their the ingredients even thought they’d really rather not let the public know how they conduct their secret rituals.

A judge in Missouri struck a blow for public transparency in the practice of the death penalty by ruling that the state’s department of corrections had no right to withhold information from the media about the source of its lethal injection drugs.

Judge Jon Beetem, sitting in the Missouri circuit court of Cole County, ruled the state had “knowingly failed, at least in part” to comply with its obligation to act with transparency. He ordered the state to release key details about its supply of deadly chemicals, pending a further hearing on what information should be redacted.

More at the link.

Via Raw Story.

It was billed as the “War on Drugs.” It has turned out to be a war on the poor, on minorities, and, especially, on black folks, because this is the United States of America, home of the Secesh, where, if you dig into any issue, race is always just under the surface.

Jordan Lebeau reports at Boston.com. Here’s a bit of the intro, but you really must read the rest. Nothing I can write can do it justice.

The Baltimore Police Department did not respond to requests for comment for this story. They did not respond to complaints from young mothers that their children are harassed for sitting outside on hot days, and from lifelong city residents who complained of violent and intimidating tactics that never seem to align with actual police work.

They did not respond when a former cop told me the police in Baltimore are addicted to drugs — not addicted to drugs themselves, but addicted to a drug-enforcement windfall that includes everything from overtime to nicer cars for officers who make big busts.

They chose not to discuss whether their form of law enforcement contributed to the Baltimore riots, which started on April 27 and left hundreds arrested, cars and buildings ablaze, and the frustration between police and the community exposed to the eyes of a nation.

Via Funny or Die.

Via Raw Story.

Badtux pretty much sums it up.

The “wilders” are not who you think they are.

A Chilean describes what it was like to live under a regime of massive state spying on its citizens. A snippet:

As the years passed, the people of Chile were able to break down the manifold barriers and lies erected by the regime and find the courage and cunning to get rid of the dictatorship. But the damage to our psyche and our tongue, to our art and literature, to our vocabulary, lingered on. It endures today in hidden recesses of our minds and hearts, polluting and twisting the way we address one another.

That toxic atmosphere is one of the reasons Angelica and I no longer live in Chile, despite many efforts to return before and after the restoration of democracy. We could no longer recognize a homeland where the persistence of duplicity and dread stifled trust and creativity.

. . . But there is nothing that compares with the sweeping and unchecked powers of surveillance authorities exercise today.

Just read it.

Well, if you are lucky, life. Maybe.

If you are lucky and Not-Black.

________________

*Yes, “property.” Read your Locke.

There really is a simple explanation (emphases added).

The man identified himself as Larry Towns Jr. He stood 6 foot 3 inches. He weighed 230 pounds. A tattoo of a lion covered his right forearm. He was black. He confessed to the crime. Deputy J.A. Tomlinson recovered the cologne and gave the man a notice to appear in court.

He never appeared and his real identity is unknown to authorities.

The Sheriff’s Office then contacted a Jacksonville man named Larry Towns Jr. His lawyer says he’s legally blind, and he had lost his state ID. He reported it stolen to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, but the police never found anyone with the ID.

He is a 5-foot-9-inch, 160-pound, black man with no lion tattoo.

The Clay County Sheriff’s Office issued a warrant for his arrest

After all, they all look alike, don’t they?