What Digby Said

[womzilla]

Digby sez:

The arguments are usually something along the lines of "that guy was an idiot to argue with the cops, he should know better," which is very similar to what many are saying about Gates. He has even been criticized for being a "bad role model," thus putting young black kids at risk if they do the same things.

Now, on a practical, day to day level, it's hard to argue that being argumentative with a cop is a dangerous thing. They have guns. They can arrest you and can cost you your freedom if they want to do it badly enough. They can often get away with doing violence on you and suffer no consequences. You are taking a risk if you provoke someone with that kind of power, no doubt about it.

Indeed, it is very little different than exercising your right of free speech to tell a gang of armed thugs to go fuck themselves. It's legal, but it's not very smart. But that's the problem isn't it? We shouldn't have to make the same calculations about how to behave with police as we would with armed criminals.

This has been another installment of the correctosphere's favorite drama, What Digby Said.

Okay, an addition of my own. In 1997, Abner Louima was anally and orally raped with a toilet plunger by New York City police, after he (apparently) sucker-punched a cop who was part of a group trying to suppress a fight at a nightclub. Louima's case was widely publicized, as it should have been. However, like most incidents of police brutality, it was treated as an isolated incident. It wasn't. In fact, the treatment Louima received was a customary treatment for people who assaulted NYPD cops. I know this because I indirectly know someone else to whom it happened--he was stoned, punched a cop, and got a nightstick up the ass.

There is no part of the law of the state of New York that says that jamming a stick up someone's ass is legal if a) they hit you and b) you are a cop. But it's one of the things that somehow just happens.

As I said years ago in a different context, "A police force which creates its own law and decides for itself what version of history to believe is no longer serving its nation. It is only serving itself." A police force which must be treated with the same deference as a gang of armed thugs . . . is a gang of armed thugs.

Comments

POLICE TOUGH LOVE

[dmsherwood53.livejournal.com]

As someone who received a beating up in a back room as a teenager I totally concur.The saf thing is part of me can see the cop's POV ;he was saving me from a police record & knocking some sense into me.
The POINT i guess is that he had no right to take that view .I wasn't a kiddie and he weren't my Daddy.