our boys in blue
http://radgeek.com/gt/2007/10/28/correct…
In Florida, a white prison gang brutally beat a Black 14-year-old named Martin Lee Anderson to death last year. Anderson had been sentenced to a juvenile boot camp prison in rural Florida as punishment for taking his grandmother?s car for a joyride and then violating the terms of his probation. Within hours of his arrival, gang members surrounded him, held him down, punched him, kicked him, and, while restraining him, held hands over his mouth for up to five minutes at a stretch. They went on beating him for half an hour. They kept on beating him even as he lay limp and unable to move. The attack was captured on tape in a surveillance video, and the autopsy report concluded that Anderson died of suffocation. But just a couple weeks ago, in spite of the video, in spite of the report, the thugs who murdered Martin Lee Anderson were acquitted by an all-white jury in Panama City, Florida. Why? Because when they battered Martin Lee Anderson to death, the gang colors they were wearing looked like this:
(via)
There’s more.
Go read the whole thing.
October 29th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Now, for this there should be protest marches.
October 29th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Why is it that Americans seem often to approve of the police in principle, but rarely of specific police forces? How many of your police forces are out-of-control gangs of thugs? (I ask because we in Britain so often follow a few years behind you.)
October 29th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Smokey The Bear hats are, I know, traditional for drill instructors. Can we have people who aren’t really drill instructors but pretending to be in front of a bunch of kids remove them? Thanks.
How many of your police forces are out-of-control gangs of thugs?
Correct supervision counts for a lot. Where you have cops-as-thugs you’ll find that people in supervisory roles are aiding and abetting. Where you have good supervisors .. not so much.
Going a bit afield .. if the cops want to be an army (carry long arms, dress out in combat gear, act link drill instructors) then they need to have a soldier’s discipline, have a cop version of the UCMJ and so on. Either they are civilians with extraordinary jobs or they’re soldiers under discipline. One or the other, gentlemen.\
I ask because we in Britain so often follow a few years behind you
Haw. I’ve assumed for years that in terms of civil rights and loss of privileges we were trailing a generation behind y’all.
October 29th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Good question. Granted, it’s kind of a tautology, but most PDs are, well, average. A few bad apples, a few great ones, but most just do the basic job without shining or stinking. Please bear with my ramblings…
It’s less that people disapprove of a specific force, than they disapprove of certain practices. Not just obvious brutality, but things like not writing other cops tickets, etc. – the little abuses of power.
And even in ‘bad’ PDs, it’s not the whole force. Most often there’s a core group of bad ones; like everything else, 10% of the people cause 90% of the problems.
And the characteristics of the bad apples varies. In some places it’s the SWAT team, others it’s Undercover, still others it’s Traffic. One thing that I have noticed is that some of the consistently worst and recurring abuses come out of the Corrections (prison staff) side of things. I disagree vehemently with Radgeek’s assertion that prisons themselves are the problems to be solved – but these events keep coming up, again and again. There’s something wrong with how we administer our prisons, but I’m not sure what the answer is. The market for ‘better prisons’ isn’t terribly responsive.
Perhaps the best way I could put this is that no PD is an ‘out-of-control gang of thugs’; but there are such individuals in some PDs, and too often their crimes are overlooked because of the uniform. Communities often want their police force to be tough on criminals – I most certainly do. However, they’re sometimes willing to accept it when that toughness is incorrectly applied – and allowing those kinds of abuses of power only encourage others. It also violates one of the most basic tenets of good policing:
“Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
I don’t think that the UK is headed down the same road as the US is, in regards to police issues. If anything, UK police have significant issues with inaction, as opposed to too vigorous actions. Our problems are those of aberrant officers and those in the communities who are unwilling to hold them to the proper standard. UK police problems are those of broad policy. It’s ‘apples and oranges’ at this point.
October 29th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Tjic,
Are you becoming a liberal… complaining about police brutality? It seems out of character.
But seriously – this is obscene, and if I were to throw in a traditional leftist talking point, I’d say this is a direct consequence of the prison industrial complex. America has expanded it’s prison system for the benefit of the corporate and governmental entities which benefit from ‘corrections’.
If you really believe in small government then that means finding ways to down-size the prison population. Is prison really the correct sentence for a juvenile who stole his own family’s car (even in violation of probation).
Also what can we say about a society that incarcerates juveniles in high security institutions intended for adults. This is expensive to do, plus it almost guarantees that the prisoner will be unable to re-integrate into law-abiding, tax-paying life.
I think prison is like a drug – we think we can ignore society’s problems by sweeping them out of view. It makes us think we are solving problems without actually changing anything. Instead we create an un-employed, non-tax-paying underclass and expect our kids to pay for the social problems that we as a generation have failed to solve.
October 29th, 2007 at 11:36 am
[quote comment="95456"]Tjic,
Are you becoming a liberal… complaining about police brutality? It seems out of character.
[/quote]
Not at all!
I’ve been an anti-statist for 15+ years.
[quote]
this is a direct consequence of the prison industrial complex. [/quote]
I am all for long prison sentences for real criminals.
I am also in favor of immediately releasing everyone who is in jail only because of victimless crimes like drug possession.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
[quote comment="95456"]Tjic,
Are you becoming a liberal… complaining about police brutality? It seems out of character.[/quote]
?
[quote]But seriously – this is obscene, and if I were to throw in a traditional leftist talking point, I’d say this is a direct consequence of the prison industrial complex. America has expanded it’s prison system for the benefit of the corporate and governmental entities which benefit from ‘corrections’.[/quote]
I’d say that it’s a [i]direct[/i] consequence of a group of people making poor decisions on how to perform their jobs – that ‘direct’ thing, and all. Right above that, to echo Brian, it’s a supervisory issue. I’d then say that it’s an [i]indirect[/i] consequence of poor prison management, and in a still more abstract manner, the struggle to find a way to deal with juvenile offenders committing ‘adult’ crimes.
[quote]If you really believe in small government then that means finding ways to down-size the prison population.[/quote]
[i]Non sequitur.[/i]
[quote]Is prison really the correct sentence for a juvenile who stole his own family’s car (even in violation of probation).[/quote]
Considering the importance of a car in modern life – especially in how important transportation is to the ‘working poor’ – I’d judge it closer to horse theft. And doing it while on probation? That’s a good sign of ‘chronically unable to get one’s s**t together’.
[quote]Also what can we say about a society that incarcerates juveniles in high security institutions intended for adults. This is expensive to do, plus it almost guarantees that the prisoner will be unable to re-integrate into law-abiding, tax-paying life.[/quote]
Yep, ’cause after a stint in jail, no-one is ever able to make the decision to not commit crimes anymore. And there are cheaper solutions. You just won’t like them. Faster, better, cheaper – you know how many you get to pick.
(Sadly, there might be a grain of truth in my sarcasm. Too often prisons function as criminal-socializing centers. Solutions to that? Make them [i]all[/i] ‘solitary’. But regardless, prison doesn’t remove your ability to make decisions for yourself.)
[quote]I think prison is like a drug – we think we can ignore society’s problems by sweeping them out of view. It makes us think we are solving problems without actually changing anything.[/quote]
Sweeping them out of view? No, putting them in prison means they’re not running around out here committing crimes. Having those who are willing to ignore a community’s rules being locked up in a cage isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
[quote]Instead we create an un-employed, non-tax-paying underclass and expect our kids to pay for the social problems that we as a generation have failed to solve.[/quote]
Yep, we were going to solve crime, poor decision-making, and rehabilitation vs. punishment, but we just decided to not do it. Silly us. We could have bequeathed unto our progeny a world with the most intractable issues of the social contract solved!