Via the agitator

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

The War Against Crime: Explaining Police Misconduct

Tanya Eiserer has an interesting post in the Dallas Morning News crime blog. The post relates to a story she wrote about a Dallas police officer who pepper sprayed a man and a second officer who lied about it to internal affairs investigators. The two officers cooked up a story to explain the use of the pepper spray. A rookie officer who was also present failed to report the incident immediately because he feared retaliation. He eventually told investigators that he saw an officer pepper spray the man without provocation.
The officer who wielded the pepper spray explained why the rookie's account matched the victim's:

"Rookie officers interpret and see things differently than more mature veteran officers."

In other words, rookies in the Dallas Police Department haven't learned to lie to protect other officers. [more ...]
...

Eiserer nonetheless makes an excellent point when she points to "the idea that police are at war." The war mentality -- the war against drugs, the war against crime -- creates the belief that anything officers do to harm the bad guys is justifiable. After all, it's war, and war isn't pretty. Wars are fought against enemies. Wars produce casualties. Defeating the enemy is the primary goal of a war, and if the enemy is harmed, or the enemy's property is destroyed or taken, that's an acceptable consequence of war.MORE

Throw in racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia and classism, mix together and we have a really toxic situation

Comments

YES!!!

[voz-latina.livejournal.com]

popo aint ur friend.

This Latina woman found out the hard way, but she got lucky when the cop cam caught the cops in an open lie.

Here's the link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32266883/