Jezebel has reported that two studies indicate that “forty percent of police families experience domestic violence,” a statistic that puts such rates of abuse at “two to four times” that of non-police households. An astute reader asks this question: does this mean forty percent of police officers should be disarmed under the Lautenberg Amendment? I think I’d be okay with that.
Tag Archives: Police Brutality
So Where Are the Women’s Rights Groups?
William Grigg reports on the third (that we know of) incident of a police officer attacking a pregnant woman. In every case the women were non-violent, and in at least two of the attacks the women were approaching full term; eight months in one, nine months in the other.
One wonders where organizations such as the National Organization for Women and the National Advisory Council on Violence Against Women are when these incidents occur. Where is Nancy Grace and why isn’t she going ballistic?
Man Attacked, Charged With Assault
This video is making its rounds on Facebook, which features the brutal assault of an elderly man suffering from dementia. The victim, who was unarmed, had been in a dispute over payments from a third party when the first assailant attacked him, unprovoked. Within mere moments a second armed attacker joined the fray and discharged a taser in the victim’s face. NB, violent content.
Despite the sociopathic behavior displayed by these “lawmen” never fear, dear citizen, they are simply bad apples. They’re outliers not reflective of the vast majority of policemen. Rest assured that the majority of policemen are upstanding exemplars of morality, and only have the best interests in mind for the people whom they are sworn to serve and protect. Why, one need only perform a quick YouTube search of “police brutality,” or some other related search term, to discover that very few videos exist.
Never mind that these policemen are paid with money coercively extracted from the citizenry. Much of the revenue collected by police forces is stolen outright, under official sanction through civil asset forfeiture laws, which provide legal cover to officers who engage in highway robbery.
Never mind that the original purpose of government police forces was to serve and protect the political class from the commoners, not defend the rights and property of the people, as we’re often told. As Wendy McElroy shows in To Serve and Protect – The State, English common law is the basis for the U.S. legal system, and many of the practices in England have been adopted here, even after the initial founding. England began establishing socialized police forces beginning in occupied Ireland before instituting them in London, in order to establish social control. She also notes that citizens aren’t guaranteed protection for themselves and their property anyway, as determined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Castle Rock v. Gonzales.
Never mind that official police doctrine places the safety of officers above all others. Never mind that policemen, many of whom are recent war veterans, are trained to view the people in their communities not as peaceful neighbors, but as hostile bands of civilians. Rather than being taught to respect the people, as they should be, police officers have been conditioned to treat citizens with suspicion.
The times when police act in benevolence or otherwise provide aid to individuals should be considered exceptions to the rule, rather than the norm, in light of what they’re being taught. As William Norman Grigg writes, police resource officers have been told “…you can no longer afford to think of yourselves as peace officers…. You must think of yourself [sic] as soldiers in a war because we’re going to ask you to act like soldiers.” If this is how officers in schools are to behave amidst unarmed children, how might they view adults?
There is little recourse in cases such as the one above. Except in extremely rare cases, police violence, even that resulting in death, is excused by “official investigations.” At best the offending officer is kept off the streets during the inquiry and thus cannot menace other peaceful individuals; albeit he is given a taxpayer funded vacation during such a time.
So often it’s found that the officer followed “proper procedures,” and therefore acted in accordance with the law. That the procedures themselves are unjust or encourage excessive force is hardly given a thought.
In a free market these cops would undoubtedly be fired post haste. That and they would be subject not only to lawsuits from the victim, but quite possibly from the firm who had hired them for such grotesque behavior. Businesses in general tend to frown upon the actions of their employees that bring about negative publicity by assaulting clients or potential customers.
The Violence Inherent in the System: UC-Davis Edition
This morning Greg Knapp, host of the KCMO Morning Show, defended the use of pepper spray on non-violent protestors at UC-Davis. Video of the incident has been widely viewed, and has sparked outrage by Occupy sympathizers, and a sort of sadistic contempt by the movement’s detractors. Knapp and his listeners, and presumably others on the Right, believe the police are justified and the protestors are getting what they deserve.
I had not seen video of the students being hosed with pepper spray, who were described as blocking the entrance to the school, and who quickly moved after being hit with the chemicals. The video does not depict this at all. It shows a dozen or students blocking a footpath, and only move after being dragged away by police brandishing batons.
In order to justify such abuse, Knapp appealed to an authority on the issue – a police officer – who wrote the book on “use of force.” Well of course this guy’s going to say that everything’s perfectly fine. His guidelines were followed. He can’t condemn the behavior; he suggested it in the first place! In this officer’s opinion, pepper spray is a “compliance tool.” How Orwellian a name is that?
Such appeals to the State provide a veil of legitimacy to the violence being perpetrated. This post sums it all up very nicely: “Sorry Libs […] the pepper spray incident was standard operating procedure.” Who cares if it was the standard? If the standard itself is corrupt, nothing which relies on its authority can be pure. What’s never questioned is whether the law in question is itself legitimate. Just as with immigration, the Law and Order conservatives never stop to ask these fundamental questions, let alone consider the possible consequences.
This is because the prospect that such treatment would ever be used against them never seems to occur to conservatives. They still don’t think any of them will ever be hauled off to some secret prison, tortured, or be made an unperson. Their blind devotion to the State and its para-military police forces prevents them from ever looking at a case such as this objectively. It’s as though they never stop to consider what might happen if they were on the other side of the gun.
The whole incident reinforces the wisdom behind this picture that made its way around the internet in recent weeks.
Official justification notwithstanding, the militarization of the police forces represents a threat to society far greater than any protest movement ever could.
I’ve decided to remain neutral with the OWS crowd. Many are ignorant of the true source of their frustration, which is government, from whom corporations draw their power. I’ve spoken with a number of folks at Occupy KC, and most of them fall into this category. However, there are also a number of individuals who see the problem for what it is. They are principled anti-state, anti-war, pro-market types, who reject central planning and embrace freedom.
