By Capt. Fogg
Said the man
taking a video of
a police "incident" from his front porch in Tallahassee, Florida.
Apparently a woman walking down a narrow residential street with no
sidewalks had inquired something of a police officer, one of a great
many who had congregated, their cars lining a narrow suburban lane with
lights flashing to arrest three people for being suspicious. Apparently
there was a complaint about a drug deal, but of course no one would
know except the officers. Why not ask about an operation of that size
in front of your house?
But we're only citizens. Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to obey, to be chased away or be
tased
in the back while calmly walking from the scene, as requested, face
smashed violently into the pavement, dragged away in chains for not
responding submissively enough to suit a cop assuming the right to
chase her away from a public place she had the right to be. Sounds
suspiciously like a case of the right to stand one's ground against an
armed attacker Liberals love to hate.
But of course we
don't have the right when it comes to the police. Ignoring the
traditional copscreaming, the verbal abuse and threats we associate with
the swashbuckling and bullying style of public relations some cops
practice,
the woman simply jerked her arm when someone behind her grabbed it
-- perhaps something either you or I might have done as a reflex.
After all, there was no "stop, you're under arrest" nor any cause for
one.
She wasn't a young woman, perhaps old enough
to be your mother or even your grandmother. She was no threat to
anyone, or at least no threat to any sane one -- anyone not in an
ecstatic froth of arrest frenzy so common to police action. Is it an
act to justify the systemic disrespect for the citizens they're supposed
to serve? Is it necessary to work up courage before shoving women into a
police car, like Viking berserkers, like headhunters before a raid?
Are they cowards or do they just love the art of the tantrum?
And they wonder why they're hated.
Ask
yourself if the constitution and rules of common decency gives a
policeman the right to shoot your mother in the back because she isn't
walking fast enough to please him -- perhaps because he doesn't want
witnesses to what he's doing? Ask yourself why a cop can assume the
right to talk to
anyone in such a fashion -- someone not even a suspect.
I
think there are bigger questions than the issue of racism. I think we
need to remember, before we fools rush in to frame this only in terms of
racism, that if they can do this to anyone whether it's because she is
black, or lives in a less than affluent neighborhood, or asks an
inconvenient question or for no damned reason at all other than he's a
cop and he has a gun and he can get away with it -- we need to remember
that
if he can do that to her, he can do that to you. It's a crime against all of us. It's a crime against liberty and justice and what ought to be the American way.
Yes,
the officer has been suspended,
but would he have been without the video? It's been said countless
times that God didn't make all men equal, Sam Colt did. True or not,
the pocket video recorder has made our word the equal or superior word
to that of authority. Video can exonerate, it can damn, it can set us
free. It can shine light on ugliness and falsehood as well as on truth.
I wholeheartedly support equipping the police with cameras, but I'm
starting to believe that there should be a recognized, guaranteed right
to keep and bear video cameras because they are necessary for the
benefit of a free society.
Labels: police brutality
