You know what?
I feel for the cops in Baltimore.
I feel sympathy for the cops who take arrestees on "rough rides" because the sumbitches did "whatever" to stress them out.
The cops who prolong the choke hold, or use the tazer a tad too early or too readily or repetitively.
Even the ones who habitually and falsely arrest prejudiciously and detain and abuse and batter.
I feel for them.
You want to know why?
Check below the fold.
They do it all mostly because...
They're a part of the dirty trick.
They're even the pointy end of the dirty trick.
Y'see, we all want a certain kind of society - both here and in the US - where we can look in the mirror and see what we want to see - a caring, supportive and equitable culture that gives everyone an even shake and helps out the little guy.
We want that, but a sizable portion of the voting public doesn't want to, y'know, PAY for it.
So instead of funding social workers to work on the caring part - see that people are not crushed by the system, but raised by it, instead of funding social programs that target inner city lack of opportunity and food and job deserts, instead of redressing generations of institutionalized and normalized oppression with programs that cost money, instead of funding a medical approach to drug dependency, instead of examining the effects of such things as for profit prisons and the effects they have on policy, we fund cops.
We fund cops.
We give them shiny new toys... or slightly used military surplus.
We give them snazzy new uniforms that look like a cross between the marines in Aliens II and a Hugo Boss wet dream.
We give them salary increases even when we're cutting back on other public sector salaries.We give them salaries that, proportionately and compared to other professionals, would amaze cops of even a generation ago.
We hire too many of them.
Y'know why?
Because they are substitutes for the social workers, the mental health workers, the community outreach workers, the community centre organizers, the recreation and parks programmes, the medical intake workers, the drug counsellors, the special education teachers, the reading enrichment programme workers, the Head Start people, that we are not funding.
And we're not funding them and quite a few others for a very simple reason.
Y'see when the anger and fear and hopelessness get too much for inner city working poor, they riot.
They do evidently self destructive things like looting the CVS because, even though they can't get a decent supermarket in the neighbourhood and CVS is all they got, free stuff from the CVS is as close to what they hope to ever get.
Do you want to know what suburban, middle class people do when they are scared and angry?
They do something even more self destructive and pointless.
They vote in tax and service cutting ideological know-nothings.
That's why I have some sympathy for the cops. They are out there being undertrained and overequipped cops, and also not-trained-at-all social workers, not trained drug counselors, not trained job counselors and on and on and on...
Sure, I think the cops who broke a man's neck are scum and deserve a long term in general population... but what do the truly deserving get as punishment then?
Because - you know - we all can see who the truly deserving of punishment, the truly responsible, are.
Take a look in the mirror.