I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.
This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.
But enough is enough.
The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.
American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.
They truly are. We have people who want to completely do away with the police. It’s completely ignorant. If we want to defund anyone, it should be these crooked career politicians.
He is like every other Trumper, who relies on fear and ignorance, mostly ignorance. “Defunding the police” doesn’t mean there is no law enforcement. D Ward either knows this or he doesn’t. The former makes him a liar, the latter makes him stupid. Neither are a good look, but it’s the hill he’s chosen to die on.
It’s every one of these numbnuts’ wet dream to be called upon some day to pull his grandpappy’s peashooter down from over the fireplace and rush to front porch to repel the 5th Armored Division. They’re all living in their own whacked Red Dawn fantasy. Wolverines!!!
As fun as it is to rag on these wannabes, there are potentially deadly serious consequences to worry about.
There was a very significant issue caused by Bill Barr creating his own secret police and deploying them in DC. They were wearing various combinations of plain t-shirts, combat pants and body armor, and were heavily armed. I.e. exactly how these gun rights people cosplay at weekends. Barr’s force wore no insignia or other identifying tags, badges or logos, and refused to say who they were other than being “with the DOJ”.
So, what if a bunch of these yahoos get it into their heads to go down to DC - or just down to their local town square - set up a control point or blockade? How do you tell them apart from the DOJ’s illegal police force? How do any of them legitimately stop you from moving freely or even arrest you? What happens if you defy them and try to move through them while being black, gay or librul-looking?
That was a seriously dangerous precedent. And it’s been set, so the above scenario may yet happen. What if it happens on November 3rd? What if a bunch of RWNJs start “policing” polling stations, as Trump has already exhorted them to do? What happens if and when the cops show up and tell them to move?
You’d think there would be physical evidence - signs of a struggle, etc - if these were murders and not suicides. ~22% of suicides are by hanging, but most of those are done indoors. Very strange.
Robert L. Fuller, 24, was hanging from a tree early Wednesday. Fire department personnel who responded to the scene determined he was dead, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. Fuller’s death was described as “an alleged death by suicide.”
The Department of Justice and the FBI announced Monday they will be reviewing the hanging death of Fuller as well as the hanging death of 38-year-old Malcolm Harsch – both black males – 10 days earlier in San Bernardino County.
“Our department has been in contact with the California Department of Justice and the FBI and our intent is to be able to share information and details so they can compare also to the Palmdale incident,” San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Jodi Miller told CNN.
Details in this article strongly suggest that Harsch’s death is simply a suicide. And according to the CNN article, public suicides are not uncommon. I’m glad these are being checked, though, for no other reason than it would be nice to know that lynchings aren’t a thing in 2020.
