By John Fleming
Severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth hate. Even reproofs from
authority ought to be grave and not taunting.-Lord Bacon
The American police are not only above the law, but they make up the law as they go along-and then proceed to violate their own "laws" as it suits them. As a category or group the American police are the meanest pricks ever to descend on God's green earth. No group in the world today is meaner. It is not just that the American police are not prosecuted for their routine epidemic criminal behavior. It is not just that they singlehandedly annihilate the vaunted but unenforced "Bill of Rights," making it not worth the paper it is written on. It is not just that they are sorely undereducated and uneducated. It is not just that they are trigger-happy and get away with gunning down innocent people time after time. And it is not just that the Fascist creeps, some of them, are secret illegal members of the NSA and CIA.
Instead, what is most outrageous is that they terrorize the very people they are supposed to serve, and that noone but powerful politicians-unresponsive to the taxpayers and part of the ruling class-have any control over them, which they refuse to exercise for the common welfare.
The meanness of the American cop defies description. He gets off on redirected aggression. He takes an instant hatred of you upon deciding, without benefit of due process of law, that you are guilty. Their use of force is legendary and infamous. The American police are devoid of humanity and have no compassion whatsoever. They approach their job as one of "law and order" against middle-class and working class belligerents who have pesky rights. It is clear that the police are the masters of the people they are supposed to serve with woefully excessive authority and that the people are powerless against them. Once arbitrarily charged by the coppers with a crime, the American citizen faces a corrupt system of courts and judges and magistrates and prosecutors and jails and prisons that stack the deck against the "defendant.," who is simply railroaded. Unlike in Europe, fines and court costs are not prorated and progressive according to one's ability to pay; the poor are simply discriminated against (in reality, oppressed and devastated), by the injustice system. Especially victimized are minorities like blacks, who disproportionately stock the jails and prisons. The system crushes the poor, and rich men rule the system.
One police tactic that nobody is opposing-not even the idiotic ACLU-is the practice of the prick cop playing judge, jury and executioner on the street and ordering a person, upon instantly deciding that he is guilty, not to return to a locale, business or shopping mall. In reality, the police have no such authority, it constitutes a truculent violation of the Constitutional promise of due process of law, and the victim is found "guilty" without benefit of a trial, a judge or jury of his peers, the right to speak in his own defense and call witnesses on his own behalf, the right to benefit of a lawyer, and so forth. The tactic is extraordinarily common and is part of the annihilation of the First Ten Amendments to the Constitution ("The Bill of Rights"). The police simply relish being the man and the law out on the streets and administering "justice" as they see fit. The fact that there are a liberal Constitution, Bill of Rights and formal laws is completely beside the point. The unwritten rule with the police hoodlums is guilty until and unless proven innocent. You are powerless to debate with a man who is armed with a handgun, a shotgun, a billy club, Taser, and perhaps most importantly who can call for "backup" that can instantly clog an entire street with squad cars. You do not give him attitude or "lip." He can threaten you with a beating, citation, arrest and processing at the county seat or jail-that would be six or eight hours of bureaucratic processing that you would never recover as long as you lived. But should you threaten him-say with a lawsuit or official complaint-and you would be lucky to have your head in tact afterwards!
The very worst of the Fascists are the LAPD-notorious around the world for human rights abuse. The ambivalence of American society towards authority figures was demonstrated when the police who beat Rodney King were formally acquitted in court of beating Rodney King. Fascism is its own excuse and raison d'etre. When stopped by a cop on the road, it is clear that you must be all deference and the officer has carte blanche to do anything to you as he pleases.
Fortified with a police academy education-an atrocity of the intellect that does not exactly make him an Oxford man-the cop has learned the blue code of silence (do not inform against fellow officers), how to lie on police reports, deflecting complaints against police at Internal Affairs (I.A.)-that is, the police judging the police, more than a little incestuous-and the veteran boys at IA, using every art known to the Sophists (but with none of their philosophy), never met a complaint they could not derail or give the royal run around. What abuse he can get away with, the use of the Taser, the threat to use the Taser, being a stickler for the law and tacking on every little misdemeanor and felony that comes to mind. And they do it all with a psychotic hatred of their victims that was unknown even to the Geheimstaatspolizei.
One favorite torture technique of the police is to tighten the handcuffs on a prisoner to the maximum extent. The cuffs are so tight that they dig into the wrists of the victim as it is, but the policeman makes a point of jerking your arms and hands around, to intensify the pain, calling it resisting arrest as you stand there motionless. Then he adds "resisting arrest" to the litany of bullshit against the hapless nominal employer of the police.
The double-standard of the police is notorious. He who calls the police first is usually in the right. The police approach their jobs with mindless truculent belligerence-as if that were the only way to get things done. They regularly lie (perjure themselves) on police reports but get away with it. They are notorious liars, and, supposedly trained to observe the surroundings and take notes, instead they do no such thing, but ignore some laws, as it pleases them, and viciously enforce others, as it pleases them. The American police are brutal, highly unintelligent, trigger-happy, murderous, petty, full of authority hubris, hypocritical, Janus-faced, inarticulate, coarse, philistine, devoid of all academic knowledge, devoid of compassion, inhumane, provincial, illiberal, intolerant, and psychotic. They have no fellow feeling for others. They mindlessly charge half-cocked and arrest someone if only to justify the call to the police. Their humor is insensitive, truculent and obscene; they sit around at the police station listlessly exchanging obscenities. Their estrangement from the common decency of humanity could not be more complete. They refuse to take "attitude" because they have woefully excessive authority. They are in fact above the law.
Why do the American people tolerate police abuse? The ultimate answer is that rule by Schreck of the system and the fact that the fact that the people-like the workers in regard to the ruling class-are unorganized and their power dissipated and fractionated. American propagandists endlessly refer to alleged human rights abuse in Russia and China: But if it is human rights violations you want, I suggest the LAPD and St. Louis County Police.
The Gestapo inspired fear too, as do the American police, but at least the former did not psychotically despise their victims.
John Fleming
John Fleming is the author of the book Word Power, linguistic vocabulary enrichment, which is available through Amazon.com