Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 1)

 This has been the summer of discontent for Indianapolis and its police force. Surprisingly, some police thought they were the law and therefore beyond its power. The result was a beaten fifteen-year-old, and a dead motorcyclist.

Not that such things had never happened in Indianapolis. Back in 1981 or 1982, a black man got shot by an Indianapolis officer for double-parking on the Circle. Nor was Indianapolis exceptional with its police problems. Maywood, California had enough and outsourced its municipal functions, including its police. The following comes from a piece Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in The Nation (August 31/September 6, 2010):

... Until you read that the now-defunct police department was found by the state in 2009 to be 'permeated with sexual innuendo, harrassment, vulgarity... and a lack of cultural, racial, and ethnic inactivity and respect."

 Wow, sounds pretty bad. Then I read how the Indianapolis Fraternal Order of Police says that the job of the police includes throwing people behind bars. I thought that that was the job of the prosecutors and the judges.

The police no longer exist to keep the peace. They exist for keeping a particular order - but maybe they always had that purpose. Go back and closely read Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Dust off the books of Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair. Look up the Haymarket riots on Wikipedia.

I readily identified with this passage from Ms. Ehrenreich's article: 

... In the yars since government - state and local as well as federal - has shed its role as a kindly change agent, it has assumed a new one as uber cop: buidlign more penitentiaries, snapping up stoners, haarrassing blacks and Latino-looking people on the streets....

But I will say that is the government we wanted: the one tough on crime. That means putting those dark-skinned drug dealers in prison. Then we bought into mandatory minimum sentences and three-strikes laws and created a broader and deeper prison culture. All of that the people are responsible for creating in this country.

Racism snuggles close to the teat of our criminal justice system. I am sure that will shock conservatives and law enforcement types - just as Rick's Café Americain's gambling shocked Captain Renault. I am white, I have spent six months in pretrial detention, and race is a factor here.

Describe a drug dealer. For everyone thinking they are all dark-skinned guys from the projects, you have been hoodwinked. They come in all races and both sexes. Most Muncie crackheads of my acquaintance were white (and female).

If all races are dealing drugs, why are so many more African-Americans in prison?

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[Continued in Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 2). sch 3/26/23.]