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Observations of An Ex-Cop in La La Land |
 ANDY MURCIA |
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POLICE BRUTALITY? |
Don't let that videotape
control your reasoning
of TheColumnists.com
Police Brutality.
Here we go again. Some guy injects himself into a cop's business in a nasty way and gets the worst of it. Now the jerk is an angel and we’re ready to lynch the cop!
Back it up a minute, please. I’m not talking about that Rodney King angel, who drives fast under the influence and risks killing innocent families on the road. No, I'm talking about the new angel. His name is Donovan Jackson, who they say is only 16 years old, though none of us have seen his birth certificate. Have you seen this kid? He’s big enough to eat hay–and he seems to be in shape, not a bit of fat on him, since it took three or four cops to handle him.
What started it? Well, it was a typical start for this sort of officer-related beef. Seems Donovan Jackson didn’t want his Daddy to be cited by the police, so he interferred in the officer’s duties and got an attitude adjustment. Something about grabbing the officer’s uniform when the officer ordered him to stand clear of the business he was doing with his father. Of course a real angel wouldn't do that. Witnesses report the kid also let go with the usual assortment of racial and the kind of dirty words that have "white mother-” in them. Officers say Jackson refused to butt out and he just had to do something more. So he interferred and the officer got scared as he now had more than one guy to deal with, so he called for help.
Guys like Jackson just don’t like police authority. It’s too authoritative and it organizes their behavior into an orderly fashion. Most of these unruly fellows want to take charge of the scene. Get rid of the cop and they become the boss. They are soon surprised when they find out abruptly that some officers won’t stand for their bull crap conduct and, my friends, the fight is on.
Must our officers fight fairly? Can’t they gang up on violent offenders and defeat them without further risk to their own two front teeth? Or should they call Don King and sell tickets for a slice of the pay per view take? Do we pay our police officers enough to be strong men able to subdue everyone single-handedly by simply overpowering them...in a nice way?
Here’s the rub to all this video stuff: It seems we Americans just enjoy watching amateur video coverage of these “fights.” We tend to think that we have all the evidence needed to convict the cop. It doesn’t seem to matter that we were NOT at the scene of this incident, nor did we witness ALL that went on there. Seems we have no time for the police or other authority to fully investigate these incidents. We just want action!
In the current case, we have a mayor who happens to be black, saying he’s seen enough, that there is “nothing” that Jackson could have done to that officer that would warrant his being slammed down on the back of an auto and punched while handcuffed. This mayor must not have a temper. He must be the only man alive who can shut his emotions down as if they were a light switch. Wake up, Mr. Mayor, and smell the coffee!
Cops have emotions and in the heat of battle their adrenaline flows. Cops are people and they sometimes make errors in judgment after having been attacked by another, and it might take a minute for those emotions to cool down. Did you ever see boxers who hit each other after the bell ends a round? It usually takes a good referee and some of their corner men to separate them and make them stop punching each other. There are no referees or corner men on the streets where this so-called police brutality occurs. Who ever told you cops were super-humans who could act PERFECTLY in every way expected?
I must ask this question of us all: “Are we all perfect?” I know the answer is no. Well, because police officers are selected from the citizen pool, how can we possibly expect “perfect” from them? Truth is we can’t.
What we should expect, though, has mostly already happened. We have both written tests and on the job, supervised, performance ratings. If performed correctly, they can weed out most of the wacko citizens who want to be cops. No, it can’t weed them all out. We try to pick citizens who are better than the rest of us at being police officers in that they have a longer fuse perhaps, or a quicker cool down period in their temperament and emotions.
But we also must remember one very important quality here and that is we want our officers to protect us and not get hurt while doing so. We also need to hire citizens who are aggressive if we expect our cops to protect us from those who are unruly and more aggressive. If we truly have these thoughts about our cops, then let's support the cop who is doing his job. And when the troublemaker gets rudely ejected, cuffed, tossed on a car, and punched in the kisser, we should remember the old school yard question as to how to determine who is right or wrong in a fight. We must ask ourselves, “Who started this fight?” We need to exonerate the person who gave the guy what he asked for and then some perhaps. And we need to punish the troublemaker who started it.
If we don’t start supporting our police officers in good times and in bad, do you really think you will get your money's worth when most cops go out on patrol? Truth is you won’t and you have not been getting it for many years now. That’s why you may have noticed how dangerous it is to go to certain areas or drive safely, or be secure in our homes.
Do we think cops are so stupid that they will time and again risk being fired or lynched by the “video mob” and come back for more? Do we really think our cops are blind? Do we think cops will not see what the mob of vote-pandering politicians and those few thugs who make a fat living as so-called “civil rights activists” are willing to do to them for a buck?
You can bet all cops are watching what we do to their own. Cops just know what the Donovan Jacksons and Rodney Kings of their world have done to cops before the camera turned on and they don’t like it. Cops don’t like how we throw them to the wolves with the nastiest bite. How would any of us like to be judged by Al Sharpton or the like? Or by some politician trying to please his voting base and their never quenched thirst for cop blood? Is that what we want?
Don’t we want guys
looking for trouble, who if they would dare to mess with an armed
cop, get what they are looking for? What do we think troublemakers
would do to unarmed citizens if they didn’t like how we
did our jobs?
Let’s not abandon our officers who often are victims of
these “video lynchings.” I suspect some of these incidents
might even be staged to obtain a desired monetary result. We’ve
all seen Rodney King and his lawyers become rich in pay offs
from our tax dollars, book deals, and their paid personal appearances.
If the news clips on Rodney King are correct, he patronized prostitutes,
used drugs, and spent our hard earned tax money for his ongoing
ride to hell. No wonder we have pot holes in our streets. Who
has money to fix them? Maybe Rodney or the new angel will feel
a civic duty to at least fix our potholes for all the bucks we’ve
paid?
Don't get me wrong. I’m not for cops beating up innocent people. I once was a supervising sergeant, whose job was investigating citizen complaints of excessive force, I’ve recommended just punishment for wrong cops in some cases. If a cop goes over the line, he or she will be dealt with accordingly. There are rules and regulations for handling such offenses, but why must we jump to judgment and holler, “fire the cop?” before all the evidence is in? And that includes what occurred both before the video camera was turned on and after.
Did you ever try to videotape that great kid of yours doing something so cute, and because you don’t operate your video camera that often, you wind up missing the shot? We all have. Is it possible that Mr. Jackson may have committed offenses that the limited, one video camera shot, failed to capture for us on screen? You bet it is.
In the case against the officer who slammed and slugged him as he was cuffed and bent over a car, maybe the complete investigation will reveal that's exactly what happened: The officer reacted to provocation.
Maybe Jackson spit on the
officer to his right while his face was turned away from the
camera view and towards the officer?
How do you react to a spit clam on your face or clothing? Just
the smell of spit makes me sick. I’ve been spit on numerous
times during arrests, and most state laws define that act as
an assault and battery of an “insulting or provoking nature”–same
as if he punched the cop first, as defined under the law.
Or maybe Jackson kicked the officer to his right in the shin,
as you can’t see his right leg or foot? Jackson did prove
he’s a “cop fighter” because it took several cops
to cuff him. I can see on the video that his mouth is still hurling
insults at the officers. You can see his mouth moving as he is
being picked up, yet you can’t hear what he’s saying.
I ask why? Maybe the video cameraman needs a windscreen on his
microphone? Maybe he’s still calling the officers “motherf-----”
something?
During the 1968 Democratic political convention in Chicago, I
witnessed angry mobs of anti-war protestors throwing globs of
poop and urine in balloons that would burst in the faces of us
cops. The cameras were not on then, but when we tried to arrest
the throwers and the mob began to riot and gang up on us, we
defended ourselves with our sticks and then the cameras came
on. The politicians who were not on the scene called it a “police
riot.” Little did that angry mob care that I was a policeman
who also opposed the Viet Nam war, but was merely doing my job
as a cop.
Though some of America's professional rabble-rousers already are in Southern California, where the Jackson incident took place, I don't think they're going to get a "police riot" this time. The Inglewood community is mostly black. The mayor is black and a couple of the cops who responded to the officer's help call also are black. Many elected officials there are black. Though it may seem a white cop is being prepared for the public lynch mob, I think cooler heads will prevail. For example, a local NAACP executive went on TV to say all he wants is “justice” and he'll wait for the investigation to be completed before saying if the cop should be fired or not. Makes sense to me and I applaud him.
At any rate, we start to see this as politics. The Jackson incident seems to be only about “get the white cop.” And that may be good politics in Inglewood right now.
What should amaze us all is how quickly we're ready to forget the affection we felt for our cops and firemen after 9-11, after watching them lose their lives helping citizens, black or white. I mean that was then, this is now and some of us already want this white cop’s blood, with or without a full investigation and a fair hearing.
© 2002 by Andy Murcia.
The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895
Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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