|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Heroes' Victims |
|---|
| New York Cops Hit New Low in Sado-Sexual Assault on Innocent Man |
|
This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, June 02, 1999. The ongoing canonization of America's police officers took a shot last week in New York. Heroic Justin Volpe - who shoved a broom handle up the rectum of a Haitian immigrant while in police custody, threatened to kill him, and denied all - changed his mind and pled guilty to this sick, revealing assault. Volpe, formerly posturing as a man's man, cried and pled for forgiveness before the court and apologized …..to his own family for the shame he brought upon them. Not to this slight, befuddled, sexually assaulted immigrant, but to his own family. Aw, the poor family. Volpe, a hulking thug, had been so disgusting, so sick, so, well, sadistically homosexual in his bizarre choice of actions that even the violent brotherhood of big city cops turned on him. It doesn't take a Freudian to have various warning flags fly when Volpe's actions are scrutinized, and even the New York police have, I guess, standards. But it was not out of a sense of shame on what befell the immigrant but a sense of fear about what this revealed about and might mean to them that cracked the omerta of the New York Police. It will be interesting to see how the careers of the officers who testified against Volpe pan out. It was not a good time for the police of America's large cities. A nineteen year old in an auto was riddled with bullets from Police because she had a gun in her lap while passed out. A middle aged, five-foot nothing, mentally damaged black lady was riddled with bullets when she made an aggressive move against an officer and his back-up with a screw driver, and an unarmed black youth from Africa with a clean record, who was doing nothing in the way of a capital offense, who was not someone likely to wise off to cops, was blown apart by New York Police for……something. All the officers are white, all the victims are black, but the police are, at least, under charges. Hmmm. Oh, and how awful for the cop's families…… I have been in numerous altercations with drunks and crowds, and although now 51 and neither large nor in shape, I tell you without question or hesitation that I could wrestle a screwdriver from the arms of your average fifty-five year old, five foot one woman even if she were on crack. Anyone who cannot should not be a police officer. I also want to tell you that Rodney King could have been cuffed and restrained by a high school football team, never mind the eight, heavily armed officers. I would be hesitant to sneak up on anyone with a gun in her lap, but several options occur to me before shooting her dead in her sleep. More than several. I fully understand that being a cop is the most stressful, necessary, and awful job I could imagine, and I am not one to suggest or claim that these incidents are typical of police. Given what they could get away with, they often do both the right thing and in the right way. But there is something of which we ought to be aware, and it has to do with history. Most towns out west started out by electing law enforcement or having it provided by the Federal government in one form or another. They were small communities, and whatever differences they had were generally sublimated to a desire for peaceful commerce. There were surely problems, but it was less than the problems that inflicted big cities on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. There, old money, terrified of immigrants, bought long established municipal and state governments and established long traditions of corruption and actual crime as long as certain criteria were met. It is true but embarrassing that big city fire departments and police were little better and sometimes worse than today's street gangs up to World War Two. Rival fire houses had violent confrontations at the scenes of deadly fires. You paid protection or your business burned. Minorities were played off against each other. Irish cops versus Italian mafia, just like northern marshals vs. confederate outlaws out west. This is the tradition that Justin Volpe, who has a tradition of police work in his family, inculcated at youth. As one who has been in jail for four months straight, let me tell you that we have more to fear from someone who would choose - from all career options - to be a prison guard than from many of the drunks and potheads inside. I suggest, in lower volume, that police work over generations of the same family is not as innocent nor as healthy as press releases make it sound. It is the Singapore Image. Singapore has no statistical crime not because of the floggings but because they go to the Phillipines to rape and pillage. To some of the big city police, the rabble they run into the precinct house might be viewed as the Phillipines come to them. It is not racism, or not just racism, but something far, far worse. Television, especially Fox, is alive with shows that supposedly show how stupid crooks are and how brave and resourceful the cops are. In reality they show aggressive cops barely qualified to drive, much less have guns. One example: cops pull over a car with two drivers and one of them bolts. An officer draws his gun and empties it in the general night direction of the runner. "Amazingly," lisps the narrator, "he wasn't hit." Not amazing at all when you see what a bad shot the cop was. On another segment, a cop hits the car he was chasing by mistake but gets credit from the narrator for turning it over. It is merely a propoganda effort to excuse car chases, which police secretly love. This is an effort not to gain respect for police but to make the most moronic of them into heroes. If a cop, even a crooked cop, dies in the line of duty, we are treated to nauseating and maudlin coverage by the media, complete with endless cars following a hearse and bagpipes playing Amazing Grace. He, or she, did volunteer for the job, however. The victims of cruel, sadistic cop violence are treated different. Microphones shoved into the face of newly informed relatives, lots of photographs of overweight mourners losing control at some cheap funeral. No parade. No tributes except from the Al Sharpton variety. They, of course, weren't necessarily heroes, only victims of heroes. |
| Post your views and reviews on The Boulder Lout Forum. |