Last week, my son and I drove from the Philly area to New England.
We stopped in a rural New York town-- I don't even remember the name of the town and it doesn't matter-- and I was on uneasy, on edge. Yes, on edge, in other words, a little bit scared.
I've read enough about small town police horror stories-- speeding ticket ripoffs that pay most of a small town's expenses, out of control cops who abuse their power and sometimes even shoot and kill people.
There's Arizona monster, Sherriff Joe Arpaio, who proudly harasses latinos. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of stop-and-frisk encounters, usually subjected upon victims of color. I'm a grey haired, clean cut caucasian. My son was also clean cut-- more than usual (he's in the arts and sometimes gets a bit shaggy.) I can't image how much more uncomfortable it must be for Latinos or or other people of color, be they African American or Muslim.
I'd just read a few days before how cops in Alabama were issuing tickets, then arresting people, and, if they didn't have the money, putting them in what amounted to debtors' prisons.
It was just a small, actually, idyllic town. There's probably nothing at all wrong with the town. It's not the town, it's the erosion of integrity among American police.
Of course, there are many, many police who function with the highest integrity. But the system seems to be broken. When cops do wrong-- when they kill, when they beat up people, the police SYSTEM protects them and fails to police its own. In small towns in particular, even the local judges seem to be in local conspiracies to abuse police powers.
The justice system, the DOJ, is run by the worst Attorney General in US History-- Eric Holder-- the man who has chosen to allow criminal bankers and other corporate felons to continue free from prosecution. Note that I do not say that Holder "failed" to prosecute. That's too passive an indictment of the man. No. Holder chooses to not prosecute, chooses to allow scores or hundreds of criminals to continue engage in criminal activities.
It adds up to a USA that is far less safe to travel in.
It is time for the Federal Government step up, step in and make it clear that police chiefs who fail to take serious action to investigate and prosecute police who abuse their powers are guilty of cover-ups and collusion. All the way up the line of command, police leaders should be held accountable when they protect bad cops. And bad cops should be given the worst punishment possible. If a cop kills, the penalty should be severe. If a cop violates an law, as a supposed defender of the law, the cop should do time, no pardons, no probation, no reduced sentencing or plea-bargains. Bad cops are a particularly malignant kind of poison in the system. Of course, the same also applies to regulators-- people who are supposed to insure that legislated regulations are enforced.
The end of the story is that we stopped at a pizza place, ordered some food, stopped at a store for some snacks for the road, and got back on the turnpike. Nothing happened. No problem. But there WAS a difference. I'd never driven in a small town and felt that way before. Now I know how so many millions of others have been feeling.
1
1
1
