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You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Criminal Justice / Shitty Cops / Where Do They Grow These Tone Deaf Assholes?

Where Do They Grow These Tone Deaf Assholes?

by John Cole|  April 23, 20156:14 am| 92 Comments

This post is in: Shitty Cops, Assholes, Sociopaths

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First it was Jeff Roorda in Ferguson making an ass of himself during the Michael Brown protests. Then it was Patrick Lynch in NYC after the cops killed Eric Garner. Gene Lyon, head of the Fraternal Order of Police in Baltimore, it’s your turn to discuss the situation following the homicide of Freddie Gray:

As protesters decrying Freddie Gray’s death plan more rallies in Baltimore on Thursday, anger is mounting over a police union’s comparison of the protest to a “lynch mob.”

“While we appreciate the right of our citizens to protest and applaud the fact that, to date, the protests have been peaceful, we are very concerned about the rhetoric of the protests,” Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3 said in a statement.

“In fact, the images seen on television look and sound much like a lynch mob in that they are calling for the immediate imprisonment of these officers without them ever receiving the due process that is the constitutional right of every citizen, including law enforcement officers.”

That comparison drew swift and sharp criticism, especially given the history of African-Americans being lynched.

For someone concerned about rhetoric, Lyon is pretty sloppy with it. Notwithstanding the troublesome history of blacks in this country being lynched, Lyon seems unfamiliar with what Lynch mobs really do. It isn’t immediate imprisonment.

Second, given the backdrop of horrific police abuse in Baltimore, a history that makes the Ferguson PD seem like Mayberry, this is especially appalling. A sampling:

Eighty-seven-year-old Venus Green heard the scream while rocking on her porch on Poplar Grove Street in West Baltimore’s Walbrook neighborhood.

“Grandma, call the ambulance. I been shot,” she thought she heard her grandson say on that morning in July 2007. As he lumbered closer, she spotted blood from a wound in his leg and called 911.

The retired teacher was used to helping others. Green had moved to Baltimore decades earlier from South Carolina after working at R.J. Reynolds and Westinghouse. Once here, she worked at Fort Meade and earned two degrees at Coppin State University.

The mother of two and grandmother of seven dedicated her career to teaching special-education students, but couldn’t sit still in her retirement years. She had two hobbies: going to church and raising foster kids. Dozens of children funneled through her home. They, like her own grandchildren, called her “Grandma Green.”

Paramedics and police responded to the emergency call, but the white officer became hostile.

“What happened? Who shot you?” Green recalled the officer saying to her grandson, according to an 11-page letter in which she detailed the incident for her lawyer. Excerpts from the letter were included in her lawsuit. “You’re lying. You know you were shot inside that house. We ain’t going to help you because you are lying.”

“Mister, he isn’t lying,” replied Green, who had no criminal record. “He came from down that way running, calling me to call the ambulance.”

The officer, who is not identified in the lawsuit, wanted to go into the basement, but Green demanded a warrant. Her grandson kept two dogs downstairs and she feared they would attack. The officer unhooked the lock, but Green latched it.

He shoved Green against the wall. She hit the wooden floor.

“Bitch, you ain’t no better than any of the other old black bitches I have locked up,” Green recalled the officer saying as he stood over her. “He pulled me up, pushed me in the dining room over the couch, put his knees in my back, twisted my arms and wrist and put handcuffs on my hands and threw me face down on the couch.”

After pulling Green to her feet, the officer told her she was under arrest. Green complained of pain.

“My neck and shoulder are hurting,” Green told him. “Please take these handcuffs off.”

An African-American officer then walked in the house, saw her sobbing and asked that the handcuffs be removed since Green wasn’t violent.

The cuffs came off, and Green didn’t face any charges. But a broken shoulder tormented her for months.

“I am here because of injuries received to my body by a police officer,” Green wrote on stationery stamped with “wish on a star” at the bottom of each page. “I am suffering with pain and at night I can hardly sleep since this incident occurred.”

In June 2010, she sued the officers; an April 2012 settlement required the city to pay her $95,000.

No, Mr. Lyon’. The protestors are not the lynch mob menacing Baltimore, as the lynch mob is easily identifiable.

They’re the ones wearing badges.

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Reader Interactions

92Comments

  1. 1.

    WereBear

    April 23, 2015 at 6:26 am

    I think The Wire did a lot to wake people up.

  2. 2.

    kc

    April 23, 2015 at 6:26 am

    $95,000.00? Not enough.

  3. 3.

    WereBear

    April 23, 2015 at 6:49 am

    @kc: I agree. Breaking an old lady’s shoulder? Because he felt threatened?

  4. 4.

    Aimai

    April 23, 2015 at 7:02 am

    We need congressional hearings. Like winter soldiers.

  5. 5.

    Tommy

    April 23, 2015 at 7:02 am

    I live a few miles from Ferguson. My brother married into this huge family. Far, far right. My brother before I first met them asked me not to engage them from a political POV. It has been years, almost a decade, and I have respected his request about 100% of the time. I let a lot of stuff go …..

    But I was with the family (yeah they are my family) and a local news program came up about Michael Brown. They laughed. Said things so hateful. Got what he deserved.

    I have let a lot of stuff pass through the years, I couldn’t let this pass. They went all Medieval on my ass. I was stunned I was the only person in a room of 30 people that felt a man shouldn’t be shot. But I was!

  6. 6.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    April 23, 2015 at 7:03 am

    @WereBear: Well, she was a teacher, probably gave that look.

  7. 7.

    NorthLeft12

    April 23, 2015 at 7:04 am

    I’ll take a wild ass guess and say that the officer who assaulted her was not charged or disciplined for his actions. I’ll even go so far as to say that there was no admission of wrong doing or even an apology from the officer or police department for the assault.

    As to the Police Lodge statement, I guess people just want to see the law applied the same way for cops as it is to most citizens. That is, those officers should be charged, hand cuffed, and processed like the accused criminals that they are. And just to be clear, they should NOT be brutally beaten like some of the regular citizenry in Baltimore [and elsewhere] are.

  8. 8.

    chopper

    April 23, 2015 at 7:12 am

    somebody needs to remind the union that people are gonna start giving a shit about the due process rights of cops once cops start giving a shit about the due process rights of citizens.

  9. 9.

    satby

    April 23, 2015 at 7:18 am

    Sort of sideways to this topic, but has anyone seen the right wing tale going around about slavery, Barbary coast pirates, and how black slave traders enslaved whites? It’s such a mish-mash of history leavened with obvious racism that I don’t even know how to slap down factually. Not that facts would matter, but I produce them for the lurkers on these FB fights.

  10. 10.

    Botsplainer

    April 23, 2015 at 7:19 am

    Remember that meathead in high school who wasn’t real smart, not real good in sports, not funny, didn’t play well with others, didn’t take razzing well and whined like a little bitch about it while gleefully picking on smaller, weaker guys?

    He became a cop.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    April 23, 2015 at 7:23 am

    @satby:

    I don’t pay attention to right wing fantasy tales, although this one sounds like it would make a decent movie.

  12. 12.

    greennotGreen

    April 23, 2015 at 7:23 am

    John, you think these people are tone deaf; I think they’re just saying what’s perfectly acceptable and conventional wisdom within their law enforcement bubble.

    That, I believe, is the problem.

  13. 13.

    SFAW

    April 23, 2015 at 7:30 am

    @Aimai:

    We need congressional hearings. Like winter soldiers.

    No doubt they’ll have them just as soon as Trey Gowdy wraps up his Benghaziii!!!!1!!2! hearings.

    I’m sure that the opportunity to delve into such a troubling situation will cause him to speed up the current process. Especially if someone tells him that the Baltimore problems are all Hillary’s fault.

  14. 14.

    satby

    April 23, 2015 at 7:31 am

    @Baud: I’m engaged in trying to counter the one honest but confused person who shared this bit of drivel while two bona fide nut cases are all over the thread with pseudo scholarly articles basically saying that we don’t know the REAL history because political correctness. Otherwise I ignore the one nut. But I try to counter misinformation when I have it presented to me, I figure someday it may have an effect like a pebble in a pond.

  15. 15.

    SFAW

    April 23, 2015 at 7:32 am

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Well, she was a teacher, probably gave that look.

    Good thing she wasn’t a Catholic school teacher — they might have thought she was carrying a loaded ruler, and shot her.

  16. 16.

    Lavocat

    April 23, 2015 at 7:33 am

    No, John. Sadly, these criminals with badges are NOT tone deaf. They merely believe in The Law Of The Gun: he with the gun makes the law.

    The only way to set these motherfuckers straight is to sue the shit out of them EACH AND EVERY TIME this happens.

    You like your cracker police force? Fuck you, pay me.

    You like executing black people? Fuck you, pay me.

    You like engaging in covering up systemic violations of civil rights? Fuck you, pay me.

  17. 17.

    MattF

    April 23, 2015 at 7:36 am

    The unfortunate fact is that police unions really do speak for the police– what you’re hearing from the union leadership is representative of what the union membership thinks. I don’t have good answer for what to do about it– in a small police force (e.g., Ferguson) you could actually fire everyone and start over more or less from scratch. You can’t do that with the police force in Balitimore.

  18. 18.

    rea

    April 23, 2015 at 7:39 am

    @Baud: The Barbary pirates did attack European towns and take slaves, but they were not particularly black:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Baltimore

    (Other Baltimore)

  19. 19.

    Baud

    April 23, 2015 at 7:40 am

    @satby:

    You have more patience than I do.

  20. 20.

    Baud

    April 23, 2015 at 7:41 am

    @rea:

    I like how you tied it in with the thread topic.

  21. 21.

    Baud

    April 23, 2015 at 7:43 am

    @rea:

    I don’t know what this particular trope is. Who cares even if there were black pirates who took white slaves?

  22. 22.

    NorthLeft12

    April 23, 2015 at 7:45 am

    What really bothers me is that the police department did not even bother to keep track of which police officers were being sued, Really? That goes beyond incompetence, and represents [IMO] a deliberate cover up for the officers that are committing the brutality.

    But I guess legally, since the cases are being settled with no admission of guilt or wrongdoing, nothing is really happening besides a friendly exchange of cash……amirite?

  23. 23.

    WereBear

    April 23, 2015 at 7:48 am

    @Baud: It supports Both-Sides-Do-It.

  24. 24.

    satby

    April 23, 2015 at 7:49 am

    @Baud: the racists do. Because somehow it justifies all the racism they have toward blacks, though of course they aren’t really racist, we are, because we point out that they seem to have issues with black people.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    April 23, 2015 at 7:52 am

    @WereBear: @satby:

    Damn, that’s pathetic. Just shows how far racists have fallen.

    And unless these supposed black pirates made slaves of white people only, it doesn’t even support their point. (What else is new?)

  26. 26.

    Jerzy Russian

    April 23, 2015 at 8:02 am

    @Baud: I would think the fact that these supposedly black pirates did not exclusively enslave whites and the fact that these supposedly black pirates did not go on to establish a large country where a large part of that country’s economy was based on slave labor would be central to their point.

  27. 27.

    WereBear

    April 23, 2015 at 8:04 am

    @Jerzy Russian: IF, that is, they had a point.

    But for decades now the Right Wing has dropped all pretense at actually making sense, instead putting all their energy into fake think tanks, fake Universities, false-data science, and propped-up pundits.

    It has the appearance of thought and rationality, but it’s totally content-free!

  28. 28.

    Patricia Kayden

    April 23, 2015 at 8:07 am

    @Tommy: Good for you for speaking out. It’s okay to be right and be in the minority.

  29. 29.

    satby

    April 23, 2015 at 8:10 am

    Yeah, I just gave up. Screw it. My lack of response will let them think they “won” but it’s such a convoluted mess with enough actual history that life is too short. As I said, I was trying for the non-bigot’s benefit, but it’s just not worth it. They’re all outraged that I congratulated the white power faction for getting out from under their white sheets and upping their game. That will have to be my last word on this.

  30. 30.

    Cervantes

    April 23, 2015 at 8:16 am

    @NorthLeft12:

    What really bothers me is that the police department did not even bother to keep track of which police officers were being sued, Really?

    No, they do know which officers are being sued, obviously.

    @NorthLeft12:

    I’ll take a wild ass guess and say that the officer who assaulted her was not charged or disciplined for his actions. I’ll even go so far as to say that there was no admission of wrong doing or even an apology from the officer or police department for the assault.

    The officer who assaulted Ms. Green was (“Detective”) Mark Spila. So far as I know he is still employed by the BPD.

    Spila and another colleague at the scene were anonymous in the federal civil-rights case that Ms. Green filed, and which she later amended and had moved to a state court. As you know, she settled the case for $95,000 and the defendants — “The Baltimore City Police Department, The Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, The State of Maryland, Wayne Brooks, Officer John Doe, Officer Jane Doe and Officer Steele” — avoided a trial that they knew they would lose.

  31. 31.

    raven

    April 23, 2015 at 8:19 am

    @Cervantes: See, you know what’s up!

  32. 32.

    debbie

    April 23, 2015 at 8:20 am

    What kind of pig shoves an 87-year-old woman?

    @satby:

    That must be the follow-up to Michelle Bachmann’s study group that tried to get GOP candidates to sign onto their proclamation that African-Americans had it better under slavery than they did with Obama because slave-masters believed in keeping families together.

    Sickening to see this kind of stuff first thing in the morning.

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 23, 2015 at 8:22 am

    “While we appreciate the right of our citizens to protest and applaud the fact that, to date, the protests have been peaceful, we are very concerned about the rhetoric of the people on the Cliven Bundy ranch.”

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA….. gasp….. wheeze…..

    I gotta stop with the jokes, I’m gonna give myself a heart attack one of these days.

  34. 34.

    Jerzy Russian

    April 23, 2015 at 8:25 am

    @WereBear:

    But for decades now the Right Wing has dropped all pretense at actually making sense

    This can be a somewhat effective tactic. There have been a few times where I have been left speechless upon hearing something unusually stupid, and I am thinking “you can’t be that stupid, can you?”. I then overthink it, like a game of chess, thinking about a possible trap later.

    Lately I have come to realize that yes, they really can be that stupid. I am not left speechless anymore, just depressed.

  35. 35.

    Cervantes

    April 23, 2015 at 8:46 am

    @debbie:

    What kind of pig shoves an 87-year-old woman?

    “Detective” Spila did not merely shove Ms. Green: he separated her shoulder.

    I’m not sure a pig could have done that.

  36. 36.

    satby

    April 23, 2015 at 8:48 am

    @Jerzy Russian: Yeah. Depressing and hopeless.
    Ironically, one of my adversaries has mixed race grandchildren, but they’re Asian, so a “good” race. In his mind that is. They’re little kids now, but I wonder what they’ll make of gramps when they get older.

  37. 37.

    Face

    April 23, 2015 at 8:53 am

    “….it’s the suckas with the badges and the blue jackets….”

  38. 38.

    Punchy

    April 23, 2015 at 8:56 am

    they might have thought she was carrying a loaded ruler absolutely nothing, and shot her anyway.

    Adjusted for reality.

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 23, 2015 at 8:57 am

    @Cervantes: You’d be surprised what a 600 lb pig can do. ;-)

  40. 40.

    rikyrah

    April 23, 2015 at 8:58 am

    Argument analysis: Imagery overwhelms the facts

    Analysis

    The Supreme Court left the bench Wednesday morning emotionally drawn toward ending an old New Deal program of propping up farm prices, but unsure about how to contain the result so as not to scuttle more than that one scheme. Imagery, of an overbearing federal government, far outran a keen appreciation of the actual facts on how that one program actually works, so the constitutional contest seemed entirely unequal.

    At one point during the oral argument in Horne v. Department of Agriculture, Justice Antonin Scalia compared the New Deal era’s “central planning” to what Russia’s communist regime “tried for a long time.” That was more extreme than other comments, but it only made the prevailing sentiment more vivid. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., conjured up a scene of a government truck coming in “the dark of night” to scoop up a farmer’s produce and haul it off — something that never happens under the program at issue.

    What clearly was happening in this argument was that a California raisin-growing family had, through its lawyers, set the Court to thinking that the program that had been running since 1949 with the industry going along all the way was not a delicately balanced marketing regime, but a grab for property with nothing coming back to the farmers.

    Although the lawyer for the Horne family, law professor and former judge Michael W. McConnell, assailed the program mainly in calm constitutional language, most of the Court’s members seemed to have formed on their own visceral discomfort with it. Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Edwin S. Kneedler tried repeatedly to emphasize the actual workings of the program, but there was no receptive audience for that.

    The Chief Justice sought assurances that the raisin program was nearly unique among federal farm crop marketing regimes, but Kneedler would not concede that, saying that there were eight or ten others that operated quite similarly, and perhaps “scores of others” that might be affected. Justice Elena Kagan suggested that the program might actually be a “ridiculous” one, and was “a weird historical anomaly” — but Kneedler would not accept that as true.

    Some members of the Court went so far as to liken this program to one in which the government simply ordered cellphone manufacturers to hand over to the government every fifth phone they made, or maybe automakers to give up every fifth car that they made.

    http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/04/argument-analysis-imagery-overwhelms-the-facts/

  41. 41.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 23, 2015 at 9:16 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: Wasn’t there a case in Canada, (BC, I think) where some serial killer pig farmer used his pigs for, um, disposal duties?

  42. 42.

    Cervantes

    April 23, 2015 at 9:20 am

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Only by accident, surely!

  43. 43.

    Tenar Darell

    April 23, 2015 at 9:22 am

    @satby: I can recommend ways to help the confused person debunk those articles. Non-reputable websites, self-referential links all to the same supposed research, no proper footnotes and citations or links at all.

    I can’t really help rebut the central charge… You’d probably need a historian. And they would spend a lot of time talking about how slavery was different depending on which era of slavery or where in the world there were enslaved people. Whites in the American South more than 150 years ago? Probably like “Black Confederate soldiers,” an outlier that proves the rule really. Worth studying to understand how someone could both become enslaved and probably “lose their whiteness,” but impossible to discuss with people who are motivated to misunderstand.

    Check Snopes, they may have done some of this heavy lifting on this “white slaves” business. Remember when TNC was doing civil war book clubs? This guy might be able to tell whether those sources are bunk. Andy Hall definitely wrestled with the whole “black confederates.” He’s got a menu item on his blog dedicated to it.

  44. 44.

    liberal

    April 23, 2015 at 9:23 am

    @MattF:

    I don’t have good answer for what to do about it– in a small police force (e.g., Ferguson) you could actually fire everyone and start over more or less from scratch.

    IMHO that might help things but wouldn’t really be enough. My hunch is that there’s a large self-filtering effect in life. So a lot of people who become cops are more likely than the general population to be authoritarian assholes. Of course, this conjecture applies to much more than cops. E.g. CEOs are much more likely to be sociopaths.

  45. 45.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    April 23, 2015 at 9:23 am

    @satby:

    Sort of sideways to this topic, but has anyone seen the right wing tale going around about slavery, Barbary coast pirates, and how black slave traders enslaved whites? It’s such a mish-mash of history leavened with obvious racism that I don’t even know how to slap down factually. Not that facts would matter, but I produce them for the lurkers on these FB fights.

    you might mention that Turky, the nominal overlord of the Barbary Coast had alliances with both England and France to attack each other.

  46. 46.

    Cervantes

    April 23, 2015 at 9:24 am

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Yes, but those women were already dead when (parts of) their bodies were (allegedly) fed to the pigs; and allegedly to unsuspecting humans.

    The pigs themselves were innocent!

  47. 47.

    liberal

    April 23, 2015 at 9:27 am

    @satby: I would assume the pirates themselves, if they’re N. Africans, aren’t black.

  48. 48.

    Tenar Darell

    April 23, 2015 at 9:32 am

    @satby: /sigh
    They’ll love him. They will either imbibe his attitudes, which are supported by the systemic racism we all swim in, or learn to see their own unconscious bigotry, push against the system, and feel ashamed of him. /big sigh

  49. 49.

    Cervantes

    April 23, 2015 at 9:41 am

    @satby:

    Sort of sideways to this topic, but has anyone seen the right wing tale going around about slavery, Barbary coast pirates, and how black slave traders enslaved whites?

    I guess I don’t understand the question, if there is one.

    Is it the precise skin color of the captors that is important in this “right wing tale”?

  50. 50.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    April 23, 2015 at 9:42 am

    @Cervantes: Counsel for pigs would like to point out that no socially acceptable pig would not have done that. Such a barbarous act might be committed by a rogue porcine that had been expelled from the general pig community. As to capability, pigs have no comment, since they do not condone such brutal behavior.

  51. 51.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 23, 2015 at 9:43 am

    @Gin & Tonic: There are many cases of farmers falling down amongst their pigs and being “attacked” by them. Several cases of partial remains being found also tho in most of those cases it was either determined or surmised that the unfortunate individual died of natural causes and the pigs took advantage of the free meal. Had not heard one about a serial killer feeding his victims to the pigs tho that line was explored in “Snatch”.

    @Cervantes: What does a 600 lb pig do? Anything it wants.

  52. 52.

    danielx

    April 23, 2015 at 9:44 am

    Police work sucks, generally. Nobody ever called the cops because things were going great, and I’m told that no amount of training can ready you for your first sight of a corpse that’s been in the water for a week (or month), or a teenage girl who’s been ejected from a car and is screaming for her mother because she’s dying right then and there.

    That being said, there are people who are drawn to police work because they actively enjoy hurting people, and the chance of getting paid to have opportunities to do so – without repercussions – is irresistible. This isn’t exactly news; there have always been people like this in law enforcement and probably always will be. The extent to which they are permitted – nay, encouraged – to do things like brutalizing old ladies and shooting unarmed citizens is a product of a given department’s institutional culture and history. There are big city police departments with a long history and reputation for brutality (cough*Chicago*cough), but every law enforcement organization has officers who will use all force possible if the opportunity offers, and will create such opportunities if possible.

    Because they like it, and figure they’re going to get away with it, and they’re usually right.

  53. 53.

    Violet

    April 23, 2015 at 9:45 am

    I’m much less concerned with “tone” than with their actual actions. The treatment of Ms. Green was appalling, as was this most recent incident and a whole lot of stuff in between and before.

    Additionally they don’t “find” these people–it’s who they are. It’s just that we’re all getting to see them now.

  54. 54.

    satby

    April 23, 2015 at 9:49 am

    @Cervantes:

    Is it the precise skin color of the captors that is important in this “right wing tale”?

    Yes. It’s key. It’s the whole “white people are the real victims” meme. Originally from this guy: http://rightwingnews.com/

  55. 55.

    Elizabelle

    April 23, 2015 at 9:51 am

    Update from The Guardian on Bertrand Olatara, the striking Capitol Hill food service employee discussed yesterday:

    He has a law degree from the Congo, and has $89,000 in student debt from a business degree at Strayer University. He makes enough $$ ($36,000) to still be on the hook for the student loan to a for-profit university, but qualifies for Medicaid and housing and food stamps. I think that’s an additional scandal.

    Five children, no mention whatsoever of their other parent. Works weekdays at the deli counter in the Senate cafeteria as Compass contractual employee. Works weekends in the freezer at Whole Foods.

    Yet for all his struggles, Olotara had an immigrant’s pride. He compared his new country to France, where he spent several years living in Paris. While he thought “Paris is good”, he said “America is where you can make your dream come true.” He gushed about the freedoms of his adopted country: “It’s the only country where you are free to say whatever you think, whether it’s right or wrong. There’s freedom of speech.”

    Although Olotara denied he was nervous about returning to work on Thursday, he seemed a little anxious. “Everybody is going to look at me,” he said as he shifted his weight tentatively back and forth. Yet he felt confident that he made the right decision in going on strike.

  56. 56.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 23, 2015 at 9:53 am

    @danielx:

    Police work sucks, generally.

    It is one job where you just know that if you do your job right, you’re gonna piss some people off.

  57. 57.

    Mike E

    April 23, 2015 at 9:57 am

    @satby: I think it’s maybe referring to Skeletons on the Zahara. Perhaps?

  58. 58.

    debbie

    April 23, 2015 at 9:57 am

    @satby:

    Also, as in both sides do it.

  59. 59.

    Violet

    April 23, 2015 at 9:58 am

    @Elizabelle: Thanks for linking that. I hope someone front pages it. This is my favorite part:

    “Some people are scared to speak,” he said. “Someone has to start. Someone has to make the first move.”

    He’s right. And good for him for being that person. I hope everything goes well for him when we returns to work.

  60. 60.

    debbie

    April 23, 2015 at 9:59 am

    @Tenar Darell:

    I can’t really help rebut the central charge… You’d probably need a historian.

    Except that there are self-styled historians like Glenn Beck out there, distorting and lying about just about everything.

  61. 61.

    Mike E

    April 23, 2015 at 10:00 am

    @Gin & Tonic: There certainly was a movie that employed said disposal option.

  62. 62.

    Cervantes

    April 23, 2015 at 10:05 am

    @satby:

    Is it the precise skin color of the captors that is important in this “right wing tale”?

    Yes. It’s key. It’s the whole “white people are the real victims” meme. Originally from this guy: http://rightwingnews.com/

    Actually, I asked about the skin color of the captors, not the captives. Is it key to the argument that the slave-takers were, let’s say, sub-Saharan African? Is that your right-wingers’ (alleged) Big Point?

    And by any chance is anyone quoting or citing the following dissertation?

    Wilson, Gary Edward, American Prisoners in the Barbary Nations, 1784–1816. North Texas State University, 1979.

    I mean, it’s well known that Europeans and Americans were taken captive and enslaved — so that can’t be the point of the controversy, can it?

    Aside: If you have some time, look into the so-called ‘‘Algerian Prisoner Fraud.’’ This was a fairly successful scheme in which gullible and caring Americans handed over lots of money to crooks who promised to use that money to ransom slaves and hostages. Aforementioned Gary Wilson says that eventually George Washington himself had to intervene to end the scam.

  63. 63.

    Elizabelle

    April 23, 2015 at 10:07 am

    @Violet: I can see Mr. Olatara working with a cause, or for a much better employer. Maybe even on Capitol Hill in an office, with that background. I think only good things can come for him after speaking out, even if he loses the deli counter job.

    I don’t know why he’s not working at Costco. (One of the Guardian commenters suggested that.) He seems to have a marvelous work ethic. He could move up, with his hard work, and law training from the Congo, and the dreadfully expensive business degree from Strayer.

    Got to love Costco for not hiring MBAs. I bet they’d take a risk on Mr. Olatara, though.

  64. 64.

    Cervantes

    April 23, 2015 at 10:08 am

    @Elizabelle:

    I bet they’d take a risk on Mr. Olatara, though.

    Seeing as how they take much bigger risks all the time.

  65. 65.

    Elizabelle

    April 23, 2015 at 10:10 am

    @Violet:

    “Someone has to start. Someone has to make the first move.”

    That should be a tag line, in between the snarky ones.

    A lot of American problems come from the Glenn Becks and Kochwhores and other fabulists (conservative economists) stepping up and making all manner of moves and claims, and instilling nonsense, and it’s so hard to work against that, because they’re simplistic and real life is more nuanced.

  66. 66.

    Elizabelle

    April 23, 2015 at 10:12 am

    @Cervantes: Costco does.

    And it believes in reward and loyalty too. Which separates them from the other big boxes.

  67. 67.

    Just One More Canuck

    April 23, 2015 at 10:15 am

    @Gin & Tonic: You’re right – Robert Pickton, in the Vancouver suburbs – he was charged with 20 murders , but they could only convict him for six (all women). He apparently confessed to an undercover cop in his jail cell about having done 49, and wanting to make it an even 50

  68. 68.

    Violet

    April 23, 2015 at 10:19 am

    @Elizabelle: Yeah, agreed. I think someone might snap him up. He obviously has a strong work ethic. He’s smart and well educated. Even Costco, like you said, but I’d think an organization that could use his skills would be interested. But his situation aside, his points still stand that the rest of the workers are not paid enough.

  69. 69.

    RichterScale

    April 23, 2015 at 10:22 am

    @Lavocat: Suing them does nothing, because the taxpayers are the ones that pick up the tab, not the cops.

  70. 70.

    Cervantes

    April 23, 2015 at 10:28 am

    @RichterScale:

    Suing them does nothing, because the taxpayers are the ones that pick up the tab, not the cops.

    Someone argued that these kind of incidents could be brought to an abrupt end if compensatory payments had to come out of police pension funds.

  71. 71.

    Cervantes

    April 23, 2015 at 10:33 am

    @Elizabelle:

    Right. My point was simply that, judging by Olatara’s courage and eloquence, banking on him would be a small risk compared to others they take on every day.

  72. 72.

    Elizabelle

    April 23, 2015 at 10:34 am

    @Cervantes:

    these kind of incidents could be brought to an abrupt end if compensatory payments had to come out of police pension funds.

    That’s a great argument. Do you recall source of that idea?

    Also, make the taxpayers who shriek about not wanting to pay sufficient taxes to support a good police department pay through the nose for settlements incurred by bad police departments. Thinking of Ferguson here.

    I think city managers and insurers can do a lot, too, in insisting on better practices by police departments. We saw how speedily the North Charleston mayor and police chief acted to order body camera use after Slager murdered Walter Scott after a traffic stop.

    They know they’ve got an undefendable lawsuit in their future.

  73. 73.

    Paul in KY

    April 23, 2015 at 11:04 am

    @Baud: Agreed. What does it matter that some poor whites were also enslaved? Wrong of them to be, but doesn’t change the terrible practice that enslaved so many black people.

  74. 74.

    Paul in KY

    April 23, 2015 at 11:05 am

    @Tommy: Also want to commend you for telling them the truth!

  75. 75.

    Paul in KY

    April 23, 2015 at 11:09 am

    @Cervantes: Even if they were alive, the pigs are still innocent.

    Pro tip: Generally stay the Hell away from pigs. They will fuck you up, if given a chance.

  76. 76.

    TriassicSands

    April 23, 2015 at 11:13 am

    Notwithstanding the troublesome history of blacks in this country being lynched,

    Troublesome? You really went for understatement there, John. Lynching, like genocide, is difficult to hyperbolize.

  77. 77.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    April 23, 2015 at 11:32 am

    I read this and all I can think is “goddamn, she’s just lucky she wasn’t shot” and boy, if that isn’t a sad commentary on where the citizens stand with regards to the police that are supposed to protect them, I don’t know what is.

  78. 78.

    Woodrowfan

    April 23, 2015 at 12:07 pm

    Tbogg used to make fun of the clown that runs rightwingnews. I think World O’Crap and Sadly, No!! did as well.

    Basically some pirates, some of whom were black, took prisoners, some of whom were white, and sold some of them (some of whom were white) into slavery. Comparing that to the African slave trade is like comparing the kid selling pot he grew in the woods at his grandparent’s place to some of his buddies with the Mexican drug cartels.. they both sell drugs but the scale is radically different.

  79. 79.

    Woodrowfan

    April 23, 2015 at 12:09 pm

    @Paul in KY: Pro tip: Generally stay the Hell away from pigs. They will fuck you up, if given a chance.

    which is why the farm hands panic in the 1939 Wizard of Oz when Dorthy falls into the pig pen. It’s not because she’d get her dress dirty.

  80. 80.

    Paul in KY

    April 23, 2015 at 12:39 pm

    @Woodrowfan: That was an excellent analogy.

  81. 81.

    Paul in KY

    April 23, 2015 at 12:40 pm

    @Woodrowfan: Had forgotten that part, but good point there.

  82. 82.

    celticdragonchick

    April 23, 2015 at 1:01 pm

    @Woodrowfan:

    Comparing that to the African slave trade is like comparing the kid selling pot he grew in the woods at his grandparent’s place to some of his buddies with the Mexican drug cartels.. they both sell drugs but the scale is radically different.

    If you look at the Ottoman Empire as a whole (along with the Barbary States), the slave trade overall was just as large and pernicious as anything here in the American south, and it went for quite a bit longer.

    Since Muslims were forbidden from selling other Muslims at the time( from what I recall in my readings), slave raids were conducted into central Africa, Europe, the shipping lanes and southern Asia to obtain human chattel for labor and sex.

    There are period claims of entire seacoast villages in Britian and Ireland being carried off, and the slave trade of Christians from Greece and the Balkans was well known in the 19th century (a famous statue of a nude Greek female Chistian slave can be seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greek_Slave)

    Public reaction to the statue was mixed. When the work was first exhibited, many people were scandalized by the figure’s nudity; Powers countered much of this criticism by suggesting that the young woman was a perfect example of Christian purity and chastity, because even in her unclothed state she was attempting to shield herself from the gaze of onlookers. Furthermore, he said, her nudity was no fault of her own, but rather was caused by her Turkish captors, who stripped her to display her for sale. So well did this reasoning work that many Christian pastors would exhort their congregations to go and see the statue when it was displayed.[3]

    Some viewers also drew parallels between The Greek Slave and the slaves who were concurrently working on the plantations of the American South. Such parallels were initially lost upon much of the statue’s American audience, but as the American Civil War neared, abolitionists began to take the piece as a symbol, and to compare it with “the Virginian Slave”.[5] The comparison was the subject of a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. The statue also inspired a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Abolitionist Maria White Lowell wrote that The Greek Slave “was a vision of beauty that one must always look back to the first time of seeing it as an era”.[6] In 1848, while walking through Boston Common, Lucy Stone stopped to admire the statue and broke into tears, seeing in its chains the symbol of man’s oppression of the female sex. From that day forward, Stone included women’s rights issues in her speeches.[7]

    African male slaves (usually animist religious backgrounds) were typically castrated or even had their entire genitalia removed.

    In any event, being a foreign slave in North Africa or Turkey was pretty fucking bad, and you were likely to end up being sold for rape if you were female or put put into chains on a galley if you were male.

    Many of the crew of Turkish and Egyptian warships at Navarino in 1827 during the Greek Revolution were slaves chained to their posts and ended drowning as their ships were sunk by the combined English/Russian/French fleet.

    The Allies had a substantial superiority in front-line combat vessels: 10 battleships to the Ottomans’ 3. This advantage was only partially offset by the Ottomans’ 7 double-deck frigates against 1 Allied vessel of this kind. The great majority of the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet were smaller vessels – 58 corvettes and brigs – which were of little use against the Allied heavyweights: they had much smaller firepower, and, their decks being lower, could easily be dismasted by raking fire. In addition, the Ottoman-Egyptians mainly deployed smaller-calibre guns than the Allies (often the guns discarded by the Allies when they upgraded their own calibres). Most of the Allied crews had gained extensive combat experience in the Napoleonic Wars, which had only ended 12 years previously, and were service professionals. In contrast, the Ottoman crews only had combat experience against the Greek revolutionary naval forces, which although gallant and effective, bore no resemblance to the navies of the Great Powers. In many cases, Ottoman crews practiced impressment to fill their ships’ complements. Some Ottoman crew were even found, after the battle, to have been shackled at their posts (convicts, Greek prisoners or other involuntary recruits).[37]

    In any event, hatred of the Turks by Greek people is still very, very real. One of my good friends from UNCG in Greensboro was a Greek Cypriot grad student, and she loathed Turks passionately.

  83. 83.

    NorthLeft12

    April 23, 2015 at 1:01 pm

    @danielx:

    there are people who are drawn to police work because they actively enjoy hurting people, and the chance of getting paid to have opportunities to do so

    I have received some incredulous and disgusted looks when I have suggested this same thing about not only police, but about people who join the army, specifically to be in the infantry. I guess this is not a topic to be broached in polite company.

  84. 84.

    NorthLeft12

    April 23, 2015 at 1:11 pm

    Funny, I was thinking about the TV show “Hill Street Blues” and how the one sergeant would always say at the end of his morning briefing, “Let’s be careful out there.” , only to be replaced by another sergeant [when the actor died] who would say “Let’s do it to them, before they do it to us.”

    As some have noted, I am sure the local culture and leadership in the particular police force has a great deal to do with the behavior of the officers in it.

  85. 85.

    NorthLeft12

    April 23, 2015 at 1:20 pm

    Michael Conrad was the actor’s name. A beloved character on that classic show. One of my all time favourite police shows along with Luther, Wallander, Law and Order, and Sherlock.

    No I have not yet watched The Wire. I am planning on it. You could include Breaking Bad as a police show, but I’ll leave it off.

  86. 86.

    drkrick

    April 23, 2015 at 1:23 pm

    @satby:

    Yeah. Depressing and hopeless.
    Ironically, one of my adversaries has mixed race grandchildren, but they’re Asian, so a “good” race. In his mind that is. They’re little kids now, but I wonder what they’ll make of gramps when they get older.

    Probably about what I think about my father. Life’s messy.

  87. 87.

    celticdragonchick

    April 23, 2015 at 1:27 pm

    @NorthLeft12:

    I have received some incredulous and disgusted looks when I have suggested this same thing about not only police, but about people who join the army, specifically to be in the infantry. I guess this is not a topic to be broached in polite company.

    The job of the military is to fight, so unsuprisingly you find some people join up who do want to fight.

    Quite a few of them did after Pearl Harbor.

    That is not all all the same thing as people who join law enforcement to kill and injure fellow Americans.

    My father (after he was a science teacher for 20+ years) went into corrections at a small minimum security facility.

    Two of the officers there were outright sadists (his words!) who cleverly concocted excuses to beat, restrain and injure inmates. They were known to other officers as problems, but nothing was ever done about it.

    Moreover, local PD was sometimes tasked with prisoner transport to the prison if it was just one inmate, and in that case officers would sometimes beat the guy before dumping him with the correctional staff as a kind of “prank” since corrections now had to deal with an angry, verbally disruptive and possibly injured inmate who had not been processed yet.

    Good times.

    I knew jerks on the military, but soldiers are typically kept on a far tighter leash and with far better oversight then you ever see with American police.

  88. 88.

    Woodrowfan

    April 23, 2015 at 2:18 pm

    @celticdragonchick: true, but I got the impression that the original analogy was not to the whole Ottoman system, but to the Barbary pirates as a group.

    Side note: If you look at magazines that sold to young men in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Horatio Alger or Buffalo Bill type stories) many of them had ads from companies that would sell you a packet of “art prints” of “Greek slave girls.” It was art don;t you know, CULTURE, and the fact they it was semi-naked young girls in light bondage positions was, I am sure, an accident..

  89. 89.

    celticdragonchick

    April 23, 2015 at 2:36 pm

    @Woodrowfan:

    I hadn’t heard that about the Greek “art” prints.

    *gag*

  90. 90.

    Trakker

    April 23, 2015 at 2:38 pm

    I cannot and will not defend the actions of that cop, but I will defend the police union. A union has only one purpose: to support and protect the rights of their members. They have no responsibility to the citizens of the city. They negotiate the best possible contract for their members and then make sure the city doesn’t abuse their authority.

    A union will not criticize publicly one of their members any more than a lawyer would criticize their client regardless of how guilty he/she appears to be. Police unions don’t hire the cops, the city does. If the city hires a bad cop, the union must defend them.

    If police unions become too powerful and encourage a culture “us vs. the scummy citizens” then the city MUST reign them in, Unions must negotiate new contracts every few years, and the city has an obligation to ensure the new contract protects their citizens. Yes, it could turn into a dirty, ugly confrontation and that’s why cities prefer to just blame the police and their unions whenever cops do bad things.

    Personally, I believe police unions have been allowed too much power to protect bad cops, and I blame the cities like Baltimore for this.

  91. 91.

    satby

    April 23, 2015 at 8:44 pm

    @Cervantes: I was talking about the captors.

  92. 92.

    Plantsmantx

    April 24, 2015 at 5:42 am

    @satby:
    You can tell them that the Barbary pirates weren’t “black people” as they’re defining that term- in other words, they weren’t sub-Saharan Africans- but it won’t do any good. These people have an endless selection of rationalizations for their racism, because they don’t reject any of them on the basis of not making any sense.

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