Serving and Protecting: Run for Your Life

One of the great virtues of the presence of cameras, when not monopolized by the state, is that more and more police officers are being caught in their lies. It has been routine for these uniformed criminals to beat people and then lie if complaints are laid. Their fellow officers will routinely lie on their behalf and they are regularly exonerated by the force which proclaims that these thugs in blue have done nothing wrong -- all testimony by eye-witnessess not withstanding.

Today the cameras are catching the bastards.



In this first incident, we see a police officer, off-duty, who is drunk in a bar. The woman bartender tells him she can't serve him more booze because of his intoxicated state. So he beats the shit out of her. The Chicago police department is now trying to fire him. But if the tape didn't exist would they take this action? All we have to do is watch what happens to cops when tapes don't exist—nothing.


One of my readers here alerted me to the second incident above. A girl took her guardian's car and went for a ride with a friend. According to press reports what happened was the police officers arrested her and her friend and took her to jail. She was ordered to remove her shoes and kicked off the shoes. One of the shoes apparently hit the fragile officer in the shin. He immediately entered the cell of the 15-year-old, Malika Calhoun, and beat her up.

This violent cop was involved in two shootings that killed people in the past. No film of those incidents ever surfaced and he was cleared of all wrong-doing, as might be expected by the police department.

In one incident, the police officer, Paul Schene, claimed the man was "on something" and acted like he was drunk or high. The autopsy showed that was not the case and Schene was lying. But never mind that, he's a cop so he got away with it. The man in question was clearly ill and had vomited in front of the officer. An altercation took place and the man attempted to flee away from the police officer. Schene shot the fleeing man in the back and the head eleven times on the premise that he could have been going for a weapon—no weapon was found.

The police report filed by Schene and his fellow officer claimed that the shoe caused "bruising, bleeding and pain" which I suspect is just more police bullshit. What is worse is that Schene was a "field-training officer" teaching the other deputy how to act like a cop. At the moment Schene has been put on paid vacation—they call it "suspended with full pay". The world is filled with billions of people who would like to be "suspended with full pay."

The reality is that cops often think they have the right to act this way and that they are above the law. One of the great problems with policing is that individuals attracted to the job are often prone to visions of grandeur, authoritarian in nature, and love violence. It is the authority and right to act violently that they find attractive. In other words, many of them are psychologically unfit for the job.