>
> not to mention that no one on earth should be judged by an arrest record OR
> even a conviction record. i'd expect that kind of crap from some
> conservative wanker, but not here among the enlightenerati.
>
> attitudes like this joanna are exactly what made my life miserable quite
> some time: your assumption, despite all that i posted in that post, was
> that someone with an arrest record must clearly be deserving of getting
> pulled over or treated with suspicion. you know nothing about what
> happened and why and i flat out told you that i was found not guilty and in
> fact sued for misconduct, police violence, unlawful arrests and illegal
> search and seizure and WON and yet you assumed that an arrest record must
> mean guilt. just like the friggin Public Defender's office who wouldn't
> help me fight the charge because they assume you're guilty if you're poor.
>
I guess this is one of those cases of class operating through another modality. What was that you said about being able to clear the record if you paid some money? (Was it $200?)
Anyway, Every state I've ever encountered has freaky police - in the UK, my wife's nephew gets stopped and searched all the time because he's from a council estate and looks it. What are they searhing for? Drugs, knives - both effectively 'crimes of class' in the UK, and damn useful for routine harrassment. In South Africa recently, our Home Affairs Minister, Buthelezi (you might remember him as the leader of the murderous Apartheid stooges, Inkatha) has been making statements about the fact that carrying an ID book entitles you to the rights of a SA citizen. Not so subtle - no ID = no rights...
My wife and I got burgled recently - she discovered the burglar climbing out the back window while I was out. To add insult to injury, the burglars shat in our garden. We called the cops - because you have to, to collect insurance payouts - and a few minutes later our aspirant councillor (partner of a local estate agent) paid us a visit and urged us to join up with ObsWatch - the scheme to fund a private security company, whose ambit seems (from experience) to include beating up homeless people and immigrants. While the 'middle class' is a damn slippy catagory in terms of class analysis, this for me is the 'middle class' - a priveledged layer who maintain their priveledge in part through the enforcement of identity - and thus enforced limits on solidarity.
Enough already. The police *are not* your friends. The violence of the state is only reinforced by laws which give them the opportunity to 'randomly' harrass, to constantly check that you're staying in line. The US police (who I saw on a recent visit there) scare the shit out of me - the routine display of weaponry, the fact that the beach we were having a barbeque on was patrolled by police cars, the way the street punks I was hanging out with got harrassed not by one, but by 5 cops, all converging in patrol cars - these people remind me of the SA police, except I get an idea that their brand of thuggery would be a bit more thought-out, a bit more scientific.
That's progress....
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844