----- Original Message ----- From: "joanna bujes" <joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 1:22 PM Subject: cinncinati
> wojtek writes about police response in Cincinnati:
>
> "That seems to be a rational response in a right-to-bear-arms society. If
I
> were a cop, I would do the exact same thing when facing an over-armed
> population: shoot first, ask questions later. Bitching about 'police
> brutality' misses the point that this society first needs to be disarmed
> (2nd CA notwithstanding) if we are to expect more civil forms of
policing."
> +++++++
>
> I used to live in a country where only the police were armed (Romania). It
> was not good -- though, I did, as a result, grow up with a healthy fear of
> the police. I was also trained by the cops (to be a state park ranger) in
> the seventies I will bear witness to the fact that so far as a cop is
> concerned, the world is divided into two basic categories: cops and
> non-cops. I'm willing to bet my last dollar that if that cop had been
> chasing a white kid for misdemeanors, he would not have shot him. This is
> one of the most racist countries I have ever lived in.
>
> Let's put it another way. A couple of years ago, my son (then fifteen)
took
> off with my car and plowed into another parked car, demolishing it. No
> driver's license --nothing; but he is white. The Oakland cops called me in
> the middle of the night to come and get him. He didn't even get a ticket.
> Do you think that would have happened if had not been white?
>
> Joanna B.
>
I'd say the resulting double standard is racist, but the individual police officers who directly perform the actions that lead to these double standards usually are not.
A police officer may, off-duty, be a full-on social materialist and realize that blacks commit more crimes because of the parralellism of race and class. That doesn't mean that on duty he will treat a potential danger as "the exploited." That's not his job. The very fact that blacks are the exploited class makes them, from a police officer's standpoint, more dangerous. One of the deeper hip-hop expressions goes "don't hate the player, hate the game." Only by discussing and destroying the causes of racial inequality can you eliminate this double standard.