<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2>In a message dated 07/02/2002 11:20:19 PM Mountain Daylight Time, b_rieux@yahoo.com writes:
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<BR><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Think of cops as just part of the exploited
<BR>working class and you can possibly see that the
<BR>problems lie elsewhere: in the US attitudes
<BR>toward crime and punishment. The US in law and in
<BR>its courts over-criminalizes young males
<BR>(especially poor, minority and immigrant).
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<BR>We have to be aware that some people can come from the working class, yet still be part of an element of society whose job is to uphold the existing order. The problems do not "lie elsewhere;" rather, they comprehensively cut across the way laws are made as well as the way cops are socialized. Their class roots are effectively stripped away in the same way that military officers' working class roots are stripped away...union bosses too.
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<BR>I can never see cops as mere workers. To do so is to ignore the very social system you hold in contrast to the cops. Can you honestly say that the choice to become a cop is the same as the choice to become a miner or steelworker???
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<BR>stannard</FONT></HTML>