Louis Kontos wrote:
>
> I don't see anybody on this list making the claim that police
> brutality is a more serious problem than street crime -- or what you
> call "thug brutality". Who/what are you responding to?
Well. Complications. The man who arranged for Adlai Stevenson to become the DP candidate for president was also an attorney for orgnaized crime -- in fact, part of organized crime. ("Colonel" Jake Arvey.) That is part of the same machine (Old Daley & Young Daley -- Kelly & Nash when I was in grade school) that runs the city of Chicago and the Chicago Police Department -- a Department as deeply involved over the years in drugs as are the drug dealers it puts into prison -- mostly, however, the minor drug dealers, because if they busted the big drug dealers they would be intefering with the political slushfunds that keeps Daleys in office. So it's really hard to know where police crime ends and 'thug' crime begins. The DP machine in Chicago has not ruled with only minor breaks since the 1920s without being directly and indirectly responsible for a lot of thuggishness, including thuggishness wearing blue, but ALSO thuggishness of the kind that makes W piss in his pants.
About 35 years ago my wife drove a friend to her home deep on the South Side. When she got ready to return home, the friend's brother said, after giving her driving directions, "Now, I hate to say this, but if you get lost I'm afraid your best friend is the man in blue." Give ALL parts of that sentence equal weight.
Carrol