[joesmo]

Your fist mistake is expecting anyone in America to care about your suffering. Your second mistake is not realizing that the cops don't give a shit about your money or your color once they've targeted you. Yes, they certainly do prefer to target individuals of color because that's been their primary objective in this country for its entire existence and before it was even founded as a country. But make no mistake about it; they will target you, they will beat you, they will kill you if they so like. And they will get away with it and probably with some additional vacation (paid leave) during the investigation.

This is the price we have to pay to keep oppressing blacks, latinos, Muslims, and whomever the undesirable group of the month might happen to be. Your third mistake was underestimating the cowardice of Americans especially the cowardice and fear of white America towards blacks, Hispanics, and recently Muslims. Americans have given up most of their freedoms in exchange for a brutal, oppressive police force whose sole purpose is oppression, racism, and cruelty. What happened to you is totally fucked up, but if you think paying $100k in taxes makes you immune or somehow protected from this brutal oppression machine, you simply do not understand the forces at play here in America.

[teddyh]

While most everything you say is true, that is a terrible attitude. Becoming a negative, hate-filled cynic is the easy way to mentally cope with the situation, but it doesn’t help and actually only makes it worse by accepting it. Acknowledging these things as true but still expecting people to behave like civilized people, and speaking out when they don’t, is much harder, but it needs to be done if anything is to improve.

[joesmo]

I expect civilized people to behave in civilized manners, but police are not civilized in this country--they have too much power and no consequences. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and what's more absolute than being able to murder pretty much anyone you want and get away with it? That's not a person, that's a fucking tyrant with a badge and expecting someone like that to behave in a civilized matter is what leads one to be beaten up or murdered and your relatives wondering why the cop got a nice, paid vacation for murdering their son. I'm just speaking from purely a pragmatic, survivalist point of view. If what you say works for you, that's great. But after having almost been murdered by an officer for peacefully having a conversation on a sidewalk, I can no longer believe these creatures are even fucking human anymore. And a lot of America thinks this way because a lot of people are oppressed and targeted by police here.

[teddyh]

You seem to think that we disagree on the facts. We do not. It is only your attitude that I have a slight reservation against. Certainly, treat police in person in whatever way allows you to survive. But actually hating them en masse (and doing only that), will only make the problem worse, not better. What will happen is that you will transmit your fear of the police to others, thereby cementing the power police holds. The English word “expect” is problematic here; I certainly do not actually assume that the police always will behave civilized, but I do expect them to, if you see what I mean. It is what should be expected of them by society. It is what I, a citizen, should be able to demand. Having this attitude enables me to insist upon proper behavior (in the appropriate venue, at an appropriate time, of course). But simply hating the police only exacerbates fear and resentment.

[geierdmtr]

sorry it happened to you. i like your writings.. i guess the more of us office gerbils get hit across the face with reality, the more light we shine on these issues and cause some changes.

[joesmo]

Yup. I think things have to get bad for non-poor whites before there are any changes. You can see this happening right now with the opiate pandemic. When that negativity outweighs the perceived positivity of our de facto segregationist system to white people, a system mainly enforced by police, we might see changes.

For now, I think a good start toward this goal is to start seeing people--all people--as human. That's not just something the police have to do, but something I have to do vis a vis the police, and everyday people have to do vis a vis both police, convicts, and "criminals". I'm personally willing to let go of my hate for the police and the justice system in this country if and when we start treating all people like humans. That means we don't use the threat and actuality of rape, torture, and murder in jail as a punishment when the actual punishment is going to jail. To me, it means police and government officials are held not only accountable, but to a higher standard than normal citizens (worse penalties and certainly no immunity from liability). It also means not criminalizing everyday activities.

Until then, the only thing we can do is speak up, bring awareness, and hope the police don't target us. And probably one of the most important things, teaching our children the truth about police, not the fairy tale of "serve and protect."

[geierdmtr]

there is a police conduct complain procedure. but it can only be used within 30 days of the incident, not an option when you are in enthralled in proccedings. also mountain view PD for example hides the complaint forms from you, and only provides them on demand. Also many Califiornia PD use an anti constitutional clause on the complaints forms, which states that any complaint can land You in jail if found unfounded. And almost every complaint will end up unfounded when filed, still worth it cause it stays in the police officers file indefinitely and if those complaints add up the officer will not be trusted by courts. Point is everybody is discouraged to complain about police misconduct. Myself, i can't dedicate my life fighting this one incident.

[geierdmtr]

i lived here for 15 years and slowly its catching up with me. lack of accountability can be encountered in any country. in europe, in the african countries and especially in the middle east. but i was able to keep my idealistic view of america so far and now its crumbling. the guards arresting and beating me were white, hispanic, asian and i believe at least one was black. the guards on trial for the latest murder in jail are white, hispanic and asian. i don't think its race, its more about the executive branch to be out of control and broken checks and balances when it comes to the executive branch. hard not to take it personally of course, sure feels like i overstayed my welcome here.

[hga]

Your fist mistake is expecting anyone in America to care about your suffering.

There you are wrong, starting with e.g. reporter Radley Blako and his readers, and extending to large swaths of the white or thereabouts population who buy books like Arrest-Proof Yourself (http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Dale-C-Carson/dp...) This was reified for me in ~2008 when a local cop played a game of chicken with his car and my body.

Some of it is that the author lives in Santa Clara County, California as mentioned in another comment. Citizens in Bay Area counties are allowed to own (some types of) guns, but by and large not to carry them, and that appears to help the Badge Gang feel they can treat nearly the entire populace as their playthings.

Take that too far in my part of the country, a combo of Greater Appalachia and the cultural South, and the calculus changes rather a lot. And in my county, when I last renewed my concealed carry permit, 5% of the age eligible population had one, and gun ownership is not quite ubiquitous, but extremely common and steadily increasing. And many of the cops are on our side; can you imagine a Santa Clara County law enforcement public affairs type confirming that a woman had an "absolute right" to use lethal force against some home invaders?

[joesmo]

I too had a cop play chicken with me in his SUV while I was peacefully standing on the sidewalk. I'm not surprised to find out it's happened to someone else. There were actually at least a dozen people there. Anyone else would have been charged with attempted murder. For the cop, it was just another day at the office.

Radley Balko is one brave writer, that's for sure. But even he's just going to write about the atrocities here after the fact. Maybe what I should have written is not that no one cares, but that very few people do, and they cannot change anything. Even Balko does not realize the full extent of the problem of living in a police state like this, probably because he doesn't recognize it as a police state. And while his assessments of what exactly is wrong with our police in "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces", for example, are spot on, his solutions are lame. He understands the hate that communities in the US have for police, yet suggests that more foot patrols will help. We are way, way beyond that. Without strict liability laws and restrictions on police, there is no fixing this. While cops can get away with murder, there will be no fixing this. If having justice, which includes not murdering innocent people, is not enough of an issue for Americans to change this system of horrific, Holocaust-scale imprisonment, it really does seem like almost nobody cares.