Still Free

Yeah, Mr. Smiley. Made it through the entire Trump presidency without being enslaved. Imagine that.

Monday, February 23, 2015

James Bovard Leaves Something Out In His Piece About Holder

James Bovard discusses USAJ Holder's non-actions in regards to the DC police back in the early 90s.
The number of killings by D.C. police quadrupled between 1989 and 1995, when 16 civilians died owing to police gunfire. D.C. police shot and killed people at a higher rate than any other major city police department, as a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post investigation revealed in late 1998. But Holder had no problem with D.C.’s quick-trigger force: “I can’t honestly say I saw anything that was excessive.” He never noticed that the D.C. police department failed to count almost half the people killed by its officers between 1994 and 1997.
Of course there is a very obvious thing missing here. Well a few things: First is that DC has a huge black population and we already know that where there are huge black populations there is a higher level of violent crime, meaning more interactions with police who are dealing with a hostile population. That's not to excuse police brutality but it is relevant. Secondly we know that the DC police at that time had actually allowed gang members (and some ex-gang members) to actual join the police force. Those persons were then able to use the "color of law" in order to do their own dirty business.
The tale of how a drug dealer served 18 months as a D.C. police cadet is part of a larger story of breakneck hiring and training by the department in 1989 and 1990 with still unraveling consequences.

The most obvious of those consequences is the worst: An investigation by The Washington Post found that graduates in those two years alone, who make up about one-third of the force, account for:

More than half of the 201 D.C. police officers arrested since 1989 on charges ranging from shoplifting and forgery to rape and murder. Some have been arrested more than once and in more than one year.

More than half of those involved in departmental disciplinary proceedings for breaches such as neglecting duty, making false statements and failing to obey orders, which have doubled since 1989.

Half of those on a list of 185 D.C. officers so tainted by their own criminal problems that prosecutors won't put them on a witness stand as officers of the law...

Yet the rates at which officers are arrested in other large cities, including New York, pale in comparison with the D.C. figures. In 1993, there were 79 arrests of officers on the 4,220-member D.C. force, a rate of nearly 19 per 1,000 officers. There were 90 arrests that year among the 30,000 New York City officers, a rate of 3 per 1,000 officers.

Detroit police, with 4,000 officers, handled 69 arrests through the department's internal affairs section in 1993, but some of those arrested were not police officers. The same year, there were 20 arrests of officers in St. Louis, which has a 1,500-member force.

Now you would think that James Bovard would inform the reader of some of this highly relevant information. Why not disclose the background of the officers in question? Why not discuss the hiring bing and the reasons it was done?

I suggest it is for the same reason 1400 girls got the official coverup behavior in Rotherdam. Don't wanna seem racist and talk badly about the black folks who can do no wrong. Better to just say "police" when we know full well if the issue was white police they would have been identified.