When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? Perhaps an actor or an astronaut, perhaps a rock star or a famous author. Of the attainable goals, you might have wanted to become a police officer, probably a detective. There are reasons for this, the profession has been glamourised in literature and on film, and there is a certain attraction about carrying a gun. For girls, well, you get to boss guys around for a change, and that can’t be bad, can it? Actually, it can.
We hear a lot in the modern world about privilege: the vacuous white privilege; the ludicrous male privilege...even so, most people realise that when it exists, privilege derives mostly from money. Celebrity brings privilege too, but this can be a double-edged benefit. Likewise in countries like Britain where there is an hereditary ruling class, there can be a certain privilege in social status or birth. The police have a unique privilege, the privilege money can’t buy.
Unless you have experienced this, you can’t really understand it. There is a big difference between the American police and the British police. The Americans are psychopaths; the British are cunts. There are reasons for this. In the States, the Constitution places severe restrictions on such things as searching property and people. The American police can’t even take a suspect’s DNA without good reason. On the other hand, the American police are armed routinely, and are prone to shoot first and ask questions later. They are also prone to use violence, especially against people lower down the food chain including blacks, the homeless, and even on occasion women.
Although police violence is not unknown in the UK, it is usually confined to public order situations, and is generally much less intense than in the US. This hasn’t always been the case, as for example the murder of Liddle Towers back in the 1970s illustrates, but today you are very unlikely to get beaten to a pulp by the British police. On the other hand, there are few people who are so dishonest. Although they will plant evidence only very occasionally, they will suppress exculpatory evidence, verbal up witnesses to give correct evidence, and place absurd interpretations on even the most prosaic of actions.
This is what is known as noble cause corruption, a behaviour that is of course anything but noble. It is known more accurately as bent for the job; the other type – bent for self – is entirely different, and in general is not tolerated, but acting as judge and jury to fit up some individual who has been judged undesirable is a different matter.
All this is done with the collusion of prosecuting lawyers, magistrates, and even judges. In this age of near total surveillance we have many examples of this, and there are few better or more outrageous examples than the scandalous case of the treatment of Monica Contreras, in an American courtroom. Check out this short video, and in particular the behaviour of the judge who literally looked the other way. Patricia Doninger was fired over her complicity in this incident, and the gutsy victim was eventually awarded a $200,000 settlement. Now ask yourself what would have happened if this had not been recorded; most likely Monica Contreras would have been written off as a head case or would have found herself in a criminal court, perhaps even losing the custody of her daughter. This is the privilege money can’t buy.
Here is another, arguably more shocking example, this time Ronald Jones, a 62 year old man, is set upon by a group of uniformed thugs for no good reason, beaten up, charged with imaginary crimes, and thrown into gaol for 15 months.
An excellent or rather an appalling example of this sort of behaviour from the UK was the death of Ian Tomlinson, who was assaulted by a police officer in broad daylight, from behind, and in full view of numerous witnesses, including unfortunately for PC Harwood, someone who filmed the incident. Ian Tomlinson was an alcoholic, a man down on his luck who had been reduced to living in a hostel, one of the great unwashed, a person of no consequence, indeed the sort of person society is better off without. He was also a very sick man, and an assault which would have left most men of his age bruised and angry led to his death within minutes. Harwood could not of course have foreseen that, but because of the victim’s low social status, this wanton assault was bracketed as bent for the job, and a cover up was instituted. This involved bringing in a tame (or bent) pathologist to fudge the post mortem examination, but thanks to that mobile phone video, the genie was out of the bottle. Again, as with the Monica Contreras and Ronald Jones incidents, consider what would have happened but for the film.
Now ask yourself this question, do you want to engage in that sort of behaviour against strangers - people who have done you no harm - or even have the power to do so? If you answer yes, you should seek psychiatric help. If you don’t, welcome to the human race. Nobody has to grow up to be a pig.
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