Even if you’re not a fan of the music, you might recognize the lyrics from Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing In the Name Of” — “Some of those that work forces, are the ones who burn crosses.” The song was written following the 1992 brutalization of Rodney King by the LAPD, and it comes up every time a cop is revealed to be a white supremacist (or occasionally when a longtime fan finally pays attention to the lyrics and is outraged he’s been listening to leftist rock).
Which is to say, it comes up all the goddamn time.
Police and right-wing government officials in Oregon have a longstanding friendly relationship with right-wing militias (see news from June 2017, June 2019, June 2020 and August 2020) but have recently completely given up on trying to enforce any semblance of law on them – enforcement is reserved for people who want cops to stop murdering people.
And of course, then there’s Kenosha, WI, where police shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times, prompting protests and forcing the AP Stylebook to issue a reminder about how to properly report on police violence:
Avoid the vague “officer-involved” for shootings and other cases involving police. Be specific about what happened. If police use the term, ask: How was the officer or officers involved? Who did the shooting? If the information is not available or not provided, spell that out. — APStylebook (@APStylebook) August 25, 2020
That subtweet didn’t do much, since CBS and other mainstream outlets went on to report that the protests “turned violent,” as though they hadn’t begun with a man getting shot in the back seven times while his children watched.
And of course, because it’s 2020 and because this is how everything goes now, things took a turn for the worse when a white kid who just loves cops showed up with a rifle. Videos from the evening show police chatting with armed militia groups and sharing water with them, and praising them for showing up. Then the kid (allegedly) murdered two people and walked away, and cops let him walk past. He has since been charged with murder, but gosh, how did they not fear for their lives and shoot him in the back seven times?
The chief of police described the incident with a perfect example of the past exonerative tense: “an individual … was involved in the use of firearms to resolve whatever conflict was in place.”
Kenosha had previously reformed its police internal affairs procedures in response to a fatal shooting in 2004. At the time, the New York Times heralded this development as a way to improve trust in law enforcement.
Reader, it did not.
See Also
- Police harass public defender with bogus warrant & arrest threats
- New Jersey police admit to vandalizing car of man who filed complaint
- Memphis union organizer finds police surveillance camera pointed at his house
- Muslim ICE detainees fed pork; prison chaplain says “it is what it is”
- The very existence of Brady Lists – often-secret lists of police officers who commit perjury so much that prosecutors won’t call them as witnesses. Of course, since the lists are secret, the false convictions they perjured themselves for often still stand. And of course the officers still keep their jobs, and sometimes even still get called to testify. (See coverage in Gothamist, Detroit Free Press, Boston.com, WNYC, Christian Science Monitor, and USA Today).
Cultivating Joy
- Caesar the No-Drama Llama is a goddamn delight, y’all, read the whole story
- Poorly Drawn Lines is amazing as always
- This wrinkly dog
- This appears to be a baby panther
Secretly Ironic 