In conjunction with Where Do We Draw the Line? and Protecting the Innocent vs. Punishing the Guilty, I found this story today that really drives home the subversive way we are manipulated by the standard line. This story is about a trial going on in Oklahoma City. A police officer used his authority to rape black women he pulled over. Most of them were people who had addictions, previous prostitution convictions, or other things this officer used to cause them enough fear, he could misuse his authority. Clearly, he wasn’t interested in protecting these women. He wanted to reinforce his feelings of being powerful by sexually violating them, all at the expense of these women, the agency he represented, and the state he worked for.
Daniel Holtzclaw – The Rape Trial All of America Should Be Watching
Do NOT ask me to trust someone just because he wears a certain uniform, flashes a badge, or is historically sworn to “protect and serve” the community. The part I found the most interesting is the tactic the defense attorney is using to both discredit these rape victims, but also to manipulate the opinion of the jury by calling this officer “an All-American good guy”. Uh. Not in my America, he’s not.
Are all drug addicts also prostitutes? Are all prostitutes also liars? Is a lie told by a cop more dependable than one told by a prostitute? Or, is a lie just a lie? I have problems with large groups of people being pronounced guilty by cops and not their peers. I’m sick of the standard line that says cops have a really hard job so that makes it okay for them to not do it professionally and correctly!! I happen to think that a lot of jobs are hard in this world, but not all of them have the ability to completely destroy other people. If a cop is getting burned out and angry, he needs to be removed from service, sent on more vacations, or something. But when he/she opens her mouth, spews out a statement like “all Bandidos are criminals and child molesters”, I want to see something to back that statement up before I start running around like a chicken with my head cut off, parroting what I heard like it is the truth. That goes for any group of people — mafia families, PETA, BACA, the Republican and Democratic parties, Jehovah Witness’s, Muslims, and any of the millions of other groups of like-minded people who hang around together!!
I’m sick of being told that the end justifies the means. And I’m sick of giving bad cops a pass when they use their authority to destroy the people they freaking work for…. you and me. But I also don’t believe that because the cop above was a sick freak, all cops are sick freaks, either! That means, I’m using some logic and reason when I decide AN ENTIRE GROUP OF PEOPLE probably aren’t all rapists just because they all have the same outfit. It is disturbing that I, a lowly blogger in charge over no one, can see easily the logic behind this concept and yet a large number of people, like you, keep parroting the same old standard line — All one-percenters are all criminals. Hmm. That’s not good since you guys also get to carry guns and point them at people like us.
So, friend. That’s my feelings on the matter. I don’t agree that FBI agents know the Bandidos better than I do. They know them from one angle, and I know them from another much closer, lived-in-the-middle-of-it one.
~ Bird
Everyone Has A Story... Again 