This is the corporate media at work.
]]>[Steve raises his hand…] Yep. I was there. In 2003, HPD was at least not a protester’s enemy, unless s/he did something that outright demanded arrest, or committed another sort of crime, e.g., existing while Black. One evening, a cop thought I needed protection walking back to my car parked in the Museum District (IMHO a very civilized area); amazingly, he did exactly that… walked me to my car and then went on his way.
In months of protesting, I was interviewed by exactly two TV reporters; one for the ABC local, the other for a station that soon went out of existence… both reporters were respectful and recorded what I said, but neither segment made it on air.
Every local TV news department owns a helicopter (or two), but the only observers hovering over us on one occasion were, quite literally, “black helicopters.” Military? Hell if I know… they certainly hovered in formation very menacingly. We pointed out cameras at them “menacingly” (yeah, right); after a while, they leisurely flew away. News choppers pointedly ignored us; I think they may have aired one of the very few violent confrontations on one occasion, but peaceful protest, even in large numbers, is definitely not considered news.
“The police truly became an occupation force then, because they ceased doing anything resembling police work and instead became more a threat to the general population than to criminals.” – Badtux
Putting aside my deteriorated physical condition, less than 15 years later, I would hesitate to take my protests public. With these new cops, equipped as military forces, the possibilities for a nonviolent protester include serious injury and death, even if s/he does not have dark skin. Freedom of speech in the streets is severely if not hostilely discouraged by TPTB in many cities. I don’t want to think about what it would take to restore that freedom.
]]>The ‘next big thing’ was supposed to be the ‘broken window theory’ which was also called a zero-tolerance approach when it was implemented in NYC by Guiliani. Crime went down in NYC, but it also went down all over the country as the Boomers aged out of the criminal population of males 15 to 45. NYC also had a major reduction in the unemployment rate.
The US built prisons and ‘got tough on crime’ about a decade late, but they are stilling working to fill up those private prisons.
]]>And Maryland basically makes it impossible to prosecute or fire police officers, thanks to a “Police Officers Bill of Rights” law that gives police officers more rights than us civilians, so even the new city council and mayor who took office four months ago have a long road ahead of them if they want to rein in the Baltimore PD — not that there’s any evidence of any real desire to do so on the part of even the black Baltimore power structure.
All in all, it’s a fscked situation. When the Bloods and the Crips are the people keeping public order on the streets, you *know* the PD in Baltimore have completely lost it. At this point, I’m not seeing that there’s any need for them. The Bloods and Crips apparently are less brutal, and probably kill fewer people too (killing customers is bad for business after all). What kind of bizarro world have we ended up in?!
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