More on Sadistic Broward Sheriffs
So my own company's local daily, the stalwart Sun-Sentinel, reported on the video I discussed in my previous blog entry today. In a story by Madeline Baro Diaz, Major John Brooks, the ranking officer present as the policemen viewed their brutal handiwork, says, "The comments were inappropriate and unprofessional and I shouldn't have made them. ... I'm apologizing to the people being talked about, I'm apologizing to the BSO and to the public."
You know what, Major Brooks? Not good enough. Tell you what. How about you wear a red dress, stand in the middle of the street, and let the innocent woman your colleagues maimed while her back was turned spray you with rubber bullets. Sound fair?
But that's not the only thing that irks me about the latest story covering these sadists in our local police force.
I really wish the story would've offered some perspective from the other side. Instead, it just quotes the police.
"I just keep thinking back on the events ... the rocks and chunks of bricks that were coming at us and all of a sudden you hear pop, pop, pop, pop, pop," [Brooks] said on the tape, referring to the sound of guns firing rubber bullets and pepper spray pellets. "That weapon saved us a lot of injuries."
Funny how there's no tape of protestors slinging rocks and chunks of brick at the cops, no? That weapon "saved us a lot of injuries"? No, that weapon caused a lot of injuries -- to innocent victims of police brutality like the story's Elizabeth Ritter and the few people I discussed in yesterday's blog entry.
Anyway, the story goes on to quote police spokesman Elliot Cohen's casual dismissal of the tape. "There's a difference between violating department procedure and just being inappropriate," he said.
I agree. There's a difference between violating department procedure and being staggeringly, disgustingly, nauseatingly "inappropriate." But screw the tape that shows officers laughing at the pain they've caused. What about the actions themselves? Can Cohen actually look us in the eyes and tell us that shooting an unarmed woman in the back and head -- five freaking times -- violates no procedures?
Well, he'll likely say that the officers were in danger and she was caught in the crossfire -- absolutely ridiculous to anyone who sees the tape. And besides, as I pointed out in my last entry, I witnessed plenty of police-instigated confrontations that day, but none that were started by protestors. So save me the insults to my intelligence.
I'm hoping that maybe this video's surfacing will pick open a few old wounds. I know it has with me. To my knowledge, not a single officer has ever been disciplined, much less fired or -- the most proper outcome -- criminally prosecuted for the vile, wholly unjutified tactics exhibited at the FTAA protests. The story mentions that several lawsuits are underway by the ACLU, but I doubt that much will come of them. Why should it? When people see something like the Rodney King video, they can understand it -- it's a few bad apples committing police brutality, and that happens. But when you show them video of dozens upon dozens of officers engaging in behavior reminiscent of Nazi brownshirts and the Soviet occupation of Czechoslavakia, they just shake their heads and say something like, "Surely, the protestors did something first. This is just the reaction." It's hard for people to wrap their minds around the idea of widespread brutality at the hands of American police. All I can say to those people is, "You weren't there."
Before November 2003, I trusted police. Before then, I believed the same thing that most people do -- police brutality is the result of a few, twisted individuals. After what I saw that day, I am a different person. More disillusioned, perhaps, but far more honest.
Miami Police on Nov. 20, 2003, busily protecting and serving the public