Here is another in a long litany of police abuses, this one too long and protracted to be caught entirely on video. You absolutely have to click on the link several paragraphs below.
But bear with me. First, a recap of past abuses that were recorded on videos, which I may or may not have posted (how to recall with all of this outrage?).
I saw a video a month or two ago that showed a Texas highway patrolman stop a car at night because a lighted cigarette was being tossed out the window. After approaching the car, the patrolman claimed to smell marijuana and he called for a female trooper to come and do an anal and vaginal probe of both women by the side of the road! That follows, right? You smell weed and you feel the need to probe. The female trooper used the same rubber glove for both women and for both the anuses and the vaginas. (Ahh...now I do remember. I didn't post this because it was just too gross.) Of course the troopers were very polite, verbally, and gave the appearance of professionalism.
A question for another day is how these videos made by the cameras inside the patrol cars get released. Are the troopers proud of them and want their fifteen minutes? Or is someone else, a whistle blower, embarrassed by them?
Shortly after that Rosemary sent me a video example of what the highway patrol is doing if you make the mistake of driving through Iowa with out-of-state license plates while exceeding the speed limit by 4 mph. We all know what happens in that situation; you get a warning and a reminder to ease up on the accelerator. Just maybe, if the trooper doesn't like your attitude, or is in danger of not meeting his quota, you get a ticket. But in the video Rosemary sent, the trooper, again with the semblance of extremely polite professionalism, harassed a sixty-something Wisconsin man who was making a quick trip to Ft. Scott, Kansas to follow up on a genealogy tip about his family.
Again, instead of the traditional procedure, and always with the condescending ever-so-well-learned semblance of polite professionalism, the highway patrolman kept the motorist in the patrol car for several minutes cross examining him. Why was he going all the way to Ft. Scott just to stay for a couple of hours? How much was this trip costing him? It must be costing four or five hundred dollars! For just two hours in Ft. Scott? That doesn't really make sense, does it? The motorist politely cooperated and answered everything, trying to be conversational, until he finally asked "why are you asking me all these questions?" The trooper kept going back to the same issues, asking the same questions over again like a familiar movie. But this must be costing you a lot of money? Why such a short time in Ft. Scott? The only difference is that, in the movie version, the good cop manages to nail a guilty scumbag. In this case, a harmless retired genealogy buff got off scot-free after a senseless fifteen minutes or so. Maybe the asshole trooper gave him a ticket; I don't recall.
And know the promised new story and video, this one from New Mexico. Why do these stories all come from states where I have sisters or nieces?
Unfortunately, I can't find a way to attach the video here, but as explained on the Daily Kos website, a man in Deming, NM failed to come to a complete stop when leaving a Walmart parking lot, and was immediately pulled over by the city police. Because the officer(s?) making the stop thought the motorist appeared to be "clenching his buttocks," he/they immediate suspected this must involve drugs. What is this fixation cops have with drugs in the butt? Before this poor man's day was done he had three enemas administered, with his evacuations watched and examined by the police, and one colonoscopy! all, obviously, without his consent. The only bright spot in the whole story is that the doctor at the first medical facility to which the motorist was taken refused to perform the procedures requested by the police because he recognized them as unethical.
The final humiliation: the hospital is trying to collect from the motorist the cost of the colonoscopy and other procedures.
As long as there have been police they have abused their power. But there was a time when they were smart enough not to put themselves into positions of liability. How and when did we slip into a situation where police are so blatant in their abuses, so oblivious to the limitations of their power and the rights of citizens (or, for that matter, non-citizens)?
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