I could go on…and on, but my point is: all of the victims of the forementioned injustices were white men. News coverage of police brutality directed at poor white trash isn’t very news worthy and seldom makes headlines. But it happens just the same, all of time, all over the country. The idea that these kinds of crimes are usually motived by race, religion, or sexuality is simple minded and readily accepted (Occam’s razor gone mad), but it doesn’t even come close to addressing the real problem. Americans must unite in order to put police violence in check. To represent the issue as “the big mean white guys with badges VS. women and minorities” is unproductive and disengenuous.

Well, the topic addressed misogyny in LE and the fact that the majority of the Portland Police Bureau cops listed as its worst apples, engaged in misogynist behavior, including sexist comments.

Yes, aggression was a contributing factor in this beating committed by this cop, but his use of language is a very critical aspect as well, and with all due respect, I disagree that it was separate from the assault. The language he chose to use while committing the assault of the man goes part and parcel with it, just as it would if he were beating a person of color and used racist slurs.

Women have gender slurs tailor made for us, far many more than men do. The vast majority of male gender slurs are slurs or terms used to define women, asexual terms(i.e. asshole) or terms used to demean the man by demeaning his mother(i.e. mother f—– or son of a…..) So even if a cop uses gender slurs that are often directed most often at women, against men, he’s still acting in a misogynist way, because he’s putting demeaning female labels on the man that he’s beating.

Police cultures in general(with PPB’s here as a specific example) are racist, sexist, homophobic, antisematic and domineering in nature. They are also very insulated and the worst elements are even more insulated within those cultures. FTMP, aspects of the culture may be invisible, certainly to those not included in a target group. Often, they are very visible(i.e. the man beaten got a good close look inside a police culture that expands way beyond the man who assaulted him)

Which brings in mind the issue about whether or not these acts of violence, tinged in misogyny are the acts of individual “bad apples” or whether they are just acting within the boundaries of the culture. I think the larger point of the essay that addressed the PPB’s worst cops, is geared towards expressing it as a far larger problem in a LE agency(and LE, in general) than just those four thug cops.

Earlier this week, I was looking through court records on another case and I stumbled upon a recently filed case against two unknown LE officers for felony assault by peace officers and concealing/destroying evidence. Very little info was available, so I passed it to both the local newspaper and the LA Times, both who wrote back and said they’d check it out.

It turned out, it was two deputies who deprived a jail inmate of toilet paper for over 20 hours, then when he got upset, they and a third one took him to a private room(no cameras there) and beat him bad enough to leave pools of blood on the floor. Articles were published on the incident and the sheriff comes out and says that his administration is cracking down on bad apples. But how many assaults and batteries did these men commit and how were they able to avoid investigation for so long? At best, they will probably plead out to misdemeanors and get probation. It is not known yet, publicly at least, what the deputies said if anything as they chickenwinged this guy and rammed his head into a steel window siding over and over, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were saying things similar to what this Portland thug did. I think racism, sexism is just so engrained with them.

The sheriff’s up for election next month and if he tries to spin this like he went to the press(and not the other way around) to be open with them about what’s going on in his agency, well I’ve got proof he’s lying. But given the numbers of deputies who’ve been busted for DV, sexual assault(on the street, and in the jails), ADWs, he’s constantly more concerned with damage control.

In the example supplied, I don’t agree “misogyny” or “sexism” necessarily fueled that attack. “Aggression” and “hostility” did, and the cop’s sexist language was used in an attempt to provoke the man, apparently unsuccessfully, since it was the cop who ultimately struck his victim first.

It might just as well be that the aggressor was attempting to appeal to his perceived victim’s sexism. When any two people are puffing up before a fight, including two scrappy women, they will tend to say things to make themselves sound more “badass” than they are to intimidate the other person. People say things they would never say or think in a normal social situation, because they are playing the role of a “heavy.” Like guys, when they are nervous and want to appear friendly to other guys, might say “hey man”, or “sorry man”, when they would not otherwise ever speak in Dude dialect. Kids might call someone “chicken,” but that does not necessarily mean they hate chicken, or even that they can conceive of any tangible connection between chickens and cowardice.

As the writer of the post you’re quoting, I know damn well that I didn’t intend - and didn’t say - “this is a problem because it’s an offensive potrayal of women.” You made that up and put it in my mouth; I never said it, and I never meant it. Yes, what he said was “offensive,” but the problem here is that someone was violently victimized.

Nonetheless, it’s interesting to me that even while beating up an innocent man, the thug who gave the beating was egging himself on with misogynistic comments. It points out something I firmly believe, which is that much violence agianst boys and men by other males - especially bullying violence - is motivated by misogyny and sexism. Misogynistic men, who are convinced that they can use violence to enforce “correct” sex roles, harm both women and men, not women alone.

(By the way, I pretty much agreed with your posts on the other thread, which makes it especially disappointing that your comment on this thread is so one-sided and unfair).

Bargoers said LaFrenz, then a four-year cop, called a man playing pool “pussy” and “vagina boy,” challenging him to fight for no apparent reason. Ordered to leave, LaFrenz’s group confronted the pool player outside at closing time. One of the group-possibly LaFrenz-head-butted the man, causing a golf-ball-sized swelling next to his eye.

While the male victim’s eyesocket was struck violently by a Neanderthal cranium, we are most offended by the cop’s *misogyny*, which was apparent in his vulgar, sexist language.

The implicit sexism in the taunt, directed at his victim’s sense of machismo, is that his victim is “less of a man” for not responding to provocation. After all, in his mind, only a woman would respond to direct provocation with what he saw as cowardice. And we object to that portrayal of women as wilting violets.

And yet, a cop beats up a man, unprovoked - and the concern here is about the language he used while beating him.

I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t read it with my own eyes.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/07/15/calif_girl_faces_felony_assault_charge/

And I just found the one I was looking for:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20050716-0006-ca-littlegirlassault.html

It’s hard to find the AP story link. The article was in our paper and I received some emails with the article but no link.

if I know I didn’t do anything wrong and got scared because I was alone and fled then others might get hurt and I might end up in jail for resisting arrest and being in jail may make you even more vunerable to abuses, so you have a catch 22.

if you resist you are punished even if innocent, if you oblige you get raped or worse, (if it is a corrupt c0p, but how do you tell the difference right off? you can’t)

and the fact the departments are unwilling in some cases to protect the arreste’ when charges of abuses are filed and the police people are not punished then there is no incentive for them to refrain and they can keep on do harm to others. and this can only create suspicion and disrepect for law enforcment officers who are honest and trustworthy, making it harder for them.

RR

The defendant is very cocky, confident and sized up every woman in the place. Goes with being a sexual predator after all. When it was my turn, I just gave him an eat-shit expression and he moved on. What a creep.

Fingers crossed that his case will be moved to trial, but wish he had a better judge.

YET, in the next breath, these elected officials and their police chiefs rush to defend the officers’ actions and seem to be mostly concerned with the officers’ feelings(which are valid, but aren’t the mother’s?). I guess in their case, it’s not rushing to judgement b/c they have all the answers and they’re just waiting for the non-independent investigations to validate them.

So if the communities have to sit on their hands and wait, why don’t the elected officials? And since the department, mayor and police commissioner have basically said it’s a by-the-policy shooting, why are they even investigating?

This is a tired routine played out in L.A. so many times each year. But the LAPD doesn’t have one of the worst reps among LE agencies in this country for nothing.

I was reading the Los Angeles Times article about it, and it stated someone as saying, they(the police) never went in to hurt anyone. That’s true, their intent is not to hurt, but to use lethal force. They don’t injure, they kill, which is what they went in the building to do, but then there’s a young girl in the mix, whose odds of being killed just went way up.

I wonder what their plan was(SWAT) if they even had one. Or whether they just reacted.

There’d be more stress/psych retirements except with those, no gun, no job in LE or even security, until you can prove your fitness. We’ve even had officers who start out with the PSTD, then decide they want to remain cops so now they have to find a physical injury(and very few cops haven’t had at least some minor injury, whatever works)

I got in an argument with my councilman on a retirement of one of the Miller killers on Saturday. He spun this story of how the reason why the city caved on the appeal of his reinstatement was b/c the officer wanted to settle. Not true, the city was the first to begin settlement talks, according to any records.

I call them bounties. My councilman hates that, but that’s what they are imo. Though since you can’t fire officers anymore what with our stacked arbitration process, that’s what’s happening more and more.

The guy who was caught on tape from Inglewood assaulting and slamming Donovan Jackson, a kid, was just awarded over $1 million AND reinstated as a police officer. Never mind, the jury hung in both of his trials, and never mind that he had 12 prior assaults and batteries in less than three years.

Excerpts:
Take the case of Sgt. Richard Barton.

The fund approved his claim March 14, 2000. Barton said he suffered post-traumatic stress from the January 1992 shooting of 12-year-old Nathan Thomas, a boy police accidentally killed while being held hostage. Barton was one of five officers involved and was the patrol officer in command. …

Lt. Gabe Kalmanek filed a disability claim on May 1, 2003, the day after he testified before a grand jury about his actions the night of a police beating in downtown Portland. His claim came in the same day the grand jury released a letter blasting the bureau for covering up the beating.

Kalmanek cited a reoccurring 1997 back injury. He avoided a certain demotion for failing to notify his commander about the beating that night and to take appropriate actions. As of December, he collected $5,438 a month in benefits. Kalmanek declined to comment when contacted at his home.

[The Kalmanek case involved his covering up two officers beating a man outside Stephano's nightclub in downtown Portland. A rookie police officer started taking the statements from the victim, then was waved off by superiors. A sergeant at the scene wrote an anonymous letter to the police review board, which prompted the investigated.

The two officers who beat the man were convicted of second and third-degree assault, fired, and received prison sentences.]

1) keep his job
2) carry his gun on duty

The point being that even though he’s out in the open, he’s got protections most men do not have. Plus, as you know, these men never lie. ;-)

They are not good enemies to have, and I know that from experience.

There are others I get along with really well, or just fine. You can have a difficult discussion with them about bad cops on their watch(in one case, resulting in a transfer, the other a sudden resignation), and they deal with it, and don’t hold it against you. It’s like what you said, that you wish they were all like so-and-so. It’s not always that they are few and far between though with cops; it’s that the ones who don’t cloak themselves in silence are much more rare than the good ones are.

“I honestly don’t know if a modern human can be a law enforcement official without sliding into sadism. It’s a drug, as surely as any chemical, and there’s no deterrent when the profession won’t police itself. And notice the conflation of white supremacy and misogyny. ”
——————————————————
Actually, some can, maybe in a better agency, more of them, but many can’t. And the screening is inadequate at best, and favorable towards sadism at worst. Our HR division which does a lot of the process for hiring cops was allowing the department to just push through without screening those that it wanted, i.e. relatives of cops. Also, background was skimpy, drugtesting poorly supervised(meaning lots of fraudulent urine samples got through) and psych testing for a long time was non-existant or ignored(according to a psych who did screening for this agency, his decisions to disqualify candidates were often disregarded and ignored).

they can’t police themselves at all, and the law protects their confidentiality to keep it a secret about their inability to police themselves. My last go-around with an IA lieutenant was last week, over a suspected “problem” cop they are hiding, who could have committed some gross misconduct, but what it is, is still unknown.

This is why I wonder why saying that a woman should be careful of where she goes or who she’s with is blaming the victim. It’s not blame. It’s awareness that you are surrounded by an enemy. I wish all men were like Amp or Kevin Hayden, or the other guys here, but they are few and far between. Are men capable of being like them? Of course! But hateful, angry entitled people rarely change, and if they are given any kind of authority to back up their entitlement, they will inevitibly abuse it.

I honestly don’t know if a modern human can be a law enforcement official without sliding into sadism. It’s a drug, as surely as any chemical, and there’s no deterrent when the profession won’t police itself. And notice the conflation of white supremacy and misogyny. Patriarchy is white male privilege and the only way to end it is to call it what it is, and refuse to yield to it. If you waver, become apologetic or defensive, you lose. They use your better nature against you, and they haven’t got one, so don’t appeal to it.

At least you can recognize these guys by their badges. The dangerous ones are the ones that love you until you become inconvenient to their “important shit” and then turn on you. I’ll take the pepper spray over the knife in the back any day. I like my enemies in the open.