"What Digby Said"

With a bow to Atrios.

It's our daily taser-abuse report, this time via Digby, who has this observation:

Mike Pyatt, a former Glenrock police officer, called one of the officers a "hot head" and said the other had poor people skills. He called on town leaders to make changes at the department.

Police officers are no long required to have "people skills," because they have weapons which are deemed perfectly acceptable to use in any situation, at their sole discretion. Why should they need patience or basic psychology or even any kind of rudimentary analytical skills when they can, without threat of serious repercussion, shoot people with 50,000 volts, thus instantly crumpling them to the ground in horrible pain they will do anything to not repeat? It's a very efficient way to solve any situation and reinforce the All American belief that you must obey police no matter what.

They do this sort of thing over and over again -- and the incident Digby's commenting on seems as much an example of abuse of power by the police as any other I've heard of -- and most of the time don't even get a slap on the wrist.

One thing -- oh, make that "yet another thing" -- there are so damned many these days -- that we need to put a stop to is this "band of heroes" culture in police departments. I understand the basis of it -- they have to be able to rely on each other in a pinch -- but it's gotten out of hand. When getting your pal off the hook takes precedence over the law and simple morality, there's a real problem.

And I don't know about you, but I'm not prone to believe the police are always telling the truth. It's pretty well established at this point that the officers at the raid on the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth lied on their official reports -- no witnesses that I've heard of have supported their version of events.

The bottom line here is that we're not inclined to trust the police any more, and that's just corrosive of good order. And they did it themselves, at least in part by considering us "the enemy."

Also ran across this commentary by Pam Spaulding, who has been following these sorts of incidents closely. She's got a summary of some of the more outrageous incidents.

I'm quite interested in what you have to say -- "non-lethal" technology has obviously outpaced common sense. It has led to a sense of complacency in some law enforcement departments and sends the message that communication skills are unnecessary and that all civilians regardless of age, size, or mobility are considered life-threatening adversaries at the drop of a hat. What does the Obama administration, which has found itself thrust into the issue of racial profiling, have to say about the rampant abuse of Tasers on suspects -- and people accused of no crime at all -- around the country?

Don't expect much from the Obama administration. The Bush administration's pretty-much successful attempt to derail the Bill of Rights is just a whiff of the future. Obama has no interest in restoring constitutional guarantees or in reigning in law enforcement agencies. You can take that as a given. Bush paved the way for gross misuse of executive power, and we are seeing the trickle-down effect of the torture regime. I don't think it really would have mattered who was elected, though -- politicians are all about power, and that's it. And don't expect Congress to do anything. The scary part is that we have acquiesced, so they're home free. (Not that I think Congress or the president would have done anything anyway -- they're too tied up in "looking forward" and "bipartisanship" to make any efforts at accountability.

I take the militia mentality of the Republican base as another facet of it -- it's the politics of fear on a day-to-day basis. It's not American democracy -- it really is the beginnings of fascism, as Dave Neiwert has so ably described it. (If you check the sidebar at Orcinus, his essays are still available.) Ultimately, though, I don't think it's a Republican monopoly: business and government are too intertwined in this country, and the Democrats are as much on the take as the Republicans ever were, especially now that they are -- theoretically, at least -- in power. (I say "theoretically" because I have yet to see any evidence that the Republicans are not still running the government.)

Appeals to Washington are pointless. All we can do is pack city council meetings and let them have it -- perhaps offer to taser the mayor and chief of police six or seven times in a row, and see what happens then.