From: akcs.kennedy@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Edward A. Kennedy, Jr.)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: An apology, sort of, and some new thoughts
Date: 8 Apr 92 18:00:03 CDT
Keywords: re:  stupid fucking p_gs

I got this really good letter about something I posted in mid-March.
 
=> In article <29c6839d-bfftalk.guns@ddsw1.MCS.COM> you write:
=> >
=> >Stupid fucking pigs!
=> >
(That was actually the title/subject line.  The article was about
how the police mocked Rodney King, in the hospital in Los Angeles, 
after beating him nearly to death.  I opined that that sort of 
behavior is psychological abuse that could cause even more trouble
down line.)
 
=> 
=>     Edward, please remember that many of the police are actually 
=>     good guys.  In fact, there are several regular participants 
=>     in t.p.g who are police.  I think they're probably revulsed, 
=>     as I am,  by the term "pig" and it actually deters from your 
=>     articles. I'm not disagreeing with what you said, because I 
=>     agree with it, but you'll reach a larger audience if
=>     you reign in the use of terms like this. 
=> 
=>     Besides, even given the anger, such derogatory terms really only
=>     serve as ammunition for the anti's to paint us as extremists.
=> 
 
and I responded:
=> >yea man, I got kind of a red face over that one.  I was kind
=> >of drunk at the time and had just been roughed up by a guy who
=> >was going out of his way to be a "pig" at the time.
 
I told him he had some excellent thoughts and asked if I could 
publish his stuff to the network.  He gave permission.
 
 
ANOTHER RESULT
 
But after I read his comments I had an idea of another way in which
calling police "PIGS" hurts all of us.  It probably gets us poorer 
police!
 
That would happen in two manners.  First, if being a policeman or
woman were considered a profession of shame, we would get poorer
police(wo)men.  The good people would say, "Who needs this?" and 
many of them would seek other professions.  That would leave the
door open for those of lesser quality, the people who have ego 
problems and only want to be policemen so that they can lord it 
over others--the bullies.  The second way this would hurt us is
that even the good police would feel angry at us in general and 
many of them would do a poorer job because of it.  Many of them 
would be less concerned about our rights because of it.  (This is
aside from the frustration that many of us, including police, feel
about the criminal having too many rights and the citizen having
too little protection.)
 
I do not think this is a hypothetical condition.  I think it has 
already happened.
 
Starting about '67 (earlier on the West Coast, later in other
places) students began having a very low regard for the police.
The same was true of the military.  None of us would wear our 
uniforms off base and many of us were concerned that our short
hair would give us away.  But we were forced into the military,
the police were not forced into their line of work.  I understand
it was very hard, during that ten years or so, for the average
policeman to get dates.  The uniform did not have the same allure
as it had in the fifties.  (I remember cartoons of barn-yard-
faced men in uniform holding guns and bataans in their cloven
hoves.)
 
Now we have Darrell Gates, police chief of Los Angeles, stoutly
defending the excessive violence of his men in the Rodney King
case, and encouraging violence, it is said, in many other ways.
If there had not been the anti-cop sentiment in the seventies
would things have been different?  Would some better qualified
cop have chosen not to quit the force?  Would he or she have 
risen to the level of chief in Mr. Gates' stead?
 
 
THE OTHER SIDE OF IT
 
But police should remember that when they abuse people, either
physically or psychologically, they are setting the stage for
trouble.  I have twice seen articles saying that good police 
sometimes get killed for what some bad cop had earlier done to
the person who later became the killer.  Just days before I posted
that article in question, a policeman in Chicago was killed.  His
name was Robert Preston, he had eighteen years on the force, and
while eulogies sometimes lie he was said to have been a really 
good cop.  Why was he killed?  Did the killer have a personal
vendetta for him?  Had the killer watched the Rodney King beating
too many times on TV or had he been roughed up too often himself?
 
Were these the things that lead to an increase in anger toward 
police and allowed him to justify a decision to kill?
 
  
-Ed     akcs.kennedy@ddsw1.MCS.COM  or
        akcs.kennedy@vpnet.chi.il.us