Yes, police brutality disproportionately affects the poor, but by no means are the middle class exempt. I can attest to this personally. I have never written about this before, but I am a middle-class, college-educated white person who was beaten rather mercilessly by the police for "resisting arrest". The resistance, by the way, was entirely verbal, specifically, I said: "no I don't think that's a good idea" and slowly backed away from them. No cursing, or disrespect, or any threatening motion.

I was then beaten rather brutally on by thigh and buttocks with a police baton such that I was unable to sit without severe pain for almost a year, and then cuffed so tightly that I still have nerve problems from the incident, almost 10 years later.

The police know very well not to beat you in your vitals (you risk dying) or your face (too bloody/visible). So they beat you viciously on your thighs/buttocks/shoulders/upper back. I lost count after a couple of blows. I then had two 200+ lb men sit on me, with one continuing to beat me with the baton. I had never physically resisted them beyond slowly backing away with hands up in a motion of surrender.

I was intoxicated, and they would arguably have been well within their rights to physically detain me and cuff me (I was singing drunkenly in a public square), but my beating was entirely because I dared to contradict them, not because I pose any kind of risk.

When I was half-dragged into a jail cell full of about 50 tattooed gang members, in which I was the only Caucasian, I felt much, much safer that I did with all the police officers of my own race who had just beat me senseless. Honestly. I was never threatened by any of my jail-mates, and at least two expressed concern about my condition (I was moaning as softly as I could).

When I asked why the police officers why they had beaten me in the police car, they told me I was resisting. However, no resisting charge was ever filed -- I was only charged with misdemeanor public intoxication, to which I pled no contest. This was all witnessed in public so I'm sure they realized they would have a hard time making it stick if I decided to fight the charges.

And to be sure, were I black and/or poor looking, things might have been much worse. And to be clear -- the pain I suffered compares nothing to the rapes suffered by the victims of this report.

Before that point, I viewed the police as kind of like the fire department, or a similar public safety organization, not as brutal thugs. I've since become very interested in the matter and learned how wrong I was.

I do recognize that a minority of police officers truly do care about their community, and not about power and adrenaline, but they're sadly decreasing in number because they don't fit in most modern police departments (and I'm also sure that there are certain police departments that are run well from the top that defy this stereotype). I've had the opportunity to observe this all up close through my involvement with another community organization that sometimes works alongside the local police department. I've heard up close how police talk to one another, and how they view the public.

But don't kid yourself. We live in a police state whose powers are growing by the year, spied on by the federal police/government and beaten down by the local police whenever we protest our treatment. The lower classes have traditionally been the primary victims, but as class disparity increases, and power centralization continues, the middle class will find itself a victim of police violence more and more frequently, for causes even more egregious than what I just described.