Reader: Cops Do a Job None of Us Want to Do

• More bad apples. Cops sodomize yet another person in NYC. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/nyregion/26mineo.html January 26, 2010 Man Testifies on Police Acts in Subway By KAREEM FAHIM On the witness stand in court Monday morning, finally with a chance to tell his side of the story officially, Michael Mineo yelled, just as he said he did that day in October 2008 when police officers swarmed around him in a Brooklyn subway station. He said had he yelled to everyone who passed by that the officers had stuck something in his rectum and had implored, �Help me!� In court, Mr. Mineo used more of a stage scream, but it was startling enough. His graphic, confident testimony came on the second day of the trial, in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, in which Officer Richard Kern faces accusations that he repeatedly rammed a retractable baton between the buttocks of Mr. Mineo, who was 24 at the time and had been strolling down the street smoking marijuana. Two other officers, Alex Cruz and Andrew Morales, face charges that they helped cover up the assault. Over an hour of direct questioning by the lead prosecutor, Charles Guria, Mr. Mineo spoke in a deep, calm voice that rarely broke, laying out his version of the disputed events of Oct. 15, 2008. Later Monday he was expected to return to the stand for vigorous questioning by the three lawyers defending the officers, who already made his character and background issues in their opening arguments last week. In the morning, Mr. Mineo testified that the officers who arrested him reacted to his cries in a �nonchalant� manner and hurled homophobic slurs at him. �They did nothing about it,� he said. He described in detail the moment when the officer prosecutors identified as Officer Kern jabbed something hard between his buttocks four times. �I felt it penetrating me,� he said. �I screamed.� Mr. Mineo said he felt pain and saw �a white light.� Mr. Mineo testified that as the officers led him away to a patrol car, he asked if they had put something between his buttocks. He said that Officer Cruz replied, �You liked it,� and used a slur. The outlines of the events that day were already known, but Mr. Mineo filled in the details, saying he had been on his way to work, at a tattoo parlor in Downtown Brooklyn, and walked with a friend, smoking marijuana rolled in a cigar. When he saw police officers sitting in an unmarked car, he swallowed the �clip,� as he called it. When two officers approached him and asked him for his identification, Mr. Mineo said he ran into the Prospect Park subway station, in part because he was out on bail on a previous assault charge. He had been arrested a number of times in the past, he said, on charges that included gang assault. Inside the station, Mr. Mineo testified, one of the officers stopped him by striking him in the side of the face and then throwing him to the ground. Other officers formed a �circle� around him, he said, and he was kicked �all over.� After he was arrested, and despite his handcuffs, Mr. Mineo said he put a finger down his pants, scraped blood from his buttocks and showed it to the officers. �You know what you did,� he told them, and asked them to call an ambulance. Mr. Mineo said an officer told him: �We can�t do that.�

• I call bullshit. It's not that we don't like to be safe from violence or harm. It's the shit the police do BEYOND the scope of what's considered their "main priority" that enrages people. And the fact that they get away with it so readily. This child abusing officer's case is the EXCEPTION, not the rule. And police brutality, racism, homophobia, and elitism are institutionalized within the police force. The police are not some happy-go-lucky fellows to just walk around saving the day for people. The institution of the police force evolved from slave patrols. You know, the guys who were paid by slavemasters to track and hunt down escaped slaves. They haven't changed all that much since then. The police have always been about social control of any potential threat to the status quo (see WTO police response). What you see on Law & Order and CSI is not real. It's not that cops do a job "we" don't want to do. It's that they are special bodies of armed men created by the state and separated from the rest of us.

• The thing is, Officer Shene should have taken responsibility for his actions and negotiated a plea deal or something. Not Guilty? That's the part I have a problem with. That's not what a good role model would do. Take responsibility, apologize, let's move on.

TotalComments: 3