In the current Willamette Week, Portland’s more mainstream “alternative” paper, there’s a story on four of the most abusive cops in Portland. Although the author didn’t make a point of this, what struck me is that three of the four committed abuses which had strong elements of misogyny.
Christopher LaFrenz: 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. Bystanders broke it up, but when Hillsboro police investigated, LaFrenz hired a lawyer and refused to cooperate. Due to differing witness accounts, nobody was charged.
“Vagina boy?” What kind of thought process leads to using “vagina boy” as an insult? Sheesh.
David Golliday: Golliday’s drunken actions at a bawdy Halloween party attended by off-duty cops and prosecutors sparked a yearlong investigation in 2001. Another cop’s fiancée told investigators Golliday grabbed her breasts and reached under her skirt, and later sent cops to her home to pressure her not to complain. He was accused of grabbing at other women, too, as well as swearing at a female district attorney. […] Golliday was demoted from sergeant but not charged.
A third cop profiled in the article, Joseph Hanousek, is best known in Portland for being caught on video pepper-spraying a female protector and seeming to laugh about it. He’s also been accused of helping prostitutes avoid arrest in exchange for sexual favors:
In 1996, due to a technical glitch, a ham-radio operator overheard Hanousek talking to a prostitute on his cell phone, and told police the cop seemed to be trading information about upcoming prostitution sweeps for the promise of fellatio.
I don’t doubt that there are many decent cops out there, but the profession also seems to attract some misogynistic, macho assholes.
Interesting article. It’s not just these four officers though, it’s the entire department, hell the entire profession that’s misogynist. And racist. And homophobic, antisematic, anti-Muslim, etc.
I mentioned this before in another thread and got some flak. Well, I’ll say it again. The White male straight paradym is what governs society, and you can take that same paradym, multiply it by 10 or even a 100, and you have a typical LE agency.
This is why the proportion of these “bad apples” who show signs of misogynist leanings is so high. I’m doing research on how to flag “problems” in our own agency without being able to rely on sources of information that are more shrouded in confidentiality than they would be in LE agencies in any other state in this country.
Here’s your bad boys:
Jason Lobaugh: Using steroids, a common occurance in law enforcement officers, especially those assigned into special investigative units and special operations(SWAT). Also bodybuilding is big in LE. Another common behavior in LE officers is domestic violence. In a study done by Center of Women and Policing, over 40% of officers surveyed reported behaviors they had done that were DV, compared to 10% of the general population. His wife, of course gets no justice, b/c LE agencies ignore inhouse DV completely, in fact at least 55% of them have no policy dealing with DV committed by their own sworn employees. High number of complaints, b/c DV at home often translates to excessive force in the field. Of course, the prosecutors never have enough evidence of illegal behaviors by officers, they are too busy being in bed with them to notice or care about building any cases, which if they were taken to trial, would be lacklusteredly prosecuted and wind up in acquittals.
Christopher LaFrenz: in 2002, he’s reaching the level of experience on the job when allegations of excessive force should be dropping off UNLESS he’s habitual.
In 2005, he’s accumalated use of force both on and off duty. If he’s got a wife, or girlfriend, well maybe she’s not come forward yet about abuse. The memory loss arises because cops know it’s harder to prove they are lying about their memory recall, than lying about factual accounts. “I do not recall” under oath means they don’t want to bother telling a lie. Cops actually have excellent long-term memories, that’s one quality applicants are tested for, during the hiring process.
Poor Lee, the guy who came forward. He probably couldn’t get a job in Portland, for being a “snitch”. Pretty brave, what he did.
David Golliday: Hmmm off-duty parties between bed felllows cops and prosecutors. I thought so.
A lateral from Detroit, did Portland bother looking into his background when they hired him? Probably not. The administrators were probably more concerned with numbers, than quality, in the mid to late 1990s like most LE agencies were. Oops, actually Portland appears to be his second lateral, which makes him even more of a risk factor. I bet $100 he’s running away from his um, quick temper and fists. And more “contempt of cop” cases like Dean’s. Knocking him down from sergeant obviously did no good, b/c he’s not just a bad supervisor, he’s a bad cop.
Hmm, the last two paragraphs confirmed what I said about this officer fleeing one agency after another. Obviously, Portland is a good match though. Heh.
Joseph Hanousek: Oh boy….Cops and sex workers….very common in LE agencies. Except for a case here and there, including Ronald VanRoussam in San Bernardino PD, never taken seriously. Unfortunately, I’ve seen it myself, caught an officer with a woman and his pants down so to speak…I should have reported him, but I was too embarassed, and he did harass me for a few days. But then again, there wasn’t any system in replace then in which to report serious misconduct and he could have gone back and killed that woman. Who’d care?
Again, prosecutors won’t go after cops they are in bed with.
Love your blog. Very nice.
Vagina Boy, huh. That’s one scared little weasel. Personally, I’m proud to be a vagina boy. My roots can be traced back to a vagina. I’m hopelessly fond of the way vaginas feel. I like everything what they represent. How could one not? On the macro scale, the vagina is the mammalian portal to all of creation. On the micro scale, the vagina brings me great comfort and a sense of well-being.
As for cops, check out what the iconoclastic – and extraordinarily funny – Fran Liebowitz has to say:
Looks like it’s time to break out another table setting for the Arvin Hill Fantasy Dinner.
The above “bad apples” are the most overt kind, and yet there doesn’t seem to be a system in place that has terminated their employment from the agency, or in some cases prevent the agency from employing them in the first place. Hiring laterals from another agency is risky enough, but hiring one who has been employed by two other agencies, and at least one where he’s got a bad reputation is just stupid, and it’s expensive.
When our agency hired a lateral who had left the LAPD in 1999, with his final assignment being in Rampart Division’s narco squad, I warned the city council that there was going to be trouble. Well, one laughed and said, he was hired because he grew up in our city. In 2002, we retired him, likely on some faux injury. Why? Maybe because by his first six months on the job in this department, he had three civil rights law suits filed against him in U.S. District Court.
Our agency lost so many officers, about 1/3 of the patrol division after five officers were fired for an onduty shooting, that when it rehired officers to take their places, the average age of a police officer was only 24. Which meant the average work experience, was three years. Well, that’s ripe for more use of force. I found out about the young age of our force through the chief after I asked him at a council meeting. Then I vetted his answer through various experts in law enforcement that I had contact with, and they all said the same thing: Look out for the excessive force law suits, because younger, less experienced cops are at higher risk, even if they aren’t “bad” cops. So, three months later, when I submitted my question on the age of our force, to get an answer in writing, all of a sudden, I get this bright, shiny letter back from the chief about how the average age of officers was now 32!! Why? because apparently, there’s been a huge influx of laterals, mostly from Orange County. Uh-oh. Agencies in this county, are well known for having problems, with racism. It never ends….and it’s a long tunnel until you reach the other side.
We’ve lateraled in officers who worked at three LE agencies in three years. That guy was fired for an onduty shooting, reinstated and now works in another CA county. We lateraled a crazy guy in, from LAPD who had three shootings including one a month before he left the LAPD and joined our agency. Oh, and he also was accused of raping a female officer in L.A. Didn’t hurt his job prospects in our city, one bit.
He’s gone now too, though….stress retirement. Though he’s got a Web site where he can spout off his homophobia and racism and sexism to his heart’s delight. And talk about how he relied on God and the Holy Spirit to tell him when to use force against a person. (I had clashed with an earlier chief over that Web site after the officer committed his fourth shooting of an unarmed man. The chief refused to even check out the Web site until I informed him that one of his Internal Affairs detectives(who incidently, was investigating this officer for racist comments) had an essay posted on the site. So he decided to check it out himself.)
But these and other behaviors which promote the behaviors of racist, misogynist cops(at least until they become too expensive for the city to keep in terms of liability) are just part and part of departments as a whole, so targetting these particular officers is not enough, though exposing them is very important. Making the connections between bad cops and misogyny is very important. Though it’s difficult b/c most cops are smarter than the four you listed, and keep it more under wraps and amongst themselves.
it’s the chief who makes dismissive comments about the female cadet who is the first woman to be president of her class at the academy.
It’s the field training officer who washes out female probational officers and then mouths off about how incompetent female officers are and how they can never be as good as men, to the wrong person.
It’s the sergeant of an all-male unit who wants to keep it that way, telling prospective male and female applicants at a recruiting fair that women are too weak to be SWAT officers, when it’s really not allowing a women to intrude into an all-male space.
it’s all those who believe that inhouse DV, rape, stalking and child abuse are “private family matters”
It’s being sexually harassed or discriminated by FTOs who also happen to be assigned to handle grievances filed by officers including sexism.
It’s police unions where the board members are all male, because none of the men trust a female officer to look out after their interests.
It’s a lot of things, and eradicating sexism out of police culture is harder than the camel through the eye of the needle routine. Just like society at large.
Nick Budnick left out the grand Clarence of misogynistic police abuse: Lieutenant Mark Kruger.
August 22, 2002 – Then-Sgt. Kruger (yes, he was promoted recently!) pepper-sprays large portions of a peaceful crowd protesting a George W. Bush appearance, including pepper-spraying KPTV camerawoman Beth English point-blank in the face.
March 25, 2003 – Kruger and Hanousek team up to pepper-spray Miranda May for no reason other than sheer sadism.
March 26, 2003 – Kruger shoves Anna Mays, a protester arrested for “jaywalking” in the face as she is being hauled away. Mays was handcuffed at the time.
August 21, 2003 – Kruger drags Amber Hicks, a protester at a Bush fundraiser, through a park by her arm for no apparent reason. Hicks claims Kruger slammed her head into the side of a van. Police custody reports show a bruise above her eye.
And oh yes, Kruger has been linked to neo-Nazi activities, and does WWII roleplaying as a German soldier.
Radfem – Hanousek is also a lateral – from Lake Oswego, Oregon (an upper-middle-class suburb).
Domestic violence is one of many misdeeds that cops get a pass on, whether it’s use of force, drunk driving, steroids (Lobaugh), or laziness and corruption (Hanousek – fingered as one of the most at fault in a bogus-overtime scandal, and the DA’s office has refused to prosecute cases resulting from his arrests because of his habit of no-showing for trial).
And if you do get in trouble, there’s always disability (Oregonian links are down now) – a common practice is for police to file disability claims before disciplinary hearings or after doing something worthy of discipline.
(I’ll post links to the Oregonian series on police and fire disability abuse when the Oregonian’s site comes back up.)
I love you, Amp, but did you seriously just wonder “what thought process” with regard to this misogynist idiot?
They don’t think, man. They don’t even read unless it says “Bible”, “Guns & Ammo”, or “Truckin” on the cover.
I think you’re right though– I’ve seen a disturbing increase in openly misogynistic comments in public, to which I often catch the guys off-guard by being the first black-leather-clad biker to tell them they had damned-well better learn to respect women.
“And if you do get in trouble, there’s always disability (Oregonian links are down now) – a common practice is for police to file disability claims before disciplinary hearings or after doing something worthy of discipline.
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Absolutely! This is the worst scam out there. When civilians commit fraud on insurance claims, they go to prison. Cops and city officials of course, are exempt.
Cops retired on disability by my city’s agency:
Michael Alagna(shoulder injury) $50,000 and half his salary after being fired and reinstated for shooting Tyisha Miller in 1998. Far from disabled, he’s now a sheriff deputy in San Joaquin County. When I asked the board of supervisors there how they could hire a disabled officer, they decided to look into it. Unfortunately, the sheriff who hired him is doing time on federal felony convictions of corruption, along with some local politicians.
recently retired:
Wayne Stewart: Another Miller Killer, he received half his salary and $100,000 in cash(for unspecified shoulder injuries). Still not in law enforcement, but not for lack of trying
Sgt. Gregory Preece: disability retirement for “bad knees” after being fired and reinstated for his racism and failure to supervise during the Miller killing.
Bill Rhetts: the LAPD lateral I mentioned above, stress retirement, after shooting an unarmed man in a dog house, blowing his leg off. When the LA Times did an article on officers involved in multiple shootings, he was one of those interviewed.
Heath Baker: Involved in DV, onduty violence, off-duty violence, lied during a criminal trial which led to the case being dismissed mid-way by a judge(who called him a liar) and racist. Received approximately $34,000 tax free for life for unspecified back injuries.
Tina Banfill Gould: Shot and killed African-American Volne Stokes in 2003, refused to give a voluntary statement in a particular room(never took the fifth) and refused to testify to the police commission. Retired medically, in March, unspecified injuries.
Al Kennedy(soon to retire) fired for sexual misconduct with a rape victim on a case assigned to him. Was fired, reinstated and will either return to the force or be paid off. Since he’s a 30 year veteran, the latter is more likely.
Andrew Wiesmann: forced to retire on unspecified injuries after six investigations were reopened after he testified as a use of force expert on behalf of Preece, Alagna and Stewart at their arbitration hearings. (I was called in to be interviewed on one of them).
It’s not always easy to catch cops on racist, sexist comments unless one of their own report it. I caught an officer once recently, for making a joke about Iraqis getting bombed in their houses in Iraq when he stopped his car at an anti-war demonstration. He drove past where I was standing, and didn’t know I was there. He just said his piece and left, with probational officer in tow.
Well, a woman who worked at a local business told me that he had told her that he had stopped at the demonstration to check it out, and was very polite and friendly to them. Then she asked him, if he saw me there, and his face when red, and he said “Oh, fuck….” After that, whenever I encountered him, he was much more hostile. I think he was a bit concerned he would get reported, or it would get written about. Well, when I had to file a complaint against him weeks later for harassment(another incident), during the interview with his very protective sergeant, the sergeant didn’t give a hoot about the joke. And even though I won on my complaint, the chief responded to he sustained allegation, by promoting the officer. That’s what happens in corrupt LE agencies. Misconduct IS rewarded, not corrected.
But then this particular officer and his buddies on the union board own the chief, anyway, so they’re never going to be anything but rewarded for misconduct.
It’s still rare to hear the comments from most of them, if you’re a civilian. They’re very careful. But then there’s the White traffic officer who instead of doing stops based on traffic violations, does pretext stops and only on Black men. Then you hear that some one who knows him says he uses racial slurs off-duty right and left. There are many agencies that only think it matters if they just don’t say them at a particular room at work(like our agency, which puts cameras in the roll call room, but beyond that, nothing else is happening).
Surely Portland has attorneys who specialize in suing the PD. If not, I see a market niche.
I recall the NY Times running some stories several years ago about a similar problem in upstate New York.
Relevant to Radfem’s post about the LAPD is this story about an investigation into their anti-gang unit.
Sheezlebub: Yeah, two LE agencies in upstate New York: Walkhill and I can’t remember the other, specifically targetted women for sexual harassment and assault. Both were investigated, and at least Walkhill wound up being placed under a consent decree by the State Attorney General. There was some criminal charges filed in one case.
Yeah, LAPD CRASH has been investigated but then-chief Bernard Parks obstructed and shut the investigation down b/c too much could be learned about the full extent of the scandal. When I was prosecuted for civil disobedience, one of the attorneys on our case represented Rafael Perez, the guy caught stealing drugs from an evidence locker which was how the scandal broke. Actually, though it was a couple of arrests earlier that sparked something.
During the DNC2000, there was a march and protest at the Rampart Division, where people got arrested. You could talk to people in the neighborhood and publicly, they would praise Rampart, but privately they feared it. There were high concentrations of documented and undocomented immigrants, mostly from El Salvador, one of the reasons why the CRASH unit did as much damage as it did. Most of the immigrants feared the police, feared discovery and were used to dealing with corruption in police forces in their home country.
I did get some good news today on one of your ex-detectives fired for sexual misconduct with a rape victim whose case was assigned to him. He was fired by the police chief, despite two supervisors’ recommendations to wrist-slap him, and unfortunately reinstated in arbitration(another scam, which has made it virtually impossible to fire cops in California at least) and the decision was upheld by the courts. I emailed the police chief about not allowing this detective to come back to the department.
He emailed me back soon after and said the city intends to appeal the judge’s decision and he won’t let this detective back into the department.
USA TODAY article excerpt:
“Perez was the focus of most of the recently discovered documents, which had been sitting in an LAPD detective’s desk drawer until late last month. The detective said he forgot about them, a claim Cooper called “absolutely incredible” during Tuesday’s hearing.”
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Mack’s actually doing time now in prison for robbing some Bank of America branches.
I’m sure the detective was told to “forget” about the documents. Parks was trying to keep a tight lid on the scandal. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Mack was involved. He and Perez were very dirty.
The scandal was catalyzed by the push in the early 1990s by then President Bill Clinton to put 150,000 more cops on the street. The emphasis including and especially in the LAPD was for more numbers. Quality didn’t matter, because backgrounds were either not carefully checked(as if you would even have enough paid people to do backgrounds to fill all these new positions) and criminal conduct was overlooked, in many cases including that of an officer busted for doing home invasion robberies onduty, whose background contained felony robbery and burgulary convictions as a juvenile and one misdemeanor burglery related conviction as an adult. Felonies are supposed to be automatic disqualifiers. Misdemeanors are more case by case except for crimes of moral turpitude(DV, molestation, etc.)
Some officers blamed affirmative action of men of color and women for the problems, but while Perez was Latino and Mack is African-American, many of the officers involved were White men. Few if any women at all were involved in any recent scandals in the LAPD. The Rampart Division sworn division is comprised of approximately 40% Latinos, 20% Black, 40% Whites. Most of the supervisors are White men.
history of perez and rampart scandal:
http://www.maximonline.com/grit/articles/article_3755.html
OK, call me paranoid, but why does this surprise anyone? There’s a reason they call it the war between the sexes. More accurately, it’s the man’s war against women. It’s been going strong for 6,000 years and it’s experiencing a surge right now. American women were TORTURED for demanding the right to vote. Women are beaten into submission every minute of the day.
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.
The problem is that if you have problems with a cop, and you get a restraining order against him, he can still:
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. ”
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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.
Oregonian article about police and firefighters using the disability system to escape discipline or undesirable assignments.
Excerpts:
Take the case of Sgt. Richard Barton.
Barton filed a stress claim Aug. 5, 1999, a day before the city said it wanted to fire him in connection with overtime abuse at Central Precinct. Barton had officers record more overtime hours than worked, then joined them at local bars before the end of their shifts, investigators found.
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.]
Oh yeah….retirements for troubled and troublesome cops. Our city hands those out like candy. Some of the officers go to work in other agencies while collecting the original physical disability retirements. As long as they don’t use the same carrier, that’s fine in California.
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.
More LA cops gone wild! Check out this story in USA Today. It’s apparently OK to shoot a child because the parent is using it as a shield to keep from getting caught.
Why did they rush into the building without knowing for sure whether or not Pena had been wounded? The odds of Lopez surviving in the process of rushing into the building was next to none.
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.
Also, I LOVE how elected officials(in this case, LA’s new mayor) implore communities not to react or rush to judgement about shootings, until after the inhouse investigations are done.
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 at a preliminary hearing, still ongoing, to support a group of women who were coerced into sex by a sheriff deputy or else they’d go to jail. These women are victims and yet they are getting ripped to shreds as liars getting even with a deputy b/c they have records. Incidently, in one case, it was another deputy who caught this man and reported him to the agency.
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.
The judge on that preliminary hearing decided to hold the officer accountable for facing all 14 felony charges of rape and sexual abuse crimes.
I don’t know about all the stuff going on in the departments of law but I do know this because you can’t tell a honest cop with one who abuses his authority at will, police scare me, if one would to pull me over for a minor traffic violation or even if I knew I did nothing wrong I do hope I have others in the car as witnesses.
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
Maribel Cuevas, a young girl in Fresno threw a rock at some boys who pelted her with water balloons and had teased her before. Her family called 9-11 when they saw one boy’s head get cut, from the rock and did first aid. Police came out and arrested Cuevas for felony ADW, and she spent five days in juvenile hall, barely seeing her parents and spent 30 days under house arrest. The prosecutor refuses to plead her case out. She was Mirandized in English despite speaking mainly spanish and an officer said he didn’t understand her father’s type of english.
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.
Actually, here’s a different article:
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
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.
Robin – you didn’t read it with your own eyes. You inferred it, incorrectly. And you owe me an apology for your nasty, mistaken insinuation.
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).
Ampersand, regardless of what I took from what I saw as a conspicuous omission in the original post – I believe your clarification. My misunderstanding was not intentional, but you have my apology nonetheless if I have characterized your post unfairly. As I said – I was surprised to see it- and am relieved by your longer explanation.
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.
BTW, for what it’s worth, that last needless zinger in my post #27 was intended for deletion because it was needlessly hyperbolic. I had intended to dial it back, but it had scrolled outside of the window when I pasted my edited version in from Word, and I missed it. It’s there now, so I suppose I must own it – I certainly thought it – but my intension really was to dial it back a bit on posting, instead of spitting fire.
Robin – I don’t have time for a long reply right now, but your apology, and your explanation for that “last needless zinger,” are noted and appreciated. I’m sorry if I was overly thin-skinned in my response to you.
“And yet, a cop beats up a man, unprovoked – and the concern here is about the language he used while beating him.”
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.
-A dear friend of mine was nearly beaten to death by police.
-My brother was brutalized and threatened with death by police.
-A good friend of mine nearly lost both of hands after being cuffed (hands behind the back), forced to the ground (face down), and stomped on by police.
-As for myself, I’ve been lucky. I’ve only had to deal with the routine hazing and unlawful searches that come with being the proud owner of a nearly spent, 1980 something excuse for an automobile.
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.
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