Every time my wife and I are in our car and see a police officer come into view, our three year old daughter gets all excited and asks from her car seat, “does somebody need help daddy?” We’ve told her that police officers help people who are in trouble, and for the most part that’s not too far off the mark. But there is an ugly side to police that we’re going to have to explain to her someday — police who beat people and sometimes kill innocent victims.
Our small city has its fair share of police corruption. A few blocks away from where I live a man approached a pregnant woman and began kicking her in the stomach. It turned out he was an ex-con who had been hired by a police officer to beat up his girlfriend. The cop figured if the attack resulted in a spontaneous abortion, he wouldn’t have to tell his wife about his girlfriend’s pregnancy.
I do not know how widespread such police violence is but the anecdotal evidence indicates it might be significant. In October and November three cases in the news made me appalled.
In the first, a Maryland man won $900,000 from Prince George’s police force. Kirk Sims, 36, was a high school counselor who had the bad luck to look like a suspect who had assaulted a police officer.After arresting him, police repeatedly beat him — ten years after the assault, Sims is still undergoing surgery resulting from his injuries. As is often the case, Sims’ assailant, Joseph Zeigler, is still on the Price Georges’s police force.
Meanwhile in Lebanon, Tennessee, a former police officer was indicted for reckless homicide and perjury after he led a drug raid on the wrong house. Five officers burst into the home of 64-year-old John Adams and shot him dead with a sawed-off shotgun. The police officers, Steve Nokes, had apparently meant to raid the house next door to the Adams’ and lied on an affidavit to obtain a search warrant.
The Summers family in Virginia was a little luckier. Police busted into their apartment at 4 a.m. with weapons drawn and screaming at them in Spanish — a language which neither Virginia nor William Summers speak. Police in that case were looking for a methamphetamine lab. An informant simply made up the information that there was a meth lab at the Summers’ residence. The informant was recently sentenced to 6 months in jail and ordered to pay $760 in restitution. That doesn’t help Geneva Summers a lot who reports having flashbacks of the incident.
Just how gung-ho are police to conduct paramilitary style raids with guns drawn?In Jacksonville Beach, Florida, police were sending in SWAT teams of police with ski masks, camouflage and heavy artillery to arrest bartenders accused of selling to minors! At least one of those arrested said he thought he was being robbed based on the officer’s behavior.
Add the ongoing corruption investigation in Los Angeles in which police allegedly committed acts of murder and a whole host of other criminal offenses, and what am I supposed to tell my daughter when she grows older? How am I to explain to her that some police are there to help her in case she’s in trouble and other police are predators who are as likely to bust down the door and shoot her as they are to protect her? What is she going to think when I try to explain to her why the good cops will often go to great lengths to protect the bad cops?
Sources:
Jury awards $900,000 to man beaten by police officers. The Associated Press, November 3, 2000.
Former officer who led fatal raid on wrong house indicted. The Associated Press, October 4, 2000.
Drug informer pleads no contest in search of wrong home. Paul Dellinger, The Roanoke Times, October 24, 2000.
Letter prompts change in raid tactics: Police agree to alter ‘terrorist-like arrests’. Caren Burmeister, Jacksonville.Com, October 31, 2000.