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April 1, 1999
Police Brutality Begins At Home
Other Op-Ed ArticlesRichard Mellon Scaife on Hillary Clinton, Demonspawn
By IAN DALLAS
here's been a lot of talk lately about police brutality, racial profiling, and the public's distrust of cops. Such talk scares me, because it's just going to make policemen angrier, and that's the last thing we want. Also, I do not think these kinds of discussions are effective, because they ignore the root cause of the problem.
Blame the police if you're looking for an easy scapegoat, but if you want to end police brutality, you've got to start blaming yourself. It's not their fault, it's ours.Before I go any further, let me just admit that the person who brought this the ory to my attention was a cop. He's a very nice man, and yes, he does knock me around on occasion. But he says that he loves me (as a friend), and I believe him. I know that doesn't make his brutality towards me right, but it also doesn't make his theory any less valid, either.
Police brutality begins at home, and it's up to each and every one of us to end the cycle. It's time to stop raising our children to be cops, because as long as there are police, there will be police brutality. It might be easier to think we can change the system, either by cracking down on abuse, or by hiring fatter, lazier cops, but this is simply not the case. I've seen cities where this was tried, and it doesn't work. Fatter cops may be slower, and thus easier to run away from, but you've got to remember: these men still have guns. They may have trouble walking up stairs, but they're not so fat that they can't pull the trigger on a pistol. Hiring the fattest police possible would be time consuming and expensive -- and what if they lost weight after they were hired? What then?
No, it's up to us to fight police brutality, and we've got to fight it head-on. By yelling at our kids, and giving them the frank, honest details about life on the Force. I'm ashamed to say I did not take this opportunity when my children were young and impressionable; perhaps that's why two of them grew up to be cops. All the warning signs were there. My oldest, Nathan, was pulling over minority children as soon as he got his first tricycle. His brother Alan, who had mastered the "stop-and-frisk" procedure by age four, turned me in to local authorities on thirty-seven separate occasions, and once at the federal level.
Anybody could have told me these were high-risk kids -- but back then, it wasn't considered polite. Times are changing, but we have to help them change. That's why it's important not to just yell at your own kids; yell at every kid you know, even the infants. Only then will we be able to live in a world free of police brutality.
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Copyright 1999 The Yale Record
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