The Case of the Drowning Men (34 page)

Police don’t
want
to be
regarded as
suspects
,
and
they
truly
resent the public’s
growing
distrust of them, but that distrust is not founded on irrational fears. Like men of the Cloth, men in uniform have also abused their authority and the days of blind admiration and respect for them
, unfortunately,
are long gone. In the age of cellphone cameras, camcorders, and Twitter, it’s become much harder for officers to hide excessive use of force,
citizen
profiling, or outright murder
s
, and all one has to do now is Google the phrase “police corruption” or any
thing similar
to see
officer
misconduct is rampant even in first-world democracies like
our own
.

Shooting teargas and rubber bullets
at peaceful,
unarmed protestors, beating someone
restrained
in handcuffs, tasering prisoners to
the brink of
death
or beyond
, racially profiling
African Americans
on the roads and on the sidewalks
, raping female motorists
in
routine traffic stops
…
reports and images of these
alarming
violations
are all over the web
and can no longer be covered up or explained away
.

In the 21st century, in
America’s
“war against terrorism”
which seems to have
no end, police powers have expanded exponentially while citizens’ rights have been drastically
diminished
.
A
nd still there is no real oversight committee policing the police for reports of
be
ing
heavy
-
handed
.
T
he police themselves review
such
complaints through
their
Internal Affairs
division
s
and rarely side with
a
petitioner.

Amnesty International
has
sent up red flags about
the enhanced
powers and
new
technology of police forces
around the world
. They have
also
issued
repeated
warnings
of late
about
the
widespread
misuse
by officers of
taser
gun
s
which cause
neuro
musc
ular
paralysis, leave very few marks on the body, and can be employed
to brutalize and torture
citizens
without fear
these
crimes will be discovered
. A country of particular concern
to them
i
s
the United States where this so called nonlethal weapon
has
been available
since
the
1970’s when it was first invented
and distributed
.

Ever since the late 1990’s, t
he deployment of taser
guns
to police departments
has swollen
to
now
include
practically
every state in the union.
Organizations like
Amnesty
International
say
many hundreds of
U.S.
deaths
in the past decade
or more
are
attribut
able
to
police
officers
repeated
ly
tasering subjects
during and after arrests
, the deadly side effects of which are amplified for victims who have alcohol in their systems or
narcotics
.

Amnesty
even
released data that shows the majority of those tasered
by police
were
in fact
unarmed and committing either minor or no offense
s
at all
which
would
have merited the use of any
type
of physical force against them.

Similarly,
human rights
groups
are also ringing al
a
rm bells about a
rising number
of deaths of
U.S. citizens
in police custody
. The
y
say
the
creation
and use
of a new classification
by
police
and medical examiners
to
justify
these deaths as caused
by
“
Excited Delirium”
is
a
very
worrisome
trend
.
It should also be noted, t
his
dubious
diagnosis
has
no basis in medicine
and is not recognized by any medical board or institution
.

Undoubtedly one
of the worse examples
on record
of police abuse
in the
United
States,
and the
dismal
failure of Internal Affairs to investigate
it
and prosecute
the offenders
,
happened in recent times
and was exposed
through
the infamous Rampart Scandal of the Los Angeles Police Department during the 1990’s.

The Rampart Scandal refers to the criminally corrupt police
assigned to
the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums
(
CRASH
)
anti-gang unit of the
LAPD’s
Rampart Division.
When it finally imploded
, more than 70 officers with ties to
the
CRASH crime-ring were implicated for perpetrating major criminal offenses against their community,
making it one of the largest documented case
s
of police misconduct in the history of the United States.

T
he crimes of
the
CRASH
police
unit
were highly
-
organized and executed
,
and
included unprovoked shootings
,
murders
and
beatings
;
planting of false evidence; witness intimidation; framing of innocent citizens; evidence tampering and destruction;
murder-for-hire
schemes
;
gun-for-hire
schemes
;
stealing and dealing narcotics
;
bank robbery
;
perjury
;
and conspiring to cover up proof of these illegal ac
t
s.
Sanctioned by
certain
higher-u
ps in the L
os Angeles Police Department
who had
knowledge of the unit’s
existence and mission
, m
ost if not all of the CRASH officers involved
in the scandal
were found to have advanced
their careers
and financially profited
in other ways
from their numerous criminal act
ivities
.

A deep probe from outside
investigat
ive agencies
into the
clandestine
culture of the elite CRASH police unit also
disclosed
a
nother
chilling find
:
CRASH
member officers
had
a
special
logo tattoo
ed on their
bodies
, a
skull
wearing
a cowboy hat encircled with poker cards depicting the "dead man's hand" of eights and aces.

The
special
gang
-buster
cops
had become, in every
possible
way, a gang
unto
themselves
.

In the
c
ase of the
d
rowning
m
en, people
don’t
have to go on a
n elaborate
fishing expedition to find
questionable
links to their own law enforcement officials
: Before, during and after,
police
are somehow always involved
in
young men’s
disappearance
s,
and they never seem to be handling themselves or the
subsequent
death
investigation
s properly
.

Public s
crutiny and speculation
may frustrate police departments and make
even the most honest cop
feel they’re
trapped
in a damned-if-
you-
do and damned-if-you-don’t position
, but sweeping
curious
death
s
under a rug
and/
or maligning
victim
s
’
reputation
s
, if that’s all
they’r
e guilty of,
only adds to doubt
about their role in the drowning
s
.

And is
that
doubt
so
unwarranted
when the public is in pursuit of
what they believe to be
a network of
secretive
killers
with
an ability to overtake and disable
a
full grown m
a
n and
enough
knowledge of forensics and police procedure
to disguise a murder as a drowning
?

I don’t think so.
As a matter of
fact, I rate this
popular
version of the Smiley Face Murder theory to be the most statistically probable
of
any I have come across
yet
.
Be
cause
, as Southern
police
forces
have already shown
us
back
in the 20th century, it wouldn’t require an actual conspiracy
per se
to pull
off
something
of this magnitude
. It requires only
a
dangerous
belief
of being above the law
,
a deplorabl
e habit
of
overstepping
authority
, and a cover-for-your
-
brother mentality
to be triggered in any investigating officers who didn
’
t participate in the
homicides
themselves,
but
who
suspect
ed
police
culpability
up
on
a
close
r
review
and
hoped
to protect their colleagues.

How does
it
work
then,
if not
through
a conspiracy of killer cops
killing
intentionally?
Perhaps a
t its most malevolent it may be akin to “Firefighter’s Arson” a not so
rare
occurrence
whereby a fireman finds perverse gratification in starting an inferno and later also gets to play hero by
helping to
put it out.