Cop Privilege: No Honor Among Bullies

THE NOTION OF being guilty until proven innocent, needs no introduction here.  Every black person in America is aware of this fact of life in our United States.  If you are black, YOU will be deemed a thug, hoodlum, dangerous, or some sort of social miscreant — before you even speak.  Of course, the conservative deflection will ensue: “Well golly.  Is that you think of black people?”  Of course not.  While I do not share that sentiment I am FULLY AWARE that that line of thinking is in the air, and I’m fully aware of society’s problem with making peace with it’s afrophobia.  Being aware of something doesn’t mean you are an advocate of it, stupid.  Nice try.  Conservative deflection… while I have broke word on that before, that’s something I’ll go in depth with another time.  Promise.

It’s a defense mechanism for black people to be fully aware of the negative sentiment and fear people have of them.  The death of Renisha McBride – a young woman who after a car crash got blown away for seeking after-crash assistance — illustrates the irrational need from black people to place white people at ease at all times.  Sad but true… a woman who was reasonably unkempt asking for civic aid gets killed because the white man suffering from afrophobia deemed a woman in disarray a threat…because she was black.  McBride’s tragic story is proof that not being aware of white people’s fear of you being black may prove fatal.  This is what I call “black status”; it’s the total opposite of white privilege.

Guilty until proven innocent. Guilty, until proven innocent.

I wanted to refrain from using the term “white privilege” here.  You see, cop privilege is a special kind of privilege.  Cop privilege is, bluntly putting it, white privilege on steroids.  Cop privilege –– which is an extension of white privilege by the very nature of it — is the next level of inequality in America.  Even black cops are placed under cop privilege as they are subject to the same socialization process that demonizes black youth. 

While T.V. shows love to portray the Internal Affairs police officer as a guy who is hard-nosed to bust cops, I always questioned how they work in real life.  Chris Dorner, who was an ex-cop, had no faith in his Internal Affairs office, which was by his own experience.  The biggest part of cop privilege, is that cops are NOT policed.  A cop may bust a KKK member or a blatant murderous bigot… but if that bigot or “colorblind” person is wearing a badge you can totally forget about it.  There is NO accountability on cops in regard of when they cross the law themselves.  Cops are just simply allowed to bully, abuse, & terrorize the communities they supposed to be “sworn to protect”.

“Sworn to protect?” More like sworn to protect their own asses.

Now, I’m not going to say all cops are screwed in the head.  The cops that sit in the office?  They might be the most reasonable ones out there.  The cop that shows up in civilian clothes that actually tries to solve crime?  I’m not talking about him either.  The ones that interact with the local populace with bullying tactics, deceit and arrogance?  Yeah, those are the ones I’m talking about.

I bring this to your attention because the Ferguson Police Department decided to not release the name of the police officer who killed 18-year-old Michael Brown.  Why?  Because they already know; identifying the cop would place “black-status” onto the said policeman at hand.  Understand?  That cop would be in black-status.  Afro-American status.  Negro status.  Nigger status, nigga treatment. Yes, I went there.  That means he will be considered guilty as soon as his identity is known — just like how the child he killed was considered guilty as soon as his skin color was known.

The reality that every black person knows their entire lives… one white cop will not be able to last one day in the life of being treated like a nigga.

So that’s cop privilege: the ability to bully the population, act out kill-on-sight attitudes on black and Latinos, push people around, conduct illegal entries, illegal searches, stop and frisk the same person 14 times in a single day, start fights with people on the street, kill unarmed citizens.  And get away with it.

This is the ability to protect other policemen from their own ignorance and bigotry, so they can terrorize the local populace another day.  Meanwhile, perhaps it is they who should be deemed a thug, a hoodlum, or dangerous… some sort of social miscreant.

Don’t get me wrong; I understand (but don’t agree with) the safety concerns for that police officer and most importantly, his family.  I understand that that cop like any reasonable person doesn’t what to get shot in the street like a rabid dog.  But I’m just wondering why can’t our society extend that same courtesy to our children.  Especially when they are unarmed.