A black “retired corrections officer” was shopping in a suburb of New York City when cops burst into the store. They “tackled, handcuffed and [beat]” him. “The officers, who are white, … were searching for a black shoplifting suspect, who was later apprehended on the roof of the building.”
In the meantime, however, they assaulted Ronald Lanier. According to his attorney, “They cursed at him, they abused him verbally, they then start to beat him … He was taking blows with his hands cuffed behind him as he laid [sic] facedown.”
Their victim “[broke] down as he described how he landed in handcuffs and in a hospital”: “I’ve never been cursed, physically abused, beaten and treated like a slave as I was two days ago.” He even tried to tell his assailants that he’d been a cop, too, but “they just laughed.”
Lest you feel sorry for this “retired corrections officer,” who may have dished out the same during his career, study his next words: “For somebody to grab me by the neck in the supermarket, and I’m telling you, ‘I’m one of you,’ and you disrespect it — it was like you’re just another black dude.”
Hmmm. “Just another black dude.” Our Rulers and their bully-boys occasionally articulate the contempt in which they hold us and the high regard they cherish for themselves, but Lanier’s is one of the clearest expressions of both I’ve seen.
After Mr. Superior-to-Us “spent 20 minutes inside a squad car,” the cops “let [him] go without receiving an apology.” Wanna bet Lanier doesn’t offer one to us, either?
Across the country in San Antonio, another cop acted on his contempt for the serfs more nauseatingly if less violently: while on “bike patrol, … he found some feces and a piece of bread, then put them into a discarded food container near [a] homeless man.” It seems his prey did not partake since the wannabe chef claims he “later … returned to the area and found the bread and feces on the ground, then put them in the trash.” On the other hand, the article implies that the cop told “investigators” about the rejected sandwich because he wants his job back: surprisingly (and vastly so, in fact), the police force “indefinitely suspended” him (it may even have “fired” him, though that seems too much to hope; the report uses both terms), and he’s “appealing” that decision. Which prompts me to suspect he may have added lying to his other sins.
Thanks to Bill Martin for alerting me to the first story and to Michael Geary for the second. Bon appétit!
12:21 pm on December 8, 2016
