Thugs? Oct 28^th

Thomas Sowell has an interesting column today; it’s interesting in its use of language and in what it leaves out. Its title is uncontroversial, if we have laws they must be enforced and so we must have police to enforce the law. Who could disagree with that? But then Sowell goes on to describe what he considers cases “reported in the media where some teenage thug has been stopped for some routine violation of the law…chooses to defy the policeman and finally winds up physically assaulting the cop.” In Sowell’s world the teenagers defying police are “thugs.” The word is used several times in his column and the police are always justified in whatever force they use.

Sowell is certainly right about some events. The kid who waved a toy pistol about, pointing it at a police officer was shot dead in seconds. The red indicator that this was a toy gun had been removed so how was the officer to know that he was in no danger? That was a horrible error but the cop was hardly to blame for it. But then we have the man who runs away after a traffic stop for a defective taillight. The policeman claims the man tried to take his Taser so as the man is running away the officer shoots him many times in the back and after he falls to the ground handcuffs him and drops something beside him. If he was dead why cuff him; if he wasn’t dead why not call an ambulance?

What about the man put in a police van handcuffed and given a “rough ride“  to the police station where he arrives with a severed spine. Rough rides are provided by police in metal sided vans so that unrestrained, handcuffed, passengers can be tossed about and injured thus teaching them respect for the law. Sowell seems ignorant of such things…or perhaps he isn’t.

Then there were the thugs who crashed a pool party. The police were called because some uninvited teenagers, black and white, showed up at a suburban pool party and declined an invitation to leave. We have a picture of a white police sergeant putting a fourteen year old, bikini clad, black girl in a wrist lock forcing her face into the dirt. After he releases her he pulls out his side arm and waves it about at the other teens until his subordinates, now possibly worried about being shot by their sergeant, finally get him under control. A white pool crasher standing with his black pool crasher friends was asked to comment and said that the cops just ignored him and focused on his black friends.

The police are often unfairly targeted by the press but with the emergence of camera ready cell phones we now have clearer evidence of the events leading to complaints about police. The latest outrage is a very large cop literally picking up a teenaged black girl who wouldn’t leave her class and throwing her across the room. His superior said the video of that event made him want to throw up. He fired the cop.

Sowell fails to recognize, in his desire to be conservatively correct, that some of the thugs he complains about are in the police force!