United Mistakes Of Police

Wrap your head around it, dear worst-reader. A traffic stop. A traffic stop can kill you. WTF.

What is a traffic stop? I’ve been involved in several. You know. Back in the day before I expatriated. Wow. What times those were. Thank goodness I don’t live in a country anymore that does traffic stops like #Americant does traffic stops. Good for me, eh. We’re worst-writing about forty years ago, don’t you know. Forty years ago I experienced traffic stops a whole bunch. So what is it about traffic stops that make them so unique, if not mind boggling? Oh yeah. They can kill you.

The police in my beloved & missed #Americant would flash their red lights and pull me over to the side of the road or highway. Remember that scene from the movie Thelma & Louise? They’re driving in the middle of nowhere, perhaps death valley, and out of the blue a policeman pulls them over. Thelma watches the policeman get out of his vehicle and walk towards them and she says: “Oh god. He’s a nazi”. Or something like that. Yeah. It’s just like that. The police get out of their vehicles and walk over to you as though they are the arm and fingers of a blind and ignorant state of sanctioned vengence.

After pulling me over and informing me about my infraction, the policeman would go about his bidness of collecting both subjugation and finances for the state. You know. He gave me a ticket. For. Indeed. I often felt the love of belligerence every time a cop pulled me over. Jeezus-h-xrist, I would think. Who in their right mind would make up a system like this? And so. As it goes. The majority of law enforcement in the united mistakes of #Aemricant isn’t about crime or murder or stopping husbands from killing wives. No. It’s about ten miles an hour over the speed limit that includes a fine and mark on your driving record and whole host of bureaucratic bull$hit that can be never ending. Indeed. Where would state and local government be without traffic stops? And that’s not all, dear worst-reader. But before I get to that…

Once I got pulled over twice within a month where I exceeded the speed limit each time by twenty miles per hour. Yeah. I was in a hurry. That fiasco ended up costing me a silly hour-wage job on account I had to turn-in my driver’s license for three friggin’ months. After it was all done it cost me two-hundred and fifty dollars, which is a lot of money for college student white-trash back then. For. Don’t you know, dear worst-reader. Those two sequential tickets put a special mark on my driving record. I subsequently received notice by mail that I was to appear before a local sheriff. Which I did. Then the sheriff took my license away and seemed to enjoy doing it. And don’t get me wrong. He was/is king of the hill. He could have taken a lot more away from me if he could, I’m sure. Or?

I broke the law by speeding in the middle of the day on a rural highway where there was no traffic, barely any cars, and even the concept of pedestrian was null and void–but there were a lot of fields and pastures and forests on either side of those highways and there were lots of grazing (and implanted) buffalo or sellers of local cantaloupe and, of course, cops that would hide in their cop-cars behind billboards waiting for guys like me–just like in the movies. And so. Question a cops motivation for the necessity of outrageous fines and other punitive measures because someone speeds here or there for a few minutes and… Yeah. I learned real quick as a privileged young white-trash guy in white-trash #Americant how to subject myself to the coercive game of state and local authority. That means. I grew up in a world that is beyond anything anywhere else I’ve lived–when it comes to the punitive nature of policing. In other worst-words, when it comes to controlling the minions of white-trash, there must first and foremost be control over behaviour. But to be really honest, considering what I read these days about police in my beloved & missed #Americant, my experience was, at best, silly.

Policing is how #Americant does it, dear worst-reader. Policing is the entry and exit, the first and last, both sides of the wall that is a nation-state. The police are everywhere. There are state police, city police, county police, town police, college campus police, federal police, immigration police, mall police, corporate police, tax police, sea police, mountain police, tobacco and firearm police and and and. Police is such an industry that it even gets all the surplus military equipment like armoured vehicles, rifles and pistols, clothing, etc., because the pentagon has too much of it anyway. Heck, most crowd control equipment comes from the military and is gleefully taken by the police. And you know what? Every one of these police, man or woman or man-child, carries a badge, an #Americant attitude that could hard boil eggs in seconds, and they’ve all grown up on/in Hollywood’s portrayal of guns and violence and control and partriarchy and hierarchy and and and. So consider that next time you see a police car with to serve and protect written on it. To serve and protect is code for something else.

When I was harassed by the police–so long ago–it never crossed my mind that my life could end because of it. For worst-moi it was always about the frustration of fines and court appearances and listening to mostly old white men complain about my attitude. Did anything worthwhile ever come from all this state sponsored harassment? Heck yeah. It’s part of my expatriation, baby. But until I expatriated I did my best to not get caught speeding or make sure my car had the proper license plate or I didn’t give a cop the evil eye when he passed by. That worst-said, forty or so years later, look at what has become of policing in #Americant.

Does #Americant policing really need to be like this? I mean. An arm of the government in the form of the police could be something else. What? Should I stop being naive, dear worst-reader? Why must there be so many deaths at the hand of government simply because people, human beings, don’t want to be prodded and poked and controlled like cattle? Ok. Ok. Don’t worry. I’m not gonna get into that defund the police stuff. Then again. The idear of using some of the wealth and power of the police-state to better train all the man-children with badges isn’t a bad thing. Or? Or how bout this? Why not redistribute some police funding in order to properly train all the man-children with guns so they can de-escalate a situation instead of drawing a gun, pointing it at someone’s head and pulling the trigger till it goes bang. Wow. Resisting arrest is a death sentence. Or is the death sentence questioning the authority of the state? Oh my.

Patrick Lyoya had no clue what he was getting into. He probably doesn’t know what it means to be a black man in Michigan who barely speaks the language, which may or may not be the case with other Congolese. Oh yeah. Let’s not forget that he was driving a car with the wrong license plate. Yeah. The death of Patrick Lyoya is commonplace in my beloved & missed united mistakes–and all because of a traffic stop. So what does questioning any of this matter? There’s now another name along side George Floyd. Wow. When is #Americant gonna wake up? Oh. Wait. That’s why it’s #Americant.

Rant on.

-T

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