[Peace-discuss] "Thank you, Don Imus."

[Karen Medina]

Ricky wrote:
>The problem is too often the authorities don't *earn*
>respect. 

I just discovered that I am afraid of the local cops. At a restaurant the other day, I overheard 3 mothers talking about teaching their kids that police were good and helpful people. My first reaction was horror. My own gut reaction surprised me. I tend to think that police are just people, some are good and some are bad, and the gun just makes it more likely that they will have a violent tendency (power corrupts, and guns are power). But examining the reasons for my reaction, I have good cause to be scared -- a local police officer raping women while on duty, a guard using tazers on people bound to a chair, and the police claiming "resisting arrest" when the police were not arresting the kids in the first place, and the police failing to properly investigate the crime Patrick Thompson was supposed to have committed, ... Even as a middle-class white female, I am downright scared of the local police.

-karen medina