"Respect My Authoritah, Proles"

That's basically what one former cop and now professor at some crap-ass for-profit college is saying.

Tam points out that the old Officer Friendlies were, at times, vicious oppressors. The nightsticks that they carried, back then, were sometimes called "(vile word) knockers". Confessions extracted by torture were not unusual. And the cops, to this day, are backed up by prosecutors who have forgotten that their job is to seek justice, not just rack up convictions.

It was still possible, into the 1970s, to see "sundown" signs in the South, which local police enforced with not a little bit of brutality.

Nearly seven years ago, I wrote this:

One of my classmates from law school was from Atlanta and I asked her how long it took to drive there. Her answer was about three or four hours longer than I guessed and when I asked why so long, she explained, in the same tone of voice that she might have used to mention Orange Barrel Season, that she planned on being stopped, on average, three times each way. But that's something I have never experienced.

She was a retread student (as I was). She had done well in her previous career and had a very nice German sedan. She got stopped on each and every trip because she was a black woman driving a nice car.  The excuse was usually something on the order of a non-working tail light, which all of a sudden had miraculously repaired itself (praise the Lord).

Yes, the cops have become more militarized. But to an extent, that translates into that they are, more and more, treating white folk the same way that they have historically treated everyone else.

If you are a minority in this country, especially if you are visibly a member of a minority, the police are, quite often, not your friends. That is a reality that is on display, quite blatantly, in Ferguson. The armored cars, M-4s and sound cannons may be military gear. But the cops likely would have acted no differently if they were all equipped with Smith & Wesson Model 10s, Winchester `97s and surplus M-1 carbines which had been purchased by the department from Herter's or Bannerman's. They'd have thrown tear gas and they would have drafted the firemen to hose down the demonstrators.  Then they would have lined up and opened fire.

And if you were a white man in a union out on strike between 1880 and 1940, the cops treated you the same way, as they were used as strikebreakers, just like the Pinkertons.

The cops have better gear now. But Tam is right, things haven't changed very much.  There are still a lot of goons in police uniforms.  And, apparently just like the retired cop whose article I linked to at the beginning of this post, if you look crossways at them, they'll bust your head open.  Or worse.