Let's hurt this guy

In today's edition of the Stars and Stripes there was a story about a homeless man who was beaten to death by six Fullerton, CA police officers in the course of an arrest. They will make all the usual noises about how he resisted, exhibited superhuman strength etc., but the fact is and will be shown to be, that some of the officers, I'm guessing two but maybe three got excited and decided to indulge themselves and really hurt this guy. They went a little far though. He died and now they are effed, as they deserve to be.

There is one thing you should remember when you read about these incidents. This behavior didn't come from nowhere. I guarantee you that several of the officers had a history of violence, questionable judgment and excitability; the department knew about it and kept them on anyway because to have let them go would have embarrassed the high rankers. That is the prime directive, nothing shall embarrass the high rankers.

When I was an officer I had contact with the homeless on occasion. They made me feel sadder than almost anybody else I worked with because they were broken inside and there was no way I could help them get fixed. Aside from the occasional happy meal or ride into town when their feet were sore, they didn't want any help. One of the female officers from the city PD knew most of them and watched out for them as best she could but mostly they wanted to be left alone. I can't conceive of six of us rolling up on one of them and beating him to death.

The gut wrenching detail of this story was that while the officers were killing this guy, he was calling out for his father, a retired Orange County deputy sheriff. The story told how the father watched his normal son turn into a schizophrenic wanderer and it described how he was always expecting a phone call one day telling him his son had died the death they die. He didn't expect to hear that as his son was being beaten to death by the police he was calling out for his father to save him. And he couldn't.