Police Commissioner William Fitchet, (over there, to the left,) is playing both sides. Trying to please everybody all the time, it seems. Didn’t Abe Lincoln disprove that theory? Anyway, he defends the cop who beat Melvin Jones’ head into an inhuman shape during a traffic stop, but he says he wants citizens to handle discipline with an oversight board because he would rather spend his time fighting crime and running the department. He finds discipline of cops to be “tedious”.
Fitchet admits he tried to prevent the public from knowing any details of the Melvin Jones beating, but was forced to come forward after the citizen video surfaced. He said he acted on advice from department lawyers when he held back with the facts. With that in mind, how seriously can we take his words when he claims he wants citizen-powered police discipline?
This is typical cop smoke and mirrors at best. We all know cops can’t take orders, and they thrive on lies to accomplish what they need. They pride themselves in their cleverness when devising a ruse. Lying quickly becomes habitual for them. If view of these facts, Commissioner Fitchet’s words sound suspicious. Even worse, the Commissioner expressed concern about public confidence being shaken because of the Jones cover-up.
Please Commissioner, Jeffrey Asher has been abusing citizens for years, and he is just one cop on the force. Has nothing prior given you a sense that the public was less than happy with you? Your department is regularly bombarded with complaints about Asher and others, and protests abound. And now, suddenly, you want citizens to be in charge of cop discipline? Sounds good if you mean it, but from here, it just sounds suspicious.
Prove me wrong Commissioner. Get behind Mayor Sarno right away and push the citizen oversight panel, with teeth, into reality. Don't hold out much hope for Jeffrey Asher when the panel is complete, but Jeffrey can’t responsibly operate a flashlight, as Melvin Jones’ head proves, let alone a gun, TASER, car, etc. We are all better off without him. How about this? Stop defending Jeffrey Asher and fire him now, before a discipline panel has to do it. Consider it an act of good faith on your part.
I will turn your face to alabaster, When you find your servant is your master
--Sting, Wrapped Around Your Finger, 1983 (The Police)
Great song, great band, but it is just a song to the citizens, despite the ironic name of the group. Not so to a cop. Cops live in stark fear of this lyric becoming a reality for them. A cop is riddled with the haunting thoughts of how they violate citizens’ rights with every workday. They know there will be a day when their misguided belief of who and what they are become intolerable to citizens, who finally reclaim their rightful ownership of police departments. We know that cops joined the force for all the wrong reasons, and as Sting suggests in his lyrics, that guilt will turn into reality.
The form in which this epiphany must take is the Citizen Review Board. Cops are really common citizens who have been given a particular job, and no more, but have tried to parlay that job into something it never included: automatic superiority. And they parlay it with the only tool they have to work with, ego.
Nobody has corrected their mistakes, at least yet, and the citizens are suffering for it. Melvin Jones III, of Springfield Massachusetts, Michael Mineo, of Brooklyn NY, Daija M of the Bronx, NYC, are all good and recent examples of the way an out-of-control ego hurts us all. Worse, these three common citizens prove that you could be next.
Why has the servant been working as our master for so long? Society’s absentee-management style is why, and it has now come back to bite us all. Cops do what they want, fueled by ego and misdirection, and the only reason a citizen does nothing is because they are not yet a victim. Time will deliver that reality to their doorstep eventually, unless society makes the titles of servant and master a bit more clear to their police departments.
So what do we do? If you really like the way servant cops own you, do nothing. Cops will take it from there and in the long run, make every move, every thought you have, into a “violation”. You will be ticketed, jailed, fined, or put on a “list” forever. But if changing that outcome sounds better, we MUST take control back with a Citizen Review Board. Call the mayor, and the City Council. Make it clear to all incoming politicians that an oversight panel is a requirement to get or keep the jobs they seek.
Call friends and neighbors, and set up an email based network between them. Bookmark websites of all local politicians and make it clear to them who you are and what you expect for your tax money. Above all else, remember that the citizen invented the police department, we pay for it and it belongs to us first. When we get that past the ego problems and clean up the police forces we have now, we can start to work on what the police academy teaches their recruits, and let attrition take its course. It is a big, long term job, but it only gets worse without control.
Mayor Domenic Sarno, pictured at left, (no, not the blurry guy with the hat), may just be making progress here. So far, he is following up on his promise to get a new police oversight board up and running in the coming weeks.
His response is due to an outcry of citizen frustration. A Springfield, Massachusetts cop, known to Melvin Jones III and many other victims as Jeffrey Asher, is still on the payroll, and still thinks he is not guilty of anything, like bashing in Mr Jones' skull, partially disabling one eye and providing a long-lasting headache due to the broken bones in adjacent areas to said eye.
Keep it up Mayor Sarno, and make it permanent! The citizens and all future Melvin Jones's will thank you. Better yet Mayor, make a national statement by showing other cities and towns exactly how it is done. Make your plan a role model for others to follow. While cities and towns are all different in their needs, all cops are alike in their problems. Your work could become textbook information in police academies from coast to coast. Let's get that ball rolling.
Folks, call the Mayor, email the Mayor, fax the Mayor, 413-787-6000, (City Hall), as well as the Springfield Massachusetts Police Department 413-787-6322, spd@springfieldpolice.net and encourage the efforts of Mayor Sarno. This issue is the People's Business, if there ever was such a thing. It is what will happen next, to you or a family member, and what you need to be a part of to control. Make the contact with Mayor Sarno as well as the Springfield police union, and put on the pressure. Melvin Jones felt the pressure on his skull. Let's exert some of our own with our voices.
That’s right, Michael Mineo was anally raped in a subway station by a cop, specifically Richard Kern, seen here with his lawyer. Mineo’s boxer shorts had a hole ripped in the back, the nightstick has his anal DNA on it, and he was admitted to the hospital with anal injuries, but cop Kern has pleaded not guilty. OK, let’s just sit back and watch this load from lawyer and cop alike spill into the record books. I can’t wait.
Maybe probing Mineo with a nightstick was within police policy. Maybe Mineo requested it. Maybe he is just trying to shake down the citizens of NY for multiple millions of dollars. Or, there might be truth to Kern’s statement that he was checking for drugs. In any case, it will be another exercise in absurdity from the police department and their lawyers, I am sure.
This kind of event happens for one reason only: No oversight. How could the friendly beatcop in our little villages whom everybody knew and trusted in and around their homes be transformed into a thoughtless, ego-filled sex criminal? No oversight.
Get the CRB, one that will save the citizenry millions of dollars in court costs like this one. We must revamp the Academy, to catch defectives before they even get into a PD. And let’s remember that cops work for us, for our satisfaction and our approval. We are not getting our money’s worth now. Ask Michael Mineo, at left.
I have railed against the stupidity the police academy calls training for quite a while now, but here is an angle I have never covered----the Trickle-Down Effect.
There are people among us who want to be a somebody. Authority, respect, and a fear of their presence is what they crave. Problem is, they’ve got nothing to back it up. Talent, charisma, strength, agility, insight, brain-power, nothing. Even worse, this particular person has a lifestyle that can only go it half-way, a part timer, shall we say. What to do? What DO you do? Police Academy? Naww…they can’t hack Police Academy. How about a school teacher? Well, no, they can’t get a teaching certificate either, so now what?
This mentally-misled person’s dream has come true. Team up with the NYPD and become an SSO! The best of police thoughts combined with the best fantasies of emotionally failed citizens with time on their hands. It’s the School Safety Officers!
School, (we want the kids to go to school), Safety, (who can argue with safety?), and Officer, (one of those titles given to people instead of a raise, like Associate at WalMart.) The SSOs are our friends, right? They fill in for Mom and Dad while the kid is at school, looking after them, keeping them safe, as their title implies. Well, not quite.
These people, hired by the police department and paid by citizens who have no input, are full of smart-mouthed attitude and arrogance to spare. Consider what a SSO looks like to the average school kid: They are dressed in a knockoff NYPD uniform, without the heavy hardware but with a heavy dose of tough-guy face, fueled by a brainless thirst for dominance. SSOs possess the authority to stop, frisk, question, search and arrest students. They strut, glare and threaten their way through the work day. And they don’t hold back on the physical abuse either.
Ask Daija. A 13-year old from the Bronx, she was body slammed to the ground with an SSO sitting on her back. She was handcuffed and dragged inside the school building and then bound to a desk until her mother came to collect her. She never agressed against anybody. She told the SSO that she chose to stay put outside the school and wait for a ride from her mother after being threatened by two strangers there, but that didn’t satisfy the SSO. Here are Daija’s words.
It is clear to anybody with a public school education, the education Dajia was there to get, that the presence and methodology of the SSO misguides kids into a life of either becoming another idiot in a cop uniform, or another criminal who ends up in jail. The attitude the School Safety Officers are eager to apply and the absence of any goodwill or maturity in them leaves impressionable kids with only the two options. And neither the school or the parent have any say in it. Great choice, huh?
How The SSO Gets That Way
The Academy’s message to police recruits boils down to this: “Always win”. That summation, plus some tips and tricks on how to overpower people, is all cops pass onto the SSO recruits. Daija chose to let her mother be the decider of her fate, and the SSO saw no “win” in that for them. So, what to do? Impose violence. That is a “win”, isn’t it? Peace through superior firepower? Ummm…..
She is not alone. Daija is part of a class action suit looking to curtail the authority of these fools, endowed by the police department, and without concern for the school’s authority. In fact, the school has no say whatsoever over the SSOs. Here is an account of the story from Gotham.
Here’s the problem: SSOs only know what cops tell them to do, and cops only know what the Academy tells them to do. Blind leading the blind. All they know is robotic obedience and that just doesn’t make it with school kids. EVERY decent parent knows that it takes a bit more finesse than anything a cop can imagine. The educational world is being polluted by the destructive, single-dimensioned cop mentality.
There is no better example in recent news to show us why a Civilian Review Board is necessary ASAP. We already have this---
·Cops don’t want to come when we call them, (mugging, rape, or home invasion victims, call the police and wait until the perps make a clean getaway and/or the victim bleeds to death while waiting.)
·Cops want to show up in places where they manipulate the law to limit citizens’ rights, like highway checkpoints or pretext stops.
·Cops want to ignore all the mistakes they personally make while exaggerating the importance of everything citizens do, especially “disorderly conduct”.
·Cops lie in court to send innocent people to jail and justify their paychecks.
Evidently, none of that is enough to get a civilian review board established, and the above is just what they do to adults. Now, they are hiring underlings and sending them to our schools to mistreat kids. At what point do we take control of a tax-funded organization called the police department and tell it what we want it to do?
Any citizen’s police oversight worth a nickel would stop the SSO idea in its tracks. An SSO would never pass muster in America if parents who take raising their kids seriously were to vote on it. Cops can’t be trusted to do the right thing without guidance any more than our kids can. Both need daily instruction from those who brought them here. We the people. Where is the citizen control over police?
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