April 26, 2021
The Keystone Kops were an incredibly incompetent police force that appeared regularly in Mack Sennett’s silent-film slapstick farces from about 1912 to the early 1920s. They became enshrined in American film history as genuine folk-art creations whose comic appeal was based on a native irreverence for authority.
Derek Chauvin\’s defense attorney, Eric Nelson, made a big deal about the drugs in George Floyd\’s system being the cause of his death. I wonder if the prosecution might have requested some drug testing of Derek Chauvin immediately following the incident? Chances are that he was pretty high on crystal meth (the cops\’ drug of choice) on full display when he couldn\’t properly execute the arrest. (A bad pun I know — and my apologies to the Floyd Family: I would never make fun of their tragedy.)
Chauvin looked very-out-of-it to me…that glazed emotionless stare — the inability to react…
If cops are as drug-addled as I suspect they are while-on-the-job — it would certainly go a long way in explaining their paranoia and the eternal excuse for shooting unarmed Black Men because they were in fear for their lives. It\’s the only explanation for the 6 shot and killed by police following Chauvin\’s verdict.
We got our first taste of methamphetamine usage on-the-job with Hitler\’s storm troopers and the Blitzkrieg: ironic how police look so much like Nazis…
Why do our American police forces use speed you ask? Well, to a certain extent, they do bear witness to some horrific atrocities and speed helps you stay in a groove where the horrific images don\’t cause one to implode.
Unfortunately, as my former speed-addicted patients taught me, if you take them out of that groove — and disrupt their established routine — their emotion maintenance can quickly break down into raw anger and fear very often getting the best of them while they self righteously explode. (Have you ever seen a long-distance trucker lose it?) You can bet that the cop who pumped 16 bullets into Laquan McDonald was a hophead.
Crystal meth addiction might also explain the bullshit lies cops shovel into their reports: their lies sound like those of kindergartners: he lunged at me with a knife (when he did no such thing).
Surely our contemporary police forces are not intentionally engaging in incompetence — there must be some other dynamic in play other than a lack of education!? A 26-year veteran couldn\’t possibly mistake a taser for a gun — could she?
But I can think of no plausible explanation that causes cell phones, garden hoses and screwdrivers to look like guns — then an altered experience of reality facilitated by a crystal meth ride.
Everyone knows that cops are one of the Top Ten (#8 currently [they used to be #5]) substance abusing professions — joined by medical doctors, lawyers, psychologists, psychotherapists and hospitality workers?
(I still think cops are in the Top Five substance abusing professions — as I\’m sure they lie on any survey given to them as they do in their reports.)
A return to the Keystone Cops: It sure seems like this is what many contemporary cop stations are becoming — as too many cops continue to use excessive force on the populous — particularly on unarmed African American men — and they do it without fear of repercussion.
I know that there are many excellent cops out there and that their jobs are very dangerous (but not the most dangerous). It is for these cops to root out the bad apples that have negatively stereotyped the police in the minds of many Americans.
Like the Keystone pipeline — which was never meant to deliver the world\’s dirtiest oil to US — the American police have to stop this reckless, uber-aggressive policing (as the pipeline has been stopped) and clean up their act!