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  • Why does it have to be so difficult?

    — Some letters to Pathetic Life —

    PATHETIC LIFE logo

    From Pathetic Life #21
    Thursday, Feb. 29, 1996

    Your adventure with the jock itch spray (11/11) made me laugh out loud, because a similar thing happened to me once. You know that Tiger Balm stuff? It’s a very concentrated balm for muscle aches. Once you put it on, it penetrates deep into the tissue and tingles, getting very warm.

    Well, one night my girlfriend wanted a back-rub. Both naked, I rubbed it all over her, then climbed on top of her to rub it in. The Tiger Balm on her back made its way to my nuts unnoticed — until suddenly there was this intense burning sensation.

    I yelled bloody murder and jumped off her, but the damage was done. I washed my privates but that damned stuff was already working and the burning got worse and worse. I could do nothing but roll into the fetal position and emit high-pitched moans until it subsided.

    —Eric B, Sacramento

    So what you’re saying is, you have a girlfriend. Don’t rub it in. —DH 

    ♦ ♦ ♦  

    You’re looking for someone to say something nice about New York? (11/1) Sorry, can’t help you there. I hate the damned place. So why don’t I move? Maybe because I’m afraid that I’ll discover that it’s not NYC, but myself I can’t stand.

    —Paul Kazee, FALaFal, Brooklyn

    ♦ ♦ ♦  

    Dear Doug — We’re writing to ask you to give us yr news and yr Pathetic Life. Thanks in advance. Let us know & keep in touch. Love and peace. Earth first! Poetas del Mundo Unios,

    —Daniel De Culla, Burgos, Spain

    Daniel, there’s always plenty of competition, but for sending no money, no stamps, nothing but a photocopied form letter across the ocean begging for a freebie, you, sir, are the Sphincter of the Month. —DH 

    ♦ ♦ ♦  

    I am a senior in high school, just another useless youth. My senior prom is coming, and I am not going. I don’t want to spend the night with everyone I hate, which is everyone. What good is sitting there and imagining beating the living shit out of them?

    So instead I just want to pick up and leave. Go to California, Barbados, or just take a car trip. By myself. All alone. I want to go to the University of Maryland; I don’t know why. To be a teacher, and get beat up by my students, or just shot at?

    Well, it’s Friday night and I’m home again. My dirty “friends” are tripping. I really don’t have one good friend. I haven’t for three years. I was anorexic in 9th grade, and it ruined two years of my life. I lost my best friend, because she was afraid of my frail 92-pound body. I’m completely recovered; what’s ironic is that now I’m overweight.

    Why does it have to be so difficult? What good am I if I have not one friend? I should just slit my wrists so my body will be donated. I could give my heart to a good 9-year-old girl, and my kidney to some 30-year-old man, and my bone marrow to a 40-year-old mother or something.

    No, I would never slit my wrists because I would go to Hell. I don’t want that. Thank God my parents have forced me to go to church because if I was an atheist I would do it in a split second.

    Anyways, is there anything in San Francisco I should see? Anything no-one knows about? Is there anything there that’s in remembrance of Jack Kerouac? Give me a little info so I can have it to look forward to. Thanks, man.

    —Linda D, Philadelphia

    High school is awful, but once you’re past that hell your life is yours to live as you choose, and once it’s your choice it can get a lot better. If you choose wisely.

    Before you think about slitting your wrists, try doing what you want to do with your life — whatever seems like fun or might make you happy. If it turns out it isn’t fun or doesn’t make you happy, try something else, but screw everyone’s expectations, and do what you want to do.

    You want to go to UM and become a teacher? Do it then, but not for anyone but yourself. If you go there because your parental units want you to, or because it’s somehow “expected,” or just because you can’t think of anything better to do, you’ll drive yourself crazy, like most people do every day of their lives.

    Sure, come to San Francisco, if that’s what you want to do. Its the most beautiful city ever, not for the architecture or parks or the big bridges, but because the people here are more live-and-let-live. You’ll find some colorful subcultures — the hippies, the druggies, the beatniks, the gay and lesbian scene, and of course the just plain nuts — we’re probably the most populous subculture.

    As a favor to me and you, though, please don’t even think about taking such a trip to any destination before you’re 18, if you’re not yet. Searching for meaning or happiness or just a vacation, the very last thing you need is to get tangled up and against the law.

    That said, if you choose San Francisco, there are a million things to see and do, some famous, some top secret. You mentioned Kerouac, and yeah, he has his street here, though it’s only an alley. If you like Mr K, you’d probably like Grant Avenue, the funky beatnik neighborhood around there, and still the highest goatee quotient in the known world. It has poetry, jazz, and City Lights (his publisher, and a terrific bookstore).

    Try the Castro any weekend — that’s the city’s mostly gay neighborhood. I’m straight, but it’s a beautiful place for anyone who’s different in any way. Seeing so many men holding hands with men, women with women, and people being happily who they are, always warms my frigid heart. The aura of acceptance is a hug for anyone who’s out of the ordinary.

    Me, I usually hang out alone, maybe riding the buses, looking out the window, watching and thinking and all.

    Of course, there’s my present turf, Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. That’s where Collegeville yuppies-in-training mingle with hippies-for-life and the homeless, rebels and stoners and screaming street preachers.

    Half a block away, you’ll find People’s Park. Maybe you don’t know the story? The University wanted to pave it for parking and dorms, but it was seized by radicals instead, who made it into an illegal, handmade park. The cops tried and failed to take it back, and decades later it’s still a stalemate and a nice place for a picnic.

    There’s more, of course, so much more, but the best way is to discover it for yourself. Wear a flower in your hair, as they say, and wander your own path.

    You sounded blue in your letter, so before signing off I’ll harp on this again: High school is a frickin’ prison. Ain’t much education there, but all those young people are jammed in a building where many/most of them don’t want to be, five days a week pretending to learn stuff that doesn’t interest them and doesn’t matter. It’s a tedious sentence, and if you’re not careful it’ll hammer all the you out of you.

    If you don’t like your fellow inmates, if you find few friends in such a cruel, artificial environment, that’s not a problem — it only shows that you have good taste.

    When they unlock the doors and let you walk out of that place forever, think about what you want to do, and then do it. Come to San Francisco if you choose, or go to Barbados, or to college in Maryland, or surprise yourself with another idea, but following your own path is the only way to enjoy your time on this rock. —DH 

    ♦ ♦ ♦  

    Some time I must tell you about my encounter with Cedric the sheep.

    —Jim, somewhere in Oregon

    This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.

    Pathetic Life
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  • Famous last words

    PATHETIC LIFE logo

    From Pathetic Life #21
    Sunday – Thursday,
    February 25-29, 1996

    SUNDAY — I try to avoid overtly telling the same stories a second or third time in the zine, but with my boring life sometimes it’s unavoidable. Like, today there was too much drizzle to sell sacrilegious fish on the Avenue, so I stayed home and tried to sleep away this looming flu or cold or whatever’s been eating at me for a week. And I’m certain I’ve already lived and written this exact same day.

    Again I’m drinking plenty of fluids, and making shuttle runs to the john so frequently it seems pointless to flush. This bug isn’t as ferocious as the one I fought off in December — I’ve only puked twice today — but the aches and sneezes and runny nose and general grogginess is a rerun, and jeez I’d like to change the channel.

    ♦ ♦ ♦  

    MONDAY — Feeling frigid, I slept in a sweater and two pair of pants with the space heater blasting, and woke up hours too early on Monday, sweating and shivering. Yesterday I wrote, “This bug isn’t as ferocious as the one I fought off in December” — famous last words, almost mine.

    By the time the alarm went off, white crud was clinging to my tongue, and if I was still working at Macy’s I would’ve called in sick, but there’s no sick leave at Black Sheets.

    Besides, they need me there — if I’m gone, who’d take out the trash? Who’d scrub the sink? Who’d vacuum the floor? And who’ll pay my rent? I really need the money, so I put on two sweaters, four socks, clicked the space heater off for the first time in twenty hours, and BARTed to Frisco.

    At the magazine, I advised Bill and Steve to keep away from me, and then tried to do my job. For half an hour I worked all bundled up and freezing, and then the sweats started and I stripped down to a t-shirt and pants, and then the chills returned so I got double-dressed again. The whole day, I was alternating between goose bumps and being drenched with sweat.

    Then I came home and slept twelve hours, and without exaggerating even a smidge, I have never been closer to death than I was on Tuesday the 27th.

    ♦ ♦ ♦  

    TUESDAY — It was damned awful, all day. I slipped in and out of delirium, sweating then shivering, coughing for ten minutes at a time but never finding any phlegm, staggering to the john and back over and over, wheezing like a rusty hinge with every breath, scraping white stuff off my tongue and piling it on the bedstand, and my head was full of bizarre fluffy nightmares whenever I could sleep.

    I remember watching TV in my room, and seeing a basketball game where one player tackled another and he shattered to pieces. The murderer hid between channels and ran away behind an Alka-Seltzer commercial. What’s weirdest about that, of course, is that I don’t have a television.

    Sleep drowned me and then I couldn’t sleep, the dreams made no sense and awake even less, and the only coherent thought I remember is thinking, if I die, who’ll clean out the piles of trash and dirty clothes and old zines littered all over my bedroom floor? And will Sarah-Katherine be sad, just a little?

    ♦ ♦ ♦  

    By late afternoon, my whole body was caked with thick, viscous sweat, and I was burning with fever, afraid to sleep because not waking up seemed like a serious possibility.

    This was no normal flu and I knew it, even barely conscious, so I stumbled to the phone and called the Berkeley Free Clinic — the only medical care I can afford.

    Probably I should’ve called a week earlier, but until the day-long dementia I kept telling myself it would pass. And being an anarchist and atheist, I’d always rather avoid going to a clinic that’s partially funded by the government and housed in the basement of a church.

    I’m uncomfortable taking charity — my dad taught us that it’s better to do without than to beg. But I was truly desperate, Dad, so I called the clinic at 5:45, and I wanted to kiss the man on the phone who told me to be there at 7:00. And then, of course, walking through the bitter wind and mild drizzle to the clinic, the fever broke and by the time I walked in they could’ve convinced me it was just a touch of a cold.

    Soon as I’d filled out the short questionnaire, I was ushered in to see a woman named Diana. She’s not a health care professional, she’s a health care amateur. That’s how it works at the Free Clinic — it’s staffed with volunteers who’ve passed a few months of training, so they’re probably less knowledgeable an an EMT. Hell, maybe they are EMTs. I don’t know or care. Diana knows more about human biology and health than I know, and that’s enough.

    She examined me and asked endless questions about my medical history and my family’s medical history and my sex habits, eating habits, sleeping habits, on and on. Certain answers seemed to trigger a subset of further questions, till we’d spent almost an hour talking about me. Man, you can dream about getting that much time from a doctor or nurse, but it’ll never happen.

    I was impressed, and I was 102.6°, which is a lifetime high for me. I’d been alternately burning and freezing all day, but at the clinic I felt so much better that the temperature really surprised me. 102° when I felt almost OK? I wonder what the reading would’ve been a few hours earlier, when I was melting on my mattress?

    Diana said she was pretty sure it was a strep, and maybe more, and then she disappeared down a hallway. A few minutes later she returned with the clinic’s one and only doctor, for a cursory review of her conclusions.

    And even the doctor seemed nice. Is that allowed? The two of them talked medical lingo, then stepped out, and Diana returned with a big bottle of erythromycin. Drugs. Oh, yay.

    I took the first double-dose of the antibiotic there at the clinic, and on the walk home my fever started raging again. That’s a good thing, I told myself — it means the reinforcements have arrived, and the war is raging between the good medicine and the bad bacteria, right?

    ♦ ♦ ♦  

    WEDNESDAY — Being a private man when I’m not spilling my soul into this zine, I hadn’t told Judith or any of my flatmates I was sick, but Judith heard me hacking and puking and brought some cough syrup. Thank you, my friend.

    Cough drops are enough when you’re hoarse, but hoarse was the day before yesterday. The coughing had only earned me a sore neck and chest, never any of the thick yellow goop I knew was inside me. Swallowing the cough syrup, though, some of the hacking finally became productive, not merely painful.

    Took an antibiotic and slept for hours again, and when my eyes opened the world felt a little better, but a piece of cardboard was in my hand. It was an amazingly mushy post card I’d written to Sarah-Katherine during my mental discombobulation, maybe the day before or the day before that. I don’t even remember writing it, but it’s my handwriting so I must’ve.

    Reading it made me cry. Good thing I was too weak to take it to the mailbox, or she’d have read too much of me, things I’d never say when I’m coherent.

    For the diary, I’ll sum it up even briefer than the card: Once, for a few days scattered across a few months, there was a woman who liked me, and I liked her. And then of course, I fucked everything up.

    Addendum, here and now: The Berkeley Free Clinic is still there, saving people’s health and lives and asking nothing in return. A few years after today’s events, they were as marvelous and heroic when my wife was sick as they’d been for me, and ever since, we’ve been sending them twenty bucks a month. It’s not much, but the clinic is legendary, and it’s a debt I can never repay.

    This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.

    Pathetic Life
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  • American police are out of control, 2/28

    American cops are armed and dangerous, barely trained, barely supervised. They can get away with anything, and do.

    California: Woman shot in face with “less-lethal” round during ICE protest files claim against Los Angeles police

    California: Prosecutors say the evidence against a CHP officer charged with lying under oath is ‘overwhelming.’ Why the case will not go to trial

    ICE took their papers—and won’t give them back

    LAPD officer who claimed disability is arrested after being caught skydiving

    California Highway Patrol officer who died in on-duty crash had fentanyl in his system, medical examiner says

    California: Passenger killed, two injured as police chase over traffic violation leads to wreck

    Over traffic violations, Colorado cops chase driver into 2-fatality wreck

    DC police lure immigrant crime victims to police station, where ICE waits to attest them

    Excerpt: When 37-year-old Jose Argueta reported his car stolen in Maryland in November, he did not realize he had set off a chain of events that would eventually lead to him spending Christmas at an immigrant detention center.

    But, he recently alleged as part of an ongoing lawsuit, that’s what happened.

    Argueta said that in early December, he received a call from someone claiming to be with D.C.’s police department, telling him they had found his stolen car and asking that he pick it up at a station in Northeast Washington. After he walked in to the police station, he said he was handcuffed and taken into custody by officers, one of whom had the word “ICE” on his shirt. They told him they had used information from the stolen vehicle report to determine Argueta was in the country illegally.

    “They tricked me into coming to the station to arrest me,” he said. “I was just trying to get my car back, but it was all a lie.”

    Georgia cops find black man hanging from tree, say it’s suicide

    Excerpt: Since 2017, Jefferson has been compiling records of Black people found hanging across the country, concentrating on Mississippi. According to her, many of those deaths were ruled suicides, even as families insisted they were lynchings.

    ‘There is a pattern to how these cases are investigated,’ she said. ‘When authorities arrive on the scene of a hanging, it’s treated as a suicide almost immediately. The crime scene is not preserved. The investigation is shoddy. And then there is a formal ruling of suicide, despite evidence to the contrary. And the case is never heard from again unless someone brings it up.’

    Georgia police chief is “formally reprimanded” for trying to turn a traffic ticket into a free oil change

    ICE promised a Minnesota Supreme Court justice it would stop raiding courthouses, then immediately broke that promise

    New Jersey: Newark mayor says ICE operation caused multi-vehicle crash with injuries

    New York: Blind refugee who doesn’t speak English is abducted and abandoned by ICE, then found dead

    Full text: When 37-year-old Jose Argueta reported his car stolen in Maryland in November, he did not realize he had set off a chain of events that would eventually lead to him spending Christmas at an immigrant detention center. But, he recently alleged as part of an ongoing lawsuit, that’s what happened.

    Argueta said that in early December, he received a call from someone claiming to be with D.C.’s police department, telling him they had found his stolen car and asking that he pick it up at a station in Northeast Washington. After he walked in to the police station, he said he was handcuffed and taken into custody by officers, one of whom had the word “ICE” on his shirt. They told him they had used information from the stolen vehicle report to determine Argueta was in the country illegally.

    “They tricked me into coming to the station to arrest me,” he said. “I was just trying to get my car back, but it was all a lie.”

    Me again: They’re lying. ICE, CBP, DHS, the entire immigration Gestapo are always lying.

    Back to the article: Argueta was detained for about a month in various detention centers before being released on bond in early January, he said.

    Argueta’s account — filed as part of a lawsuit over warrantless arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — is one of two recently surfaced examples of immigration agents arresting people at D.C. police stations, renewing concerns from some advocates over the local force’s ongoing cooperation with the federal agency. That relationship was part of the focus of a D.C. Council hearing Wednesday examining the police department’s performance.

    The Trump administration has worked to expand partnerships with law enforcement agencies across the country, attempting to enlist local police in its mass deportation campaign. In liberal jurisdictions, those efforts have met resistance, either through long-standing sanctuary policies or new bans on cooperation.

    The new accounts have fueled skepticism about whether D.C. police are complying with the letter and spirit of the city’s sanctuary law, which prohibits local police from providing federal immigration agencies with a person’s custody details, location, address, personal identifying information or criminal case information absent a warrant signed by a judge.

    “These examples are people that would not have entered federal immigration detention if it were not for [D.C. police] actively assisting ICE,” said Austin Rose, an attorney for the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. “I don’t know if the collaboration is formalized or whether it’s just happening, but either way, I think it’s violating D.C.’s laws.”

    D.C. police spokesman Tom Lynch said the department was investigating the claims in the sworn declarations.
    Asked about Argueta’s situation at Wednesday’s council hearing, interim D.C. police chief Jeffery Carroll said he did not want to speculate until he learned more about the incident and his department’s involvement. “Obviously it sounds not good, but we need to investigate that to find out what happened,” he said.

    In another example cited in the lawsuit, a man said a D.C. police officer pulled him over on Jan. 2 because his motorcycle plates were expired. She handcuffed him and took him to a police station, he said. Another man not in a D.C. police uniform was with her, the declaration states.

    “I wasn’t sure who he was,” the man said in a sworn declaration submitted to the court. He used a pseudonym — “Benito Lopez” — in the court filing for fear of retaliation in the United States and Venezuela.

    The man said he was in the process of applying for asylum and until recently, had been working as a delivery driver in the District.

    He recalled being at the police station for about three hours, given a court date and then told he was free to go. But as he was preparing to leave the station, the man testified, two officers wearing green vests walked in, one of whom had earlier accompanied the D.C. police officer.

    When he asked why he was being arrested again, they responded: “You are done with them but not with us.” They handcuffed him and told him they were with Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of ICE.

    “At no point was I presented with a warrant or told how ICE knew to come get me at the police station at that moment,” the man said in the declaration.

    He has since been ordered to be deported, the court filing states. He said he had never been convicted of any crime, and had not missed deadlines or court appearances related to his immigration case.

    The declarations come more than six months after President Donald Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C., seized temporary control of the city police department and surged federal law enforcement into the city.

    While residents of D.C. are used to police cooperation with federal agencies, the city had in the past maintained policies that barred officers from assisting with civil immigration enforcement. For many in the deep-blue city, seeing D.C. police alongside ICE and HSI at traffic checkpoints and delivery driver stops after the surge was jarring. A Washington Post-Schar School poll in August found that 70 percent of Washingtonians thought the local police department should help federal deportation efforts either “not much” or “not at all.”

    D.C.’s former police chief issued a policy in August, allowing her officers to share information about people not in their custody with federal immigration agencies. A federal judge, in a lawsuit filed by the city to maintain the chief’s authority over the department, said the Trump administration was likely allowed to compel D.C. police to help enforce immigration laws during the month-long federal takeover.

    Even after the emergency expired, residents say they have continued to see D.C. police working alongside immigration agents, at times patrolling in the same vehicles. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and members of her administration have stressed that immigration enforcement is not a focus of the city police department, but have acknowledged that federal authorities who are part of a joint task force can enforce immigration laws.

    Bowser previously said she would work to remove homeland security officers from the task force, but that has not yet happened, according to documents the police department submitted to the D.C. Council on Tuesday. The department also said the chief’s order allowing information-sharing between D.C. police and immigration authorities was still in effect, according to documents submitted as part of the council’s annual performance oversight process.

    The department did not answer the council’s questions about how many times its officers had shared information with immigration enforcement, saying it does not track that data.

    Rose, with Amica, said federal immigration arrests anecdotally appear to have fallen significantly since the spike in the summer and fall. The federal government reports warrantless immigration arrests to Amica as part of the lawsuit — and while there were 30 such D.C. arrests reported in December, that number had fallen to 11 by January, he said.

    Amica and a coalition of advocacy groups still want stronger enforcement of a federal judge’s order limiting warrantless immigration arrests in the city.

    In his sworn declaration, Argueta said he had never been arrested “in my entire life” before his December encounter with immigration agents in D.C. After he paid his bond, he said, he went back to his home and job in Maryland, where he has lived for more than a decade.

    “I am very angry and traumatized from what happened,” he said. “I don’t want this to happen to other people.”

    Manhattan DA charges 2 NYPD officers with covering up another’s DWI crash

    New York: ICE arrests Columbia student, after lying to gain access to University-owned residence

    She was later released

    Snowball fight in New York City turns chaotic after police arrive

    You are there!

    New York’s Finest make first arrest of dreaded snowball terrorist

    Excerpt: The man, Gusmane Coulibaly, was taken into custody early on Thursday morning at his home in the Bronx and charged with assaulting a police officer, obstructing governmental administration and disorderly conduct, according to the police. The Police Department was still seeking three other men, two of them believed to be between the ages of 18 and 20, who were also wanted for assault.

    Ohio: ICE agents pepper-spray Columbus mom, three kids inside moving vehicle

    Oregon: Armed ICE officer calls 9-1-1 during confrontation: ‘I’m going to have to shoot this kid’, 9-1-1 operator suggests he just drive away instead

    Former Pennsylvania officer accused of child rape fatally shot in a gunfire exchange with police

    Pennsylvania: Teens charged with aggravated assault after police riot at protest

    Excerpt: The teenagers who were arrested had been taking part in a protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that began at Quakertown Community High School and moved off campus to Front Street. Witnesses have said that a confrontation erupted there, in front of Sunday’s Deli and Restaurant.

    McElree, the police chief, who was dressed in plain clothes, grabbed a teenage boy and placed a teenage girl in a chokehold, they said, prompting other students to intervene and a larger scuffle to break out.

    Angelo said the central allegation against his client is that she struck McElree during the melee, an accusation she denies. He contended that students reacted in confusion and fear when a man rushed into the crowd.

    He said McElree “put himself smack in the middle and created a melee” when he charged up to the teenagers while out of uniform and without announcing who he was. “I think he owes the community and these teenagers an apology,” the lawyer said.

    Residents demand Quakertown police chief resign after students ‘choked’ and ‘tackled’ during ICE protest

    Pennsylvania: Private prison falsified records in detainee’s death in ICE custody

    Excerpt: Staff at a for-profit Pennsylvania immigrant prison serially falsified detention records about a man who died in 2023, according to a federal death review obtained exclusively by The Intercept earlier this month.

    Despite these findings, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to punish the facility’s politically connected operator, GEO Group. Instead, records show the agency gave GEO even more money to run the facility after the man died: $4 million in additional funds, just three months after the death review was completed. After an April 2024 visit at the facility, ICE’s acting director called GEO a “valued partner.”

    Me again: They’re lying. Even the freelance feds are always lying.

    Texas: Austin police officer gets “indefinite suspension” for punching man on Sixth Street, knocking him unconscious

    Washington: Family sues King County over mother’s death in jail, claiming neglect during severe illness

    Border Patrol hired IT specialist, and when he showed up for work ICE detained him

    Trump’s ICE is quietly stockpiling weaponry—and it should alarm us all

    99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it’s not on this page.

    When cops are caught breaking the law, they’re investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers’ names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.

    When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with ‘law enforcement experience’ and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It’s called “Wandering Cops.”

    When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: “testilying.” Yet it’s almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.

    Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don’t, they aren’t cops for long.

    The legal doctrine of “qualified immunity” renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past ‘qualified immunity’ is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.

    All this is a path to a police state.

    In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.

    Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.

    That’s the solution.

    Previous police brutality,
    misconduct, and perversions

    2/28/2026

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