Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods,
When great Jove nods;
But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes
In missing the hour when great Jove wakes. – Rudyard Kipling
Even if you clicked on “Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever” in Links #165, I doubt you took the time to look at a map to see where St. John the Baptist Parish is. Well, I’ll save you the trouble: it’s one of three small parishes (that’s Louisianese for “counties”) just west of Greater New Orleans; the three are so similar and so traditionally interlinked that they are referred to collectively as the “River Parishes”. If one heads west from New Orleans, one first passes through Jefferson Parish (the largest suburb); continuing past the airport one will then, within half an hour by interstate, rapidly pass through St. Charles, St. John the Baptist and St. James Parishes (in that order). This is the general region where I grew up, and I have friends and family in all three parishes. When I was a wee lass they were all semi-rural, but St. Charles began to build up in the late ‘70s due to urban sprawl from New Orleans; St. John the Baptist’s turn came ten years later, and then surged again after Hurricane Katrina. And St. James is still fairly small-towny, with less than half the population of St. John.
The reason I’m going over all this isn’t just because I saw and featured an out-of-control-cops-murdering-innocent citizens story from a place I know well; after all, I feature similar stories every week, sometimes from New Orleans (which I know just as well). No, it’s because that story was only one of several such stories from St. John in a relatively short time. When one considers that the parish only has about 45,000 people, this number of incidents may seem quite astonishing…unless one knows what I know about American sheriffs in general, and Southern sheriffs in particular, and Louisiana sheriffs especially particularly, and St. John Parish…well, you get the idea. My international readers may not realize just how unaccountable to higher authority the sheriffs in most American states are; many of them run their counties like their own private fiefdoms, and head political machines which keep them in their offices for decades. And once the precedent is established, the culture doesn’t usually change merely because one sheriff dies or finally decides to retire; no, the next one often continues just like his predecessor did even if they’re of (ostensibly) different political parties, much like feudal barons inheriting their domains from their fathers. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this only applies to rural counties, either; some of the worst offenders reign over urban or populous suburban areas. I suspect Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona (site of Phoenix) needs no introduction, but you might be less familiar with other specimens of his ilk such as Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida (600,000 people) and the late Harry Lee of Jefferson Parish.
As you can probably guess, the deputies (county cops) of tyrannical sheriffs take their cues from their liege-lords, and behave accordingly; those who imagine my dislike of cops only dates back to my sex work career, or to my especially brutal treatment by three sheriff’s deputies in 1995, have obviously never lived under the tyrannical regime of a Louisiana sheriff. I had already learned to dislike and distrust cops long before I left high school; in fact, the first time I ever heard the expression which forms today’s title was from my mother’s lips when I was about ten, in reference to the sheriff of our parish. Y’all don’t know my mother, but let’s just say that for her that was essentially the equivalent of calling him a thrice-damned son of a bitch. So I wasn’t actually surprised when I read back in January that St. John deputies had murdered a middle-aged woman for refusing to get out of her car, then planted a gun on her to provide an excuse for the deed; nor was I particularly shocked when I read that they had murdered another woman for having a rifle slung across her back, then gunned down her husband for complaining about it. After all, this is the same parish where a deputy once thought it would be funny to throw tear gas canisters into the jail and then close up all the ventilation, nearly killing dozens of men (this was in the early ‘90s and doesn’t seem to be available online). And it’s the same parish which re-elected (as “parish president”) a former sheriff who had done time for extortion, only to see him convicted and sentenced again for the same crime (its sheriff’s office has, in fact, been a festering bog of corruption since at least the 1960s).
The “blue wall of silence” in pocket dictatorships like St. John is like it is everywhere; cops cover up for one another. So while reports of murders and mayhem from down there don’t surprise me, this one did:
A Louisiana sheriff fired his chief deputy – who is an attorney – for objecting to the sheriff’s secretly recording conversations between criminal suspects and their attorneys…Tregg Wilson sued St. John the Baptist Parish and its Sheriff Mike Tregre…Wilson claims he confronted Tregre after he learned of secret cameras on loop in the interview room at the sheriff’s office, where criminal suspects meet for private conversations with their attorneys…
Tregre’s megalomania is apparently so advanced, he didn’t realize that as soon as he fired Wilson the latter would report him to the feds for his incredibly illegal actions. Now, in a way I suppose recording privileged conversations isn’t really as bad as murdering citizens; after all, as Scott Greenfield pointed out, “It only applies to the ones who survived arrest, and shouldn’t they be seriously thankful the deputies didn’t just kill them in the first place?” And hey, if the federal government can record every single one of our electronic conversations, why can’t one of its minor vassals do the same? It’s not like the deck isn’t hopelessly stacked against criminal defendants anyhow. But we live in a looking-glass country, where the worship-word “liberty” is still sacred despite the total abrogation of nearly every constitutional guarantee of it, where police smashing down people’s doors without warrants, destroying their property and murdering their pets and children is said to be for the victims’ “protection”, and where $400 million per life saved is considered reasonable if the threat is “terrorism”, but sums a minuscule fraction of that aren’t if the threat is anything else. So I guess it’s wholly predictable that the feds yawn when people are murdered by cops, but launch a full-scale investigation when those same cops just eavesdrop; after all, they’ve never claimed a monopoly on murder, but do (apparently) want one on snooping. We can’t have these little tin gods in the provinces thinking they’re the equal of the great big brazen idols in Washington, now can we?
When I was sharing a flat with sex workers in Darlinghurst in 1982 (the bad old criminalised days) one acquaintance had essentially become enslaved to a cop who not only demanded money off her to stay out of jail but regularly showed up with his cop friends for ‘freebies’.
After she couldn’t take any more we smuggled her out of town, initially putting her up with my family in northern NSW, then with friends nearby after she clashed with my stepmother. Only three people in Sydney knew her location and phone number, one being her younger sister who was not a sex worker but a student at Sydney University.
One evening she got a frantic phone call from her younger sister who had just been raped by two cops and told that if the woman didn’t come back to Sydney to recommence her previous ‘arrangement’ that and worse would keep happening to the sister.
She came back.
A few years earlier another sex worker acquaintance of mine had her boyfriend executed by Sydney detectives in a blatant manner in an inner city street. The overwhelming evidence forced the coroner to find that he had been killed by one detective ‘not in accordance with his duty as a police officer’. The DPP declined to bring charges and the detective went on to become the most highly decorated cop in the state, committing several more murders before finally being forced out for corruption after being connected to the attempted murder of another cop who had been silly enough to try to blow the whistle on police corruption.
You did hear that the Danziger Bridge verdicts were overturned this week?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/17/justice/louisiana-danziger-bridge-case/index.html
Sheriff’s “Fiefdoms” are, as you point out, a predominate feature in Southern life.
Here’s another example some may have forgotten …
Ku Klux Klan, Neshoba County Sheriff, Philadelphia Police.
I bring this up to point out that, in the not too distant past – the Klan used Southern Sheriffs and Police as a means to efficiently propagate terror.
In fact, a string of my ancestors were elected as Sheriff of … Neshoba County. They were out of office by the time of the civil rights murders – but I have no doubt the ones that were still around either knew or participated indirectly in the killings. I’m not from Neshoba County … but way farther south but I DID, as a kid – attend family reunions. My Dad hated going because he was a Catholic – but Dad didn’t back down to anyone. My Mom always told me … “Krulac, you keep your mouth shut and don’t talk to any of the men.” I remember they were big as trees … and meaner than hell. We’d show up – stay an hour – and be gone before anyone got too drunk and started causing shit. It was scary.
Not very sharp people – but the guys who were elected Sheriff always left that office an order of magnitude more wealthy than when they came into it. It was well known that if you did well in the Klan – you could be rewarded by being “elected” Sheriff.
Thank God the Klan is gone – for all intents and purposes anyway.
But the tradition of Southern Sheriffs continues on.
Oh yes, I heard. And as Radley Balko pointed out, no conviction of a non-cop would ever have been overturned just because of sock puppetry.
” re-elected (as ‘parish president’) a former sheriff who had done time for extortion”
Incidentally, if you are an old, old, old person like me, you may remember a TV show called “The Dukes of Hazzard,” which was the corrupt Southern Sheriff played for laughs, with a character named Boss Hawg pulling the Sheriff’s strings. As a kid I had no idea what this character was, but years later I found out he was a county commissioner. (Thanks Wikipedia.)
Younger people may have been exposed to the trope, with a supernatural twist, on American Gothic. Main problem with that was that the literally satanic Sheriff Lucas Buck was far more charming than the average corrupt sheriff. (Although it was accurate in that he was a rapist and murderer… yes, even though he was also quite the charmer.)
We recently had a bit of a scandal near where I live in Lakeland, but I don’t expect much to come of it. It does remind me of cabrogal’s sexual enslavement story above, “Last week allegations came out that a female employee had sex while on-duty — sometimes against her will — for years in the Lakeland Police Department.” (I’m pretty sure if it was “sometimes against her will” it was really “always against her will,” there were just times she complained and times she got it over with without resisting.)
Not to worry, Sheriff/Preacher Grady Judd is on the case…. I’m sure he’ll make that Scarlet Woman pay… er, I mean, “make ‘proper reforms to the department.'”
The Sheriff meme was parodied on “BJ and the Bear” also.
And “Sheriff Lobo” even got his own “spin-off” series …
hmm… I vaguely remember that, but maybe only because they mentioned it on the Simpsons…
I`ve been watching this unfold thru the years. Seem to be getting worse.??
What can be done and is the American public starting to take notice??
The apparent anomaly of Federal interest is even easier to explain than you seem to think. The Feds are unlikely to be bullied by one of these sherifs. They ARE, however, highly likely to need attorney-client privilege.
I’ll admit a bias right up front- I strongly dislike the American south, although I like some of the people from it. In my mind, it’s fixed as the home of racism, anti-intellectualism, obesity and failure. The only thing that makes it look good is the state of the rest of the nation.
(As far as despotism goes, I’ve no room to cast stones, as I live under the rile of Governor Wanker. At least we tried to get rid of him.)
And even with my bias, I’m not willing to say that southern cops are worse. I’ve also experienced living under the Los Angles and Chicago cops.
The problem is giving these people, often highly unqualified people so much power. Modern police have so much power that abuse and corruption is inevitable.
The only possible solution is to end policing as we know it, and to replace it with something better, less powerful, and under the control of the citizens. The typical American approach of piecemeal ineffectual reforms won’t work, the tree is too rotten for pruning.
Hear, hear!
There’s a huge body of academic discourse – a fair bit authored by current or former cops – that provides a model of community policing that is such an improvement on what we’ve got at the moment it might conceivably even do more good than harm.
But the problem is the vested interests in the current system – and the power vested in it – pretty much guarantees we can’t get there from here. Any attempt at reform will be completely undermined and subverted.
The first step in setting up workable policing has got to be to get rid of the system we’ve currently got.
They just went the opposite way in Scotland, creating a single, unified police force…. which promptly got to work on its highest priority… cracking down on sex workers.
The difficulty is that an elected Sheriff is supposed to be precisely this. Elections are a magic guarantee that corrupt criminals cannot hold public office – except that it just plain doesn’t work.
Briefly – I’ll tell you my journey. Part of the reason I dropped out of college was I ready as hell to get out of the South. I was also a Socialist back then.
Twenty-Four years of traveling ALL OVER this Earth … and I am back in the South because I would not live anywhere else. Yes, the South is fucked up – but in my opinion – it’s a lot less fucked up than the everywhere else and I’m certain of that because of all the rest of the places I’ve seen.
Of all the “flaws” on your list – the only one we’re really guilty of – to a greater extent than anyone else is … obesity. Anti-Intellectualism? This is the home of the Global Warming “Deniers” – the very people who now seem to have been completely correct about the hoax of Global Warming – considering the HUGE WALKBACK of the recently “leaked” UN Report on “Global Warming”.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/18/leaked-u-n-climate-change-report-says-global-warming-claims-exaggerated-but-scientists-are-fighting-back/#
Detroit is bankrupt … California is bankrupt – the South … IS BOOMING – so how can we be the home of “failure”?
And … racism? Really, you think we’re more racist than the North? You are aware that more and more black folk are moving back to the South because the opportunities are BETTER down here – right?
The South is growing faster than any other region of the country.
http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-9-coolest-state-population-trends-we-learned-from-the-new-census-data-2012-12
If it’s so bad – why aren’t people running?
The port of South Louisiana is the largest volume port in the Western Hemisphere. After Katrina – some debated whether or not NOLA should be rebuilt. There was NO choice – THIS IS WHERE THE OIL COMES IN. Without NOLA – most of the goods you buy and the oil you use – would have to come in somewhere else – like California – good luck with talking those hippies into supporting the cause! LOL
Our CRIME – is being anti-Socialist, anti-Marxist. So of course – “intellectuals” – which are really not “intellectuals” but in fact, big domineering bully-babies (which would be smashed in the nose if they lived here) … don’t like us.
Our CRIME – is being patriotic. We’re the “Empire” guys – because we understand history and that someone has to be on top – and if it’s not us – then we’re blowing some other guy’s crank – for free. 😉
Are we perfect? Hell NO! But I’ve lived just about everywhere and I’ll take this place over any other – including Hawaii.
The reason the South is growing is because it treats its working class like the slaves who got freed 150 years ago, or at least as close as they can get without the Feds being unable to continue to turn a blind eye to their depredations.
California is not bankrupt: a good old liberal named Jerry Brown took care of that (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/how-jerry-browns-californ_b_3281541.html) the old fashioned way; raising taxes on the rich. And it was Schwarzenegger and Enron who drove CA to the edge of bankruptcy, together with Prop 13.
A claim on a yet unpublished UN report by a right-wing site does not constitute refutation of the theory of climate change. And the “educated” people who deny change–e.g. PhD’s, etc.–are usually getting big money from the carbon based energy companies.
No sir, the South’s crime is being reactionary and elitist, wanting to go back to the bad old days before Dr. King, and after Plessy v. Ferguson, when a small aristocracy controlled everything, in spite of the Civil War and its outcome.
By the way, the country’s best growth is in North Dakota, and Texas’s growth is not keeping up with it’s increase in population, even though 22.8 percent of it’s workers are paid the minimum wage or less.
Yep! I see way more interracial couples in the South than I do the North. And especially way more white men with black women.
The South is so patriotic that they constantly boast about their treasonous war (which they lost, BTW), and constantly drop hints that maybe they’ll do it again someday.
As some of you know, I live in Texas. I live here because people I love live here, and I can’t afford to live somewhere else (except possibly Oklahoma, which is as bad) and visit them often. I’ll say one good thing for Texas, though: this state has a lottery. And if ever I win it, I’ll say “Thank you dear Texas,” drop a wad of cash here to throw a celebration party, and then I’m moving the fuck out of this state.
I see interracial couples from time to time myself. I’ve been half of one. And I sure hope the black woman can vote, because it’s in this gloriously non-racist southern realm that voter suppression is rising from the dead.
If the South really ever does try succession again, I say “good luck and don’t let the border hit you in the ass on the way out.”
This is a downward spiral, not just in the south but in all law enforcement.
My opinion is that even wanting to be a police officer is a pretty good indication that you are a violent thug.
Damn war on drugs.
Incredible. Bad cops certainly seem to be a staple of both movies and, regrettably, life, but it sure is disturbing to see such egregious and, apparently, all too common cases of the abuse of police power.
Apropos of which, I happened to follow a link you provided to the “Police, Prostitution, and Politics” site and was flabbergasted – horrified, actually; enough to make a person cry – at the number of rapes and assaults of sex workers by policemen. While I counted “only” some 200 cases over a span of some 30 years, that is, no doubt, only the tip of a rather odious iceberg. One of the consequences, as that site suggests, of unaccountable police, and of trying to impose highly questionable moral and social values – one would have thought we would have learned our lesson from the consequences of Prohibition.
Although I wonder what the “per capita” incidence of such crimes within the police force really is. One would hope – makes for a great breakfast but a thin supper – that it would be substantially less than in the general public, but such statistics don’t help matters much.
As for what would, I notice that “Cop Cameras” – to be worn by “constables on patrol” – are gaining some support, even among the police themselves. Bears some resemblance to the system that I’ve suggested for sex workers in your “Friday the thirteenth” post. Maybe we’ll all wind up being similarly “wired” – maybe we all need to be literally “watching the watchers”.
Snarkier and nastier on tin gods than Kipling, and considerably more full of himself, Ezra Pound, shortly before he exiled himself to Italy —
From Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Part One) Life and Contacts, poem III:
…
All men, in law, are equals.
Free of Peisistratus,
We choose a knave or an eunuch
To rule over us.
A bright Apollo,
tin andra, tin eroa, tina theon,
What god, man, or hero
Shall I place a tin wreath upon?
…
Greek “τίν” is a signifier, like the English word “what”.
Pound’s cheap pun on “τίν” turned lines from Pindar’s Second Olympic Ode for the tyrant Theron of Acragas into an attack. Pindar’s line (in English) was:
What God? what Hero?
What Man shall we celebrate?
This message was brought to you by the Foundation To Cure Trivia Deficiency Anemia. We think of the children.
The “little tin gods” Kipling was referring to was Shani, Saturn, or the god of Saturn. In Northern India on Shanivar, that is Saturday, small tin idols of Shani-deva are carried about in tin containers and offered sesame oil or mustard oil. Each planet has its own metal associated with it and tin is Shani’s.