This will discuss whether the police system in the New York City area is corrupt and/or racist.

I grew up in the Midwest, respecting the police as the "good guys"-- heroic fighters of badness, upholders of justice-- who ought to be obeyed. Now, living in the New York City area, I read and hear about a different type of cop.

Here, cops, singly or in conspiracy, are repeatedly caught helping drug dealers in exchange for money or drugs. In Philadelphia recently 5 police officers were found to have kept a stash of drugs from which they withdrew drugs to plant evidence on people. A detective in one New Jersey police department claims that after a certain store was robbed, several police officers looted the store, justifying their actions with the thought that the storeowner's insurance would pay for the stolen goods; and cops who didn't participate in the looting were ostracized. In another New Jersey community it is claimed that the police are currently taking bribes from drug dealers. In Newark, NJ, an officer who came forward with allegations of an operating police extortion ring is being penalized for his honesty.

Item: in New Jersey, an honor student meets drunk white friends at a bar. The friends are "tearing up" the bar. The honor student tries to help clean the bar up, and in doing so, carries a concrete parking berm out of the bar. A cop waiting outside fears that the man will hit him with the berm, so he shoots him. The honor student dies; the cop is acquitted.

How Much Police Brutality Is Enough?

The quotes above are from a recent column by National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg. The same column condemns the police torture of Abner Louima and so begs the question - just how much police brutality is acceptable in the name of "maintaining the social order?"

Paradoxically, my friend who knows of police corruption does not report it, for 2 reasons. 1) She feels powerless to stop it and 2) she is afraid that if she reports it, the police will take "revenge" on her somehow. People should elect officials who will stop police corruption through better police training, and more accountability by the police to the communities they serve, not by hiring more police (we already have 600,000 officers in the US, 35,000 of whom are African-American).

Monopoly on force however, of the kind possessed by the state and its police, is certainly an evil, an unnecessary and unacceptable one that by its very nature undermines the social order. The entire raison d’etre of the State is after all to replace, not defend, civil society. As the sociologist Robert Nisbet explains in part in his book The Twilight of Authority:

Even Jonah Goldberg himself has an inkling of how private justice works. In an otherwise muddled article that defends the practice of police beating suspects he stumbles upon this basic insight:

Some topics in this essay:
Jonah Goldberg, SYSTEMIC RACISM, Twilight Authority, Abner Louima, York City, Item Jersey, Amadou Diallo, Anglo-Saxon England, Newark NJ, Al Sharpton, police brutality, honor student, police system, police officers, jonah goldberg, york city, police corruption, abner louima, police officer, web site,