The Heelers Diaries

the fantasy world of ireland's greatest living poet

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Sunday, July 26, 2009

president obama gets it right

A black Harvard law professor returned to his home without his keys, jimmied the lock to gain entry, and went inside.
A neighbour phoned the police, suspecting a burglary.
The police arrived and got into an altercation with the black Harvard law professor.
They arrested him.
He was dragged away shouting race.
Later, President Obama at a press conference commented on the incident, saying the police had acted stupidly.
What is interesting about all this is that so many of us who traditionally support the police didn't immediately leap to do so in this instance.
My own first reaction was: Hmmm, Barack might be right on this one.
Why?
Because too many of us in the free world, ie the free countries that matter, it the ones that are really free, ie Ireland, Britain, America, Canada and Australia, too many of us have experienced misbehaviour at the hands of thuggish elements in our police force.
Certainly the Irish police force is completely out of control.
A polite professional officer is the exception in Ireland rather than the norm.
We have an executive entitled the Ombudsman who's supposed to investigate police corruption in Ireland.
He is a former Irish Times editor called Conor O'Clery.
Yes, the collossal Paddy Whacks in our government appointed this snivelling anti American liberal bolshevick bigot to investigate police corruption.
I give up.
O'Clery said recently that there was no general corruption in the Irish polcie force.
You know what that means.
If former Irish Times editor Conor O'Clery says there's no generalised corruption in the Irish police force then you may be sure that means precisely the opposite.
The Irish police force is generally corrupt.
This is my analysis.
We'll see who's right when it's too late to do anything about it.
But I digress.
The point I want to make is about the general attitude in the general public across the free world towards the police.
We're no longer assuming the cops are in the right.
Even Mark Steyn, while supporting the American police who arrested the black Harvard professor and excoriating President Obama, even Steyn admits to a recent interaction with a Vermount police officer who behaved improperly and left Steyn wondering what exactly he could do about it.
In the end Steyn kept his cool and wrote a letter of complaint, which is what he advises the rest of us to do.
Steyn admits he wasn't there when the black law professor was arrested but goes on to give an account of the incident based on what the police officer says happened.
It's all a little bit unsettling.
Europeans and the rest of us have countries where the police can normally depend on half hearted public support and no support at all from the pseudo intellectual atheistic pro criminal liberal judiciaries and media elites.
Americans on the other hand back their police force clearly and unequivocally down the line to the hilt.
Americans back their police more than most because they recognise the heroism of the officers who go up against evil as a part of their daily routine.
Americans recognise that the police are the guarantors of our freedoms.
Yet more and more Americans are concerned with a thuggish element in more and more of their own police departments.
In Florida, the police officer who shot an Irishman dead in a recent case turned out to be himself a child abuser. The Irishman had been out of his mind hammering on the doors of apartments. There was every reason to restrain him. Maybe even to shoot him dead. But the calibre of the officer, not the bullet, raises deep concerns.
In New York it has been revealed that several police officers spent thirty years as hitmen for the Mafia. Supporting the police hardly means we're going to support those scum. The New York police have had a bad reputation, Nine Eleven notwithstanding, for the past four decades. Interestingly enough in Boston, another city with a strong Irish strand of cultural identity, the police always had a much better reputation, a reputation for moderation and restraint and integrity which to say the very least, has been elusive for the New York police department. At the same time, in the interests of full disclosure, the only negative experience I've had with American police was at Boston airport when a half wit called Officer Savanelli started acting the sack as I entered the USA. Savanelli called over a few other idiots and the five of them gave me an on the spot interrogation as clownish as it was unwarranted. There's always a price to pay for putting idiots in positions where they can misuse their authority.
In New Orleans, Mayor Nagen, a Mayor Stylish after Barack's own heart, had filled the police department with black officers of almost no integrity or ability, hired purely for their blackness. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans these officers committed murders, assaults, and acts of looting. Many of the more law abiding ones simply abandoned their posts. And Mayor Nagen was reduced to blaming former President Bush for the weather in order to explain the utter collapse of his administration and the malign inefficacy of its law enforcement officers.
Clearly, I say again, there are police officers that do not deserve any support at all in any circumstances whatsoever.
And so I think President Obama got it right.
Some say he shouldn't have spoken out.
But I think the Prez is entitled to comment on anything and everything even if sometimes he'll end up looking like a hipster doophus.
Because Americans, unlike Europeans and the rest of the free world, give their President real authority.
He'll be wrong sometimes but these are the breaks.
So Barack spoke out.
Fumbled around a bit.
Spoke from his own mindset as an African American, which I also think is fair enough.
Then in a quite worthy way backed down a little.
I am told President Obama has invited the African American professor and the police officer who arrested him for beer at the White House.
I think this is a bit of class.
With a real chance of healing.
And something good coming of it.
I hope it happens.
Bullshit walks.
The two bullshitters should go to the White House and listen to what their President tells them.

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