August 17, 2016


News and Views


“… a fun Grand Canyon vacation”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/16/father-utterly-terrified-after-trooper-points-gun-at-his-7-year-old-during-traffic-stop/?utm_term=.a25d1cbdae39

U.S.
Father ‘utterly terrified’ after trooper points gun at his 7-year-old during traffic stop
By Amy B Wang
August 16 at 7:18 AM

Image – police cars (Kenneth Walton via Facebook)
Photograph -- A DPS patrol vehicle. (Arizona Department of Public Safety) A DPS patrol vehicle. (Arizona Department of Public Safety)
Related: [A white homeowner called 911 to report ‘hoodlums’ outside. Then he fatally shot a black man.]
Play video : 1:06, Kenneth Walton and his 7-year-old daughter were driving to the Grand Canyon when they were pulled over by an Arizona state trooper. Here's what happened next. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)
Related: [A black woman called 911 because she was afraid of a police officer. A violent arrest followed.]
Squad car -- (Arizona Department of Public Safety) (Arizona Department of Public Safety)
Related: [A black woman called 911 because she was afraid of a police officer. A violent arrest followed.]
Related: [Fatal shootings by police are up in the first six months of 2016, Post analysis finds]
Related: [How Philando Castile’s killing changed the way blacks talk about surviving traffic stops]



At first, Kenneth Walton thought the Arizona state trooper following him and his 7-year-old daughter wanted to warn him of a broken taillight.

They were in a rental car, on a stretch of Interstate 40 between Las Vegas and Flagstaff, Ariz., on what was supposed to be a fun Grand Canyon vacation. It was dark, and Walton knew he hadn’t been speeding, so — not thinking much of it — he pulled over on an off-ramp, rolled down his driver’s side window and waited.

That’s when things went “terribly awry,” according to the San Francisco man’s account of what happened last Thursday.

“Tonight, I was arrested at gunpoint by an Arizona highway patrol officer who threatened to shoot me in the back (twice) in front of my 7-year-old daughter,” Walton wrote on Facebook, hours after the incident. “For a moment, I was certain he was going to kill me for no reason. I’m alive, and I need to share the story.”

His post, published early Friday morning and updated throughout the weekend, went viral, serving as a lightning rod for discussions about what is appropriate during interactions with law enforcement.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety confirmed that the traffic stop took place but disputed the tone and some of the details in Walton’s Facebook post, calling it “inflammatory” and “irresponsible.” The department is standing by the trooper’s actions, including his threat to shoot Walton during the traffic stop, said Capt. Damon Cecil of the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

“We sympathize with them; I don’t think there’s any law enforcement official who would not be just as angry, just as fearful and terrorized if [they were in a similar situation and] officers had guns pointed out,” Cecil told The Washington Post. “It’s a scary situation. But in light of that, this is a positive story. … This case is a prime example of how things should be done.”

According to the DPS, the traffic stop occurred around 7:43 p.m. on Aug. 11, after the license plate on Walton’s rental car came up as stolen. The trooper requested backup and followed the rental car on the Interstate 40 until it exited the highway.

The trooper then approached the car with his gun drawn — actions the department said are appropriate for anything considered a “high-risk traffic stop … when serious crimes or hazardous conditions may exist.”

“Initially the driver, identified as Kenneth Walton, was not responding to officer’s commands while seated in his vehicle so the trooper moved up the passenger-side window and got the occupant’s attention by tapping on the window with his hand,” DPS said in a short statement. “It was at this time the trooper realized there was a child in the car as she sat up into view. Mr. Walton was ordered out of the car and detained in handcuffs while the trooper conducted his investigation.”

The trooper, identified as Oton Villegas, has been with DPS since 2009, the department said. Villegas has not had major disciplinary actions. In 2013, he was named along with several other officers in a civil rights lawsuit that was settled and dismissed without prejudice, Cecil said.

According to Walton, however, the department’s account is inaccurate: He says the first command came when the trooper tapped on the front passenger window, gun in hand, not before. In addition, Walton said his daughter was sitting in a booster seat in the rear passenger side of the vehicle, not in the front, and was in view — not crouched or reclined — the entire time.

Walton said the DPS statement omitted or downplayed details about how the incident unfolded, including how the trooper (referred to by Walton as an “officer”) interacted with his young daughter.

In his paragraphs-long Facebook post, Walton recounted trying to stay calm while the trooper reportedly escalated the situation.

Suddenly, the officer rapped on the rear passenger side window with his pistol. My daughter, who was sitting inches from the barrel of his gun, jumped with fear as the officer yelled at me to roll down the front passenger window, his service weapon pointed directly at me. I knew something was terribly awry and I tried to remain calm, keeping my hands visible as I slowly fumbled for the window controls in an unfamiliar car.

My daughter rolled down her window and I explained that we were in a rental car, that we had no weapons, and I was having trouble figuring out how to roll down the front passenger window from my driver’s side door. The officer didn’t listen, and kept yelling louder and more insistently, ordering me to comply with his request as he leered at me down the barrel of his pistol. My daughter panicked and tried to get out of her booster seat to reach forward to roll down the front window, and the officer screamed her at her not to move as he pointed his pistol at her.

Walton said he was somehow able to roll the passenger window down, at which point the trooper ordered him to exit the car with his hands up. As he did so, Walton said the trooper came over to the driver’s side of the car and screamed at him to face the other direction.

Then, as I had my hands in the air, he yelled, at the top of his lungs, in a voice I will never forget, as my daughter looked on in terror, “Get your hands away from your waist or I’ll blow two holes through your back right now!” My hands were high in the air as he said this, and I was not in any way reaching for my waist. I was utterly terrified. I’ve heard stories of police yelling out false things like this before they unjustifiably attack someone as a way to justify the attack, and I thought this was what was happening to me. I braced for bullets to hit me and all I could think of was my daughter having to watch it happen and being left alone on the side of the highway with an insane, violent cop.

Walton said he got down to his knees and backed gradually toward the trooper, following every order “as slowly and deliberately” as possible. He was handcuffed and placed in the back of the trooper’s car, while more law enforcement arrived soon afterward. His daughter remained in the rental vehicle, frightened and still strapped to her booster seat, he said.

Cecil said it was appropriate for Villegas to have escalated the traffic stop, given the circumstances.

“Our trooper had a set of facts in front of him and responded the way he was trained, the way that was safest for him and his public,” Cecil said. “Putting yourself in the trooper’s position: He’s giving commands, he’s yelling, he’s not getting a response. Should he de-escalate the yelling? Or should he escalate? … You weren’t there. And I wasn’t there.”

Cecil confirmed that Villegas pointed a gun at the 7-year-old, but did so unintentionally, and that he threatened to shoot Walton because he “perceived a threat.”

“We’re not disputing that our trooper said those things,” Cecil said. “He absolutely did.”

Walton initially said on Facebook that dashboard camera footage would bear out his account of the traffic stop because he was under the impression all Arizona law enforcement officers had dashboard or body cameras. DPS told The Post there is no dashboard or body camera footage available from the incident, nor is the agency aware of any amateur video taken at the scene — only audio from the trooper’s vehicle before he walked to Walton’s car and after he returned with Walton in custody.

According to DPS, an investigation ultimately found the rental car company had not replaced the license plates when the front plate was reported stolen, which is why it had been flagged in the system.


To complicate matters, Fox Rent a Car said the license plate number in question should have never been placed in the stolen-plates database in the first place.

The rental car, a 2015 Nissan Altima, was registered in Arizona, which only issues rear license plates, according to Fox Rent a Car chief operating officer Sean Busking. Last November, the car was reported stolen in California, Busking said. Five days later, the Oakland Police Department recovered the vehicle — along with its one and only rear license plate — and cleared it to return to the rental fleet, he said.

“Oakland’s police department must have been unaware that Arizona does not issue front license plates when they issued their ‘stolen plate’ report,” Busking told The Post. “However, we are surprised that the Arizona Department of Public Safety would suggest that Fox is somehow responsible for replacing a front Arizona plate [that] never existed.”

Regardless, Walton and his daughter were released that night without a citation.

“Fortunately, the subject in this case was compliant with the trooper and the situation ended peacefully with no one being harmed,” Flagstaff District Commander Captain Ezekiel Zesiger said in a statement.

Walton disagreed, saying the trooper’s aggressive arrest had left both of them physically unharmed but emotionally shaken.

“In the process of scaring me, he basically traumatized my daughter,” Walton told The Post. “That’s sad because we’ve taught her that [a police officer is] who you go to, that’s who you always trust. That’s something we would still like to instill in her but I don’t know how we do that now.”

In his Facebook post, Walton said he believed the traffic stop might have ended differently had he not been a “scrawny, 48-year-old white guy” wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, cargo shorts and hiking boots, as he was at the time.

If you are a person who has ever looked skeptically at the claims of Black Lives Matter, or others who talk about police violence, I urge you to consider what happened to me and put yourselves in the shoes of others. I just survived a bizarre gunpoint situation in which I was as innocent as Philando Castile, who was not as lucky as I was. We live in a society where anywhere and everyone can have a gun at any time, and police are responding with fear in dangerous ways. I got lucky tonight. My daughter and I made it to the Grand Canyon and I’m going to try to salvage what’s left of our vacation. Many others — because of the color of their skin or the way they look or because of simple bad luck — did not meet the same fate.


DPS took umbrage to the post, in particular the insinuation that race played a part, Cecil said.

“[Walton] has an opportunity as a parent to use this as a learning experience. A teachable moment for his daughter — a valuable lesson about the community and interactions with law enforcement,” Cecil said. “But instead he chose to make it a negative in a very irresponsible way.”

Walton said he has no intention of inciting anyone, he said, or of being representative of any movement.

“It was the first time in my life when I had been approached by an officer with a presumption of guilt and … I guess I got a taste for what it’s like,” Walton told The Post. “I had a realization as a middle-aged white male for what it may be like out there. If this is the sort of aggression people face out there, I can understand why there are problems.”

Reached by phone on Tuesday, while he was on way back from vacation, Walton said he was still shaken but considering taking his Facebook post down because of all the attention it had received. Some commenters were sympathetic, while others attacked his credibility, calling out his involvement in a 1999 eBay art forgery scandal — something Walton said he has never tried to hide.

“I cooperated with the authorities, plead guilty, served 9 months of probation and took responsibility for my actions,” he wrote in an update to his Facebook post over the weekend. “I make no excuses for it. If you think that has anything to do with this, there is nothing I can do to change your mind.”

This latest incident comes following nationwide unrest after deadly shootings by police officers in Milwaukee, Falcon Heights, Minn., and Baton Rouge, that resulted in fatal encounters.

So far, more than 250 people have been shot and killed by police officers in the first three months of 2016, according to The Washington Post database on police shootings.

Walton and his daughter eventually made their way the next day to the Grand Canyon — the first time for both of them — and tried in vain to shake what had occurred on the highway.

“I was pretty distracted over the next couple of days at the Grand Canyon, thinking about what had happened,” Walton told The Post. “Things will get back to normal eventually.”

Cecil said DPS has not received a formal complaint from Walton. The department, he added, has not been in direct contact with Walton since the traffic stop.

“Absolutely not. Absolutely not,” Cecil said. “This is not a situation where we feel that we need to reach out to him. He’s the one who started this negative relationship and negative communication.”

Read more:
Comprehensive coverage of police shootings from The Washington Post



“Arizona Department of Public Safety” (DPS) “has not received a formal complaint.” …. ‘If you are a person who has ever looked skeptically at the claims of Black Lives Matter, or others who talk about police violence, I urge you to consider what happened to me and put yourselves in the shoes of others. I just survived a bizarre gunpoint situation in which I was as innocent as Philando Castile, who was not as lucky as I was.’

We really do need a recording with sound in this case. I have seen on videos in the last two years that police officers do too frequently yell, rage, yank and hit “perps” who have a broken taillight. They excuse it by stating that their job is dangerous, so they have to be very aggressive to intimidate the driver. I am dumbfounded, however, by Capt. Cecil’s amazing statement, “This case is a prime example of how things should be done.”

As Walton said, that was his first experience with an officer who assumed from the beginning that he was guilty. I think this whole thing would have been different if Villegas would have waited to approach the car until his police backup team came, so that he would feel less afraid, and then spoken in a more measured way, followed by actually LISTENING to what Mr. Walton had to say. Ask him about the f**ing license plates so that Walton would have been able to defend his possession of the car; and if it really did appear that he stole the car rather than renting it, “take him downtown,” as they always say on old, old TV shows. An arrest is much preferable to a dangerous assault or possibly death. And as for pointing a gun at a 7 year-old girl, that’s either dangerously excitable due to his fear, or (pardon my word) SIMPLY STUPID. Heck, all he had to do if that was, in fact, a mistake, was to APOLOGIZE. As it is, I think the father should take his daughter to a child counselor for at least one visit for observation and testing. I think she really IS likely to be seriously traumatized. He could add the cost of that therapy into his demands for damages when he sues.

The dozens of PD videos that I have watched in the last two years, to me, makes Walton’s statement seem very likely indeed; and as for whether or not Walton “started” this “negative communication,” I hope he sues not only the aggressive and foolish officer, the whole DPS, and the City of Phoenix. We have a good law firm here in Jacksonville for that kind of situation, though they usually handle medical cases. It’s called Farah and Farah. In their commercial, one of the owners says that they “aren’t afraid” to go to court; that they “like to” sue, adds the comment, “We bully bullies.” They might be able to suggest an equally pugnacious firm in Phoenix. Lawyers know other lawyers personally in many cases.

I wish Mr. Walton good luck. Villegas is clearly abusive, not overly bright and too afraid to be a good cop. Yes, that job really IS dangerous, but that just means that officers need to keep a tight hold on their reactions and use LOGIC rather than emotion, because it was very close to being tragic. Cecil’s totally obnoxious statement that Walton should have “turned it into a teaching moment” illustrating what the “proper” way to deal with a raging cop is. In my opinion, it is pretty darned perilous for anyone who is stopped on a dark night by a screaming cop. Capt. Cecil isn’t taking the situation seriously at all, and he’s the supervisor. No wonder the personnel management of police departments so often fail the public. They just don’t really care.




MORE OF THE WILD, WILD WEST, STARRING OUR OLD FAVORITE, SHERIFF ARPAIO


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/us/arizona-sheriff-joe-arpaio-ruling.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FArpaio%2C%20Joseph%20M.&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=collection&_r=0

Contempt Ruling Rebukes Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona
By FERNANDA SANTOS
MAY 13, 2016


Photograph -- Sheriff Joe Arpaio at a celebration in Phoenix last year when he became the longest-serving sheriff in Maricopa County’s history. Credit Laura Segall for The New York Times


PHOENIX — Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who made a name for himself as an unapologetic pursuer of unauthorized immigrants, was found in contempt of court here on Friday for willfully violating an order requiring his deputies to stop detaining Latinos based solely on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally.

In a 162-page ruling, Judge G. Murray Snow of United States District Court found that the sheriff had ignored advice from top commanders and his own lawyer and persistently publicized the pursuit and arrests of unauthorized immigrants because he believed those actions benefited his re-election campaign in 2012. Mr. Arpaio, 83, who has said he will run for a seventh term in November, has about $8 million in his campaign war chest, most of it donations from out-of-state residents who champion his tactics of immigration enforcement.

Judge Snow said Mr. Arpaio and three current and former aides at the Maricopa County sheriff’s office had engaged in “multiple acts of misconduct, dishonesty and bad faith” as they continued to racially profile Latinos in traffic stops and workplace raids.

Often, Latinos were turned over to federal immigration agencies even though they had not committed any state or federal crimes — and even though the agencies had not formally asked the sheriff’s office to do so. In his order, Judge Snow wrote that Mr. Arpaio and his aides — Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan, retired Chief Brian Sands and Lt. Joe Sousa — “have demonstrated a persistent disregard for the orders of the court, as well as an intention to violate and manipulate the laws and policies regulating their conduct.”

The judge scheduled a hearing for May 31, when both sides are to debate other ways to compel Sheriff Arpaio and his deputies to follow the law. One of the most extreme alternatives is to appoint an outside agency to take over the sheriff’s office. Judge Snow could also refer the case for federal criminal prosecution that could result in fines and jail time, options not available in civil cases.

“His recalcitrance ends here,” said Cecillia Wang, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project, one of the organizations representing the plaintiffs. “Strong remedies are needed to protect the community’s rights, starting with internal investigations that root out misconduct. Willing or not, the sheriff will be made to comply with the law.”

In an email on Friday, Mr. Arpaio’s lawyer, John T. Masterson, said, “We are in the process of digesting and analyzing” the judge’s order and would file a response by May 27, as the order requires.

The ruling confirms an admission by Mr. Arpaio last year that he had ignored the court’s order and corrective actions prescribed. It also painstakingly details the methods the sheriff and his office used to “violate and manipulate the laws and policies regulating their conduct,” Judge Snow wrote, failing their “obligations to be fair, equitable and impartial.”

The case against Sheriff Arpaio began in 2007, when a group of Latinos filed a class-action federal lawsuit against him, accusing him and his deputies of racial profiling. Judge Snow ruled on behalf of the plaintiffs after a three-week trial and ordered changes at the sheriff’s office, such as training officers and requiring them to wear body cameras.

The purpose was to ensure that the officers understood the constitutional rights of drivers they stopped — and that there was a record of such stops, in case anyone accused the officers of mistreatment. But the sheriff’s office had no system or formalized instructions on how to track, collect, review or store the videos taken by the cameras, Judge Snow said. It also did not have a rule prohibiting the officers from taking the recordings and other evidence they collected to their homes, as at least one of them did.

The judge said he had reason to believe that many video segments that could have proved officers’ continuing disregard for his order, issued in December 2011, “were destroyed both intentionally and otherwise.”

There was another problem. Mr. Arpaio and his office “did not make a good-faith effort to fairly and impartially investigate and discipline” officers’ misconduct, Judge Snow wrote. According to his ruling, investigations were purposely delayed to justify lesser or no reprimands, disciplinary policies were improperly applied and decisions were put in the hands of biased arbiters. In the end, few officers were investigated and fewer were disciplined.

Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous, has paid $41 million in legal costs for the case over eight years and is expected to pay an additional $13 million next year.


A version of this article appears in print on May 14, 2016, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: New Rebuke for Profiling in Arizona. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe



A GOOD NEWS POLICE STORY


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/black-los-angeles-police-recruit-hopes-to-shatter-perceptions/

Black Los Angeles police recruit hopes to shatter perceptions
AP August 16, 2016, 11:15 AM

Photograph -- In this Tuesday, July 19, 2016, photo, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy recruit Renata Phillip, third from right, listens to a lecture in a classroom at the Biscailuz Regional Training Center in Monterey Park, Calif. AP PHOTO/JAE C. HONG
Play VIDEO -- New Los Angeles officers join force at difficult time for police
Photograph -- police16225600324594.jpg, In this Thursday, Aug. 11, 2016, photo, probationary Los Angeles Police Officer Asia Hardy plays with her daughter, 4-year-old Mali Hudson outside her home in Altadena, Calif. AP PHOTO/NICK UT
Play VIDEO -- Analyzing police-community tensions in Milwaukee


LOS ANGELES - Renata Phillip was 11 years into a satisfying teaching career when she shocked her friends and family last August by deciding to make a drastic career change: become a police officer.

Her decision came amid growing concern over police tactics in the wake of a number of deaths at the hands of officers of unarmed black men across the country. Most recently, the fatal police shooting of a black man who had a gun in his hand police sparked violent unrest in Milwaukee.

Phillip, a black woman who grew up in a mostly white, upper middle class neighborhood 30 miles east of Los Angeles, said she wasn't motivated by race. But race is a motivation now as she completes her training to become a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy.

"Everything that's going on, it drives me to work a little harder," the 36-year-old said during a break at the department's grueling training academy.

Phillip hopes to be an example to those who've never dealt with a black law enforcement officer. "If I can have a positive experience with someone and maybe help them change their mind, why not?" she said.

A little more than a year ago, Asia Hardy was in Phillip's shoes, training to become an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department.

The 26-year-old, who grew up in an idyllic, close-knit neighborhood in Pasadena, has been a probationary officer for just over a year, working the beat she requested in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

She said Phillip should expect both criticism and pride on the streets.

"I get called a sellout sometimes," she said. Some will tell her: "Why are you doing the white man's job?"

Others see Hardy as a beacon.

"They'll say, 'I'm glad you're out here representing us,'" she said. "Or you get the little girl pointing at you and saying, 'Look, Mommy, there's a girl cop.' Things like that make my day. I want that little girl to know she can grow up and be a cop if she wants to."

Black officers made up about 12 percent of all police in 2013, the most recent year nationwide statistics are available. That compares to the overall black population of 13.2 percent.

Departments have long struggled to recruit black candidates, said Nelson Lim, a researcher at the Rand Corp. who helps organizations diversify.

In 2004, Lim consulted with the LAPD, which was under a federal consent decree to hire more minorities. Even then, he said the department failed to meet its diversification goals.

Now with increased tensions, Lim said it's only going to be harder.

"You don't need a study to conclude that would have a negative impact," he said.

In the days after a sniper attack killed five of his officers last month, Dallas Police Chief David Brown urged black people to leave protests and join the department to work for change from within.

"Serve your community," said Brown, who is black. "We're hiring. Get off of that protest line and put your application in."

Phillip, the Los Angeles sheriff's recruit, was settled into her teaching career at Ganesha High School in Pomona, a middle-class city near her hometown of Diamond Bar but far from it in terms of gangs and violent crime.

But she decided to become an officer after realizing she was spending more and more time helping her students with problems outside the classroom, and that she was enjoying it.

One student had lost a friend to gang violence. He started acting out by disrupting class, getting into drugs and into trouble.

Phillip said she worked to gain his trust and build rapport, which eventually allowed her to find out what was bothering him and help him transfer to another school. The change removed him from negative influences, allowing him to focus on school.

"Now you see a person who has taken charge of their past and isn't letting someone else determine what they will or won't do," she said. "I thought, 'I need to spend more time doing this.'"

Phillip is one of just two black women in her class of 84 recruits. More than half are men and most are white or Hispanic.

Only three recruits out of every 100 will make it to graduation, said Capt. Scott Gage, who's in charge of training at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

He cited extensive background checks, rigorous physical requirements, dozens of tests and determination to stick with the yearlong process.

Phillip's mother worked as an accountant, her father as an engineer. When Phillip told her family about her decision to join law enforcement, there were tears.

"My heart really just sank," said Phillip's mother, Gloria Solomon. "Honestly, this is awful to say as a mother, but I almost wished she didn't get through."

Solomon said she was concerned not because of racial tensions in the U.S., but simply because policing is a dangerous job.

After praying about it and seeing how passionate her daughter was about law enforcement, Solomon said she's now fully on board.

"I'm just really proud of her and I just really want her to be safe," she said.

Hardy, the rookie LAPD officer, said she specifically requested to work in the most crime-ridden division.

"I knew a lot of African Americans live there and I wanted to be there to reach out, I want everybody to do better," she said. "Them seeing me out there and knowing, 'Wow, there goes a female cop. A black female cop.' I wanted to be that example."

Phillip also hopes to work in troubled neighborhoods.

"If I'm not putting myself in the position to really effect change then what am I doing?" she said. "Hopefully somewhere I have the opportunity to change someone's mind. Hopefully that someone standing on the news protesting maybe sees me on the street one day and says, 'Maybe I could do that.'"



I thought when I first saw this article that a field like TEACHING is an ideal background for a police officer who knows and acknowledges the difficulties both in the minority neighborhoods and in the Police Departments across the nation, because these same kinds of officer/neighborhood interaction problems have been popping up everywhere since Ferguson first got the country mentally and emotionally involved in this terrible problem that exists today. Before that case, I knew of course that there were overly aggressive, stupid, “crooked” police, and simply uneducated police.

Let’s face it, when I was in school back in NC, most of the officers on the force were more or less uneducated. It wasn’t considered a highbrow job, but more a matter of forcefulness. Quoting Chaucer was not a necessary skill, but weighing at least 200 pounds was. I grew up in the neighborhood with three policemen who are all pretty good neighbors. I never heard that any of them had stolen drugs from the evidence room to sell on the street, or such things. Knowing them, I can’t believe that they could take a marksman’s stance and fire off three or four bullets into a black man’s back just because he ran away from them. That was on a video. I do believe that racial hatred is a social disease (no pun intended, of course) -- a type of group mental illness like “mass hysteria,” and very closely related to the “Heil Hitler” crowd of the 1930s and 40s.

People do “catch” attitudes, beliefs, hatred, love, and even evil from those who are their mentors, friends or family, thus being a primary influence on the individual. Fundamentalism in religion has that aspect to it. One of the things I liked least about Youth For Christ (1963) was the way they all “identified in” and became highly emotional about something that I had always considered to be a subject to ponder for its’ truth and impact on the world. I was clearly the outsider, and in addition, I just couldn’t believe all the things they said I “must” believe, if I’m to “be saved and go to heaven.” I had never quite decided in 1963 that there was a real place called Heaven nor, on the other hand, Hell. I believe in evil, but not in the supernatural evil influence of “the devil.” Evil is all about us, mixed in with goodness, like tossed salad, and that’s just the way LIFE is. Just as I pick out the radishes and raw onions in my salad, we need as society members to try hard to avoid evil. There is not enough emphasis on that in our country today, with the result that we are daily becoming a more violent and greedy people. I’m really concerned about that. We teach “being saved” but not being decent people. Before we go for sin-free, let’s go for empathy and cooperation as individuals. Individuals make up a society, and therefore its’ cohesive characteristics. If the cohesive characteristics are to be racial hatred and violence, we are doomed.

I have flaws, especially my temper, and have severely disappointed some people, but I rarely play little dirty tricks on people knowingly, or torture them to cause them to have a lowered self-esteem, which is the worst thing that playground and Internet bullies do. I try to be on the side of goodness, rather than being enmeshed in crass and greedy behavior. I’m thinking there of someone like Bernie Madoff. That story shocked me. He’s the one who made the news, but there are thousands like him in the world. In this country we have set up our laws to please the big business community and not to allow a proper and healthy constraint on what they are allowed to do. Madoff, of course, crossed one too many lines, and ended up in prison.