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Catching Up: (Part 2.) September 9-16

• September 9: Greek comrades go on the offensive, and several are arrested.
• September 10: City Police Chief Nate Harper pretends to do something about the 34 cops who are still carrying sidearms, despite having court ordered protection from abuse orders issued against them. Some pigs are more equal than others.
• September 11: Another non-eventful “Take Your Airplane to Work Day*”. The Phoenix Insurgent points out that these are some of the only workplace fatalities that the media cares about. In their exuberance to commemorate “their 9/11” Chileans smoked one of their pigs.
• September 12: In another mystery of sports versus life, New England Patriots coaches are accused of using video surveillance to spy on opposing coaches. What about the rest of us? I just assumed NFL coaches did this sort of thing. I played catholic grade school football, in the 80’s and there was all kinds of coaching espionage happening, that’s why I assumed that all the coaches did what Bill Belichick does. Oops. A cop was also killed at a gun show, playing with a Gatling gun, mounted on a military version of a popular penis enlarger.
• September 13: The City announced a new social program for the wealthy, this time the focus is housing.
  

• September 14: The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh declared it OK to view the controversial ‘Bodies’ exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center. I’m not sure what the problem is. Isn’t any good museum full of dead and stolen stuff? Not to mention the Vatican?
• September 15: The City is cracking down on public housing residents. I assume this is not to include the rich folks who get tax breaks for owning empty downtown lofts for their out of town clients to use? There was also another meaningless ANSWER march in DC.
• September 16: The almost 17 year old US war on Iraq continued, despite the ANSWER march in DC.

*In the words of a great mind.

Infighting Erupts Amongst Regional Terror Groups

Two (temporarily demoted) City detectives reacted violently, to counter the assertion that they were not “above the law” when confronted by country cops at a Toby Keith concert, of all places. They even tried to grab the uniformed terrorist’s weapon. If you or I tried that, it’s no mystery how that would have ended.

Amazingly, the City is pretending to discipline them, even stripping them of their titles, but no reduction in wages. Compare the reaction with that to the handful of murders of black civilians, committed annually.

Local Reporter Confronts Bonehead, Bonehead Runs to Police

A PG reporter describes his experience confronting a “skinhead” who was apparently abusing a young woman in public. It sounds like one the members of a local bonehead crew, which is led by a probable government informant and documented mental patient, and according to a former Squirrel Hill video store clerk, consumer of, what was described by a former punk parody band vocalist, turned realtor, “ethnic porn” (although said realtor uses “sociopathic” as his racial slur of choice). Even the other child-molesting, meth-cooks in funny uniforms, want nothing to do with them. The incident ended as most encounters with such “fearless white warriors” do, with the boneheads hiding behind the police. Or maybe he just wanted a job, that came with free, stupid, Village People/Cub Scout clothes. Not a bad idea, considering the number of government agents and snitches that make up these groups. It served them well in Philly on the 23rd.

PS-They don’t care what color the cop’s skin is when they’re scared, as seen in this photo from Valley Forge, which could be entitled “Teach Your Children Well”.

Congratulations, Lt. Rodriguez

It must feel good to be Charles Rodriguez, first the big promotion, then his boss, the Mayor sticks up for him and his droogs, and now the assault charges against him get dropped. What a lucky guy. If I knew what it was, I’d play his badge number on the Big 4.

It must be nice that a history of personal violence is no impediment to a career in law enforcement, especially in the US where you can’t bag groceries without passing a urine test and a criminal background check. Are we that careless?
NOW, is contemplating a lawsuit. The enemy of my enemy…

The Pittsburgh Women’s Blogging Society has note by note coverage of the public hearings, which the Mayor could not attend, as there was a celebrity golf-related schedule conflict, on UPMC’s dime.

The problem is, these properly credentialed terrorists public servants are simply taking their work home with them.

Police Accountablity: Pittsburgh Trailing Saudi Arabia?

I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn’t make it worse.
Brendan Behan

The recent revelations by the City of Pittsburgh of an apparent clause which requires male officers seeking promotion to have a documented history of battering their loved ones or run the risk of never wearing the white shirt would barely register as news, if not for a bit of strangeness from Saudi Arabia:

Three members of Saudi Arabia’s powerful religious police face trial Saturday for the death of a man who died in custody. The case is the first of its kind in this conservative nation. The trial involves the death of a Saudi man the police arrested for being alone with a woman who was not a relative – an act considered an offense in the kingdom. It will be held in the northern city of Tabuk, close to the Iraqi border.

It isn’t clear how long the trial will last or what punishment the men might face if found guilty.

Police trial? Punishment? Guilty? Having lived in Pittsburgh for the majority of my life, the notion of police accountability seems as strange as cardamom in your coffee, ritualized hospitality or archaic alcohol laws. OK, not so much the latter.

Of course in many ways, we’re light years ahead of the Saudis. After all, our local religious judge (Mullah? Mullette?) is an unveiled woman and the State subsidizes gambling, as well as an independent body charged with high school debate matches regarding police misconduct (with its own myspace profile).

A government is the gang with the monopoly on violence for a given area, and the police are entrusted with carrying out the violence, in exchange for betraying their social class, like any other low-level manager. This doesn’t change, except by degree. The NYPD is the Stasi, is the RUC, is the Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, is the mellow Dutch cop who patrols the red light district. Pittsburgh cops have a reputation for corruption and violence, even amongst US police forces, who are considered by some to be the worst in the world. You wonder about the ‘land of the free’ when Egyptians and Chileans and Turks, express horror at the conduct of US cops.

The thin blue line is very thick in Allegheny County, with countless municipal fiefdoms, and a DA, who will do damn near anything to avoid charging police with violent misconduct, even engaging in comical conflict of interest duels with the coroner. If DA Steven Zappala Jr. were merely being realistic, and correctly pointing out that a cop’s job is violent misconduct by definition, but his hardline against police accountability comes across as that of a groupie or political opportunist, who needs the police support to be attorney general or federal prosecutor or senator.

Is it any surprise that cops like George T. Trosky, Charles Rodriguez, and Gene Hlavac abuse their loved ones? No more surprising than in any of the professions where violence is rewarded, such as the military or professional sports. This is even less surprising to those of us who are related to cops or live with ill-behaved dogs or in a base town. What is surprising that someone risked their lives and freedom by dialing 9-1-1 despite the threat of retribution by one who can kill you, if they happen to have the right uniform on.

Personally, I can’t fault George Trosky for his videotaped beating of Grateful Dead fans in 1989. Who hasn’t considered wading through a Dead show parking lot, swinging sticks? Apparently, Trosky’s lack of self-control paid off, since he was hand selected to be Jerry Garcia’s personal bodyguard for the 1995 Pittsburgh dead show. Or was it Trosky’s access to heroin?

Bureaucracy make take on local characteristics, but it’s still the same animal, and the the trial for the Saudi religious police has been postponed, as court proceedings often are, but what is remarkable is that regardless of the outcome, charges were filed in Saudi Arabia, something that is still a dream in Allegeheny County. Just ask the families of Charles Dixon, Bernard Rogers, Michael Ellerbe, Damian Jordan, and thousands whose names we will never know.

UPDATE (now with Video): Gene Hlavac is the asshole who attacked a group bike ride in Pittsburgh last Spring