You may recognize Mark Luedtke’s name as that of a guy who frequently supplies intriguing links for bloggers at LRC. Mark is also a writer, and he published this column on corruption among cops in the Dayton [Ohio] City Paper. I appreciate the article not just because Mark blasts the badged bullies but because he also provides such telling ammunition against the police-state as

Staging a fake traffic stop isn’t news. While working for a local attorney, I learned cops perform pretextual traffic stops to look for drugs all the time. Day in and day out, they profile drivers then create phony reasons to pull them over and search them and their vehicles for drugs. They perform illegal searches under the pretense of looking for weapons because they’re supposedly scared of their victims. Before every trial, defense attorneys file motions to suppress and present evidence the traffic stops were staged, but the hearings are shams. Everybody in the courtroom knows the stops were staged, cops lie about it every time, but judges never grant the motions.

And

Not all victims of police corruption are black, but most are. The NAACP doesn’t understand racial profiling by police, and that’s why it’s ineffective at stopping it. Police racially profile young black men not because the police are racists but because their victims are easy to convict. If they don’t have drugs, cops plant drugs on them. That’s also common. Then prosecutors knock all blacks off the jury before the trial. All-white juries routinely convict young black men.

And finally,

Laws of aggression require cops to harm innocent people.  … Every day cops bust down doors, invade homes, and attack peaceful people in their sleep. People who become cops choose to harm peaceful people. In a free society, they would be the crooks and we would hire peaceful security officers to protect ourselves from them.

Amen and amen! Thanks not only to Mark for speaking such truth but to the gutsy editors who publish him: few cows–or should I say pigs?–are more sacred in Amerika than police.

The Best of Becky Akers