American Justice

Some guy gets abused by cops at the border. To the chagrin of the police, turns out he's a professor and author, who has something of a following on the net. The story hits the news, and suddenly the D.A. wants to drop the charges.

If you buy into the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.

Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.

In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.

But that is not this universe.

The bad situation will likely turn out fine for him, and he's just been physically assaulted and spent a night in jail.

The problem, of course, is that this is a routine situation for people who are not semi-famous or have the resources to properly defend themselves. I'm sure the cops never abused somebody who could make them look bad before.

Certainly there are quite a few good cops, doing a tough job to try and keep people safe. Problem is, it's not those cops. Those cops were ego freaks that get off on flexing their authority. I suspect they're life-long underachievers who lash out at ordinary people out of frustration for having a shitty life, and general disgruntled attitude.

Cops have to be held to a higher standard, and those fuckers need to be charged with felonies. At the least, a big fucking lawsuit is in order.