Your Way Right Away

Someone sent me a story that got me thinking this afternoon. It starts with two kids who were stoned at work in a Burger King in Valencia County, New Mexico. For some dumbass reason, they decided to sprinkle weed on the Whoppers ordered by a police officer (Henry Gabaldon) and consumed by two police officers (Mark Landavazo)- both on duty. The officers ate about half the burger and found leafy green bits that tasted like weed then had it analyzed. Sure enough - it was weed. The kids admitted they did it.

This all happened a few months ago. Just this week, the second kid got probation, just like his partner did a little while ago. All told, I think it was a pretty fair sentence although one of the cops definitely does not agree...




Once you've seen the video, you realize that one kid is Latino (Armijo) and the other one is African American (Nuckols). You also learn the judge is Santa Claus - or possibly a homeless wizard.

Some people - like on the Breitbart.tv forum are mindlessly defending the kids. Some maintain it's "no big deal" since it's just weed and essentially harmless. But there's also a lot of knee-jerk, fuck-a-police type of polemic (if you can count mistyped/mispelled one-sentence comments polemic).

It's clear that many of these comments come from people who feel vindicated by the teenagers' pot sabotage. They are happy that someone 'struck back' against police.

On the other side of the thin blue line,the police reaction shows a lot of frustration that these two kids were not locked up for assault. I don't think these kids should have gone to jail, but I can see why this i really unsettling. The officers were not targeted for being dicks, but because the guy ordering was a cop. This was a random anonymous attack like minor league terrorism.

What's interesting about this incident - and people's reactions - is that they're not about the individuals involved. This was a minor skirmish in a grand struggle battle between cops and teenagers - with some added twists of cops vs minorities.

Cops live in fear of the people they police for reasons just like this. Some of them respond by trying to inspire a little more fear in the people they encounter. That's the way things go with an armed occupation. Is it fundamentally different than our occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan?

I might be making this connection because of the bullying cop videos I've seen recently. This one was big on Digg last week...



When we see these things, we'd like to think these are isolated individuals abusing power. My first reaction was WOW what a cock! This guy definitely shouldn't be a cop. But surely he's in a class by himself... This was kinda what we tried to believe with the pictures and videos from Abu Ghraib when they surfaced. Then I saw a nearly identical one...



The common element I see is fear and confusion on the part of the officers. They confront the kids head-on. They single out an individual in front of his friends - probably in a semi conscious decision to 'make an example' of him. To break him. Then things just escalate.

Once you enter a confrontation, there has to be a winner and a loser. You can't just stop and say - look this was a big misunderstanding. This is true of individuals, groups and nations.