I have a friend who works in the law enforcement center where I live. He is a detective, and he always has to do an assessment on any situation that gets out of hand between police officer and anyone he arrests where there was a disturbance or altercation with the officer.

You’d think that would be a matter of a simple report, but sometimes it can get involved. There are usually at least two different officers he has to interview before he makes his report. Usually it goes without a hitch, but sometimes there is something filed on behalf of the arrested.

 Such was the case a couple of weeks ago, where the prisoner was saying he was hit. There were no visible marks, and he didn’t ask to see a doctor, nurse or anything, and didn’t even say anything to cellmate, but yet he was claiming something happened. The thing my friend didn’t like was that sometimes when he has interviewed the officers, there are attitudes that come across that are kind of vague, but noticeable. He says it really bothers him when he detects an attitude, but it boils down to a gut instinct on his part.

 These cases are hard to prove on behalf of the prisoner, and rarely even sees the light of day, especially if the problem he got arrested for is so minor that the guy isn’t even going to be held long enough for him to bother with carrying out any action because his thinking usually comes down to “I’ll just do my time and get out of here.” I don’t like the injustice in it.

 This particular story stuck in my gut because it reminded me of years ago when I was hauled down to a police station, and the officer tried to have me thrown into jail saying I was drunk and disorderly. The breathalizer didn’t show a thing, because I hadn’t been drinking, so then he said I had gotten mouthy with him which led him to believe I had been drinking. Now, I doubt like Hell it had anything to do with the fact that I am Native American and of course we all know how much we like to drink and what a nuisance we can be when we are drinking. Bullshit! It is nothing but that ugly prejudice again, and they know it and I know it.