Please Justify This Police Action For Me

[The Grand Nudger]

Neither is likely.  You wont find pepper spraying a person anywhere in any manual for treating hypothermia.  You'll be equally hard pressed to find a grown adult, cop or otherwise, who wakes up dreaming of pepper spraying children.

-and yet.........

It seems to me that the context and nuance folks are being very disingenuous.  The argument is offered up as an excuse to avoid a particular context, a particular nuance.  

What does any and every instance of police brutality involve?  Any and every violent act committed by agents of the government in any context?  The willingness of the agent to engage in the act, and the belief that they have the assent of society in doing so.  Why, do you think, there are officers who believe that these things we call police brutality are okay, why, do you think, we have so many brutalizers working in law enforcement?  Why, do you think, those officers feel that they are empowered to act as they do?

I think that it's a lewis black joke playing out in reality.  Iran iran iran iran IRAQ!  We created an abusive system of law enforcement...for some reason™ - and this is exactly the sort of shit an abusive system will produce.  I keep hearing about the sub-whiteness of the family, the size of the child, the fitness of the mother.  Just stop, lol.  None of that....none of that..... can explain why a cop does the things they do.

They might feel empowered to do so because so many officers have gotten away with treating people like shit or abusing them, and they know that their fellow officers are almost surely going to have their backs.

Yes, maybe they do feel empowered and maybe they do expect other officers to have their backs - the question posed was why.  Do you think there might be some reason™?

Yeah, many police officers are pieces of crap. No argument from me there. Many sign up to be officers because they enjoy having that power. Many of them are surely racists or even attend Klan meetings in their personal time. I know this. It's f'd up. Many of them don't give a damn about the people they're supposed to serve and protect, and will gladly pepper spray them in the face like the Occupy Wallstreet protestors or shoot them with rubber bullets like those protesting pipelines. Very screwed up stuff goes on with many police officers.

What if they aren't?  What if they aren't pieces of crap?  What would or could explain a decent human being pepper spraying a nine year old?  

I may come off like a bootlicker to some but I've been speaking out against brutality and the militarization of the police for years. The religion of 'Anti-racism' doesn't take any context into account though, and automatically assumes that any police action against a black person is racism. This non-nuanced way of thinking is illogical and only takes away from true incidents of racism. It's like the boy who cried wolf. If people call everything racism, it's going to be taken less seriously when there is actual racism present.

A particular nuance, a particular context, that you refuse to take into account.  Decrying anti-racism as a religion, in the perjorative, is pretty much all you need to say, isn't it? No further elaboration required.

And nobody said pepper spray was treatment for hypothermia. You are misrepresenting things by saying that and you know it. It was supposedly to get her in the car to prevent her from getting hypothermia. Not to treat it. Comments like that make it seem like you are not arguing in good faith. You are a smart person and you know they were not trying to treat hypothermia with pepper spray, so why make a comment like that?

Excellent.  We've agreed that it's not a treatment for hypothermia and we've already agreed that it;s no solution to getting a little girl into a car.  

Tell me more about the care these officers showed?

Decent non racist-golem police officers were presented with a nine year old girl problem. What do you think accounts for their willingness to engage in those acts, their expectation that other officers will have their back, and is it even remotely possible that there might be some reason™ that law enforcement holds this ideological space? Now, remember, you can't say "might have something to do with the inevitable effect of systemic racism in law enforcement" - because that would make you religious, and being religious is bad...even if it's true.