sending letters by rabbit
2021-Jul-26, Monday 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mellowtiggerThere was an old black-and-white show on television called The Untouchables. I happened to have it running in the background one day this month while playing on the computer. That particular episode was described this way in TVGuide online, "S3,E3: Crooked former policeman feels too many restrictions are put on good lawmen."
Hmmm. Interesting premise. What really caught my attention, though, was a memorable line uttered by one of the crooks who was using corrupt police to move money around.
How is it that we went from one generation that accepted at face value that policing can be a corrupt institution to... well, whatever this is that holds police sacrosanct today? Serious question. I want to know the answer.
Today, I learned that cops have asked ShotSpotter to fabricate evidence for them to use in court. Which is not very different from when they alter mug shot photos to better encourage a desired arrest or when they suggest "ghost guns" to justify their overbearing actions.
Today, I learned that here in the Minnesota capital, cops used perfectly civilized behavior to arrest a white woman unharmed... after she literally drove her vehicle onto the capitol lawn towards a press conference with journalists and law enforcement (which would've landed a black man in a morgue, obviously), displayed a Trump flag and Bible, and started shouting obscenities along with "I am a white woman! There is only one race!” Unharmed. Uncuffed.
Police obviously can kill fewer people when they want to. It's just that for mysterious and unknowable reasons, they sometimes don't want to do that. Seriously, how did we go from distrusting police outright ("sending letters by rabbit") to believing every word and action they offer without question?
I want to see the timeline of change that got us here, so I know exactly which steps to undo.
Hmmm. Interesting premise. What really caught my attention, though, was a memorable line uttered by one of the crooks who was using corrupt police to move money around.
"Sending money by cop is like sending letters by rabbit."
How is it that we went from one generation that accepted at face value that policing can be a corrupt institution to... well, whatever this is that holds police sacrosanct today? Serious question. I want to know the answer.
Today, I learned that cops have asked ShotSpotter to fabricate evidence for them to use in court. Which is not very different from when they alter mug shot photos to better encourage a desired arrest or when they suggest "ghost guns" to justify their overbearing actions.
Today, I learned that here in the Minnesota capital, cops used perfectly civilized behavior to arrest a white woman unharmed... after she literally drove her vehicle onto the capitol lawn towards a press conference with journalists and law enforcement (which would've landed a black man in a morgue, obviously), displayed a Trump flag and Bible, and started shouting obscenities along with "I am a white woman! There is only one race!” Unharmed. Uncuffed.
Police obviously can kill fewer people when they want to. It's just that for mysterious and unknowable reasons, they sometimes don't want to do that. Seriously, how did we go from distrusting police outright ("sending letters by rabbit") to believing every word and action they offer without question?
I want to see the timeline of change that got us here, so I know exactly which steps to undo.
explaining that phrase
Date: 2023-Sep-26, Tuesday 09:38 pm (UTC)The character in the show was using it in this context: The criminal was using a corrupt cop to send money, which might never arrive because the corrupt cop cannot be trusted to deliver it rather than keep it. Similarly, we might hand an envelope to a rabbit, but we can't expect that rabbit to deliver the parcel. In fact, that rabbit might simply eat that paper for itself.