Shocked, shocked, that there's racism in the police ranks...

Poor Montgomery County Police. First the Washington Post reports on their racist and general hate speech in yesterday's paper. Now it seems it's really the Post's fault, at least according to the Fraternal Order of Police lawyer Margo Pave. She laments that the Post's coverage of her organization's racism, sexism, and xenophobia isn't balanced:

Pave said the excerpts provided to The Post do not reflect the "bread and butter" of the discussions on the board...

Apparently, not every message on the board is about how much some officers hate the people they're theoretically supposed to "protect and serve." It would take an entire separate post for me to go into the reasons why the police -- as an institution -- don't exist in reality to protect and serve anyone's interests except for private property's, but I'm not going down that road on a Friday.

Ms. Pave needs to learn the lessons that also seem to elude many of our political leaders: it isn't news if it's ordinary. In fact, it often isn't news if something is working as planned. For instance, the electricity being available 364 days a year isn't newsworthy; however, an outage from say a lightning storm or someone cutting a cable accidentally is newsworthy. Therefore, not too many Post readers are terribly interested in police message board items about where the best place is to get your uniform pressed, who has the best coffee, and whether new paperwork is really overburdensome.

In a community chock full of recent and longtime immigrant communities, African Americans, and indeed women, it's understandable that it might be news that the police are referring to their constituents in the following terms:

February 2006: "Go ask [name of officer in Silver Spring] I'm pretty sure he has plenty of beaner cars that he has impounded!!!!!"

Very nice. "Beaner." How tremendously original. And we can't forget that old stand-by, diversity. If there's one thing that pisses off a racist more than seeing a white woman and a non-white man, it's being faced with the reality that non-whites can also do the same job their racist asses are doing:

June 2004: "Bottom line is thank the 'fool(s)' in [headquarters] that want to diversify this department for political reasons. Now we have the 'GHETTO' officer. When you lower your standards this is what you get."

Umm, I'm guessing standards were pretty goddamn low about the time the complaining officer got hired. And for all of Ms. Pave's complaining, the Post did at least report on a dissenting officer who was upset by the quasi-fascist demeanor of some officers:

March 2005: "No RACISTS??, then explain the NEO NAZI look that some [Silver Spring] officers have. Bald heads, black [battle dress uniform], and non-issued black flight jackets w/patches. Now that just conveys racism. Im white and I felt unsafe around them."

I've seen a few of those yahoos around. About ten years ago it was rare to see actual cops wearing the fascist gear unless they were part of a SWAT team or similar special unit. Now you can't wave a copy of Mein Kampf around for two seconds before a few types described above show up acting like it's Oprah's book club in bizarro world.

Thank goodness county executive Doug Duncan set the record straight:

"Let me be very clear. There is no place in our police department . . . for racism, bigotry and hatred," County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) said. "As public servants, we not only take an oath to uphold the law, but we have a moral
obligation to guarantee that the law is applied equally and fairly to everyone in our community."

Well that's reassuring, but let me translate: "Let me be very clear. From a legal standpoint I am publicly condemning these statements. I am on now on record, the kind you might have brought up in court, as being against these opinions, and through implication, I'm telling you I had no idea this was going on. I am indeed shocked, shocked, that racism exists in our police force. And to go further, we take an oath to apply the law fairly, so I'm amazed there's racism. I believe in legal terms, you would call this 'plausible deniability.' Thank you, and good day."

Very nice, Pontius, but that's always much easier than actually rooting out the assholes and changing policies, practices, and recruitment to deter racist behavior.