Rock Control for Dummies

The playground at the RPES (Rocky Point Elementary School) was shot, having been worn away over the years to a dirt surface in most spots by the pitter-patter of little feet. The kiddies would always come home dirty, or muddy, from recess wallowing, in the divots, holes, pools and puddles. Parents complained. The RPSB (Rocky Point School Board) agreed. It was high time for a change, but, as most in Rocky Point were working class folks, there was barely enough revenue to keep the roads paved and the snow shoveled in winter.

The RPTC (Rocky Point Town Counsel) sent out word to all of the local businesses for ideas, but they really were hoping that some thriving enterprise (there was only one of those in town) would simply donate the cash in exchange for naming rights to a new and improved playground. But no company, no local philanthropist, nobody came forward to foot the bill for the renovation and the RPES continued to send home dirty little children.

Then, just as the RPTC was about to give up on the idea of a new playground field, Slate and Sandy Feldspar, owners of   FRS&G (Feldspar’s Rock, Sand, & Gravel), offered to chip in all of the resurfacing materials for the entire playground! Since Feldspar’s was by far the largest employer in town, mine workers, who sent their kids to the school, felt compelled to cough up their labor to complete the work. Members of the RPTC were beside themselves with joy. Between the generosity of the Feldspars, the good will of townspeople, and the new playground, their re-elections were as good as in the bag.

When the job was complete, the Mayor and the RPTC, and the Feldspars, and the workers, and the teachers, and kids all gathered at the RPES and had a ribbon-cutting ceremony. In place of the once-dilapidated field of mud, there lay a beautiful, brand-spanking new multi-colored bed of fist-size, jagged-edged, flint rock, straight from the Feldspar’s own quarry. Photographs were taken of the new FCPA (Feldspar Children’s Play Area), and the kids were immediately set loose to run and play and hang from the monkey bars and climb the jungle gym, and swing on the swings. And everybody clapped and cheered.

As you might have guessed, it wasn’t too long before things started to happen on the FCPA at the RPES. Kids were tripping and falling on the unsteady bed of jagged flint and scraping and gashing various body parts. And once again, parents, (those few who did not work for the Feldspars) began to complain. They felt that there might be a tad too many rocks on the playground for the kids to avoid. And word got around to the Feldspars, and their response was printed in the editorial section of the local newspaper and was swift and to the point: “Here in Rocky Point, we enjoy a long, proud tradition of all things…rocky. Everyone knows that this town was built on a bedrock of bedrock. Most, here in Rocky Point, owe their livelihoods to the many uses and benefits of the product which we harvest from our own local quarry. There is nothing inherently dangerous about a little rock. Sure, the occasional natural or stoned-milled product can become lethal if subject to misuse, but kids just need to be educated about how they can avoid those accidents by the proper care and treatment of our rocky friends.”

And so the principal at RPES both crafted and rigidly enforced a new rule saying that children were no longer allowed to trip and fall on the flint. And the kids? They really tried to keep from falling, but every step they took seemed to land on a jagged edge as the rocks were everywhere, and both they and the rocks were even more slippery after it rained. And so, more kids despite their best efforts to follow the new rule, got gashes and holes and stitches and eye patches.  FRS&G paid to cover up the blood-stained layer of flint with a new shiny bed of identical size and quality.

In addition to accidental gashing, slashing, and severe blood-loss, some kids came up with creative/destructive ways to actually play with those razor sharp fist-size rocks on the FCPA at the RPES. Games of dodge-ball soon took a deadly turn. When you were thrown out, you were really out, usually for the semester. But what was more surprising was how many kids, maimed or worse, had been completely unintended targets or were otherwise collaterally damaged by ricocheted, stray shards of the razor-sharp flint. More parents complained.  The Feldspars issued a similar editorial response and the principal crafted another rule. But kids still threw rocks at each other, because that is what kids do, when their playground is full of rocks.

And a few of the “bad” students reacted…badly to “time out” by picking up rocks in anger with an eye to an eye for any eye, to bash in the brains of the ones who told on them. And parents of the injured, comatose, and deceased children again complained. They had the idea that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to have so many rocks lying around where one of their children, good, bad, or otherwise, could pick one up and do so much bodily damage to another one of their children. And they mentioned neighboring towns that had fewer rocks lying about where more of the kids carried all of their body parts into adulthood. The idea was silly, they admitted, but there seemed to be a connection.

Predictably, FRS&G issued a scathing response; this time on a full-page in the local newspaper. Rocks don’t kill people! People kill people! There are no bad rocks, only bad people! Rocks are just rocks. They don’t need no stinking education! Parents and teachers are shirking their responsibility to teach proper rock-safety at the RPES. If “bad” kids are bashing good kids, then the answer is…more rocks! If every “good” law-abiding kid had a fist-size, jagged edged, piece of flint hidden away in their pocket, the “bad” kids would think twice about starting up a bashing they might not be able to finish! We don’t need more rules about the numbers of rocks allowed on our streets. We need less. If we outlaw rocks, only the outlaws will have the rocks! We need increased penalties for “bad people” who misuse rocks, not an immoral abridgement of lawful rock ownership! You can take away my fist-sized flint, when you pry my cold, bloody fingers, from the jagged edges!”

But more children misused the poor blameless rocks, and more eyes and limbs and brains were lost in the process. More “bad” kids were sent away to prison for rock-related crimes, but parents quit complaining. Since most of the townspeople relied on FRS&G for their livelihood, many friendships were already frayed to the limit. The parking lot of the local church was paved in FRS&G materials, as were the local roads and sidewalks. Every member of the RPTC owed their cushy Counsel positions to FRS&G. The RPTC did take a vote, however, and unanimously decided to expand the childrens’ section at the RPC&C (Rocky Point Cemetery & Crematorium) and the FFF (Feldspar Family Foundation) offered slightly imperfect marble for all of the extra little gravestones at a greatly reduced price, in light of the situation.

The only billboard in town still read: “More Rocks, Less Rules,” on one side and “Mine Baby Mine!” on the other.

Eventually, the Feldspar Mine quite literally ran out of rocks and every family that could drive, walk, limp, hobble, crawl, or wheel out of Rocky Point, did so. And the town crumbled to its original foundation.

So it goes.

It is my position that all handguns and their owners should be licensed, just like automobiles and their drivers. Period.  And children should never be allowed to handle a firearm…ever.

Below, you will find just a few quick statistics on the number of guns, gun ownership per capita, and number of deaths related to firearms in the United States. You might be surprised to find that the answer does not require a degree in quantum physics to figure out. It never did.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

From Answers.com:

The FBI estimates that there are over 200 million privately-owned firearms in the US. If you add those owned by the military, law enforcement agencies and museums, there is probably about 1 gun per person in the country.
If you want to get a rough idea of how many guns there are out there just look at how many people you see out there then multiply by a factor of estimated ownership. The last best guess was about 350,000,000 Total. That would be 1 weapon for every man woman and child. The average gun enthusiast owns several firearms which includes pistols, shotguns, and rifles of all makes and models. It is often estimated that about 1 in 4 people own any firearms and on average firearms owners own 4 guns each.

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_guns_are_in_the_united_states_of_America#ixzz1Huf3bP9p

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

This is a list of countries by gun ownership rate (number of privately owned small firearms divided by number of residents).^[1][2][3][4]
The numbers are based on the average of figures provided by the Small Arms Survey 2007,^[3] unless other sources are provided, and are an estimation based on dividing the total amount of civilian owned guns in a nation by the total population of that nation. As some people may possess multiple weapons while others possess none, this number is not a representation of the percentage of people who possess guns in each nation.
The ownership rate reported is the average estimate taken from "Annexe 4: The largest civilian firearms arsenals for 178 countries. That table gives also the minimum and maximum estimates. Note that for some countries, this margin of error is considerable. E.g. Yemen, ranked second with an ownership rate of 54.8, has a low estimate of 28.6 and a high estimate of 81.1. While the United States are ranked for the highest gun ownership rate unambiguously, Yemen based on the margin of error may rank anywhere between 2nd and 18th, Switzerland anywhere between 2nd and 16th.
The lowest gun ownership rate among the 178 countries surveyed as of 2007 was reported from Tunisia, with 0.1 (or a total number of 9,000 guns), due to very strict gun control under the Ben Ali regime (compare the rates of the neighbouring states, Algeria: 7.6, Libya: 15.5).

Country	Guns per 100 residents (2007)	Rank (2007)	Comments
United States	88.8	1
Yemen	54.8	2
Switzerland	45.7	3
Serbia	37.8	4
Cyprus	36.4	5
Saudi Arabia	35.0	6
Iraq	34.2	7
Finland	32.0	8	[5]
Uruguay	31.8	9
Sweden	31.6	10
Norway	31.3	11
France	31.2	12
Canada	30.8	13
Austria	30.4	14
Germany	30.3	15
New Zealand	22.6	22	1993: 26.8.[2]
Greece	22.5	23
Angola	17.3	34
Thailand	15.6	39
Australia	15.0	42
Mexico	15.0	42
South Africa	12.7	50
Turkey	12.5	52
Italy	11.9	55
Pakistan	11.6	57
Spain	10.4	61
Argentina	10.2	62
Russia	8.9	68
Iran	7.3	79
Tunisia	0.1	178

From The American Bar Association

In 2003, there were 30,136 firearm-related deaths in the United States; 16,907 (56%) suicides, 11,920 (40%) homicides (including 347 deaths due to legal intervention/war), and 962 (3%) undetermined/unintentional firearm deaths.

CDC/National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports 1999-2003 http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars

·                      The rate of death from firearms in the United States is eight times higher than that in its economic counterparts in other parts of the world.

Kellermann AL and Waeckerle JF. Preventing Firearm Injuries. Ann Emerg Med July 1998; 32:77-79.

·                      The overall firearm-related death rate among U.S. children younger than 15 years of age is nearly 12 times higher than among children in 25 other industrialized countries combined.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 1997;46:101-105.

·                       The United States has the highest rate of youth homicides and suicides among the 26 wealthiest nations.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Rates of homicide, suicide, and firearm-related death among children: 26 industrialized countries.
MMWR. 1997;46:101-105.

Krug EG, Dahlberg LL, Powell KE. Childhood homicide, suicide, and firearm deaths: an international comparison. World Health Stat Q. 1996;49:230-235.

The Cult of Perfection

I read a guest commentary in the Denver Post yesterday that made me want to cry. A young woman, fresh out of college and in her first “real job,” was sexually harassed, to the point where she had to quit and file a lawsuit against her former employer. As one who has suffered from racial discrimination early in my life and age discrimination in later adulthood, I can only hope that she skins those bastards alive and finds a new job soon, where she can work in a truly safe and nurturing environment.

I am disgusted that my generation did not eradicate sexual harassment, but am heartened that we have state and federal laws in place to protect workers from harassment or at least to redress grievances resulting from the actions of misogynistic pigs who would prey on them. The glass ceiling is cracking, and my daughters will be the beneficiaries when it is finally shattered. I look forward to feeling the shards crunching under my feet.

I think that we as a society have also made more significant progress in the fights against ethnic, racial, and sexual-preference discrimination. I believe that we have young people to thank for most of that progress. Yes, we older people passed the laws, but most of our nation’s youth have been raised to instinctively eschew both the outdated rationalizations for and the vocabulary of most institutionalized bigotry. As a result, same-sex marriages are becoming as natural as those between races, and ethnic minorities.  I hope that the next generation will look upon racial, ethnic, and sexual discrimination, like most of us now look upon slavery: a very dark, shameful period in our history, never to be repeated.

With that said, wouldn’t it be wonderful, if we could take a serious step toward eradicating our one remaining, insidious, pervasive prejudice? The last is always the hardest to go. And to start, it would entail systematically dismantling the largest, most cruel and reviled cult ever to disgrace America. A dreaded cult to which the likes of Jim Jones could not hold a candle, for its ruthless methodology. And it employs monsters in its ranks more acerbic than Joan Rivers, more horrifyingly otherworldly than Tammy Faye Baker! The dreaded cult from which we must rid ourselves is…The Cult of Perfection.

One prevalent example of the Cult of Perfection is the premium that its disciples place upon having the “perfect body.” This Cult-manufactured desire is only exceeded by the manic drive to meet the impossibly unrealistic goal. Disciples of The Cult also feel simultaneously compelled to strive in the same relentless and myopic fashion, to be the perfect golfer, football coach,mom, dad, dresser, doctor,dancer,divorcee,sports fan,wine connoisseur, the perfect…oh gosh…the perfect everything! But what the initiated don’t seem to realize, is that not everybody wants to or is able to join them in their perfection-worshiping obsessions. And so, when  Cult disciples sit around the lunch table, and look up from their US/People/Cosmo/Sports Illustrated magazines to utter snarky remarks about thunder thighs, junk in the trunk, muffin tops, saggy boobs, EWW!, disgusting! etc. there are often actual human beings sitting at the same table who are adjusting their clothing so as to not be targeted by the psychological projections of their perceived imperfections.

Businesses often encourage the obsessive and exclusive behavior of Cult disciples because beauty sells and extreme anything means money and imperfect looking people are as inferior as they are unsightly, right? I am sure that you have all read the studies which show that many more promotions go to the slim, tall, folks, with good hair. You would think that normally intelligent, morally upright individuals who were raised to embrace diversity would actually embrace diversity, but just think about how many times you have heard the above scenario in your break room at work and how many ugly/fat/old people jokes you have heard or told in the last six months, and then tell me that I am wrong.

Disciples of The Cult of Perfection have also seemingly been robbed of their ability to process the idea that people over 40 (at least those who cannot afford the required surgical procedures to retain disciple status) do not appreciate or deserve being regarded as gross, disgusting, and lecherous seekers of Shangri La. But, you will say, it is the time-honored tradition of all subsequent generations, to believe that, because they and they alone, have been blessed with the power and the glory and the stamina of youth, they are therefore eternally entitled to take the credit for re-thinking up 2,000 year-old ideas. I get that. We were all there once. The naive hubris of youth. As a parent of two adult young women, I am fully aware of how incredibly ignorant and stupid and unfair and (add your favorite expletive here) I was, until they turned 21.

But I am not talking about just the initiated teens or tweens here. I am talking about many 20-somethings, 30-somethings, and even surgically altered 40-something disciples, who, despite grandiose promises of eternal youth and vigor, are still obviously terrified that, if they look me or other imperfect creatures in the face without the aid of a soft-focus lens, they will see a clear reflection of themselves in 25 years. It is therefore an anomaly that so many disciples of The Cult of Perfection take such pains to keep an emotional distance from imperfect outsiders (and from each other, unfortunately) yet seem to take such pleasure in openly putting the rest of us down while we are sitting right there at the same damned table. A “pithy, edgy” comment coming from a Cult member gets the eye-roll or is ostensibly ignored if it comes from one of us, because I guess we don’t have the right to be pithy or edgy. The Cult of Perfection, like any cult, is defined by those who are excluded. The purity of its membership must not be tainted by careless fraternization with the imperfect. Rules is rules.

And just who makes up these rules? Who calls the shots? Who are the enforcers in The Cult of perfection? Being on the outside, it is hard to say for certain, but it seems to me that the “shot-callers,” the Prefects In Charge of Perfecting Perfection, come from the ranks of B, C and D-list, or otherwise unemployed entertainers. You can detect their presence when you hear the words “you’re fired,” or “simply fabulous!,” or you hear any sentence containing the words “situation,” or “Snookie.” And the Prefects insult and demean anyone who is not just like them, and they rule with an iron fist, and carry weapons of mass offensiveness in their Prada bags, and if you listen carefully, you can hear the click, click, click, of their Manolo Blahniks. No one escapes their scrutiny and  ruthless condemnation…even A-list entertainers are not immune from the occasional devastating put-down.

Initiated disciples of the Cult of Perfection are highly restricted as they struggle to continually apprise themselves of the ever-evolving standards of perfection, which can morph radically with each news cycle. How skinny is skinny enough? Which diet is the perfect diet this week? Which is the perfect micro-brew-lager-lite-beer? Are six-pack abs enough or is a case now demanded? How much make-up must you wear to swim in the ocean? How do you suck in your gut in public all day and night and still manage to breathe? How low must your IQ sink? What reality show is everybody talking about today? How many incomprehensibly stupid, dangerous, inane, life threatening stunts must you pull, in order to…be…perfect? Is one marathon per month enough? Ultimate Frisbee too passé? Rock climbing? Bungee jumping? Zip lining across the Grand Canyon? Will walking a high wire without a net be the new perfect thing to do?

And which “kinda-sorta-but-not-too-religious” religion is in and what is soooo (quite literally) yesterday? The damned list in this category keeps rapidly changing as well and it brings up a whole Host of unanswered conundrums. How can you be “not perfect, but just forgiven?” And how do you believe in an omnipotent God who obviously goofed when She made unattractive people, and let old people get old so we have to look at them, and people with bad hair… or with hair in the wrong places or people with no hair, for crying out loud! And the Prefects give us no answers to these ontological oddities, yet still demand unconditional obedience.

Our children are placed on the Kiddy Cult waiting list, long before we plan the exact date of conception. Will four languages plus Suzuki, plus Montessori, plus scripted play dates, plus college-prep nursery school be enough this time around? They keep raising the bar. How does Brangelina do it, anyway? And it is so hard to find the required “diverse” playmates, when our suburban gated communities don’t have any diversity. Will the Home Owners Association allow us to temporarily import some…uh…others? We may need them as references along with the required pre-school application, resume, I.Q results, and letter of intent. We just gotta find some friends with a last name that ends in a vowel!

As long as The Cult of Perfection holds its vice-like grip over society, imperfect people will, and in fact, must be forever an underclass of…well…the imperfect, to be ridiculed, when They ridicule, to be demeaned, when They demean, to be cruelly castigated and cast out in tears, whenever the Supreme Prefects, Len Goodman or J. Lo, or Stacy London give the thumbs down.

It figures that this last remaining prejudice would be the toughest to overcome. You may read this exposé and decide to initiate a self-intervention. You may even find the courage to make a break for it and leave the Cult, but the Cult will follow you wherever you go and make you feel imperfect. There are spies everywhere, minions who  will look over your shoulder, and watch what you eat and what you wear and attempt to censor opinions that you are about to express and make you pay dearly for any deviance from all required conformity.

I wish you the best of luck in your quest to free yourself of this final prejudice, but whatever you do, if you are ever, ever caught in the midst of a large group of Cult members, even if they offer nicely, DON’T DRINK THE MERLOT!


J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Guns, Liquor, & Police Brutality

No, It’s not what you think, but there is a correlation if not an interrelated, causal relationship between the three issues that deserves a conversation. It is my opinion that we can not alleviate the appalling rate of police brutality in Colorado, without honestly admitting to and actually dealing with the affects of recently relaxed gun and liquor laws, because they in turn, effects the attitudes, policies, and conduct of law enforcement. This post is a bit of a read, but there was no other way for me to make the point. Sorry.

                                Guns

In 2004, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act expired. It once imposed a ten-year, federal ban on assault weapons such as AK-47s, Uzis, Tec-9s, and 16 other military-type assault weapons. Why was the law not renewed? Because the GOP ran the whole show in 2004 and Wayne LaPierre and his NRA, lobbied heavily (bought off or otherwise threatened politicians) for the ban to be lifted. It was allowed to expire, even though  national police organizations such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, and the Fraternal Order of Police all supported the renewal of the ban, and President Bush said he would sign such a bill if Congress passed it.

So, for the last six years, it has been open season on the sale, trade, and use of assault weapons. The spineless Democrats did nothing to bring back the ban, when they had the chance in 2008. They remembered losing their majority in the House over passing the original bill in 1993 and got scared.

Those of you who can still remember way back to January of 2011 may recall that the 32-round clip, psycho-conspiracy-theorist Jarred Loughner used to kill and maim so many people in seconds, was perfectly legal to buy, and that he bought it at the local Wal-Mart. It was perfectly legal, because the Brady Law had expired. In response to the Tucson shootings, gun manufacturers in Tucson and all over the country are now giving away high-capacity ammunition clips as premiums with the purchase of handguns.

Criminal background checks supposedly still exist, and sort of work, unless it involves a gun show, or someone is trading, say, a truck, for 40 Kalashnikovs, or the seller just doesn’t cotton to the inconvenience of making an American citizen wait an hour, or a day, or even three days, to make sure that he’s not a convicted felon, or recently released from a mental ward, or is part of a terrorist organization, or is under a restraining order for stalking and beating his wife, or  is a gang member.

Recent ATF reports of hundreds if not thousands, of assault weapons legally sold in the U.S. somehow ending up in the hands of the Mexican Drug cartels, should not surprise you in the least. A straw purchase is where a legally entitled person agrees to buy weapons for a not-so-legally entitled person and it happens every day in every town in the U.S. Do you remember the Columbine High School massacre?

But these weapons don’t just end up in the hands of individual psychos or otherwise illegally emigrate to morally challenged entrepreneurs in Mexico. Many find their way to home grown, all-American., terrorist groups like the Liberation Front (ALF), the Army of God, the Aryan Nations, the Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord, the Earth Liberation Front, the Jewish Defense League, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Phineas Priesthood. I may have mentioned these righteous patriots in my post on March 11, 2011.

In 2010, the State of Colorado decided to allow concealed weapons permit-holders to conceal ‘n’ carry on 13 community colleges across the state. The major universities in Colorado also recently allowed or were prevented from prohibiting students, teachers, staff, and visitors to carry concealed handguns on their campuses as well. Now, every drunken, drug-addled, narcissistic, stressed and depressed, co-ed, frat-boy, agoraphobic professor, and angry parent can pack concealed heat in class, at parties, and during meetings with counselors and various Boards of Regents.

On, March 15, 2011. the Tea/GOP/NRA folks in our legislature began pushing through  House Bill 1205, which will allow anyone who passes an insta-criminal-background- check, to conceal and carry a handgun. No permit necessary! The proponents aver that  $ 152.50, is just too much to pay for a permit, when gun owners can already wear their weapons, Tombstone style, on the outside of their clothing. There is a K-12 exception. An opponent of the bill, Claire Levi, was quoted as stating, "We will not be promoting public safety if our police chiefs who are very strongly opposed to this bill do not have any way of knowing who is armed and who is not... we will all be less safe because of [the bill].... This is a very very dangerous bill," You can drive a semi (tractor-trailor, that is) through all the holes in the insta-background check, but that is not really the point.

So when some deranged nut or patriot-org, or upset, upstanding citizen, or dumbass college student decides to say, shoot up a Safeway, or an abortion doctor, or a liberal talk-show host, or a rival gang member, or their spouse, or a frat party, or their boss, or their professor, guess who has the impossible job of somehow preventing the crime? And when the inevitable happens, who has to respond to the hostage situation, to the rapid-fire, multiple bullets flying everywhere, to the horrific aftermath of mass carnage? You guessed it. Your local police force, that’s who. And police officers know full well that just one assailant can cap off 32 lethal rounds in just a few seconds before reloading and an equal number after reloading in the time it takes for him to shout “you’ll never take me alive, Copper!”

Just how much harder are we going to make it for the police to tell the good guys from the bad? The already improbable focus necessary for the average police officer to maintain has now increased exponentially. And, now, with no CCW registry, an officer has absolutely no way of ascertaining whether a suspect is even likely to be carrying a weapon, until actual physical contact is made. Now everybody from college kids to state legislators are potential Uzi-packing loonies. And we have just made it legal to put more troubled minds with an assault weapons in every car, on every street, and behind every door, to where the police are called to respond. Think about that for a moment.

                                   Liquor

In January of 2008, in the form of Senate Bill 82,Colorado repealed their Blue Law, which meant in common parlance, that liquor, beer and wine was free to be sold seven days a week, from that day forward. The repeal also allowed grocery stores to sell beer and wine as well. As of today’s date, March 15, 2011, the GOP house is proposing aother bill, which will allow every convenience store in the state to sell full strength beer. With that addition, all residents will have absolutely unfetterred access to alcohol, within walking distance of every home, school, church, and playground. Rest assurred, the already staggering number of alcohol-related violent crimes will increase.

After daily practice for over 22 years in the criminal justice system as a deputy Colorado State Public Defender, I have been able to estimate that about 80% of the serious felonies I handled and at least 90% of the violent crimes, were alcohol-related. I defended addicted clients, self-medicating, mentally ill clients, binge-drinkers, young drinkers, old drinkers, itinerant drinkers, and novice drinkers and they had one thing in common. Their brains went to hell on alcohol and they did some of the most unimaginable, unspeakable things after their primal pump was…uh…primed, by alcohol. Most of these people weren’t bad folks when they were sober, but they had no business drinking, and it was cheap and it was easy to get, and their parents and brothers and sisters and wives and aunts and uncles all drank, before, during, and after their felony offenses.

And I have to laugh at politicians who yammer about the evils of marijuana. In 22 years, not a single one of my 5,000 or so clients committed a violent crime, or even a very serious crime, while solely under the influence of pot. Although my mentally ill clients frequently used pot to self-medicate clinical depressive and bipolar conditions, it was alcohol or methamphetamine (a close second), or crack-cocaine, or a combination, that gave them that extra little push to a long stretch in the joint. Pot smokers stay at home, eat, and watch a lot of T.V. and doze off.Alcohol drinkers drive into and over innocent people, duct-tape, beat and rape women, and punch, kick, pummel, cut, slash, stab, gut, and shoot strangers, neighbors, friends, loversand the occasional animal.

And when you put alcohol and guns together, the combination is almost always lethal. I’ll give you one guess who has to deal with all of those drunken, insanely violent, assault weapon-toting, perpetrators, witnesses, and bystanders at the crime scene.You guessed it. Your local police department.

                           Police Brutality

In 2010, Denver was the sixth-worse city for police misconduct, when measured against 62 other metro police forces of 1,000 or more officers. Only Atlanta, New Orleans, Fort Worth, Louisville, and Jacksonville, had more reported incidents of police misconduct.

In 2010, Denver ranked first, yes, numero uno, in reported cases of excessive use of force, otherwise known as police brutality. In 2010, there were 17 reported cases of police brutality, a full 10% higher than the national average and an increase from their 2009 figures.

My only surprise was that these numbers were not higher. In my former employment as a deputy Public Defender, serving both a major metropolitan jurisdiction as well as a small town, I saw a minimum of one client per week at the jail who would look like his face had been put through a meat grinder. The booking photo would more resemble that of an autopsy.

The police reports on the case would often involve hospital records concerning the serious bodily injury sustained by my client at the hands of the police and, wouldn’t you know it, my client was always charged with resisting arrest, or obstruction, or even assault on an officer, especially if one or more of the cops scraped their knuckles or tore a rotator cuff, from beating my client into unconsciousness.

And almost all of my clients would tell me a surprisingly similar version of the same thing: “…and I tried to tell the cop…blah, blah, blah…” and then the inexorable clash of an irresistible force (police force) with a highly movable object (my client).

Did some of my mentally ill, drunken, drug-addled, or otherwise violence-prone clients have it coming? Probably, I must admit. But, over the years I developed a fairly accurate method of deciphering which of my clients and cases fit the “he had it coming” profile and which didn’t, and which cops seemed to beat up my clients over and over and over again, with no response from their superiors except a promotion. There were far too many clients with little or no criminal history, far too many cases where no drugs or alcohol were involved, far too many scenarios where a simple misunderstanding seemed to spontaneously explode into a full-fledged beat-down, before my client could figure out which end was up. And I could see the expressions of genuine fright and confusion in their blackened eyes, the tears of disbelief running down their bruised and battered faces. And again, the same cops, over and over and over, until they made detective.

My beaten down clients were routinely charged with various offenses where the officers were cast as victims or heroes. These charges were filed as a matter of course by prosecutors in order to shield the cops and, in effect, the County, against any eventual civil liability. Usually, my client, even if  strongly believing that he was a victim of police brutality, would eventually feel compelled to plead to a much more minor charge in order to get out of jail and back to work.

In Colorado, if an officer gets  scratched or is spat upon by an arrestee, and the latter is convicted of that offense, he or she is looking at a felony that carries a mandatory five to sixteen years in prison, with no possibility of probation. The pressure to plead down to a “time served” misdemeanor and a probationary sentence is overwhelming. My clients didn’t usually start concentrating on the police brutality part, until the hospital bills came due and they suddenly discovered (yeah, I told them already) that they had about a zero percent chance at prevailing in a civil suit because they pled to a crime, incident to arrest.

If we count one beaten down client per week, this adds up to approximately 50 per year. Even if we assume that 90% deserved or even partially deserved to be punched, choked, kicked, bones broken, spleens ruptured etc., this leaves five of my clients, on average per year who were more than likely true victims of police brutality. Since none of my clients were able to successfully sue the police or the county over their injuries, we can add their numbers to the recorded statistical figures above. There are approximately 335 deputy Colorado State Public Defenders in Colorado. Five victims of police brutality per year per each of those 335 is…well…an unconscionable number of folks being unlawfully beaten to a pulp by the very folks who are sworn to serve and protect them.

As for cops like Officer Devin Sparks? He was the cop who was caught on video, walking all the way across the street to confront and beat and tackle and severely injure a young man named Michael DeHerrera, whose only crime was talking on his cell phone to his dad, an El Paso County Sheriff’s deputy, about the police brutality he was witnessing. Officer Sparks should be fired for the gratuitous brutality and for lying about it on his reports and to the official agency conducting the investigation. He should also be charged with assault. And what about the “fellow officer” who was the original police-thug Mr. DeHerrera was watching? He also lied on his report, lied for Officer Sparks, took young DeHerrera’s cell phone (which was evidence), put it in an evidence bag and then,…uh,…“lost” it? He should be fired as well.

And the five Denver Sheriff’s deputies who sat on 56 year old, 150 LB., Marvin Booker in the Denver jail until he stopped breathing and then “high-fived” each other and left Mr. Booker to die on the floor? The old man was afraid of losing his shoes and they sat on Mr. Booker and killed him because he insisted on attempting to pick up his shoes. There is no place in law enforcement for these five violent unrepentant criminals either. They do belong in the jail…on the inside.

I cannot include the other reported cases. Although I am no stranger to gore, or pathos, having attended more than a dozen autopsies during my former employment, just reading about case after case after case of truly brutal acts of criminals-with-badges against helpless human beings, made me physically sick and I had to stop. Suffice it to say that, in my opinion, none of the officers involved in these cases should still be on the force, all should do jail time, and none should ever, ever be authorized to carry a firearm again.

So, What’s My Point?

Do I have a  really clever answer to any or all of these three issues? The short answers,  myopic and totally unrealistic ones, are to reinstate the Brady Act, re-legislate Prohibition, and require all police officers to have advanced degrees, undergo yearly, intense, psychological testing, and then institute a zero tolerance policy for all police brutality. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of me, not holding my breath.

I can just picture the resulting bedlam after getting the NRA and the Mausers, and the Liquor lobby and the Bar Lobby and the 7-11 lobby and the Police Union and criminal  defense attorneys all into the same room. They are all advocates for their individual constituencies. It is not their job to craft sound public policy. They are not interested in hearing about the obvious linkage, because an acknowledgement of the interrelationship would necessarily call for a compromise solution.

But sound public policy (by that, I mean a rational compromise) should be the goal of our elected officials and I have just a few compromises for them to kick around:

1.    Reinstate just the part of the Brady Gun Act that bans extended ammunition clips. That way, gun nuts could still buy their Uzis, but the clips would only hold 10 rounds. None of my hunting friends use an AK-47 to bag an elk and any homeowner who has to cap off more than 10 rounds in “self defense,” poses an unacceptable danger to his neighbors and to himself. If you have to fire more than 10 rounds to hit center-mass of an intruder at close range, you are already dead anyway.

2.    Get guns the hell away from college campuses. Holy Mother of God! Scientists      have shown that kids’ brains don’t gel until they hit about 23 YOA, and we parents are aware of at least some of what our sons and daughters actually do when they go away to college. That is scary enough, without adding concealed guns to the all-night orgies, inevitably (and illegally) fueled by copious amounts of alcohol and drugs.

3.    No guns in bars, ever. Ever. Guns + alcohol + enclosed space = death. Simple.

4.    No sale of alcohol in stores after 10:00 pm. Store owners will just have to live with the compromise.Many lives will be saved, and the state will save millions in criminal justice-related costs.

5.    No sale of alcohol in bars after midnight. Tough noogies, dancers, sports fans and yuppies. Get over it. Bars can still serve food after midnight. That way, bars can still make a buck, the food will absorb the alcohol, and dram-shop laws will be relegated to the past.

6.    If you pass compromises 1-5 above, the 11:00 pm to 6:00 am shift of every police force in Colorado will sincerely thank you. A comprehensive approach such as this will significantly lower the crime rate and make policing commensurately safer. Then cops can spend more time going after bad guys instead of babysitting gun-toting, bar-hoppers and teeny-boppers.

But we must also face the fact that we have simultaneously and unjustly conferred both deity and demon status on our members of law enforcement and it is high time that we concede the obvious. They are only human. No more and no less. There are only a small number of folks who are willing to take on the risks and a still smaller number who are actually suited for the job. Yes, we need to take serious steps to make our streets safer for our citizens and for law enforcement,  but the simple fact is that some police officers should not be carrying guns and patrolling our streets and we all need to buck up and admit it..

After the passage of the above legislation, the Police Union ought to just shut up and take it, when our Manager of Safety fires each and every officer who beats the crap out of someone for no good reason, or lies in his or her report about it, or covers up for the gross misconduct or illegal activity of a fellow officer. You want comparative discipline? You got it. First time and you are looking for a new job that does not allow you to carry a firearm. Every officer gets a fair hearing to determine the facts and every officer adjudged to have committed any or all of the above gets exactly the same punishment as the last criminal-cop.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo