To the editor:
Over the last many years, I have never heard any law enforcement official in Lynn or anywhere else say anything critical about police brutality, no-knock raids, the use of extreme violence against peaceful Americans, shooting unarmed humans, shooting people in the back, militarization, the criminalization of everything, killing people for
trivial reasons such as a broken tail light, walking or driving away from barking cops, using SWAT teams to serve routine warrants, police unions protecting bad cops, the drug war that authorizes the police to treat peaceful Americans like they are worse than murderers or the targeting of the poor and powerless for brutal treatment, which includes the targeting of Blacks and browns.
The police call it the blue wall of silence, which is just a lame excuse for not doing the right thing, an excuse for a complete lack of moral courage. Their silence on all these
issues shows that no Lynn cop is qualified to become a police chief. They are all part of the good old boy network.
Unfortunately, the police are not the only ones who are silent about these police-state policies. In fact, all members of the ruling class, political class and the wealthy have also been silent, including Lynn mayors, city councilors, judges, prosecutors, reverends, rabbis, teachers, businessmen and women, anti-violence groups and almost
everyone else except the poor and powerless who comprise the vast majority of the victims. (They have no friends in high places.)
No one ever mentions the fact that the lawmakers and their enforcers have transformed the former Land of the Free into the world’s leading police-prison state with the world’s largest prison population and the world’s highest rate of incarceration.
The newly-appointed chief of the Lynn Police Department has stated that he wants an open discussion of police policies. Well, I am ready whenever he is.
Richard G. Eramian
Lynn
email: [email protected]
