This is NOT “Man Bites Dog”

I’m still bewildered by what passes for news anymore. Or, if I understand that something is news, I remain befuddled over how and why it got to be news in the first place. One of the phrases that runs on a near unconscious loop in my house, particularly when it comes to stories about prisons and policing, is “See my shocked face?” So, when I came across this AP article the other day — “Police: Prison guard beat banker, used racial slur over mask” — I had to ask myself how this got onto an international news platform. The story is horrific, but it’s not actually news in the sense of the old saw which tells us: “Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is news.” This is the former, not the latter.

To be fair, I suppose there plenty of folks who would think that it’s surprising that someone in the law enforcement world would be have in the way that Mr. Jones did. But the news there is really that such folks really aren’t all that familiar with the everyday attitudes of tons of cops and prison guards. While I was inside, I certainly knew of similar incidents that happened and that were perpetrated by the very members ostensibly tasked with protecting you from me. There was the case in which one of the lieutenants of the guards at my Federal Correctional Institution went to a local high school football game, got into an arguments with a woman of color, and drew a gun on her as a way of “resolving” the dispute when using racial slurs against her failed to get lower the tensions. It’s said that when the police intervened and searched his vehicle, they discovered weapons for prison riot control, like flash-bang grenades, that he had brought with him from work and was toting around for no sane reason. What’s also not news it that this was largely not covered by local media, though it certainly was the subject of real interest and inquiry by inmates and staff. This , when you look at the look at this person in his everyday milieu, could not shock anyone. Ask any Black inmate of this FCI about this lieutenant, and you would get the reply, “racist motherfucker” in describing his character. This was a well-earned response that it would have taken any neutral observe a maximum of 48 hours of observation to establish. He pulled a gun on a woman and called her names? That fits. It’s up there with other non-news like Bill Clinton having some problems with out of control sexual behaviors or Donald Trump habitually lying.

The “consequence” that this lieutenant, whom I have overheard explaining to rookie staff that “race-mixing” is one of the great social crimes of America, suffered? Well, first there was being placed on leave for a bit. Then there was going back to his old job, but having to work the weekend shifts pretty much exclusively. Then, at some point, he did get demoted, but he was left he in place at the same FCI, the environment the he both befouled and which allowed him to fester. Instead of a lieutenant of the guard, he became the officer in charge of all the locks and keys in the entire prison. Have you ever wondered why I think the phrase “accountability” is such a bullshit cliche? Well, there you have one of the many reasons I feel that way. Maybe the California guard is going to get into a bit more trouble, but forgive me for doubting that. Once the story dies down, he’ll likely go back to his old ways. And remember this: if somebody is going to verbally and physically assault a person in public, what do you think that person does when behind closed gates and in an environment in which nobody can or will hold him to account?

If you do this at a bank or a football game, what do you do to prisoners that nobody is inclined to believe in the first place? “This does not represent our staff our standards,” the prison says. This is a familiar variation on the “one bad apple” cliche. “One bad apple” drives me insane, not simply as a anti-social rationalization of the abuse of power, but as a devoted word nerd. The proverb is “One bad apple spoils the barrel.” That is, a bad apple isn’t an isolated incident, it’s an infection that ruins all the apples. I suppose that the average American is so unfamiliar with fresh, unpreserved food that this doesn’t make much sense to him. More’s the pity on both accounts. But we are really losing something when the phrase becomes a twisted rationalization about exceptions when it’s meant to talk about systemic problems and the need to stay vigilant to protect systems. Yet should I expect more from a collective that also seems to think that the misstated cliche “I could care less” means that one doesn’t care at all? No, people, take it from this word nerd, you need to make the Herculean effort to add the word “not” to that phrase to get your (presumed) intention across. I have been know to reply to people who say/write “I could care less” with “So do it. It’s ‘I could not care less!'” But such inattention to simple and fundamental detail might be part of the syndrome that allows abusive prisons guards to become a story of “man bits dog,” when in fact it’s a case of “dog bites man.”