Interesting article by

Norm Stamper-Retired Seattle police chief

, Disclosure: During my rookie days back in the sixties as a San Diego police officer I used excessive force, more than once.Visceral memories of these incidents help shape an answer to the question of why certain cops engage in brutal behavior, and others don't.

As police brutality cases go, it may not be one for the annals.

In February, King County, WA sheriff's deputy Paul Schene deposited a slender 15-year-old girl into a holding cell and ordered her to remove her shoes. The teen used her right toe to loosen the heel of her left sneaker, which she then cast off, the rubber-soled shoe apparently striking Schene in the shin.

As she began the mirror process with the other shoe, Schene stormed the holding cell, kicked the girl in (what appears to be) the groin, chased her across the cell, grabbed her by her hair, flung her to the concrete floor, burrowed his knees into her back, slugged her twice in (what appears to be) the head, and handcuffed her, all of this on camera. He then yanked her by her hair to her feet and "escorted" her out door, and out of our view.

The girl, who had offered no resistance, reported trouble breathing. Paramedics were called. Schene's report declared that the teenager had suffered a "panic attack."

Pretty bad. But does it stand up to the LAPD Rodney King beating? Or the NYPD torture of Abner Louima? Or the countless other videotaped police attacks we've seen in recent years?

Yes.

The Schene attack didn't last nearly as long the King beating. It wasn't as sadistic as the broom-handled, sodomizing case of Louima in Brooklyn's 70th Pct. But it's just as painful to watch: a six-two, 195-pound man pummeling a frightened child.

Cops are allowed to use physical or lethal force only as "necessary to effect an arrest, to defend themselves or others from violence, or to accomplish other police duties according to law."

Apart from the question of why in the world they'd do it with today's omnipresent cameras rolling, why do certain cops resort to excessive force?

How do we prevent this kind of behavior in the future?

Please don't say through (1) more thorough screening of law enforcement candidates, or (2) better training. They're both critical. But law enforcement doesn't pick bad apples. IT MAKES THEM, and not through academy training.

Forty-three years ago I was an idealistic, vaguely liberal 21-year-old when the San Diego Police Department hired me. The last thing on my mind was taking to the streets to punish people. And lest there be any doubt about the department's policy, the police academy, even then, drove it home: excessive force was grounds for termination.

So, why did I abuse the very people I'd been hired to serve?

Not to get too psychological, I did it because the power of my position went straight to my head;

because other cops I'd come to admire did it;

and because I thought I could get away with it.

Which I did--until a principled prosecutor slapped me upside the head and demanded to know whether the U.S. Constitution meant anything to me.

It comes down to this: real cops, those with a conscience, those who honor the law, must step up and take control of the cop culture.

is the increased use of drugs and alcohol to self medicate the escalating tensions we undergo as we struggle to stay above the rapids, financially, socially and psychologically. Whether bought at the local grocery store ,legally prescribed or obtained circumspectly, the astronomical rate of their use points to our inability to cope with the world in which we realize that our existence requires our complicity in the same machine that is eliminating us, while we are fed the myth that if we only strive harder we can stay afloat.

Although these pharmeceuticals buy us a short respite,actually they only entangle us deeper in the circuitry as we come to rely on their more frequent use which onlu delivers us into total incapacity. I believe our political and financial crisis is a result of intoxicated elites who lost touch with their own inner voice long ago as they frenentically struggled to deny their own panic at being in a world out of control, a world they themselves have created in their assumption of power.

That those farther down the line act out, only points to the dead end that has been created in our national myth, previously camouflaged by going West or following in the footsteps of Horatio Alger . We can no longer kid ourselves. Of course many of us never could, but now we are reaching a critical mass.

Our schism in redressing the core issues in this country of of inequality and justice have been deepened by denial and finger pointing..We are in deep pain in America, but instead of facing it we waste precious time in blame. And those of us without a voice do what they can to make themselves heard.

After a while it must be obvious that YOU are the one with the problem. Six months out of two years that were okay.Even with a fixed horse race you have better odds.

Don't even ask for change - thats his problem- your problem is to get off a sinking boat before it takes you down.

I think Cary's wonderful exposition on his belief, given in his last paragraph, buys you a wide range of entrances into the world of Christianity or almost any other religion. Believing in such a way does not requires declarations,announcements from a rooftop or beating your chest -it only requires that you exhibit love and understanding to those who cross your path and in doing so perhaps you can widen their understanding of what the idea of God could be , if we only disposed of our judgements and condemnations of others.