It’s always bothered me when countries known for their history of being terrible manage to do something better than the United States does.
An old post of mine from Kuro5hin.Org, dated “Thu Nov 9th, 2000 at 05:00:20 AM EST”.
It would appear that South Africa is in a position to teach the U.S. (or at least the cities of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago) how to deal with offences by police officers. According to this story in the London Times, they are now dealing with a recent case where police officers used prisoners to train attack dogs.
For those of you who are tired of a) the U.S. election stories and b) our new discussion of chartering the Virtual State Kuro5hin, this should give sufficient cause for venting in another direction.
As the Times reports, the South African Broadcasting Corporation has come into possession of a video of a dog training exercise at which 6 officers beat a group of black prisoners and, after taunting their dogs, set them on the prisoners to train them to be “vicious and aggressive”. Apparantly, this video had been in circulation among South African police for some time and had been “shown at police barbecues for entertainment”. The South African government immediately ordered the arrest of the six officers, all of whom were still serving in the police force.
Now, after some of the particularly egregious examples of police activity here in the States (the California case where prison guards organized fights between inmates, the New York case where police shot an unarmed man 40-something times, the Chicago case where an officer shot a driver reaching for her cell phone and pretty much anything done by the L.A.P.D), isn’t it nice to see that South Africa, at least, knows how to deal with these things, even if the U.S. can’t seem to figure it out?
Feh.
