Friday, January 14, 2011

More On Latest LAPD Murder

If this is an accurate transcription/copy&paste of the LAPD release, we're struck by the apparently specific terminology used to identify all "actors" in this.
Here is how the LAPD describe [sic] the event:
Upon arrival the officers were directed and located the naked suspect, a male Black, 25- years old, behaving erratically. The officers attempted to speak and detain the suspect, however the suspect ran away and the officers followed the suspect on foot. The suspect ran to another location where he found his shorts and put them on. The officers tried again to talk and detain the suspect, who again ran to another apartment complex a very short distance away.
When the officers attempted to detain the suspect in the apartment complex doorway, the suspect immediately attacked the officers. During the fight the suspect aggressively punched both officers in the face and head. One officer, a male Black, 17 months with LAPD, shot the suspect to stop the attack. The second officer, a male Asian, 5 years with LAPD, was also physically battered and dazed during the incident. The Officers took the suspect into custody and immediately called for medical assistance.
The suspect, who died after being transported to a local hospital, has been identified as "former MTSU football player Reggie Doucet," according to KTLA. Doucet reportedly lived at the apartment complex where the incident occurred; a neighbor says Doucet "was never violent in the seven years they were neighbors."
We'll actually guess it has something to do w/ one of the court orders the paramilitary LAPD operates under, but both the quick & the dead reading/scanning as if they were dog breeds is a little off-putting. Or illustrative.

2 comments:

Sheesh said...

This is kind of normal for the police, fwiw. Their reports, stemming from their radio traffic transcripts will uniformly refer to actors and subjects etc. with 'whiskey mike', 'bravo mike' (in our area anyhow). It's a safe bet that if their radio code for black male is 'mike bravo' that it will get transcribed in all of their reports the same way: male black.

I don't see this as evidence of dehumanization.

M. Bouffant said...

Police Beat Ed.:

To us, virtually all contemporary human activity is dehumanizing, & the LAPD's various activities are high on the list. But what do we know?

It's certainly an odd turn of phrase. Also, the age of the victim & the ossifers' service being juxtaposed made us think "activist federal judges trying to hamstring the thin blue line." But not doing it well.

We prefer nouns to adjectives, but recent events indicate that sort of attitude leads to Jared Lee Laughner land.