officers - The Black Vault

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car. A.nd now, the manacles in placP-~
drain their nervous fear by .club· ,..
victim into insensibility .. That c1. t\
understood as activity of normal m, J:
the infantry, such reactions again!>.
enemy soldier caught -after a chase we. .{
not be extraordinary). ~·
What alters the character of the episo
is of course the presence of as many as l
other police officers who simply stood by,
as though they were official witnesses at
an execution that came after a jury trial,
two appe;,tls tQ state courts, two to f~deral
. courts and finally consideration by ·the
Supreme Court: Proceed with the exeeution.
Can we assume that the .official
onlookers were taking natural, vicarious
relief from the savage beating, as though
they had been directly threatened? .
One has to decline to believe this; an
assembly of that size imposes a sense of
security in a Him vs. Us situation; as the
-ratio of policemen to fugitives increases,
aberrational behavior becomes less and
less plausible ..
One has to conclude that there is an
insensibility jn the Los Angeles police that
is difficult to understand and impossible to
d,efend. Joseph Wambaugh has written.
about the . phenomenon .in his famous
novels. But it remains inexplicable, in
; i particular when exercised by the .police,
r-r • who are a part of the judicial system. And
that it is everywhere deemed inexplicable
is the one redeeming factor -in the grisly
episode in Los Angeles. ·
WiUiam i; Buckley Jr. is a syndicated I
columnist.