He's twitchin' like a fuckin' chicken

by: Dark Wraith

Below is a YouTube video of a drunken Erie, Pennsylvania, policeman talking about his work. Among other comments he makes during the video, Officer James Cousins II engages in an animated monologue about a murder victim, 31-year-old Rondale Jennings Sr.; specifically, Cousins describes what Jennings looked like as he lay dead on the ground.



According to the Associated Press, officials in the Erie Police Department are trying to get YouTube to pull the video.

Cousins has been suspended with pay while an investigation proceeds. The head of the Erie Police Department, Steve Franklin, is currently refusing to discuss the matter, ostensibly because of the on-going internal review. In the CNN video below, we hear from the mother of the murder victim who was the subject of the law enforcement officer's derisive, graphic monologue.



While this will ultimately be cast as merely an isolated incident involving roguish behavior on the part of a single law enforcement officer, readers are encouraged to consider the possibility that, far from being an aberration, Erie Police Officer James Cousins II represents the pervasive, callous norm of modern police, who consider that their work puts them not only above the rule of law, but apart from the essentials of common human decency.

While Mr. Cousins will likely be punished to one extent or another, citizens should consider that this will happen only because of the unusual circumstance that he was caught on video mocking the suffering and grief of victims and survivors.

Desecrations by law enforcement personnel will continue, just as they have throughout the past. The only difference these days is that police must watch out for the occasional, furtively held video camera capturing them in their moments of glib, if drunken, clarity.