It has not been a banner year for our armed public servants from the City of New York. When we last left them, they were executing a two-pronged strategy to protest Mayor Bill de Blasio's alleged anti-cop rhetoric, first hijacking the funeral of two murdered cops, then refusing to do their jobs. What did the horrible race-baiting, cop-hating demagogue de Blasio do to warrant these bold, courageous, and dangerous acts of protest and dissent? Well, 1) He ran in opposition to Stop and Frisk, the policy of stopping and searching pedestrians, which was agreed by both its supporters and detractors to result in racial profiling in practice, and 2) He had the temerity to say that he'd told his black son to exercise extra care when interacting with the police in the wake of the NYPD's public execution of the unarmed and black Eric Garner. That it is flatly contradictory to simultaneously support profiling blacks as criminals and be offended at the suggestion that blacks should be conscious of being profiled as criminals doesn't seem to bother the NYPD's union or the rank-and-file officers it represents. Indeed, that's how the logic of white supremacy tends to operate: it is not enough to oppress, but the victims of the oppression must feel quietly grateful to be oppressed.
Anyway, on New Year's Eve, the New York Police Department requested the public's help in finding a man who grabbed an MTA worker, threw her on the ground, throttled her, and then ran away with a jaunty and satisfied smirk on his face. A few days later, the man turned himself in. It turns out that who the NYPD was on the hunt for was one Mirjan Lolja (yes, LOL-ja. yes.) -- a 7 year veteran of the NYPD, who apparently heroically took it upon himself to continue the NYPD's public relations campaign on his off time:
An NYPD officer is in police custody in connection with an attack last week on an MTA employee on a Bronx subway platform, police said.Officer Mirjan Lolja turned himself in Thursday at the 25th precinct in East Harlem where he is stationed. No charges have been filed yet.
Lolja, who was off duty at the time of the attack, has been suspended from the force pending an investigation by the NYPD's Internal Affairs unit, police said.
The 28-year-old transit worker told investigators that she was attacked at about 2:30 a.m. Dec. 23 by a man on the D train platform at the East Tremont Station. The man grabbed her from behind and pushed her to the floor, where he choked her before fleeing.
Here's a shot of Lolja smirking in satisfaction as he leaves the station:
We're as shocked as you to discover that cops in New York are violently assaulting the citizens they are entrusted to protect for basically no reason at all. Shocked. But what's more terrifying than what police officers are willing to do, for no reason, on camera and in public, is what they must be doing privately, off-camera, under the pretext of fighting crime.
The hilarious coda to this story is the treatment of this story in the news by the New York Daily News. Here's the headline from the story they wrote before they knew that the culprit was a police officer:
And here's the lede of that story:
A hulking brute grabbed a 28-year-old MTA employee up in a bear hug at a Bronx train station, shoved her onto the platform and began choking her in an unprovoked attack - then ran away smiling, authorities said Wednesday.
Here's the story after they found out that the culprit was a police officer:
And here's the lede of that story:
Police Officer Mirjan Lolja, 37, was suspended after the assault in which the Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker — who was on-duty and in her uniform — was allegedly put into a bear hug, thrown to the floor and choked, cops said.
Notice anything? Gone is the evocative "thug" in the headline and the "hulking brute" of the lede, and the sensationalism of the label of an "unprovoked" attack, replaced by plainspoken and bare nouns. Gone, too, is the directness of the active voice, replaced by a circumspect passive voice, accompanied by the (necessary) lawyerly "allegedly". The callousness of him smiling has been dropped, too, demoted to the second paragraph. This is no surprise -- it's just an example of the subtle way in which our media defers to and genuflects before law enforcement, shaping and coloring the narrative in their favor.
Next time you call someone a thug, New York Daily News, do make sure he's not a cop instead, just going about, doing his duty, giving out bear hugs of love.
