The Chief Flips the Bird

Well, the island collectively dropped its jaw when the news came out. Se fue muy molesto read the headline in The New Day, our local newspaper; “He Left Hot and Bothered,” would be the equivalent in English.

And the “he” is a pretty important he, since Héctor Pesquera is the head of the police department, which in turn is the second largest force in the United States (New York City is number 1).

Well, the question on everybody’s lips is, “why?” Granted, the job couldn’t have been much fun, since morale is low, public confidence in the police is virtually nil, the politicians are busy fighting each other—sometimes to the point of fisticuffs—and, to top it all off, the United States Department of Justice is suing the police department for violations of civil rights.

And was that the problem? Because yesterday, federal judge Gustavo Gelpí appointed Juan Mattos to be the federal monitor to assure that an 18-year reform of the Police Department was going according to plan.  

Pesquera denied that the appointment of Mattos has anything to do with his decision. However, Pesquera also refused to say why he was retiring and returning to his home in Florida.

And Mattos was presented to the public two days ago at the governor’s mansion, at which everybody and his brother showed up, except….right, you know who….

"Pesquera se cansó de las determinaciones apresuradas y el ridículo ayer, donde el Gobierno anunció un alegado monitor sin estar el Jefe de la Policía y sin dar detalles sobre la contratación, es el mejor ejemplo", dijo González.

Roughly, “Perquera got tired of political pressure, and the best example was the ridiculousness yesterday, when the government announced an alleged monitor without the chief being there and without giving details about how he was contracted,” said González.

“He works very hard—Saturday and Sunday, included—and he has the respect of the force,” said my friend Tony, who is the kind of guy who knows the inside story. What he didn’t do, apparently, was play the political game terribly well. And that’s crucial, because the reform won’t come cheap—it’s guesstimated that it will cost 300 million bucks over the course of a decade. Which means that any police chief is going to have to go to the capitol and press the flesh.

Pesquera made over a quarter of a million bucks annually, but guess what?

…wasn’t worth it.

The Dancing Libertarian

Right, here’s a guy with a truly wonderful idea. He wants to get 10,000 lunatics together on the Fourth of July, all of them heavily armed with rifles slung against their backs, gather them at Arlington Cemetery, march them across the Potomac into Washington, troop around the Senate, White House, and Supreme Court, and then march over the bridge into Virginia again.

Adam Kokesh, the intellectual author of this plan, is planning to do this—if he gets the support—to send out a little message. He invokes Tom Jefferson, and the famous line, “when the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

Well, there is a little problem. The only guns allowed in DC are handguns, which have to be registered in the city. So the police chief came out sounding quite reasonable—he’s willing to work with any group that wants to come in peaceably and protest. But no, boys, leave the guns at home.

There’s serious craziness out there. But wait—let me go check Adam out.

OK—I’ve just spent 25 minutes with Adam, having watched two clips. The first is a 21 minute affair, and covers his libertarian beliefs, his role in the Afghanistan war, his realization that the war was unjust and illegal, and then his realization that Obama, far from sticking up for the rights and freedoms of the people, was just as bad and in fact worse at jumping into bed with the rich and powerful. The second clip was of Adam standing and being filmed in a no-film zone in front of the White House. A clearly peeved cop, exercising all his patience, has decided not to arrest him.

He’s articulate and intelligent, is Adam, and makes a good spokesman. And yes, there are things I can agree with. Of course he has the right to stand on a sidewalk in front of the White House and be filmed, for which he was not arrested; he also has the right to dance at the Jefferson Memorial, which he did, and for which he was arrested.

And he may be right in his assertion that the cops are abusive and generally disrespective. In fact, I started this day by reading that Puerto Rico is going to have to put 600 million bucks into upgrading our police department over the next ten years. Given that we have a deficit of over 2 billion and are facing likely credit downgrades into junk status, it’s a little difficult to see how we are going to do this. The United States Department of Justice, however, has mandated that the police department correct what Justice deems civil rights violations. So a local federal judge is overseeing the process.

OK—that’s the local news. Adam and I can probably also join hands on the issue of the maker of my computer—a MacBook Pro. Apple, it seems, has shielded billions in taxes by employing multiple schemes that are, by the way, perfectly legal. Corporations can do things that you and I can’t do; here’s The New York Times on the subject.

Congressional investigators found that some of Apple’s subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless — exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world.

Beautiful! And I also agree with Adam—the statistics on the economy are bogus. Unemployment at 8 point-whatever percent? Does that count everybody who has stopped looking for work? And yes, the rich have certainly gotten richer.

It’s hard, in some ways, not to be cynical, not to feel that in almost every facet of our society we have consistently gone backward. We let our government take away significant liberties in the fear-drenched days after 9 / 11. We’ve engaged in unjust wars and gotten the whole world to hate us. Our cops have too often used force against us.

So I’m happy to report good news; last Friday, May 17, I took part in a march against homophobia, and what an affair it was! Best, how many groups came out and protested, how organized the whole affair was! And despite some estimates of only 200 participants, there were, I can tell you, many, many more.

The mood was great; spirits were high. And yes, there were many kids there—teenagers and people in their early twenties. For the first time in Puerto Rico, there was a large, organized and multilateral march for gay rights, and against homophobia.

Our hour had come. And no, Adam, not with armed weapons slung across our backs….