A police officer in Austin is out of a job after being caught on tape telling a local reporter that a woman deserves to get beaten if she’s acting “like a whore.”
Last week, Joy Diaz of KUT, the NPR member in Austin, was waiting outside the headquarters of the Austin Police Association, the local police union, to talk with union president Wayne Vincent about two police officers suspended for making jokes about rape victims. Back in October, the two cops were joking about a woman they saw walking by their car, and one of them said, “Go ahead and call the cops–they can’t un-rape you.” They didn’t know that the dashcam was on. When a local attorney investigating a routine car accident happened to get that footage, he uploaded it to YouTube. The two cops, identified as Mark Lyttle and Michael Castillo, received a lengthy suspension.
Scroll down to read more.
Apparently Diaz learned the hard way that the mentality expressed in that video goes pretty deep. While Diaz was waiting for Vincent,? Officer Andrew Pietrowski walked up to her out of nowhere and started talking about Ray Rice being caught on tape cold-cocking his then-fiancee, Janay, in an elevator. Pietrowski, a longtime member of the force, said that he thought the incident had been blown out of proportion. But then he started railing about women getting special treatment. That rant is reproduced in full.
“You think about the women’s movement today–‘Oh, we want to go to combat’ and ‘We want equal pay, and we want this.’ You want to go fight in combat and sit in a foxhole? You go right ahead. But a man can’t hit you in public here? Bullshit! You act like a whore, you get treated like one!”
A shocked Diaz had Austin police chief Art Acevedo listen to Pietrowski’s comments. Acevedo has made it a point to clean up the department’s image in his seven-plus years as chief. When Acevedo heard the tape, his response was immediate–anyone who thinks like that “has no business being a cop.” Gee, ya think?
Diaz’ story aired on Thursday–but by that time, Pietrowski was an ex-cop. He’d retired the previous Friday after finding out KUT was going to air his comments all over central Texas. According to the Austin American-Statesman, Pietrowski was due to retire at the end of the year. However, once word got out about his horribly sexist comments, he was asked–read, told–to go right away while he could still go decently. In a colossal understatement, Vincent said that Pietrowski’s comments were “disappointing” and did not represent the views of the rank-and-file.
The picture I immediately got was of a woman beaten half-senseless after making a sassy remark to her boyfriend or husband, and the responding officer telling her, “Well, you deserved it after what you said to him.” If these comments are any indication, there are more cops in this country who think like that than most of us suspected. Hopefully Acevedo and his counterparts in other cities will turn these sexist cops out sooner than later.
Let us know your thoughts at the Liberal America Facebook page. Sign up for our free daily newsletter to receive more great stories like this one.
Darrell Lucus, also known as Christian Dem in NC on Daily Kos, is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
