White Supremacist Cops Fired In Alabama — Raise Your Hand If You’re Shocked…

From YouTube description:

The Anniston Police Department in Alabama has just suspended two officers for their involvement in a white supremacist group.

Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola (Think Tank), and Hannah Cranston (Think Tank) hosts of The Young Turks discuss.

?The Anniston Police Department in Alabama knowingly employs neo-Confederate sympathizers, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports.

Josh Doggrell is a Lieutenant on the force. He is also the founder and chair of his area League of the South chapter. The League of the South (LOS) is a white supremacist organization that calls for southern states to secede and establish a Christian theocratic state run by ?Anglo-Celtics.? Doggrell has belonged to the group since 1995.

During a 2013 LOS meeting, Doggrell told the gathered crowd that his supervisors at the department were not only aware of his racist affiliations, they actively agreed with them.?

I’m not going to comment specifically on this story, our friends The Young Turks do a fantastic job of telling this story. I do want to address some outlying issues around a story such as this.

raise your hand
Image From thedailybeast.com

So, let me begin by addressing the conservative outcry that I’m sure is cued and ready to play like an old record. You know the one.? It has songs like:

“you’re race baiting”

“stop stirring the pot!”

“you’re creating racism!”

“if blacks stopped being criminals…”

“blacks are more racist…”

These are just a few conservative classics that we’ve all heard, over and over.

If anyone thinks this is an “isolated incident” or that the other “good cops” had no idea they were racists, please raise your hand.? I have some prime swamp land real estate I’d like to sell ya– hell, I’ll even throw in the magic beans for free!

Listen, we don’t point out these kinds of stories to make all cops look like racists. But, it is worth noting that many racists find it a bit too easy to have successful careers in Law Enforcement. Doggrell is a 16-year veteran.? Even if they never beat a suspect or falsify evidence, the fact that their “discretion” is compromised is more than enough to allow them to destroy people’s lives.

When we sit back and think about how much power police officers have, and how easy it would be for them to use that power to hurt the average citizen, let alone the poorest of citizens, I think we can begin to understand how important stories like this really are.

Power must always be checked by the citizens, not by government agencies who “police themselves.” Because we cede this responsibility to the police, we invite the kind of authoritarian future many of us fear is already here.

Here is the video of Dogrell speaking at the racist convention, and below it, a video of The Young Turks giving their commentary on it.