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A cautionary tale
Topic Started: Feb 27 2014, 11:30 PM (149 Views)
Quasimodo

Quote:
 
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/02/26/implosion/#more-34814

Implosion

February 26th, 2014

A little noticed news story raises an interesting question. A significant percentage of an entire California police department was arrested for corruption and extortion, including the retired chief and the acting chief. CBS News reports:

KING CITY, Calif. — One-third of a central California town’s police force was taken off duty after several officers were arrested in a scheme to take for themselves the impounded cars of some poor Hispanic residents, authorities said.


In the scheme, vehicles were impounded and towed, and when the car owners couldn’t pay the fees, the vehicles were sold or given away for free to some officers, Monterey County District Attorney Dean Flippo said Tuesday.

Four King City officers – including the recently retired police chief and the acting chief – have been arrested in the scheme.


They’d impound cars — towed away by a firm owned by a relative of one of the cops — and sell or keep the vehicles for themselves. But how could such a situation have come to pass?

The situation illustrates what happens when corruption acquires the critical mass to take over an entire organization until there are essentially no internal controls left to stop it. Then the entire edifice rots uncontrollably and the process continues, unhindered by self-restraint until some external check brings it to a halt. In this case there were external controls which were eventually triggered and caused the arrest of the city police force.

When an institution’s internal controls failed completely it just keeps chugging along, like a runaway automaton, until Professor Arithmetic and Engineer Murphy step in to pull the plug.

On a very large scale this phenomenon describes why a Hitler, Napoleon or Stalin can do so much damage. Having overwhelmed the checks and balances of their respective countries, nothing could stop them until the very forces of the universe seemingly applied the brakes. This metaphor has often been used to describe the defeat of Napoleon in 1812. The great commander advanced inexorably to Moscow until he fell back starved and defeated — but by whom exactly? According to one point of view it was not Kutuzov (who remembers him?) that defeated the French Emperor, but Russia itself. Time, distance, cold and attrition, plus the inability of Napoleon to restrain himself, annihilated the Grand Armee.

These same factors, on a much more tawdry scale caused the downfall of the King City police force. They just went too far; didn’t stop, couldn’t stop until the whole shebang went over the cliff. They forgot there were other forces in the universe, forces they could not control and one day these universal forces showed up on their doorstep. Looking down at the smoldering wreckage a bystander can’t help but wonder: what were they thinking? Maybe they were thinking that in this age of spin the facts can be overruled by the lie.

It can’t. Time, distance, bankruptcy, and growing resentment eventually claim their due. But the supremacy of facts surprises people who have grown up in the belief that everything can be “fixed”. In the movie the “Godfather”, long-time henchman Genco Abbandando appeals to the Godfather to fix his cancer. “Stay with me Godfather. Help me meet death. If he sees you, he will be frightened and leave me in peace. You can say a word, pull a few strings, eh? We’ll outwit that bastard as we outwitted all those others.” It is perhaps a dying man’s ravings, but there was half-belief in the fixability of everything nonetheless.

The Godfather versus Death? Don’t be ridiculous. Well how about Detroit versus Arithmatic? Think that’s any less ridiculous?

(snip)

Maybe there’s a moral in there somewhere. Probably it is this: do you know if your car is being towed away?
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Quasimodo


Any resemblance to any entities or establishments in or around Durham, North Carolina, is of course
entirely coincidental...

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