’80S HITS: Also in this week’s City Paper, an annoyingly pretentious but nonetheless affecting article quoting abandoned civilian complaints against the D.C. police. The complaints were filed in the 1980s, but never dealt with, and are basically sitting in boxes being shoved between various agencies who are trying not to have to deal with them (since each agency has its own, more recent, cases to handle). There are between 80 and 100 of these boxes.

I will ignore the condescending-ironic framing of the piece–no wait, I won’t ignore it, let me mock it for a moment before we get to the good stuff. The piece (by very good reporter Jason Cherkis) is titled, “Beat Literature: Finding artistic value in the city’s unwanted police complaints.” Ohhhhkay. If they were just strapping this “artistic value” load onto the back of the story because they needed a punny title, that’s sub-optimal, but in itself not a huge journalistic crime. But then, in order to justify the title, Cherkis has to yank us back to this “artistic” theme throughout the article: “Raymond Chandler couldn’t have wrapped up a piece on a more hard-boiled note. …These complaints amount to literature… all those literary pieces of alleged police violence… the gothic prose style… The author [i.e. the guy complaining] builds the tension up with each sentence, with each new detail. …The story’s greatness is in its ambiguity… these pieces of literature…” Cherkis’s own piece of literature isn’t online, so you’ll have to believe me when I say that none of these “primitive art/folk art” cliches add anything to the story.

Anyway. Now that that’s out of my system, let’s look at the complaints themselves, because (as usual) Cherkis is on to a real story. Reading real people’s descriptions of lousy things that happen to them is always illuminating–it builds empathy. In particular, the complaints Cherkis quotes give you a real sense of crack-era D.C. cops as unpredictable, club-first-ask-questions-later forces of nature:

[clipped]

“The so call jump-outs do not wear any type of uniform to identify themself so people really don’t know rather they are policemens, or rather there are stone criminals.”

“There was a man underneath the Stairs in my backyard. He walked towards me. Then he grabbed me by my throat, threw a gun in my face, and pushed me to the ground while choking me.

“He said don’t move. I said what’s the problem? He said shut the f— up. I said ‘what’s Up?’ He then said if you say another word that he would bust me in my face. I then Realized that there was a badge around his neck and that I wasn’t being robbed.”

John J. Miller on the D.C. police department here.