A series of found poems, Part 1:

I.

Qualified Immunity: How it protects Law Enforcement Officers.

Impudence: this crime could be committed by a Slave in a hundred different ways, and depended much upon the temper and caprice of the overseer as whether it was committed at all.

The monopoly on the legitimate use of violence is what defines modern government.

He could create the offense whenever it pleased him

The statute authorizes deadly force “in effecting an arrest or in preventing an escape from custody” if the officer “reasonably believes” it is necessary in order to “to effect the arrest and also reasonably believes that the person to be arrested has committed or attempted to commit a felony…or may otherwise endanger life or inflict serious physical injury unless arrested without delay.”

A look, a word, a gesture, accidental or intentional.

Oklahoma state law makes it a felony to touch a police officer even off duty and out of uniform.

II.

In this case there were all the necessary conditions for the commission of the crime charged:

Two short tempered men Combustible mixture             Alcohol and ego                                     Inconclusive fight                     neither seriously injured Police arrive However             One of them                 [bar fighters] Produces a police                                             credential He is allowed to handcuff the other                    [his opponent]                                     Place him under arrest for a felonious assault On an [off duty] law enforcement officer

III.

Then I found, too, that there were puzzling exceptions to this theory of slavery, in the fact that all black people were not Slaves, and all white people were not masters.