The poisonous contradictions of coptalk
Today, the official language associated with police violence is notoriously tortured. The phrase âofficer-involved shootingâ ubiquitously deforms a straightforward locution featuring a subject, a transitive verb, and an object (A cop shot someone!) into an agentless gerund, as if a crankish Victorian ethnographer has translated a foreign expression as proof of some exotic, alien system of thought (An-officer-proximate-to-a-weapon-discharging-has-been!). In breaking news coverage, which frequently reproduces police press releases without modification, the results can run from euphemistic to downright bizarre. âSt. Louis police officer killed by colleague who âmishandledâ gun, authorities say,â ran coverage of a 2019 incident, in which an off-duty female cop died after an âaccidental discharge of a weapon.â Subsequent investigation revealed that she had been shot in the chest in a drunken session of Russian roulette with two on-duty cops, one of whom allegedly had a history of domestic abuse that included forcing girlfriends to play the âgameâ with him. âAn off-duty Hoover police officer is under investigation after a dispute with his wife early Saturday resulted in a handgun being discharged and her being shot,â claimed another news source in Alabama, again citing police officials. The officer in question resigned; two months later, he made headlines once more: âA former Hoover police officer investigated after his gun discharged and struck his wife in February was arrested over the weekend on domestic violence charges.â Guns donât shoot people, an observer might note, except when theyâre the guns of police, who donât shoot people either, but get mixed up in officer-involved shootings instead.
