Other people's children

Coloreto Cukali

1.

In the mass of videos where police in spacesuits chase high school students like rabbits, hitting them with rubber batons, usually 4-5 police with batons, and a high school student with a backpack, I came across a peaceful video: during a break, a policeman taking bread from his family.

So, 'police officers are people, like us', even sensitive and family-oriented, meant the message published in government media. For a moment I was touched. A father, a wife and a child. The child hugs him. The wife gives him bread, so that he doesn't have to steal from broken shops.

Then, after the break is over, the policeman puts on his spacesuit and heads off to war. He will work overtime today as well.

His job: to strangle other people's children.

2.

Other videos, with police officers in spacesuits leaving indelible trauma of violence on teenagers and young people, pass by one after the other, and the police officers in spacesuits – we have no way of knowing if the police-parent is among them – give me a clear picture of what it means to be a police officer in uniform. It is their body language, it is their legible actions, in broad daylight, that create an interesting portrait of the bloody police-parent. A man who loves his child very much, but, at the sound of the whistle, puts on the spacesuit and rushes to break the bones of someone else's son, the one who burns trash cans and breaks windows. Opposite, we have 2 frustrated citizens: a young boy and a young police officer.

3.

The first has been watching for years how his parent's dignity, and even his human being, is violated and trampled on. At home, he only hears conversations: we don't have enough money, we can't buy this and that. Even when he gets a diploma, he has no hope of ever raising a family nest, much less having a satisfying job and a dignified life. He hears that Albania theoretically belongs to everyone, but in practice only to a few; he is bombarded by the successes in life of patronage figures, criminals and scoundrels; and he sees that there are only 2 paths for him - to go to London to work as a shepherd or to become like his father: unpaid, humble and trampled on. And he explodes like a pressure cooker, to quote av. Matlia.

So he goes out and burns, breaks and destroys with blind rage, because there is no powerful punch to strike the heart of the concrete man. He and his entourage, against whom his rage is directed, are hiding somewhere, and they bring out the man in uniform.

4.

The man in uniform is also frustrated. First, he is hungry and tired. He has a guaranteed salary, but he too cannot buy a house; he too does not receive any decent services, in education or health; his wife's hand also wrinkled as she passes by vegetables and fruits and has to choose not what to buy for the child, but what not to give the child to eat because there is no money. He knows that his bosses eat and drink with crime; he is forced to servile himself to them to keep his job and perhaps even do dirty work for them, for the same reason. He understands that he works in an institution seized by crime, and he has two options: to conform and do like the others, or to lower his head and pretend not to see. He too is a pot waiting to explode. And here they give him the opportunity to vent: go and beat those puppies!

5.

It's not hard to read the profile of a police officer in a spacesuit. He may be strong and athletic, but he's untrained. He has no sense of proportion. Poorly educated – to the point where he may not even realize that the fault for his poor education lies with that man in the concrete villa and his entourage of crime, eunuchs, and his own cronies – he sees only one enemy: this scoundrel in front of him. Maybe he's sharp, street-smart, and understands who's to blame. But he needs to vent. He'd like to punch that "mountain" too, but there's nothing easier than punching someone weaker than you. Who has the same problems as you. But you just want to vent your fatigue, the fact that you're away from your family, your stress, your worries, everything, on the bones of this high school student who comes from cold, windowless classrooms where patrons teach.

6.

We can say that he is doing his duty. Yes, what is this duty? And, when they hired him, how did they explain to him the extent of violence he can exercise?

And, beyond the stick, does he have a brain? Can he analyze that these protests also seek to improve his child's future? Or is he simply a machine of violence?

Let's not lie to ourselves.

The frustrated student vents violence when he sees the police uniform, because he identifies it with the state of violence. 

The frustrated police officer unleashes violence because he finds someone weaker and who won't give up. Did he give up? One more reason to break his ribs.

The man with the spacesuit and the rubber baton, even though he may have a family and children, has only one psychological profile: frustrated and bloodthirsty.

Yes.

Yes!

Both can exist within a single man: father at home, bloodthirsty at work.

7.

On top of a concrete cube, while they were demolishing the National Theater – perhaps among these present-day people there may be some of the policemen who beat us back then – an old policeman, without a spacesuit, so not a policeman trained to beat (perhaps an institution guard) and who was my father's age and eyes, begged me to come down. I believe he read the despair, the suffering I had inside and my need to react violently, as I saw the scumbags demolishing a symbol that was important to me, and he begged me to come down. HE BEGGED ME. Even though he had received orders to beat me. My eyes softened, and I did not speak back. I got down from the concrete cube and left outside the perimeter. After 5 minutes, there were civilians without uniforms and policemen in spacesuits and they bled everyone they found. I had escaped. From a policeman. Yes, policemen are people. Yes, police officers could have fatherly eyes. And a police officer who acts like a father to other people's children doesn't kill you.

8.

Tell that to the police officer in the video released by government television, because maybe he doesn't have time to read me.

Let him tell us if he's really a father or a murderer.

So that his child doesn't become a bloodthirsty like his father and his friends.