The police disinformation about passengers watching the SEPTA rape is just one of a series of cop lies rocking the U.S. political debate. Enough is en

SEPTA rape case is latest in a U.S. pandemic of police lying. There must be consequences. | Will Bunch

submited by

Style Pass

2021-10-27 20:30:09

The police disinformation about passengers watching the SEPTA rape is just one of a series of cop lies rocking the U.S. political debate. Enough is enough!

You know the old adage that a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth gets a chance to put its pants on. In the aftermath of a shocking rape aboard a SEPTA El train as it rolled into 69th Street Station in Upper Darby last week, the pants of truth were apparently out at the dry cleaners for a few days.

The alarming first draft of the story about that SEPTA subway car that came from the lips of police officers such as Upper Darby Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt — that during a brutal sexual assault of a passenger that lasted about six minutes, a carload of passengers watched and even filmed videos but did nothing to stop the attack — fit the broader post-pandemic “law and order” narrative of an amoral modern world gone mad.

“I’m appalled by those who did nothing to help this woman,” Bernhardt said a couple of days after the rape arrest of a 35-year-old man. “Anybody that was on that train has to look in the mirror and ask why they didn’t intervene or why they didn’t do something.” Fueled by the internet and the hothouse environment of right-wing talk radio, the SEPTA rape saga didn’t just travel halfway around the world but made multiple orbits.