Is sodomy with a stick worse than death?

The outcry over Justin Volpe's abuse of Abner Louima -- compared with comparative silence about decades of police killings -- suggests assaulting someone's manhood is worse than killing him.

By Jill Nelson

May 26, 1999 | New York police officer Justin Volpe's guilty plea Tuesday to charges of depriving Abner Louima of his civil rights, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and witness tampering came as no real surprise, given that all last week was spent with his cronies in the New York Police Department testifying to what we already knew: that on Aug. 9, 1997, Volpe and three other police officers beat Louima brutally in a police cruiser, and then back at the station house Volpe sodomized Louima with a broken broom handle while a fellow officer held him down.

While he is now an admitted rapist, sodomizer and sadist of the highest order, Volpe ain't blind. Pleading guilty is simply a desperate attempt to get leniency from the court and save his ass -- and I do mean that literally as well as figuratively -- under an avalanche of damning testimony and damn near certain conviction. The whole defense effort has been both offensive and pitiful, from suggestions that Louima's massive internal injuries -- damage that required multiple surgeries and months of hospitalization -- were the result of consensual homosexual "rough sex," to the bizarre parading about of Volpe's black girlfriend, as if her very existence negated the possibility of Volpe being racist. Hello! Thomas Jefferson had a black girlfriend too, Sally Hemings, and that didn't stop him from owning slaves, demeaning black people in his writings and perpetuating slavery.

The bottom line is that none of the weak balloons the defense tried to float could get off the ground after the testimony of Volpe's colleagues. The image of Volpe strutting around the precinct brandishing a stick covered with shit and blood, preening in sadistic glee, beating walls and bragging to his cronies that "I took a man down tonight" is simply unforgettable, and unforgivable. Trotting out a soul sister girlfriend ain't gonna make that shit disappear, and anyway, so what? Even black women have the right to bad taste.

But even if the judge does shave a few years off his possible life sentence, Volpe can probably kiss his ass goodbye. What began as a dick thing outside a nightclub in Brooklyn, when Volpe was decked by an unknown assailant and chose Louima to blame and punish, will as likely as not end as a dick thing inside some prison. The brothers in the joint are waiting for you, officer Volpe, and it ain't with open arms. As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end, or something like that.

While it's impossible not to be relieved, and happy on some level, that Volpe will surely serve time in prison for his sadistic crimes -- where he will definitely, and appropriately, get his just desserts -- it's impossible not to wonder why this case galvanized the attention of so many citizens, not only in New York, but across the nation.

Next Page: Who remembers Eleanor Bumpers?

• View blog reactions