A day or so after Anchorage Police Department officer Jean Mills was shot and seriously injured by former convict Kenneth Robinson in East Anchorage, I noticed a sign in the median of Fireweed Lane promoting an upcoming cagefight. The theme: cops vs. cons.And what is the ideological function of this cagefight? It removes crime from its social setting (with its poverty, accumulation by dispossession, control networks) and transforms it into something like a struggle (the struggle for existence) between two types of naturally opposed or competing animals....Fights usually have promotional themes, but something that makes a spectacle of law enforcement getting beat up or beating people up just seemed like the wrong tone.
The fight promoter, Jason Hutchings, told me there were only two current law enforcement officers fighting — one of them is a trooper and the other is a corrections officer. They will be using fake names, he said.
He saw nothing wrong with the theme. Every fight has a story, he said. This was a classic one.
There’s always going to be people that hate cops always going to be people that hate cons.Always and forever.
