Friday, August 5, 2011

The Police Love To Kill

It will come as no surprise to many of you that I have a severe distaste for the police. There are many reasons for this, mainly that they are trained to treat everyone as a suspect of something regardless of if a person actually committed a crime. Couple that with case after case of abuse by police officers and what we end up with is a thuggish force that is nothing more than your average high school bully with a gun.

One funny (i.e. sick and disgusting) thing about the police force is that they, as a whole, were so famous for just shooting people without cause that cities began to gave them all TAZERs. I guess if they are going to shoot something at someone, lets make it electricity instead of a bullet. At least that way the victim (yes, victim) has a greater chance of surviving a police assault. That is unless you are unlucky enough to receive a beating and TAZERing simultaneously from a group of rabid thugs while also having the misfortune of being mentally disabled.

Recently in Fullerton, CA, a group of six police officers beat a homeless mentally ill man and TAZERed him repeatedly until he was dead. These six police officers murdered a man in the street in view of cameras and the public. I guess they missed the class at the academy about unnecessary force and when is the right time to stop beating the shit out of another human being.
Eye witnesses at the scene claim the six officers tasered him five times and beat him beyond recognition, which the disturbing photo of him in hospital shows.

Mark Turgeon, who was there, said: 'They kept beating him and tasering him. I could hear zapping, and he wasn't even moving.

'He had one arm in front of him like this, he wasn't resisting. And they kept telling him, "He's resisting, quit resisting", and he wasn't resisting.'
Yes, this man obviously got what was coming to him. His crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time and for that crime the punishment is death.
According to Gawker, Thomas - who suffered from schizophrenia - caught the attention of the police after someone reported that a burglar was breaking into cars parked near a Fullerton bus station.

When officers approached Thomas in the depot parking lot and tried to arrest him, he resisted.
Now before anyone loses their head and says "Well obviously he resisted. They had to beat him into submission", I would like to point out the fact that he was mentally ill. There is a way to subdue someone without killing them or even breaking a bone. You might even be able to do it without *gasp* beating someone. I know that is a hard pill for most police to swallow, but I assure you that it is true.

So since he resisted arrest the police must have had crazy injuries, right? Right?
Police will not issue a statement saying the issue is under investigation but they did say that six officers were involved and two 'suffered broken bones in the fight'.

However, they recently retracted that statement saying that it was only 'soft tissue damage'.
So the police lied about having broken bones and it was later revealed that they suffered "soft tissue damage". Do you know what that is also known as? Scrapes and bruises. The police get a boo-boo and a mentally ill man gets murdered in the street. That sounds a little less than fair, but what do I know? I am just a crazy liberal.

I am sure that many will come to the defense of the police and say "oh, if you aren't a police officer then you don't know what it is like on the streets. People are evil and in the heat of the moment bad things happen." You know, I don't need to be a fireman to understand that giving and arsonist a book of matches isn't a good idea. I don't need to be a police officer to understand that it is dangerous on the streets.

What does this say about our standards for hiring police officers in this country? Are we so hard up for badges on the street that we will hire people who are obviously unstable enough to not stop beating someone? It seems to be the police officers in this case that are mentally unstable and lack control. When someones face looks like hamburger it is probably time to stop beating them.

This brings up another issue of the overuse of TAZERs. Electricity is deadly. How can a police officer know if the person that they are about to TAZE has a heart condition, or a pace-maker, or an insulin pump? They can't and if one person dies because of the misuse of a TAZER by a group of bullies then that is one person too many.

The final issue that this story highlights is the need for good citizens of this country to record everything that the police are doing. If you see the police pull someone over, pull over as well and record the show. Do it while it is still legal because there is a movement afoot in this country to make it illegal to film the police. Without footage of this incident there would have been very little notice in the media. The person you film getting accosted by the police very well could owe you their life.
(Source 1, Source 2, Source 3)

The police, like the government, should fear the populace. Not fear of getting killed or some sort of vigilantly justice but the fear of being held accountable. That fear should motivate them to use their brains when arresting someone and perhaps exercise a little bit of restraint.

After this article if anyone is still on the fence about what happened to this man, watch the video and check out the before and after pictures. If that doesn't sway your opinion then you must be a heartless wretch.

Alternate Source: LA Times

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