If you've been paying attention lately, you should be frightened. You should also be pissed off to a high degree. Why? Because the police in this country are coming closer every day to becoming the New Gestapo. Look into the rash of innocent victims of police brutality lately, usually during the execution of unconstitutional and controversial "No-Knock" search warrants. While it looks really dramatic in movies and on TV, the reality of the situation is a far cry from what they show. Do a little research on the subject and you will quickly become horrified to see what some "public servants" are doing, and what you are paying for.
I'm not talking about Rodney King getting a two minute beatdown on the news (which is a whole different matter I'll address in another post), I'm talking about the police kicking in someone's door at 3 A.M. and how sometimes it all goes terribly wrong. With a normal search warrant, if the police have the wrong house, car, guy or whatever, they can apologize and try again. With a "dynamic entry" or No-Knock warrant, they forcibly enter someone's home with their weapons already drawn. The justification for this is pretty flimsy and based on laziness IMHO. They say that knocking on a suspect's door gives them opportunity to flush "evidence" down the toilet. Big Fucking Deal. If someone has a stash small enough to flush all at once, why in the fuck do you need a fucking SWAT team in the first place? They're obviously small potatoes and not worth that kind of effort in the first place.
I don't know about you, but if my dog starts barking after midnight, I'm grabbing a flashlight and my bedside gun and going to see what the fuck it is. If it's nothing, great! But if it is something-or someone-that I need to know about, I have the upper hand, because I'm prepared to meet a threat. Someone in our home after midnight that we didn't specifically invite is getting at least a Grade A ass-beating for violating the sanctity of our home. If I found six or eight guys at my front door about to kick it in and I don't see cop cars in front of the house, I would be beyond alarmed, scared or whatever you want to call it. Things are going to be ugly for all parties concerned at that moment, because unless they have machine guns, I can match the cops in firepower & skill, I have Home Field Advantage and most of all, I have a family to protect.
OK, that's a worst case scenario, I know. Besides, I'm a law-abiding citizen and we live in a nice neighborhood so the cops have no reason to kick my door in, right? I'm sure that's what a lot of people thought when they went to sleep before tragedy struck them. The list is long, but what pisses me off more than the Thug mentality that seems to permeate the police these days is the upper echelon lying about this shit after the fact, trying to cover their incompetent asses just to save their jobs.
The victims are as varied as society itself. Click the links to be appalled:
Kathryn Johnston, a 92 year-old in Atlanta, GA, who lived in fear for her life because she lived in a bad neighborhood. Ms Johnston fired a shot into her ceiling when armed men broke down her door. The police responded with 39 rounds of fire, hitting her a number of times, and she bled to death on the floor while these heroes were putting handcuffs on her.
Derek J. Hale, a retired Marine sergeant in Wilmington, DE, who was shot at point-blank range for failing to comply with a police order to pull his hands out of his pockets. Did I mention he was being Tasered for the third time, convulsing and shouting that he was trying to but couldn't move his hands. Oh, and this all happened in front of a woman and her two children, aged 11 and 6.
Cory Maye of Prentiss, MS, who was not killed but is serving time on Death Row for shooting an unidentified intruder trying to protect his 18-month-old daughter when the intruder burst into the bedroom they were hiding in. It just happened the intruder was a plainclothes cop in the wrong half of the duplex Mr. Maye lived in, looking for a drug dealer to arrest. It didn't help Mr. Maye's case that the cop was the son of the police chief. Or that Mr. Maye is black and the man he killed, his police chief father and every person on the jury were white.
This is just a small example of the police in Amerika getting way out of hand. Learn your rights, exercise your rights and remember, the cops and all their bosses are supposed to work for you, goddammit! Maybe someday soon, the Powers That Be will look down from on high at the real world and realize that the ridiculous "War on Drugs" is completely untenable and the truth will outweigh their desire to preserve their political position, along with the status-quo. Oh well, if you're going to dream, dream big.
