Never Talk To The Police
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Obvious reason why the cops oppose lapel cameras.Sadly, it all boils down to this simple truth.
I understand that in a country of over 300M, which is very violent and lots of guns in the populace, the cops are afraid.Serpent, you do realized how large the city of Long Beach is let alone the greater Los Angeles metropolis. Further that although every unjustified police shooting is horrific, that in a state of over 315 million people these bad shootings are microscopically small.
But let's admit that there's a problem that the fear within the cops for their lives is resulting in extraordinary consequences for the citizenry. A misdemeanor act or worse, just an interaction between a citizen and police can result in death.
If we can't admit the problem, how to solve it?
Right now, black people in Ferguson are forcing 24x7 coverage of this very problem. It looks like Falljuah. But this is not a racial problem only, cops with some issues are killing and beating up whites too, including women. So what to do?
Look no further than TPS, caught conveniently turning off dash cams in cruisers when inappropriate conduct was the order of the day. Lapel cams will be no different, regardless of potential for administrative reprimands or punative consequences.Obvious reason why the cops oppose lapel cameras.
Are Canadian cops as bad as US cops when it comes to interacting with the public? I know about G20 and then the Yatim shooting but I haven't had time to do my own digging into the situation here.Look no further than TPS, caught conveniently turning off dash cams in cruisers when inappropriate conduct was the order of the day. Lapel cams will be no different, regardless of potential for administrative reprimands or punative consequences.
I'm an American, who spends a lot of time in Canada, and has had quite extensive professional interactions with many federal, provincial, and municipal law enforcement organizations. From the inside, they all appear to be great guys with good hearts and a consistent desire to do good. On the street, too many lose their way in terms of professionalism, ethics and integrity. In this regard, IMO, Canada and the US are no different.Are Canadian cops as bad as US cops when it comes to interacting with the public? I know about G20 and then the Yatim shooting but I haven't had time to do my own digging into the situation here.
Perhaps in major cities where the issue of police corruption is greatest and along with it covering up for bad actors, however, in more rural parts of the country that just isn't true, a lot of those in the police service see them as helping to protect them from false accusations.Obvious reason why the cops oppose lapel cameras.
I sense a lot of aggression from US authorities. I don't find that here with Canadians. I'm American too and I feel that I have to work to disarm them and their suspicions and relax them. It starts with ICE at Pearson or the border crossing into the US.I'm an American, who spends a lot of time in Canada, and has had quite extensive professional interactions with many federal, provincial, and municipal law enforcement organizations. From the inside, they all appear to be great guys with good hearts and a consistent desire to do good. On the street, too many lose their way in terms of professionalism, ethics and integrity. In this regard, IMO, Canada and the US are no different.
The US is facing considerably larger crime issues in terms of scope and scale than Canada, and seem to almost have adopted an 'us vs. them' siege mentality where law enforcement policy and active implementation are concerned. Canada is not there yet, although you do see it slowly developing in larger metropolitan communities.I sense a lot of aggression from US authorities. I don't find that here with Canadians. I'm American too and I feel that I have to work to disarm them and their suspicions and relax them. It starts with ICE at Pearson or the border crossing into the US.
Oh so the story changes.He pulled over but not fast enough. Actually, I think he was asking for him to move over to a side to make way or something.
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No I haven't gone through any such exercise. But I'm very clear in my mind that cops in the US are dangerous. They overreact. I was with a friend in Northern California and during rush hour, there was a traffic incident on the freeway and a CHP cruiser came up behind him and sounded the siren for him to pull over. He didn't understand rolled forward slowly.
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Sirens mean GTF out of the way. Entitled attitude like you post about shows why some people have negative interactions with the cops.
As I said earlier, over a million cops in the US working a couple billion man-hours. Obviously cops who are out of line should be dealt with but it is hardly epidemic.Serpent, you do realized how large the city of Long Beach is let alone the greater Los Angeles metropolis. Further that although every unjustified police shooting is horrific, that in a state of over 315 million people these bad shootings are microscopically small.
There's no story, Dick Tracy. He pulled over when he was asked to pull over. Initially the cop was asking him to clear the way and he didn't do that fast enough and the cop didn't like it and asked him to pull over. So he got chewed out for it. The fact that the cop had time to pull him over, yell at him.....I still don't know what emergency he was trying to address.Oh so the story changes.
Sirens mean GTF out of the way. Entitled attitude like you post about shows why some people have negative interactions with the cops.
Did you see the cops yesterday on CNN arresting that black guy, in a ring with their handguns and ARs/whatever pointed out as if they're a SEAL team extracting a Al-Qaeda operative from hostile territory.The US is facing considerably larger crime issues in terms of scope and scale than Canada, and seem to almost have adopted an 'us vs. them' siege mentality where law enforcement policy and active implementation are concerned. Canada is not there yet, although you do see it slowly developing in larger metropolitan communities.
So yeah, you're right. These guys are scared as shit with a "us and them" mindset and they're dangerous.
I think there was an article in the star a few days ago which said that police these days are turning into military forces instead of civilian forces. I agree with the article and I really think policing is starting to get out of control. We are losing our rights in the name of "security".Did you see the cops yesterday on CNN arresting that black guy, in a ring with their handguns and ARs/whatever pointed out as if they're a SEAL team extracting a Al-Qaeda operative from hostile territory.
So yeah, you're right. These guys are scared as shit with a "us and them" mindset and they're dangerous.
Here's a pretty good article on the subject:I think there was an article in the star a few days ago which said that police these days are turning into military forces instead of civilian forces. I agree with the article and I really think policing is starting to get out of control. We are losing our rights in the name of "security".
One Nation, under SWAT: The undemocratic Militarization of the Police
By contributors | Aug. 15, 2014 |
By Matthew Harwood via Tomdispatch.com
Jason Westcott was afraid.
One night last fall, he discovered via Facebook that a friend of a friend was planning with some co-conspirators to break in to his home. They were intent on stealing Wescott’s handgun and a couple of TV sets. According to the Facebook message, the suspect was planning on “burning” Westcott, who promptly called the Tampa Bay police and reported the plot.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, the investigating officers responding to Westcott’s call had a simple message for him: “If anyone breaks into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill.”
Around 7:30 pm on May 27th, the intruders arrived. Westcott followed the officers’ advice, grabbed his gun to defend his home, and died pointing it at the intruders. They used a semiautomatic shotgun and handgun to shoot down the 29-year-old motorcycle mechanic. He was hit three times, once in the arm and twice in his side, and pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.
The intruders, however, weren’t small-time crooks looking to make a small score. Rather they were members of the Tampa Bay Police Department’s SWAT team, which was executing a search warrant on suspicion that Westcott and his partner were marijuana dealers. They had been tipped off by a confidential informant, whom they drove to Westcott’s home four times between February and May to purchase small amounts of marijuana, at $20-$60 a pop. The informer notified police that he saw two handguns in the home, which was why the Tampa Bay police deployed a SWAT team to execute the search warrant.
In the end, the same police department that told Westcott to protect his home with defensive force killed him when he did. After searching his small rental, the cops indeed found weed, two dollars’ worth, and one legal handgun — the one he was clutching when the bullets ripped into him.
Welcome to a new era of American policing, where cops increasingly see themselves as soldiers occupying enemy territory, often with the help of Uncle Sam’s armory, and where even nonviolent crimes are met with overwhelming force and brutality.
The War on Your Doorstep
The cancer of militarized policing has long been metastasizing in the body politic. It has been growing ever stronger since the first Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams were born in the 1960s in response to that decade’s turbulent mix of riots, disturbances, and senseless violence like Charles Whitman’s infamous clock-tower rampage in Austin, Texas.
While SWAT isn’t the only indicator that the militarization of American policing is increasing, it is the most recognizable. The proliferation of SWAT teams across the country and their paramilitary tactics have spread a violent form of policing designed for the extraordinary but in these years made ordinary. When the concept of SWAT arose out of the Philadelphia and Los Angeles Police Departments, it was quickly picked up by big city police officials nationwide. Initially, however, it was an elite force reserved for uniquely dangerous incidents, such as active shooters, hostage situations, or large-scale disturbances.
Nearly a half-century later, that’s no longer true.
In 1984, according to Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop, about 26% of towns with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 had SWAT teams. By 2005, that number had soared to 80% and it’s still rising, though SWAT statistics are notoriously hard to come by.
As the number of SWAT teams has grown nationwide, so have the raids. Every year now, there are approximately 50,000 SWAT raids in the United States, according to Professor Pete Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies. In other words, roughly 137 times a day a SWAT team assaults a home and plunges its inhabitants and the surrounding community into terror.
Upping the Racial Profiling Ante
In a recently released report, “War Comes Home,” the American Civil Liberties Union (my employer) discovered that nearly 80% of all SWAT raids it reviewed between 2011 and 2012 were deployed to execute a search warrant.
Pause here a moment and consider that these violent home invasions are routinely used against people who are only suspected of a crime. Up-armored paramilitary teams now regularly bash down doors in search of evidence of a possible crime. In other words, police departments increasingly choose a tactic that often results in injury and property damage as its first option, not the one of last resort. In more than 60% of the raids the ACLU investigated, SWAT members rammed down doors in search of possible drugs, not to save a hostage, respond to a barricade situation, or neutralize an active shooter.
On the other side of that broken-down door, more often than not, are blacks and Latinos. When the ACLU could identify the race of the person or people whose home was being broken into, 68% of the SWAT raids against minorities were for the purpose of executing a warrant in search of drugs. When it came to whites, that figure dropped to 38%, despite the well-known fact that blacks, whites, and Latinos all use drugs at roughly the same rates. SWAT teams, it seems, have a disturbing record of disproportionately applying their specialized skill set within communities of color.
Think of this as racial profiling on steroids in which the humiliation of stop and frisk is raised to a terrifying new level.
Everyday Militarization
Don’t think, however, that the military mentality and equipment associated with SWAT operations are confined to those elite units. Increasingly, they’re permeating all forms of policing.
As Karl Bickel, a senior policy analyst with the Justice Department’s Community Policing Services office, observes, police across America are being trained in a way that emphasizes force and aggression. He notes that recruit training favors a stress-based regimen that’s modeled on military boot camp rather than on the more relaxed academic setting a minority of police departments still employ. The result, he suggests, is young officers who believe policing is about kicking ass rather than working with the community to make neighborhoods safer. Or as comedian Bill Maher reminded officers recently: “The words on your car, ‘protect and serve,’ refer to us, not you.”
This authoritarian streak runs counter to the core philosophy that supposedly dominates twenty-first-century American thinking: community policing. Its emphasis is on a mission of “keeping the peace” by creating and maintaining partnerships of trust with and in the communities served. Under the community model, which happens to be the official policing philosophy of the U.S. government, officers are protectors but also problem solvers who are supposed to care, first and foremost, about how their communities see them. They don’t command respect, the theory goes: they earn it. Fear isn’t supposed to be their currency. Trust is.
Nevertheless, police recruiting videos, as in those from California’s Newport Beach Police Department and New Mexico’s Hobbs Police Department, actively play up not the community angle but militarization as a way of attracting young men with the promise of Army-style adventure and high-tech toys. Policing, according to recruiting videos like these, isn’t about calmly solving problems; it’s about you and your boys breaking down doors in the middle of the night.
SWAT’s influence reaches well beyond that. Take the increasing adoption of battle-dress uniforms (BDUs) for patrol officers. These militaristic, often black, jumpsuits, Bickel fears, make them less approachable and possibly also more aggressive in their interactions with the citizens they’re supposed to protect.
A small project at Johns Hopkins University seemed to bear this out. People were shown pictures of police officers in their traditional uniforms and in BDUs. Respondents, the survey indicated, would much rather have a police officer show up in traditional dress blues. Summarizing its findings, Bickel writes, “The more militaristic look of the BDUs, much like what is seen in news stories of our military in war zones, gives rise to the notion of our police being an occupying force in some inner city neighborhoods, instead of trusted community protectors.”
Where Do They Get Those Wonderful Toys?
“I wonder if I can get in trouble for doing this,” the young man says to his buddy in the passenger seat as they film the Saginaw County Sheriff Office’s new toy: a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. As they film the MRAP from behind, their amateur video has a Red Dawn-esque feel, as if an occupying military were now patrolling this Michigan county’s streets. “This is getting ready for f**king crazy times, dude,” one young man comments. “Why,” his friend replies, “has our city gotten that f**king bad?”
In fact, nothing happening in Saginaw County warranted the deployment of an armored vehicle capable of withstanding bullets and the sort of improvised explosive devices that insurgent forces have regularly planted along roads in America’s recent war zones. Sheriff William Federspiel, however, fears the worst. “As sheriff of the county, I have to put ourselves in the best position to protect our citizens and protect our property,” he told a reporter. “I have to prepare for something disastrous.”
Lucky for Federspiel, his exercise in paranoid disaster preparedness didn’t cost his office a penny. That $425,000 MRAP came as a gift, courtesy of Uncle Sam, from one of our far-flung counterinsurgency wars. The nasty little secret of policing’s militarization is that taxpayers are subsidizing it through programs overseen by the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Justice Department.
Take the 1033 program. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) may be an obscure agency within the Department of Defense, but through the 1033 program, which it oversees, it’s one of the core enablers of American policing’s excessive militarization. Beginning in 1990, Congress authorized the Pentagon to transfer its surplus property free of charge to federal, state, and local police departments to wage the war on drugs. In 1997, Congress expanded the purpose of the program to include counterterrorism in section 1033 of the defense authorization bill. In one single page of a 450-page law, Congress helped sow the seeds of today’s warrior cops.
The amount of military hardware transferred through the program has grown astronomically over the years. In 1990, the Pentagon gave $1 million worth of equipment to U.S. law enforcement. That number had jumped to nearly $450 million in 2013. Overall, the program has shipped off more than $4.3 billion worth of materiel to state and local cops, according to the DLA.
In its recent report, the ACLU found a disturbing range of military gear being transferred to civilian police departments nationwide. Police in North Little Rock, Arkansas, for instance, received 34 automatic and semi-automatic rifles, two robots that can be armed, military helmets, and a Mamba tactical vehicle. Police in Gwinnet County, Georgia, received 57 semi-automatic rifles, mostly M-16s and M-14s. The Utah Highway Patrol, according to a Salt Lake City Tribune investigation, got an MRAP from the 1033 program, and Utah police received 1,230 rifles and four grenade launchers. After South Carolina’s Columbia Police Department received its very own MRAP worth $658,000, its SWAT Commander Captain E.M. Marsh noted that 500 similar vehicles had been distributed to law enforcement organizations across the country.
And the rest:
Astoundingly, one-third of all war materiel parceled out to state, local, and tribal police agencies is brand new. This raises further disconcerting questions: Is the Pentagon simply wasteful when it purchases military weapons and equipment with taxpayer dollars? Or could this be another downstream, subsidized market for defense contractors? Whatever the answer, the Pentagon is actively distributing weaponry and equipment made for U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns abroad to police who patrol American streets and this is considered sound policy in Washington. The message seems striking enough: what might be necessary for Kabul might also be necessary for DeKalb County.
In other words, the twenty-first-century war on terror has melded thoroughly with the twentieth-century war on drugs, and the result couldn’t be anymore disturbing: police forces that increasingly look and act like occupying armies.
How the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice Are Up-Armoring the Police
When police departments look to muscle up their arms and tactics, the Pentagon isn’t the only game in town. Civilian agencies are in on it, too.
During a 2011 investigation, reporters Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz discovered that, since 9/11, police departments watching over some of the safest places in America have used $34 billion in grant funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to militarize in the name of counterterrorism.
In Fargo, North Dakota, for example, the city and its surrounding county went on an $8 million spending spree with federal money, according to Becker and Schulz. Although the area averaged less than two murders a year since 2005, every squad car is now armed with an assault rifle. Police also have access to Kevlar helmets that can stop heavy firepower as well as an armored truck worth approximately $250,000. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1,500 beat cops have been trained to use AR-15 assault rifles with homeland security grant funding.
As with the 1033 program, neither DHS nor state and local governments account for how the equipment, including body armor and drones, is used. While the rationale behind stocking up on these military-grade supplies is invariably the possibility of a terrorist attack, school shooting, or some other horrific event, the gear is normally used to conduct paramilitary drug raids, as Balko notes.
Still, the most startling source of police militarization is the Department of Justice, the very agency officially dedicated to spreading the community policing model through its Community Oriented Policing Services office.
In 1988, Congress authorized the Byrne grant programs in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which gave state and local police federal funds to enlist in the government’s drug war. That grant program, according to Balko, led to the creation of regional and multi-jurisdictional narcotics task forces, which gorged themselves on federal money and, with little federal, state, or local oversight, spent it beefing up their weapons and tactics. In 2011, 585 of these task forces operated off of Byrne grant funding.
The grants, Balko reports, also incentivized the type of policing that has made the war on drugs such a destructive force in American society. The Justice Department doled out Byrne grants based on how many arrests officers made, how much property they seized, and how many warrants they served. The very things these narcotics task forces did very well. “As a result,” Balko writes, “we have roving squads of drug cops, loaded with SWAT gear, who get money if they conduct more raids, make more arrests, and seize more property, and they are virtually immune to accountability if they get out of line.”
Regardless of whether this militarization has occurred due to federal incentives or executive decision-making in police departments or both, police across the nation are up-armoring with little or no public debate. In fact, when the ACLU requested SWAT records from 255 law enforcement agencies as part of its investigation, 114 denied them. The justifications for such denials varied, but included arguments that the documents contained “trade secrets” or that the cost of complying with the request would be prohibitive. Communities have a right to know how the police do their jobs, but more often than not, police departments think otherwise.
Being the Police Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
Report by report, evidence is mounting that America’s militarized police are a threat to public safety. But in a country where the cops increasingly look upon themselves as soldiers doing battle day in, day out, there’s no need for public accountability or even an apology when things go grievously wrong.
If community policing rests on mutual trust between the police and the people, militarized policing operates on the assumption of “officer safety” at all costs and contempt for anyone who sees things differently. The result is an “us versus them” mentality.
Just ask the parents of Bou Bou Phonesavanh. Around 3:00 a.m. on May 28th, the Habersham County Special Response Team conducted a no-knock raid at a relative’s home near Cornelia, Georgia, where the family was staying. The officers were looking for the homeowner’s son, whom they suspected of selling $50 worth of drugs to a confidential informant. As it happened, he no longer lived there.
Despite evidence that children were present — a minivan in the driveway, children’s toys littering the yard, and a Pack ‘n Play next to the door — a SWAT officer tossed a “flashbang” grenade into the home. It landed in 19-month-old Bou Bou’s crib and exploded, critically wounding the toddler. When his distraught mother tried to reach him, officers screamed at her to sit down and shut up, telling her that her child was fine and had just lost a tooth. In fact, his nose was hanging off his face, his body had been severely burned, and he had a hole in his chest. Rushed to the hospital, Bou Bou had to be put into a medically induced coma.
The police claimed that it was all a mistake and that there had been no evidence children were present. “There was no malicious act performed,” Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It was a terrible accident that was never supposed to happen.” The Phonesavanhs have yet to receive an apology from the sheriff’s office. “Nothing. Nothing for our son. No card. No balloon. Not a phone call. Not anything,” Bou Bou’s mother, Alecia Phonesavanh, told CNN.
Similarly, Tampa Bay Police Chief Jane Castor continues to insist that Jay Westcott’s death in the militarized raid on his house was his own fault. “Mr. Westcott lost his life because he aimed a loaded firearm at police officers. You can take the entire marijuana issue out of the picture,” Castor said. “If there’s an indication that there is armed trafficking going on — someone selling narcotics while they are armed or have the ability to use a firearm — then the tactical response team will do the initial entry.”
In her defense of the SWAT raid, Castor simply dismissed any responsibility for Westcott’s death. “They did everything they could to serve this warrant in a safe manner,” she wrote the Tampa Bay Times – “everything,” that is, but find an alternative to storming the home of a man they knew feared for his life.
Almost half of all American households report having a gun, as the ACLU notes in its report. That means the police always have a ready-made excuse for using SWAT teams to execute warrants when less confrontational and less violent alternatives exist.
In other words, if police believe you’re selling drugs, beware. Suspicion is all they need to turn your world upside down. And if they’re wrong, don’t worry; the intent couldn’t have been better.
Voices in the Wilderness
The militarization of the police shouldn’t be surprising. As Hubert Williams, a former police director of Newark, New Jersey, and Patrick V. Murphy, former commissioner of the New York City Police Department, put it nearly 25 years ago, police are “barometers of the society in which they operate.” In post-9/11 America, that means police forces imbued with the “hooah” mentality of soldiers and acting as if they are fighting an insurgency in their own backyard.
While the pace of police militarization has quickened, there has at least been some pushback from current and former police officials who see the trend for what it is: the destruction of community policing. In Spokane, Washington, Councilman Mike Fagan, a former police detective, is pushing back against police officers wearing BDUs, calling the get-up “intimidating” to citizens. In Utah, the legislature passed a bill requiring probable cause before police could execute a no-knock raid. Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank has been a vocal critic of militarization, telling the local paper, “We’re not the military. Nor should we look like an invading force coming in.” Just recently, Chief Charlie Beck of the Los Angeles Police Department agreed with the ACLU and the Los Angeles Times editorial board that “the lines between municipal law enforcement and the U.S. military cannot be blurred.”
Retired Seattle police chief Norm Stamper has also become an outspoken critic of militarizing police forces, noting “most of what police are called upon to do, day in and day out, requires patience, diplomacy, and interpersonal skills.” In other words, community policing. Stamper is the chief who green-lighted a militarized response to World Trade Organization protests in his city in 1999 (“The Battle in Seattle”). It’s a decision he would like to take back. “My support for a militaristic solution caused all hell to break loose,” he wrote in the Nation. “Rocks, bottles and newspaper racks went flying. Windows were smashed, stores were looted, fires lighted; and more gas filled the streets, with some cops clearly overreacting, escalating and prolonging the conflict.”
These former policemen and law enforcement officials understand that police officers shouldn’t be breaking down any citizen’s door at 3 a.m. armed with AR-15s and flashbang grenades in search of a small amount of drugs, while an MRAP idles in the driveway. The anti-militarists, however, are in the minority right now. And until that changes, violent paramilitary police raids will continue to break down the doors of nearly 1,000 American households a week.
War, once started, can rarely be contained.
Matthew Harwood is senior writer/editor at the American Civil Liberties Union and a TomDispatch regular. You can follow him on Twitter @mharwood31.
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Copyright 2014 Matthew Harwood
Cops Gone Wild
August 15, 2014| Categories: Articles & Columns| Tags: militarized police, Police, police state, | Print This Article
Paul Craig Roberts
Update: I have received four or five emails from readers who complain that the person in the photo, which is a photo taken from media accounts, is not the person who the cops murdered in Ferguson.
Why does it matter? The photo shows three oversized cops pointing military weapons at point blank range at a black kid with his hands up. Any one of the cops unarmed could have restrained the kid. The photo demonstrates that the police are trained to use excessive force.
The emails I received demonstrate the inability both emotionally and rationally of many Americans to deal with reality. They try to hide from reality by claiming that Ferguson’s size threatened the police, who were justified in shooting him. Hiding from reality is the refuge of no-think Americans. Most of the “exceptional people” can be found hiding there.
The right-wing Republican “law and order” conservatives who are defending the police murder deeply believe that they are threatened not by the federal governments destruction of their constitutional protections, but by dark-skinned “minorities.” They believe, unlike America’s founding fathers, that the government and its police force are what makes them safe.
This belief dooms Americans.
Ferguson, Mo. is a small overwhelmingly black town whose government and police are white. The Ferguson police murdered an 18 year old black male who had his hands over his head. If you take a look at the photo of the three goon thugs pointing military rifles at point blank range at the kid with his hands up, when any one of the over-sized goons unarmed could have restrained the kid, you can understand how excessive police force results in abuse and murder of citizens.
There is no question that the black community in Ferguson regards Michael Brown’s death as murder. But will it be covered up by the white government and the white police force if protests are limited to the black small town population of Ferguson? As this report suggests, there is good reason to fear a coverup in Ferguson: http://rt.com/usa/180680-ferguson-henry-davis-blood/
There is another astonishing aspect to the murder. Unarmed protesters in Ferguson are confronting a small town police force that is as well or better armed than America’s combat troops on battlefields in countries invaded by Washington. The only reason there is any trouble in Ferguson is that the cops murdered in cold blood a person without cause or justification, and the black community thinks that the white murderer will be given a pass by the white government. The part-time black US Attorney General, Eric Holder, has not sent in the Feds to investigate.
It is not only in Ferguson that goon thug cops murder people and they don’t murder only blacks. Whites get it also. There are a huge number of murders by police in “the home of liberty and democracy.” During the course of Washington’s war in Iraq, American police murdered more innocent American civilians than America lost troops in the war!
The American police murder so many civilians that it would take several thick volumes to record the police atrocities. The ones mentioned in this article are merely among the most recent that are reported.
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports that a white 37-year old woman having a reaction to prescribed medication tried to call 911 for help but got instead a police goon thug who shot her dead up against the wall in her own bedroom. The police have put out the fake story that the woman in medical distress threatened the goon thug with a weapon.
The newspaper reports that the woman’s husband also called 911, but fails to report that the husband said that he was headed home and would see that the emergency was dealt with only medically and not to send any police. But the goon thugs couldn’t miss the opportunity to murder another innocent American civilian.
Police victims have no rights, and in the vast majority of cases neither do the families of the murdered police victims. Compensation to the families of murdered police victims is rare as is accountability for the police murderers. In America a police badge is a license to murder.
During the past decade, perhaps longer, the federal government has systematically militarized local and state police forces in all 50 states. The police have been trained by federally contracted trainers to regard the American public as the enemy. The police are trained that they must not take the risk of encountering members of the public on a trusting basis, but must regard the public as armed and determined to murder the police.
I have observed on a number of occasions fully militarily equipped police training by 30 of them lining up and emptying high capacity magazines at the same target. Like most small towns in America, Doraville, Georgia, population 8,500, has a SWAT team armed with the weapons of the US military.
Congress should hold hearings to determine which federal budget was used to train state and local police to murder Americans. America has been at war for 13 years at vast costs against Muslims deemed to be a threat to our safety; yet American police have murdered more Americans than we lost in the Iraq war.
We need to discover who trained our police to murder us, and we must hold both the criminals responsible for the “training” and the criminals in the government who financed the “training.”
The most fatal mistake that any American can make is to call the police.
With permission I republish my contribution to the summer issue of Gerald Celente’s Trends Journal:
Police Violence Against The Public Soars
In the 1960s, there was an effort in New York City to establish a civilian police review board. Complaints about police violence and harassment of black New Yorkers had grown to the point that the reality of the problem was obvious. New York Mayor John Lindsay was amenable, but conservatives led by William F. Buckley and the police rose up in arms. The conservative media called the police review board “the property of bleeding hearts and cop-haters.” Fear-mongering was used to rally white voters, who were told that the review board would coddle criminals, demoralize the police, and lead to an upsurge in crime.
Mayor Lindsay established a review board by executive order, but rising opposition forced the supporters of the review board to put it to a vote. Fear had done its job, and the review board was abolished by a vote of 63 percent against and 36 percent in favor. This from “liberal New York.”
August 15, 2014| Categories: Articles & Columns| Tags: militarized police, Police, police state, | Print This Article
Paul Craig Roberts
Update: I have received four or five emails from readers who complain that the person in the photo, which is a photo taken from media accounts, is not the person who the cops murdered in Ferguson.
Why does it matter? The photo shows three oversized cops pointing military weapons at point blank range at a black kid with his hands up. Any one of the cops unarmed could have restrained the kid. The photo demonstrates that the police are trained to use excessive force.
The emails I received demonstrate the inability both emotionally and rationally of many Americans to deal with reality. They try to hide from reality by claiming that Ferguson’s size threatened the police, who were justified in shooting him. Hiding from reality is the refuge of no-think Americans. Most of the “exceptional people” can be found hiding there.
The right-wing Republican “law and order” conservatives who are defending the police murder deeply believe that they are threatened not by the federal governments destruction of their constitutional protections, but by dark-skinned “minorities.” They believe, unlike America’s founding fathers, that the government and its police force are what makes them safe.
This belief dooms Americans.
Ferguson, Mo. is a small overwhelmingly black town whose government and police are white. The Ferguson police murdered an 18 year old black male who had his hands over his head. If you take a look at the photo of the three goon thugs pointing military rifles at point blank range at the kid with his hands up, when any one of the over-sized goons unarmed could have restrained the kid, you can understand how excessive police force results in abuse and murder of citizens.
There is no question that the black community in Ferguson regards Michael Brown’s death as murder. But will it be covered up by the white government and the white police force if protests are limited to the black small town population of Ferguson? As this report suggests, there is good reason to fear a coverup in Ferguson: http://rt.com/usa/180680-ferguson-henry-davis-blood/
There is another astonishing aspect to the murder. Unarmed protesters in Ferguson are confronting a small town police force that is as well or better armed than America’s combat troops on battlefields in countries invaded by Washington. The only reason there is any trouble in Ferguson is that the cops murdered in cold blood a person without cause or justification, and the black community thinks that the white murderer will be given a pass by the white government. The part-time black US Attorney General, Eric Holder, has not sent in the Feds to investigate.
It is not only in Ferguson that goon thug cops murder people and they don’t murder only blacks. Whites get it also. There are a huge number of murders by police in “the home of liberty and democracy.” During the course of Washington’s war in Iraq, American police murdered more innocent American civilians than America lost troops in the war!
The American police murder so many civilians that it would take several thick volumes to record the police atrocities. The ones mentioned in this article are merely among the most recent that are reported.
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports that a white 37-year old woman having a reaction to prescribed medication tried to call 911 for help but got instead a police goon thug who shot her dead up against the wall in her own bedroom. The police have put out the fake story that the woman in medical distress threatened the goon thug with a weapon.
The newspaper reports that the woman’s husband also called 911, but fails to report that the husband said that he was headed home and would see that the emergency was dealt with only medically and not to send any police. But the goon thugs couldn’t miss the opportunity to murder another innocent American civilian.
Police victims have no rights, and in the vast majority of cases neither do the families of the murdered police victims. Compensation to the families of murdered police victims is rare as is accountability for the police murderers. In America a police badge is a license to murder.
During the past decade, perhaps longer, the federal government has systematically militarized local and state police forces in all 50 states. The police have been trained by federally contracted trainers to regard the American public as the enemy. The police are trained that they must not take the risk of encountering members of the public on a trusting basis, but must regard the public as armed and determined to murder the police.
I have observed on a number of occasions fully militarily equipped police training by 30 of them lining up and emptying high capacity magazines at the same target. Like most small towns in America, Doraville, Georgia, population 8,500, has a SWAT team armed with the weapons of the US military.
Congress should hold hearings to determine which federal budget was used to train state and local police to murder Americans. America has been at war for 13 years at vast costs against Muslims deemed to be a threat to our safety; yet American police have murdered more Americans than we lost in the Iraq war.
We need to discover who trained our police to murder us, and we must hold both the criminals responsible for the “training” and the criminals in the government who financed the “training.”
The most fatal mistake that any American can make is to call the police.
With permission I republish my contribution to the summer issue of Gerald Celente’s Trends Journal:
Police Violence Against The Public Soars
In the 1960s, there was an effort in New York City to establish a civilian police review board. Complaints about police violence and harassment of black New Yorkers had grown to the point that the reality of the problem was obvious. New York Mayor John Lindsay was amenable, but conservatives led by William F. Buckley and the police rose up in arms. The conservative media called the police review board “the property of bleeding hearts and cop-haters.” Fear-mongering was used to rally white voters, who were told that the review board would coddle criminals, demoralize the police, and lead to an upsurge in crime.
Mayor Lindsay established a review board by executive order, but rising opposition forced the supporters of the review board to put it to a vote. Fear had done its job, and the review board was abolished by a vote of 63 percent against and 36 percent in favor. This from “liberal New York.”
In the half-century that has passed, gratuitous police violence has spread to the public in general. Today it is not only blacks and Hispanics who experience police brutality. Everyone suffers from it. Being white is no longer a protection. In a recent column, “Call the Cops at Your Peril,” I reported a few of the recent atrocities police have committed against the public. Ninety-three-year-old Pearlie Golden was shot down in her front yard in Hearne, Texas. In Miami, 23 police officers fired 377 bullets, literally blowing away two men trapped inside a wrecked car. The police were under no threat whatsoever from the 93-year-old woman or from the two men trapped inside a wrecked car. In Cornelia, Georgia, a SWAT team made a no-knock entry at 3 a.m. and threw a concussion grenade into a baby’s crib. The grenade blew up in the baby’s face, leaving him disfigured, unable to breathe without a ventilator, and with a 50 percent chance of survival. According to the Atlanta Constitution-Journal, the raid produced no drugs, no weapons, no bundles of cash, and no suspected drug dealer. It was just another of the thousands of mistakes routinely made by SWAT goons who put American citizens at risk every time they break unannounced into a home, usually a wrong address.
New tactic: Kill the dog
A police favorite is to murder the family’s pets. When the Middletons, ranchers in Rains County, Texas, called the sheriff’s department to report a burglary of their home and the theft of firearms, the first thing the deputy did when he arrived was to shoot the Middleton’s three-year-old, 40-pound Australian cattle dog, Candy, in the head. In Prince George’s County, Maryland, cops on a mistaken drug raid broke into the mayor’s home and murdered his two non-aggressive black Labradors while holding the mayor and his mother-in-law at gun point.
Another police favorite is to humiliate their arrested victim, especially women, by stripping them naked. The abuse of women has become routine. In a recent case, a 31-year-old white mother of four in New Albany, Indiana, was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after a fight with her estranged husband. In police parlance, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest mean that the woman protested the false arrest and raised her voice. As most Americans have no idea about the police, they are shocked and disbelieving when they experience a police encounter. Until they have an encounter with the police, they are big supporters of the police. Unable to believe what was happening to her, she was stripped of her clothing by two male and two female cops, paraded around the jail naked in front of the police, and thrown naked into a cell. She became hysterical as a result of this treatment. Enjoying their torment of their victim, the cops pepper sprayed her. The county sheriff said that he does not believe jail policies or procedures were violated. In other words, the sheriff admitted that abuse, humiliation and excessive use of force are routine. http://www.infowars.com/cops-strip-parade-pepper-spray-woman-and-lock-her-in-cell-for-7-hours/ Also: http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/tabitha-gentry/
As I write, I googled “videos of US police brutality” and 7,660,000 results appeared in 0.31 seconds. There are more cases of gratuitous police violence, almost always against the innocent, than a person can absorb in a lifetime. Police body slam elderly infirm people, taser cripples in wheel chairs, pepper spray, taser, and mace kids, young women, and mothers with babes in their arms. Just the other day police shot and killed a 13-year-old kid who was walking down the street with a toy rifle doing no harm to anyone. Only the goon cops regarded the 13-year-old as a threat. The goon cops simply couldn’t let the opportunity pass to experience the thrill of killing a person.
We see the same thing in the US military video released by Bradley Manning of the US helicopter gunship murdering journalists and citizens walking peacefully along a street and then murdering a father with two babies who stopped to help the wounded. Nothing happened to the murderers, but Bradley Manning was imprisoned for telling on them.
We are at the point that the police try to murder teenagers making out in a parked car. http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/06/no_author/cop-shoots-teenage-couple/
We have become a killer society, and the US government is the world’s leading killer.
Who’s the real danger
The cases of gratuitous police violence against the public are so numerous that it is impossible to report on them. All that can be done is to categorize them into types. The conclusion is that the police are a far greater danger to the public than are criminals.
Moreover, the police are unaccountable. They can murder with impunity, but if you even accidentally or reflexively touch one of them, it is off to prison with you if you survive the beating. Cecily McMillan, about whom I recently wrote, was an Occupy protester. Her breasts were seized from behind by a cop. Reflexively, her elbow came up as she swung around and her elbow hit the cop. Recently a cowardly or corrupt jury, egged on by a corrupt judge and prosecutor, found her guilty of assaulting an officer and she was sentenced to prison. Nothing happened to the cop who sexually assaulted and falsely arrested her.
Prosecutors are interested in convictions, not justice. Prosecutors routinely indict the innocent on the basis of the false charges brought by police, and judges often are complicit in the false convictions. No honest prosecutor would have brought the case against Cecily McMillan. Her trial was a political trial, and her conviction was a foregone conclusion. The purpose was to send the message that regardless of constitutional rights, protests against the Establishment are not permitted. The judge guaranteed her conviction by ruling that no evidence of the injury to her breast could be presented in her defense and that the jurors could not be informed of the arresting officer’s record of excessive use of force and abuse of citizens. The jury was unwilling to stand up for an innocent person. Instead of serving justice, the jury served the corrupt purpose of the police state. See http://www.opednews.com/articles/Th...millan_Jury_Justice_Political-140603-414.html and http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/05/21/justice-dead-amerika/
Whatever the police do, seldom do they suffer any consequences. As a result they have become more bold and more violent. Any encounter with the American police is a dangerous one.
The “war on terror” has removed any remaining constraints on police. The federal government has militarized state and local police and equipped them as if they were a military force. The police are trained to regard the public as a danger and to take no risk with their lives when confronting citizens. The police are taught that politely asking questions in order to arrive at an assessment of a situation could expose them to danger and that they should avoid all risk to themselves by dominating the situation with force just as an army or marine unit would do when confronting an enemy.
I have witnessed training exercises at which 30 police officers line up and empty high capacity magazines at the same target. We are talking about 450 shots in a few seconds at one head-sized target. It was this type of training that resulted in 23 cops pouring 377 bullets into two men in Miami, one of whom was totally innocent of any charges.
Armed for daily battle
SWAT teams have become ubiquitous and they are armed with tanks, with MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Armored Fighting Vehicles), and BearCat Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Trucks. These military vehicles are in routine use, and the SWAT team breaking down your door has replaced the policeman knocking to present a summons. http://rt.com/usa/164816-american-police-militarization-war/
It once was the case that joining the police force implied low-level risk. An officer could, and occasionally did, die in performing his duty. Today no level of risk is acceptable for police. Therefore, all risk has been shifted to the public anytime members of the public have encounters, mistaken or not, with the police. Consequently, police kill far more innocent members of the public than criminals kill police. The police have become like Wall Street and the federal government. The police serve no public interest.
When I was growing up in the forties and fifties, we understood that the police force attracted bullies because of the power of the badge, but unlike today the police did not have carte blanche. In the forties and fifties the American people had not been reduced to powerlessness or to the sheeple that they are today. Newspapers were still independently owned and served as a constraint on police power. Blacks did not always get this protection, but in large southern cities, such as Atlanta, where Ralph McGill was editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, blacks, too, had the protection of the press. I remember the first civil rights march in Atlanta. There were no police and no dogs set on the marchers. I know because I was there.
Bullies were one thing, but there was not the hostility toward the public that is ingrained in police training today. Standing up for one’s constitutional rights in a police encounter today is a perfect way to enrage a bully whose authority is questioned. The likely result is a beating and arrest. Subservience is the easiest way to survive a police encounter. You might be a brain surgeon or a former high government official and the cop might be someone who barely made it out of high school. But if you want to get out of it without damage to your body and charges on your record, act like a peasant confronted by a baron, earl or duke centuries ago. This is America today.
Anything else and you might be history.
So, are police review boards the answer? Apparently not. In 1993, 27 years after New York Mayor Lindsay’s failed attempt to impose some accountability on police, Mayor David Dinkins established the largely powerless Civilian Complaint Review Board. The police rose up in opposition and were egged on by Rudy Giuliani, who when he became mayor gave the police carte blanche. White New Yorkers applauded Giuliani. Finally, they were safe again — as long as they did not have a run-in with the police or the SWAT team didn’t go to the wrong address, perhaps a more likely occurrence than a criminal showing up at the door.
A number of cities today have review boards. Some have powers. Most don’t. Even those with powers have been made hesitant to use them. When terror is such a threat that the country remains on Orange Alert, one step below Red Alert, for years, only a terrorist-loving liberal-pinko-commie would want to restrain the police.
As long as the US remains in the hands of the Establishment, police review boards will be ineffective. Wikipedia reports that in 2006, eight years ago, the NY Civilian Complaint Review Board received 7,699 complaints, approximately 6% resulted in a “substantiated disposition.” In other words, 94% of the cases went nowhere.
The police have been set loose on us by “law and order” conservatives and by the “war on terror.” The police are doing us far more damage than are the criminals and the terrorists.
It remains to be seen whether Americans survive their police.
In the meantime the sheeple will continue to pay the salaries of those who pose the greatest threat to them.
New tactic: Kill the dog
A police favorite is to murder the family’s pets. When the Middletons, ranchers in Rains County, Texas, called the sheriff’s department to report a burglary of their home and the theft of firearms, the first thing the deputy did when he arrived was to shoot the Middleton’s three-year-old, 40-pound Australian cattle dog, Candy, in the head. In Prince George’s County, Maryland, cops on a mistaken drug raid broke into the mayor’s home and murdered his two non-aggressive black Labradors while holding the mayor and his mother-in-law at gun point.
Another police favorite is to humiliate their arrested victim, especially women, by stripping them naked. The abuse of women has become routine. In a recent case, a 31-year-old white mother of four in New Albany, Indiana, was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after a fight with her estranged husband. In police parlance, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest mean that the woman protested the false arrest and raised her voice. As most Americans have no idea about the police, they are shocked and disbelieving when they experience a police encounter. Until they have an encounter with the police, they are big supporters of the police. Unable to believe what was happening to her, she was stripped of her clothing by two male and two female cops, paraded around the jail naked in front of the police, and thrown naked into a cell. She became hysterical as a result of this treatment. Enjoying their torment of their victim, the cops pepper sprayed her. The county sheriff said that he does not believe jail policies or procedures were violated. In other words, the sheriff admitted that abuse, humiliation and excessive use of force are routine. http://www.infowars.com/cops-strip-parade-pepper-spray-woman-and-lock-her-in-cell-for-7-hours/ Also: http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/tabitha-gentry/
As I write, I googled “videos of US police brutality” and 7,660,000 results appeared in 0.31 seconds. There are more cases of gratuitous police violence, almost always against the innocent, than a person can absorb in a lifetime. Police body slam elderly infirm people, taser cripples in wheel chairs, pepper spray, taser, and mace kids, young women, and mothers with babes in their arms. Just the other day police shot and killed a 13-year-old kid who was walking down the street with a toy rifle doing no harm to anyone. Only the goon cops regarded the 13-year-old as a threat. The goon cops simply couldn’t let the opportunity pass to experience the thrill of killing a person.
We see the same thing in the US military video released by Bradley Manning of the US helicopter gunship murdering journalists and citizens walking peacefully along a street and then murdering a father with two babies who stopped to help the wounded. Nothing happened to the murderers, but Bradley Manning was imprisoned for telling on them.
We are at the point that the police try to murder teenagers making out in a parked car. http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/06/no_author/cop-shoots-teenage-couple/
We have become a killer society, and the US government is the world’s leading killer.
Who’s the real danger
The cases of gratuitous police violence against the public are so numerous that it is impossible to report on them. All that can be done is to categorize them into types. The conclusion is that the police are a far greater danger to the public than are criminals.
Moreover, the police are unaccountable. They can murder with impunity, but if you even accidentally or reflexively touch one of them, it is off to prison with you if you survive the beating. Cecily McMillan, about whom I recently wrote, was an Occupy protester. Her breasts were seized from behind by a cop. Reflexively, her elbow came up as she swung around and her elbow hit the cop. Recently a cowardly or corrupt jury, egged on by a corrupt judge and prosecutor, found her guilty of assaulting an officer and she was sentenced to prison. Nothing happened to the cop who sexually assaulted and falsely arrested her.
Prosecutors are interested in convictions, not justice. Prosecutors routinely indict the innocent on the basis of the false charges brought by police, and judges often are complicit in the false convictions. No honest prosecutor would have brought the case against Cecily McMillan. Her trial was a political trial, and her conviction was a foregone conclusion. The purpose was to send the message that regardless of constitutional rights, protests against the Establishment are not permitted. The judge guaranteed her conviction by ruling that no evidence of the injury to her breast could be presented in her defense and that the jurors could not be informed of the arresting officer’s record of excessive use of force and abuse of citizens. The jury was unwilling to stand up for an innocent person. Instead of serving justice, the jury served the corrupt purpose of the police state. See http://www.opednews.com/articles/Th...millan_Jury_Justice_Political-140603-414.html and http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/05/21/justice-dead-amerika/
Whatever the police do, seldom do they suffer any consequences. As a result they have become more bold and more violent. Any encounter with the American police is a dangerous one.
The “war on terror” has removed any remaining constraints on police. The federal government has militarized state and local police and equipped them as if they were a military force. The police are trained to regard the public as a danger and to take no risk with their lives when confronting citizens. The police are taught that politely asking questions in order to arrive at an assessment of a situation could expose them to danger and that they should avoid all risk to themselves by dominating the situation with force just as an army or marine unit would do when confronting an enemy.
I have witnessed training exercises at which 30 police officers line up and empty high capacity magazines at the same target. We are talking about 450 shots in a few seconds at one head-sized target. It was this type of training that resulted in 23 cops pouring 377 bullets into two men in Miami, one of whom was totally innocent of any charges.
Armed for daily battle
SWAT teams have become ubiquitous and they are armed with tanks, with MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Armored Fighting Vehicles), and BearCat Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Trucks. These military vehicles are in routine use, and the SWAT team breaking down your door has replaced the policeman knocking to present a summons. http://rt.com/usa/164816-american-police-militarization-war/
It once was the case that joining the police force implied low-level risk. An officer could, and occasionally did, die in performing his duty. Today no level of risk is acceptable for police. Therefore, all risk has been shifted to the public anytime members of the public have encounters, mistaken or not, with the police. Consequently, police kill far more innocent members of the public than criminals kill police. The police have become like Wall Street and the federal government. The police serve no public interest.
When I was growing up in the forties and fifties, we understood that the police force attracted bullies because of the power of the badge, but unlike today the police did not have carte blanche. In the forties and fifties the American people had not been reduced to powerlessness or to the sheeple that they are today. Newspapers were still independently owned and served as a constraint on police power. Blacks did not always get this protection, but in large southern cities, such as Atlanta, where Ralph McGill was editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, blacks, too, had the protection of the press. I remember the first civil rights march in Atlanta. There were no police and no dogs set on the marchers. I know because I was there.
Bullies were one thing, but there was not the hostility toward the public that is ingrained in police training today. Standing up for one’s constitutional rights in a police encounter today is a perfect way to enrage a bully whose authority is questioned. The likely result is a beating and arrest. Subservience is the easiest way to survive a police encounter. You might be a brain surgeon or a former high government official and the cop might be someone who barely made it out of high school. But if you want to get out of it without damage to your body and charges on your record, act like a peasant confronted by a baron, earl or duke centuries ago. This is America today.
Anything else and you might be history.
So, are police review boards the answer? Apparently not. In 1993, 27 years after New York Mayor Lindsay’s failed attempt to impose some accountability on police, Mayor David Dinkins established the largely powerless Civilian Complaint Review Board. The police rose up in opposition and were egged on by Rudy Giuliani, who when he became mayor gave the police carte blanche. White New Yorkers applauded Giuliani. Finally, they were safe again — as long as they did not have a run-in with the police or the SWAT team didn’t go to the wrong address, perhaps a more likely occurrence than a criminal showing up at the door.
A number of cities today have review boards. Some have powers. Most don’t. Even those with powers have been made hesitant to use them. When terror is such a threat that the country remains on Orange Alert, one step below Red Alert, for years, only a terrorist-loving liberal-pinko-commie would want to restrain the police.
As long as the US remains in the hands of the Establishment, police review boards will be ineffective. Wikipedia reports that in 2006, eight years ago, the NY Civilian Complaint Review Board received 7,699 complaints, approximately 6% resulted in a “substantiated disposition.” In other words, 94% of the cases went nowhere.
The police have been set loose on us by “law and order” conservatives and by the “war on terror.” The police are doing us far more damage than are the criminals and the terrorists.
It remains to be seen whether Americans survive their police.
In the meantime the sheeple will continue to pay the salaries of those who pose the greatest threat to them.
not as bad, but bad enough not to talk to them ever.Are Canadian cops as bad as US cops when it comes to interacting with the public? I know about G20 and then the Yatim shooting but I haven't had time to do my own digging into the situation here.
http://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/police_who_lie.html
One of my observations as a regular Joe motorist is that in most of the places with the greatest number (in the opinion of those of us in the rest of North America) of jackass drivers, the one motor vehicle law they obey with alacrity is: you hear a siren, you see police or fire/ambulance emergency lights you pull over as far to the right as you can possibly get.Sirens mean GTF out of the way.
