The mainstream media may have moved on from the incessant and frequently biased coverage of the murder of George Floyd and subsequent nationwide protests, but the American Police State continues to march on in full force.
On June 28, Aurora, Colorado police violently broke up a peaceful vigil being held in memory of Elijah McClain, a local man who was murdered by members of the very same police force last year in August. Excellent reporting on this recent incident of unchecked police brutality initiated against peaceful Americans by Alan Macleod over at MintPress News.
Clad in full riot gear, wielding batons and pepper spray, police in Aurora, Colo, broke up last night’s vigil to the memory of 23-year-old massage therapist Elijah McClain — a man killed by the same police force last August. The day had begun with demonstrations organized by the local chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. At 8.30 p.m. a somber violin vigil was held in the city’s Center Park, where dozens of musicians, including children from local orchestras, congregated to mourn his killing last year. Videos of the event show the police charging the sizable crowds, spraying protestors with pepper spray and beating them with their batons.
One short video clip posted to Twitter by an attendee of the vigil shows the police initiating force against peaceful citizens who are just standing there, with several officers ganging up on one individual at a time it would seem, in this case repeatedly beating a man with batons, then spraying him with pepper spray and chasing him down as he attempts to flee the violence.
The police apparently not only felt the necessity to break up the peaceful assembly which was not a cause of any problems in the area, but chose to do so by violent means, as has become the all too frequent norm across America these days. I suppose it really shouldn’t be all that surprising, coming from the very police force that murdered a pacifist who had admittedly committed no crime, and for not apparent reason.
Elijah McClain was himself a vegetarian pacifist, according to his final words as he was choked to death by police, who wouldn’t even kill flies; and much like the more well known George Floyd, among his own last words was the same sad line - “I can’t breathe.”
He was on his way home from the grocery store on the fateful night of August 24 when he was accosted by three officers who claimed they were in search of a suspicious person. As Macleod writes,
The officers quickly put McClain in a now-banned carotid chokehold, cutting off blood supply to his brain. They claimed that the 5’6” 140-pound McClain, medically diagnosed with anemia, fought back with “crazy strength,” and therefore instructed medics to inject him with ketamine, a drug often reserved for tranquilizing horses. He was pronounced brain dead after arriving at the hospital.
But, like so many cases of police brutality these days, the police bodycam footage tells a completely different story,
showing McClain gasping for air repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe” and officers threatening to unleash their dogs on him if he moved a muscle.
The cops themselves admitted he had committed no crime. McClain was a victim of police suspicion and subsequent initiation of force and unwarranted brutality. The pacifist vegetarian who owned no gun, who refused to fight, and who wouldn’t even kill an insect was murdered by a gang of violent thugs, apparently for no reason other than looking suspicious to the cops who just happened to be in a particularly violent mood.
A tragedy that, like so many similar tragedies, has found no justice for the victim’s family. Unfortunately, such incidences are far more common than most people are aware.
Unbeknownst to most of us, on the day now known to the whole world as the day George Floyd was suffocated to death by Minneapolis police, there were in fact a total of five additional Americans killed by police that same day!
Writing for the Free Thought Project, John Vibes breaks down all five of these additional killings that went unnoticed while all eyes were on the death of George Floyd. Contrary to the picture painted by the mainstream media which portrayed Floyd as a victim of systematic racist police brutality, the reality of the situation revealed that of the six people killed by police across America that day, the majority were in fact not even black. Floyd, just like all the whites and Latinos killed by police, was simply an unfortunate victim of the American Police State whose violence does not discriminate based on race, color, or creed. Floyd and five other Americans that day were all victims of systematic police brutality, not systematic racism.
And despite several weeks of nationwide protests which included many activist calls to defund the police, this brutal police state continues to march on strong, maybe because the majority of the focus was on so-called racism instead of the root problem - indiscriminate police violence and brutality.
Some of those victims most certainly are black, like a Tennessee man who was beaten for six minutes simply for walking on the wrong side of the road in May, as recently released video footage reveals.
Others are not, like a man who was brutally beaten in front of his family in the Walmart checkout line, simply for attempting to pay for his items shortly after the Walmart had closed.
Such occurrences are not isolated, but take place on a daily basis across the country, and they are not isolated to those of one skin color or another. The rise of the American Police State is the problem, and it would seem the problem will only continue to get worse until its fall. Those calling to defund the police are not crazy radicals for doing so, but are simply attempting to cut the problem off at its root. Until police forces across the country radically change their approach to so-called ‘law enforcement’, police are the problem, because together they form the police state, and the American Police State is very much the problem here.