It's been far too long since I have offered an update here! My list of topics to discuss has added up, so today I am using this post as a clearinghouse for a topic just to get it documented. The topic at hand? The United States turning into a police state, where brutality and murder by police has become an every day, normalized incident.
I will start with this article showing just how trigger happy police have gotten- they shoot 25 - 30 dogs every day. Think of all the people who interact with dogs- random children, mail and package delivery personnel, utility workers, etc. Rarely do we hear about one of these people trying to kill a dog. When it comes to police, however, they are quick to go for the gun. Heck, even I had an experience- I had a dog that got out of the gate and was running down the sidewalk. An officer was in the area and she told me "I was about to shoot him, but he was wagging his tail so I just maced him". The dog wasn't threatening in any way, but the officer's first instinct was to shoot him. There is even a Facebook page dedicated to dogs shot by police.
And sometimes it goes wrong. Just last week a violent, trigger happy officer shot a dog and the dog's owner, killing her. This isn't an anomaly, except for the fact it was an adult. Most of the time when cops shoot at dogs and hit people it's children.
Like this 4 year old in Ohio
Or this 10 year old in Kansas
Or this 10 year old in Georgia
Or this mother of 3
My own police department used a SWAT team over a delinquient gas bill and shot a woman's dog in front of her kids, which cost the department $750k. Which is a great transition to the next point- police in the US use SWAT raids for every day activities now, which put citizens and officers at risk.
We use SWAT for everything in the United States.
And this isn't a new problem- Forbes called this out in 2011. And the Washington Post talked about it in 2006 which cites a study from 1998. This is a quickly growing problem.
A third of the raids don't result in any arrests.
[They are used as a political weapon}(https://nvcopblock.org/107184/swat-arrest-minor-offense-political-beliefs/)
From there only being dozens a year in the early 80's, they rose to 20,000 in 2014 and in four short years they quadrupled to 80,000 in 2018.
SWAT raids are intended in instances where the police fear armed resistance or evidence may be destroyed. However, guns are only found around one third of the time. Given that half the households own firearms, that's a staggering failure. The police would encounter more guns on SWAT raids if they randomly selected homes. Their "intelligence" gives worse results than rolling dice or picking random people to terrorize by kicking in their doors would deliver.
Just look at what a swat response looks like. This is full on military occupation.
And when police murder someone, they get a paid vacation while it is investigated and they are almost never prosecuted for breaking the law. Even this guy- who was using a personal rifle with the words "You're Fucked" etched on it that shot a unarmed man who was on the ground following instructions, get's off free. And he is trying to get paid for life because people are mean to him now.
Police exist in a culture of covering for illegal activities. The whole concept of the Thin Blue Line is that police are on one side and citizens on the other. Cops should never snitch on other cops, that's crossing that blue line. They cover for other officers who plant drugs.
They cover for officers who destroy evidence.
They stand by while officers block cameras before they commit illegal acts.
They knowingly spread falsehoods.
They take $750,000 in tax money to build a mansion and laugh when it it brought up.
When they are caught committing horendous crimes they get tiny sentences.
My city, St Louis, is rife with police corruption, incompetence and internal political battles. St Louis actually has two police unions, one for white cops and one for black cops and they seldom agree. From basic stories like crashing into businesses to widespread theft to accidental shootings of officers to internal arguments becoming assaults to straight up murder of officers by officers, it's a department full of the worst kind of people and led by sociopaths.
Meanwhile they aren't bothering to even look into crimes like rapes
But hey- at least they are racist as hell.
Racist
As
Hell
But this isn't only a St Louis thing. Heck, even famous actors get arrested on their own property for the crime of being black.
And it bleeds over to social media. Kind of often, it is showcased on social media. Which isn't just a St Louis thing, as seen in Philly and other places.
But hey, at least they still arrest people who feed stray cats.
St Louis is also pretty incompetent / corrupt when it comes to running it's jail, as seen here.
Oh, and here.
And hey- here.
And wait! Also here.
Police kill more people in the US than any other western country, more than a thousand in 2018.
Compare that to the UK, where in 2018 there was 1 killed by police
And they call out this so called "war on police"? - only 52 officers killed by gunfire in 2018. More than 3 times that many die by suicide. The biggest threat to police comes from themselves.
I know there are a lot of links here, but I want to back up my assertions with published stories and data. Ponder where we are today- the age of "Officer Friendly" is behind you. You are more likely to lose money to police than to criminals. And that is just asset forfeiture, not money paid in fines, bail, traffic and parking tickets, and other penalties levied by police against regular folk.
We have arrived at a moment in time where police do more damage than they prevent. They do more harm than they prevent. They trample on civil rights and civil liberties. They are the greatest threat to freedom we face today. While people worry about terror cells in other lands, we are being brutalized and murdered every day at home by the people that are charged with protecting us.
Please consider making this a factor at the polls when you vote, we can change this together. Stay safe out there!