Police punch a man repeatedly until he collapses on the ground.

Was this justified? How could it be? Three against one, the three are armed and have all of the power of the state behind them. The man in custody is powerless. He did not do anything to warrant being brutally attacked. He was not violent or resistant. There was no justification for this. The question must be asked, how can this be standard procedure? Do we pay our taxes to be brutalized by officers of the law?

Atrocious abuse of power.

What is really unconscionable is that the court found the officer free of wrong doing. The state supported this man's blatant abuse of official power to solve a personal issue. This is very scary. This attitude is quickly becoming standardized throughout law enforcement which is allowing the police to act above the law. If they are not required to obey the same laws that we are, then the law is a sham and so are the police. Their main job is to uphold the law and protect the citizenry from harm, and nothing about this horrendous situation fits into either of those categories. The officer was not being threatened, he was not harmed, and most of all he was wrong from the get go. Without evidence of any kind, a young woman was physically assaulted and her life was negatively impacted forever.

Realize too that the $60,000 award came out of your pocket when it should have come out of the cop's pocket. He is the one that committed a crime. The state did not commit the crime. What a terrible thing that the court had to admit his guilt with an award but then verbally denied it. This is double-think right out of Orwell. Expect this situation to get worse until it finally explodes. This is precisely why the citzens of this country should come unglued over what appears to be a small incident. Any misjustice against any citizen lowers the bar across the country for expectations of how police conduct themselves. They should be held to obeying the law. Or, is that too much to ask?

What do we do when our police forces decide that they should be held unaccountable for their own crimes? What recourse is left when the police claim they must be allowed to break the law in order to uphold it? Does anything justify the rampant physical assaults on unarmed citizens by the police? There are many questions to ask ourselves when we encounter blatant criminality in the justice department and law enforcement. For each citizen victimized by legalized official crime the freedom we fought and died for, the freedom from exactly this kind of official abuse, of this kind and of all kinds, is reduced and made irrelevant. We all go down a notch.

There are only so many notches.

POLICE BRUTALITY

When the police abuse their power they are breaking the law. Whenever that happens, the police become the criminals.

It's nothing new. The state has always openly abused all who they perceive as a threat to their power, and often only for personal or political reasons.

When ordinary citizens don uniforms they change. Suddenly a suit of clothing makes them feel entitled to treat other people like "the enemy".

Are you "the enemy"?

Police get revenge by brutally beating a man for killing one of their own.

If you're tempted to think this shocking violence is justified, think again. Do we have the right to seek vengence against those who make us angry? If we don't then the police don't. What is the court for if the police are allowed to let emotions dictate such violent private punishment? What is the law for if it turns it's head when these things happen as they did in this case, as they so often do? The government supports official crime. Don't let that tidbit of reality escape you. If they're doing it here, in the very place where the law is supposed to rule over justice, then why wouldn't they be doing it anywhere else they want to?

Are the police at war against us? Is the government waging a war against the people? Should we allow them to treat us this way? After all, this is the response to peaceful protestors.

Isn't protest our God given right?

How can we protest THIS abuse, if this is the response?

An out of uniform police officer brutality murders a man by shooting him in the head at point blank range in broad daylight at a bus station. Afterward, security video reveals him happily chatting it up with his out of uniform partner who stood there and witnessed the murder.

As condemning as the evidence may be, and in spite of official rebuke and the decision that the police officer who murdered the man be fired, his superiors covered his lies and his actions and in the end promoted him to detective. If the worst this official murderer had to face was being fired, that's already enough to be angry about. If you or I were caught on video shooting someone point blank in the head and killing them, we would face life in prison and even the death penalty. This would be regardless of the fact that we were afraid of the person we shot, or even if that person had previously brutalized us, even repeatedly. But when a policeman murders someone in cold blood, he is promoted. That this happened is one thing. That nothing is done to stop it, make it publicly known, or punish those involved tells us that at least at that precinct, the law is whatever they want it to be. Do we really want to pay these people to do this?

A Google search for "shot by police" minus UK (as the search without it brought back nothing from the US) returned over 27 million results. Here are just a few of those listings. Should the concept "shot by police" bring back so many references? Do we have a problem here? It's like the elephant in the living room that nobody talks about. It seems to me that we ought to be talking about it, and doing something about it, while we still can.

This unarmed female protester was shot in the back by police as she left the area.

HOW OFTEN DOES THIS HAPPEN?

Why do the police now routinely shoot to kill when they can just as easily shoot to disable? Is breaking ANY law grounds to be immediately executed? What reason exists to kill 15 year old kids when they cannot possibly hurt the police who often kill them for nothing more than being a challenge?

What are the police there for if their guns and expertise are not being used to save lives? Is it too much to ask that the police engage the public with skill, instead of only with bullets? Should citizens be killed the moment they irritate the police or make them nervous? Is that grounds to die?

Being a cop is not an easy job. That's why the police have always been considered heroes, they risk their own lives everyday to protect the public. But today, the police increasingly refuse to risk their own lives, and they will shoot to kill anyone for reasons of their own. This is not heroic, it is something else entirely.

We ask ordinary men to risk their lives for us, and those who step up to the task are accepting great responsibility. When they do so, and when they set an example of restraint, honor and decency, they become extraordinary.

When they shrug that responsibility off, we need other people to do the job who are willing to do it inside the boundaries of the law; and who don't see the people who pay their salaries as the enemy.

The police are not our masters, they are our servants, as are all public officials. This new trend of total control of the public portends very bad tidings now and in our nation's future. Whatever we don't attend to during our time of responsibility as citizens will be left to grow out of control and will also be left for our children to have to contend with.

Everyone needs to be involved in creating the country we want to live in. When we forfeit that involvement we allow abuses like these to become calcified into our government. Once they are there, they are very difficult to remove.

It's always best to prevent them before they get there. It does require vigilance. Above all, it requires getting involved. Simple phone calls to police captains after articles about police crime appear in the papers can go a long way to create the kind of pressure needed to let them know we are watching and we care.

It's only freedom. If it matters it will always have to be fought for. The choice is only between how to fight. Peacefully as active citizens; or violently when all is lost. It's a choice we all need to make.

ang