Can we finally say that law enforcement has gone rogue

Without that video, and for four days manipulated police reports and closing ranks around an officer who has a wife eight months pregnant, meant once more a murder was going to be let go, go back to work, and continue the abuse of a system which has gone rogue.

We need to understand that a person who runs because he is behind in child support cannot be summarily executed, and the scuffle, and all the nonsense we have heard repeatedly on this forum cannot justify shooting a man in the back when the public was not at risk and the officer was not at risk.

I pray that the civil trial will proceed in Furgeuson. It was a whitewash without a video. We need a trial, we need cross examination of witnesses including the officer, and we need justice. In my life I have never seen a grand jury conducted like it was in St. Louis County. In my life, I never thought that municipalities would be supporting their rogue law enforcement by them simply issuing citations to raise money for their existence. Houston we have a problem.

My wife has a photo from 1930 which references the "Peace Officers" were at the scene of the accident.........when did we militarize our law enforcement officers and when did they go to war with segments of our population.....which over time has grown to where basically it is an us against them situation. There is no peace in America until the criminal justice system is addressed. Rand Paul is making bipartisan progress. It must be bipartisan because no American or their children are safe.

I used to defend cops because I was brainwashed to believe they were a positive force standing between normal people and the violent criminal trash which wants to hurt us.
But modern video technology is revealing that cops themselves are just the same violent criminal trash and are also a threat to normal people.
I no longer have any use for either. From now on I will want to avoid ALL criminal trash including the ones with their little tin badges.

You may recall seeing another video which also originated in South Carolina. A man had been stopped for a seat belt violation. The fucking cop asks the man for identification. The unarmed man then reaches into his glove box for the ID and when he retrieves it and turns around to give it to the pig, the fucking pig shoots him. A seat belt violation for christs sake.

The problem is, othershoe, when normal people encounter these violent pigs we have no way of knowing which ones are going to open fire on us. They all look alike.
That's why the best medicine for this is avoiding all of them like the plague.

In other words,  it's now too hard to distinguish the babies from the bathwater.  So to be safe,  I'm now flushing all of it.

Yes it's true,  many more people are now equipped to provide us cell phone videos.  But there are still far more police encounters which have no video involved.  And in all of those the pigs are still free to try to frame those they murder by throwing down a taser beside their victim's dead body and lying about it like this pig did.  And when that happens the pig gets away with it most all the time.

Yes, a large part of the concern is the individual who is in the criminal justice system.  A prosecutor who  has a bias, a police officer who is more concerned about securing funding for his job than doing his job, a organizational mind set which takes private use of alcohol or drugs and determines that government can prohibit the same and put people in jails which grow the system and increase profits.

No, we will always have rogue cops, but when the system goes rogue then we have the very standing army our forefathers were so fearful of and who took extraordinary care to avoid.  

It starts with shrinking the footprint of the law enforcement system.  I have suggested by at least 25%.  To do this we need to change the way we look a the drug prohibition system which feeds the monster.  We need to legalize, regulate, and tax most drugs where individual consumption is the issue.  We need to use these tax dollars from taxation and regulation to focus on addiction and the social costs.  We need to seriously look at the use of SWAT for routine law enforcement functions like serving warrants.  We need to have body cameras on every police officer in America with clear operational protocols which do not give officers discretion when to disable their function.  We need citizen oversight of police lines of command which must include statewide enforcement mechanisms to investigate and prosecute police misconduct.

Bob, just adding folks to your list never solves the problem.  I have friends and family who carry badges, and the individual criminal cop gets his opportunities from a broken system which we can and must fix.  I have ran for public office asking for shrinkage of police budgets twenty years ago.  It was not a popular position, but I was right then and could not be more right now.

http://www.revealnews.org/article-legacy/us-police-get-antiterror-training-in-israel-on-privately-funded-trips/

US police get antiterror training in Israel on privately funded trips

"The clouds of tear gas, flurries of projectiles and images of police officers outfitted in military-grade hardware in Ferguson, Missouri, have reignited concerns about the militarization of domestic law enforcement in the United States.

But there has been another, little-discussed change in the training of American police since the 9/11 attacks: At least 300 high-ranking sheriffs and police from agencies large and small – from New York and Maine to Orange County and Oakland, California – have traveled to Israel for privately funded seminars in what is described as counterterrorism techniques.

For some, dispatching American police to train in a foreign country battered by decades of war, terror attacks and strife highlights how dramatically U.S. law enforcement has changed in the 13 years since al-Qaida airplane hijackers crashed into New York’s World Trade Center. In many places, the image of the friendly cop on the beat has been replaced by intimidating, fully armed military-style troops. And Israel has played part in that transition.

As these trips to Israel became more commonplace, the militarization of U.S. law enforcement also was driven by the creation of various homeland security initiatives and billions of dollars of surplus military-grade equipment donated to local departments through the 1033 program after 9/11.

Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, described the tactics he sees American police use today as “a near replica” of their Israeli counterparts.

“Whether it is in Ferguson or L.A., we see a similar response all the time in the form of a disproportionate number of combat-ready police with military gear who are ready to use tear gas at short notice,” Syed said. “Whenever you find 50 people at a demonstration, there is always a SWAT team in sight or right around the corner.”..."

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And then there's civil forfeiture law in several states...notably in Florida and Texas, where the "war on drugs" and now the "war on terror" allow police to seize property without charging anyone and keep 100% of the proceeds.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2014/03/12/cops-use-traffic-stops-to-seize-millions-from-drivers-never-charged-with-a-crime/

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Florida Senator Jeff Brandes has filed a bill to amend civil forfeiture law in Florida

http://floridapolitics.com/archives/9098

"Six weeks after he said he was considering filing such legislation, St. Petersburg Republican state Sen. Jeff Brandes on Thursday filed a bill that prohibits law enforcement agencies from retaining property and assets seized from individuals who are not convicted of a crime.

Civil forfeiture is a controversial legal process that allows police to take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging them with wrongdoing.

The legislation amends the Florida Contraband Forfeiture Act to prevent law enforcement from supplementing their budgets through assets seized in civil forfeiture proceedings. Under the proposal, property such as vehicles cannot be retained by a law enforcement agency and any assets that are legally seized from an individual under the Contraband Forfeiture Act must be split equally among local charities and the State of Florida Crime Victims Compensation Trust Fund.

“This legislation recognizes the inherent deficiencies in the current civil asset forfeiture law of Florida and seeks to remove potential conflicts,” Brandes said in a prepared statement. “There is a growing concern nationally about civil asset forfeiture and Florida should be a leader in reform on this issue.”

Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing, prompting Attorney General Eric Holder to announce last month that he was barring local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars, and other property without warrants or criminal charges. The Washington Post called it the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs. Howevr, it did nothing to address the issue inside the states..."

Sal wrote:Dont worry.
You're all white, Bob.

No and I'm not living in Boston either.  But that does not mean I cannot sympathize with all the innocent normal people who had their  legs and arms blown off or had their lives snuffed out by that unspeakably violent little monster.
And it sure as hell does not preclude me from having sympathy with those whose lives are snuffed out by vicious monstrous little tin horn cops just because they had a tail light not working or they weren't wearing a goddammit seat belt.

You're forgetting that I'm a member of an even smaller and more hated minority than blacks,  Sal.  For that reason I take all this very seriously.  And the enemies to them are my enemies too.  Just because so many blacks don't have any regard for my minority makes no difference to me.  When these evil little monsters come for them,  it could easily be me they come for next.

This should help make some of you liberals/leftists/democrats better understand exactly why the inventors of this country gave us the Second Amendment. It was so we would have some means to defend ourselves from the armed uniformed little stooges of government like this south Carolina pig.
Sure, times have changed and these miserable little tin horned stooges of government now have us badly outgunned with their armored personnel carriers and swat teams and paramilitary tactics, but we would be even more defenseless without the rights provided us by that 2nd Amendment.

Same goes for you cop loving right wingers who will always defend cops no matter what. That 2nd Amendment you so revere was not given to us to protect the little uniformed stooges of government. It was given to us to protect us FROM those dipshits.