Tasers don’t kill people

Police Statism
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But cops armed with Tasers sure as hell do:

The Denver coroner has ruled that the July 9 death of an inmate at the new jail was the result of homicide.

Marvin Booker was being processed on a charge of possession of drug paraphernalia when he got into a scuffle with jail deputies. He was shocked with a Taser device, placed in a chokehold and held to the floor as jail deputies piled on top.

Other inmates said Booker, 56, who was listed as 175 pounds in Denver court records but was actually 5-foot-5 and 135 pounds, was then carried to the holding cell at the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Facility and dropped face fir5 st. He never recovered.

The coroner’s finding means simply that another human being caused Booker’s death, rather than from natural causes, suicide or an accident. It is not the coroner’s role to determine who might have caused the death or whether the homicide was justifiable.

The Denver district attorney’s office is investigating Booker’s death to determine if criminal charges should be filed against the deputies involved, who are on paid vacations until the matter is settled.  I would like to believe that someone will be held responsible for this man’s senseless death, but I’m not holding my breath.  If it had been private citizens who dog-piled a homeless person and caused him to suffocate, they’d already be in jail and facing murder charges.  But when it’s five deputies who are caught on video smothering a small man who had been arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia (itself a non-crime), suddenly it’s more important to “review policy.”  And maybe they’ll, you know, be disciplined.

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On Being a PPB (Police Punching Bag)

Police Statism
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While enjoying a Mother’s Day brunch at my sister’s house, I learned that my older niece’s boyfriend has an interesting part-time job.  He has a theater background, and role-plays for training seminars to help police deal with unstable individuals and hostage situations.  He’s played drunks, people high on drugs, people having a psychotic episode, and people who for the moment are just very, very pissed off.

One of his recent gigs involved playing someone from the last category: a distraught father who’s holed himself up in a house with his kids and threatening to kill them.  While I didn’t learn a lot of details, he apparently played his role so well that a frustrated cop ended up giving him a black eye.

I was struck by the irony of someone who volunteers to put himself in harm’s way by our Protectors and Servants (granted, he’s paid for it), when they will freely dish out the same punishment to any slob on the street unfortunate enough to find themselves in a cop’s crosshairs.  It also disturbs me that whatever training the police take to deal with unstable individuals, it doesn’t seem to be working very well.

I mean, if an actor can get clocked by the police during a simulated exercise, what does that bode for genuinely troubled people when the cops have access to their Tasers and sidearms?  Unfortunately to ask is to answer.

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Favorite wars, favorite secessions

The Basics, War
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One way of identifying a person’s ideology is by referencing that person’s “favorite war.”

If you can get your average American to admit that both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars were wars against secession, the next heady notion to contemplate is that, just perhaps, the U.S. took the wrong side on at least one of them.

I’d guess that most Americans’ favorite war is World War II. Americans fought against three obvious evil empires (Nazi, Italian fascist, and the Rising Sun), and, in the end brought them down. The worst thing most people I’ve talked to will admit of the war is that “three out of four ain’t bad” — recognizing that the U.S allied itself with the worst of the four regimes then extant, and then fought a Cold War for forty-some years because of that dangerous alliance.

But surely the Civil War has nearly as many (or more) “buffs.” And the Civil War certainly exerts a great deal of influence over our (varying) sense(s) of allegiance.

For instance, I often talk up secession, refer to it as a basic right and an obvious foundational aspect to any free federal union. It may be traumatic, but it is as necessary as divorcing an abusive spouse, or as satisfying as telling a crazy boss to “Take this job and shove it.” The usual argument against secession is a knee-jerk “but the Civil War settled that” routine. How many times have I heard this? Must be dozens.

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The New Slave Masters

Police Statism
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Welcome to the new, more egalitarian America: we are all niggers now.

Wendy McElroy has a piece about the horrifying case of a badged criminal killing two sisters by crashing into the car carrying them with his police car at high speed. The officer, who was driving 126 mph without sirens at the time of the crash, had been sending emails and talking on the telephone seconds before the crash. Despite the clear evidence of criminality, the family could not be certain of a conviction, and opted to accept a plea bargain by the officer. While convicted of a felony, the officer will not have to spend a day in jail. Instead of the lengthy prison sentence which would await any of us, the criminal in this case received 10 years of probation.

Anti-police protest banner While many people who have not concerned themselves with the police will be surprised to hear it, the simple fact is the police are a special class of person in the United States. Not since the era of slavery and the subsequent Jim Crow era have we seen second-class citizenry displayed so unashamedly. And do not think that the comparison between police and slaveholders and oppressors of the past is overstating the case. It is not overstating the case in the slightest. The family of the victims in this case had concerns over whether or not the officer would be convicted at all. The evidence in this case is even stronger than in many of the shameful murders of blacks in the past, yet being able to secure a conviction against the new massahs was a dubious matter.

Police, for all practical matters, have rights far beyond those which ordinary citizens enjoy. Police may request identification from people, detain people, beat people, and even kill innocents, with little or no fear of the negative repercussions which any of us would expect were we to do any of those things. My father described similar experiences in Birmingham in the 1950s. Welcome to the new, more egalitarian America: we are all niggers now. Just as in the past, convictions were difficult to obtain against people who were clearly guilty of assault and murder, so today is it difficult to obtain such convictions. Just as in the past, blacks had nearly no ability to exercise self-defense without severe negative repercussions, so today do people of all races have nearly no ability to defend themselves against thuggery from the elite class.

In light of the new reality, why don’t we reinvigorate some proud American traditions? Police departments already cooperate in apprehending fugitives, so the fugitive slave laws won’t fill the bill. We still have them, as anyone who has been pursued for tax evasion or any number of other phony crimes could tell you. What then? Well, how about just establishing a new 3/5th rule for those of us not in the oppressor class? It would not only be an appropriate reflection of America as it is, but it would also be a constant reminder to us field hands and house slaves of who really runs things around here.

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