Under a series of Supreme Court rulings we have lost the rights to protect ourselves from random searches, home invasions, warrantless wiretapping and eavesdropping and physical abuse. Police units in poor neighborhoods function as armed gangs. The pressure to meet departmental arrest quotas—the prerequisite for lavish federal aid in the “war on drugs”—results in police routinely seizing people at will and charging them with a laundry list of crimes, often without just cause. Because many of these crimes carry long mandatory sentences it is easy to intimidate defendants into “pleading out” on lesser offenses. The police and the defendants know that the collapsed court system, in which the poor get only a few minutes with a public attorney, means there is little chance the abused can challenge the system. And there is also a large pool of willing informants who, to reduce their own sentences, will tell a court anything demanded of them by the police. Chris Hedges: The Origins of Our Police State – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig
Beverly Hills News
Posts Tagged ‘ weapons ’
Chris Hedges: The Dead Rhetoric of War – Truthdig
The intoxication of war, fueled by the euphoric nationalism that swept through the country like a plague following the attacks of 9/11, is a spent force in the United States. The high-blown rhetoric of patriotism and national destiny, of the sacred duty to reshape the world through violence, to liberate the enslaved and implant democracy in the Middle East, has finally been exposed as empty and meaningless. The war machine has tried all the old tricks. It trotted out the requisite footage of atrocities. It issued the histrionic warnings that the evil dictator will turn his weapons of mass destruction against us if we do not bomb and “degrade” his military. Chris Hedges: The Dead Rhetoric of War – Truthdig
Raw video Davenport police chase, and shooting
Scott County Attorney Mike Walton has cleared three Davenport police officers of any wrongdoing in the Aug. 7 shooting of an 18-year-old man on the Centennial Bridge. Walton said Thursday that the three officers — Sgt. Greg Behning, Detective Epigminio Canas and Officer Sam Miller — shot Michael Linn Cross as he tried to run them over with his vehicle in an attempt to break free from a blockade of police vehicles. “When you don’t stop after officers try to stop you, bad things are going to happen,” Walton said. “Mr. Cross raised the level of danger for everyone involved. He endangered the lives of officers, he endangered the lives of civilians, and he endangered his own life.” Walton showed video from a squad car’s dashboard camera. The video showed Cross crashing his Chevy Blazer into an unmarked police van at the base of the bridge in Davenport shortly after midnight. He then put his vehicle in reverse and struck another unmarked vehicle that attempted to box him in. A marked squad car with lights flashing also attempted to block him. The three officers fired their weapons at Cross’s vehicle as he rapidly accelerated forward. Walton said the officers fired six rounds, and Cross sustained three gunshot wounds that were not life-threatening. The incident on the bridge lasted 1.03 seconds, Davenport Police Maj. Don Schaeffer said. Schaeffer said the officers fired their weapons because they felt they were in danger, adding that Cross turned his steering wheel “toward those …
