Policemen who perpetrate acts like those I am about to describe should be imprisoned.
That’s not an anti-police statement, it’s a pro-law-and-order one. Anybody who vandalizes the property of innocent people and pointlessly terrorizes them, whether flashing a badge as prelude or not, should be arrested, prosecuted, convicted and punished.
Santa Ana police raided a medical-marijuana dispensary, a legal business in California. Why? Solely because it lacked a license.
Techdirt.com, which has videos of the raid, suggests that although “having the proper paperwork in place is important” — and it sure seems to be if not-being-raided is also important to you — the shop was in line to get the license. The process had been bogged down by local politics.
Nevertheless, officers on site “treated this lack of proper paperwork like it was the Zeta Cartel operating under its nose. The video captured by the dispensary’s cameras shows heavily-armed cops — some wearing ski masks — smashing through two doors and yelling at the peaceably-assembled customers to lie on the floor.”
We then see the jolly officers sampling the shop’s foodstuffs, playing darts, and ripping cameras off the wall.
They missed a couple. (Hence Techdirt’s extensive video coverage.)
Motive? It seems apparent that they engaged in all this abusive authority-flaunting just because they could.
And there is no real doubt that they knew what they were doing was wrong, and they knew that we would know. That’s why they went for the cameras.
Just like any gang trying to get away with something.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “Marauding Cops”
Once upon a time, before we had a better understanding of brain development, the better minds of the day were trying to figure out what caused schizophrenia, the disconnection between emotion and reality. At that time, we did not understand the differences between true schizophrenia and other brain disorders. It was thought that people were actually be trained to interact with the world in an unhealthy manner. The term that was coined at the time was that this stemmed from “schizophrenogenic mothers”. This was a phrase that meant that children were raised in an environment where the were continually given choices where either choice that they made was wrong. We now know that this does not produce schizophrenia, but rather that it can be one of the factors in those that have an inherited tendency towards the regular abnormal function that we call “personality disorders”, where individuals chronically do not function well in a community.
We have placed our police in a position where everything that they have trained for all their lives is suddenly being deemed wrong. This means that not only everything that they have learned professionally, but also everything that they may have been told as children. They have been cut loose from the foundations of their life and are now being told to just adapt and move on.
Does not justify their actions but it does mean that they have been left with no direction that seems to allow them to operate with honor. One of the problems with taking everything that someone builds their life upon, is that they have then very little left to lose. For them to have to function now with operating guidelines that seem without honor anyway, it takes very little to make any honor-less direction just as viable.
It used to be that police protected the people they serve, but the Republic we used to have has been corrupted and we now have what used to be called FACISM! .. Yes the corporations now run this country , they are buying the cooperation they need to generate their profits… The police now protect the interests of the corporations without regard to what individual rights they trample on. BLAME THE REAL CAUSE… The police have been hood winked into a position of absolute power over all the corporate slaves that this FACISM has created. And we all know that absolute power corrupts absolutely. It does not surprise that some of the police exhibit the same tendencies of abuse that the corporations exhibit in their quest for profits at the expense of their subjects. CORPORATE SERFDUM…THE NEW STATE OF AFFAIRS !!!..
Drik, Well here I go again. Disagree. The cops have now been taught that they are superior and need follow no laws. Their words and actions are the law, and therefore all must subject them self to the law enforcer and plead for mercy. They have now terrorized most people to where “submit”, “stop resisting” and ” show proper respect for authority” are spouted by many to excuse what cops do. This behavior of crashing into homes and businesses, indiscriminate shooting and terrorizing happens daily. It is now the norm. Excusing their mind set and the behavior they exhibit is only sanctioning this actual lawlessness. Wake up!
This is troubling.
In a world where the government’s believe themselves exempt from the constraints of what we call personal morality, is there any surprise that their agents fall victim to the same temptation?
This is not a new phenomenon, and will become more and more prevalent as the tyranny progresses.
Sad to say that this is all too often the operating procedure of law enforcement in SoCal. Most of the cops are super fit, like athletes / movie stars. They moonlight as private security on TV & Motion picture shoots or body-guarding celebrities. This gives them an attitude of rare superiority..
This goes to their heads. They are influenced by what they’re around; an artificial sense of reality.
Yes, there is a lot of crime in SoCal; from drug trafficking — to road rage — gang activity — to being the car theft capital of the U.S. I am sure shifts are stressful, dangerous & busy.
However we’ve had shootings galore, when not necessary, in very public places. Just recently the shooting of a homeless man on Hollywood Blvd in the heart of the tourist district & on the peaceful streets of Los Feliz of an unarmed older gentleman. As a middle-aged white woman, I’ve experienced very bizarre behavior in a routine traffic stop. (which I reported).
I want cops on the streets. But I want them to be less aggressive & less neanderthal.