Scrounging around for news, as I am wont to do, I noticed something that was quite startling to me. Actually, I have noticed it for quite some time, but I am seeing a dramatic rise in these instances. For a while now, I have been thinking that there appeared to be an emergence of the police state here in the United States. Now I know it without any doubt.
I will start with the now infamous tasering incident of Andrew Meyer at a Senator John Kerry speaking engagement at the University of Florida. This is so well known now that I won’t even bother linking to it. At issue here is not whether or not Andrew Meyer deserved to be removed from the event, but whether or not the police went too far in their efforts to do so. In my opinion, they did. Andrew Meyer is one guy and they were many. Let’s not forget that police officers are trained in techniques for perpetrator removal. I view taser usage in this type of instance as nothing more than laziness on the part of the police. There also seems to be an issue with the fact that he was subdued at the time of his tasering. There was even a statement that I read on someone’s blog that he was actually handcuffed at the time. If that is true, then the police were definitely in the wrong. So that is instance one.
Instance two involves a 13-year-old girl being strip-searched in an effort to locate that horrible street drug that has forced women everywhere to sell their children into slavery and men to resort to performing oral sex on drug dealers, just for a taste… ibuprofen. Yes, you read that correctly. The school forced a 13-year-old girl to disrobe and expose her breasts and pubic are in an attempt to find ibuprofen. Worse than this, the court system actually agreed with the school! On top of that, the school didn’t even notify the parents that the search was going to take place. I have a 13-year-old daughter. If that happened to her, there wouldn’t be any lawsuit. I would be at the school with the police and I would have someone arrested for assault. That’s assuming I didn’t just beat someone within an inch of their life first.
Instance three involves a man in North Carolina coughing on a police officer during a traffic stop and being arrested and charged with assault as a result. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but I wouldn’t consider coughing to be violent behavior. I’ve always understood assault as an intentional, unlawful threat by word or act to do violence to a person, coupled with an apparent ability to do so. I don’t really see how coughing on someone could be construed to fit this definition. Maybe it could… if you were coughing up blood directly into an open wound of the person you were coughing onto and you were infected with HIV or hepatitis or some other blood-borne illness. Otherwise, this is just silly and is a serious indicator as to the level of paranoia that exists in this country today.
Instance four involves, what is likely the most serious of offenses that I have read about recently. It’s the story of 16-year-old Pleajhai Mervin in Palmdale, California. Apparently, she attempted to commit a terrorist attack involving cake laced with some sort of biological agent and the cafeteria floor. Upon the realization of the seriousness of the spilling of cake onto a high school cafeteria floor and the potential for mass casualties, a school security guard played the part of hero and apprehended the vicious terrorist and proceeded to break her arm in the process. The security guard even informed her of her rights under the Constitution by instructing her to “hold still nappy-head”. You can watch the action-packed video of the thrilling prevention of this heinous act. Pleajhai was at the center of this dastardly plot, but she was not alone, as her mother was also arrested once she came forward and attempted to defend her daughter. Also arrested was the person who documented the attempted event on his cell phone and his sister, who stood by and watched. The official charges against Pleajhai were battery and littering, as authorities could not legitimately prove anything more substantial was afoot.
The previous paragraph was littered with sarcasm, in case you didn't know. The case is real, however. See, this is how media spin works. I just spun a story of obvious police brutality into a story of police heroism by simply adjusting a few key words. I even made it exciting by using the term “action-packed”.
Anyways, the point of this writing is that I fear for the state of our nation. Our civil liberties were being eroded prior to 9/11. Now they are just being destroyed in chunks. Our politicians used to use a chisel, now they use dynamite. I don’t know about you, but I’m worried about this. The four stories I’ve just relayed to you are but a few among many. I fear that they will wind up being the first among thousands.
No comments:
Post a Comment