As seen on America The Not So Beautiful
August 24, 2014
By Mike Caccioppoli
Someone needs to tell me why cops have tasers. Are they for when a kid kicks them in the shin? Or maybe when a woman starts to argue about being pulled over for doing 66 in a 65. Is that what tasers are for? Heck I’m so old I can remember when there was no such thing as a taser. Only on Star Trek. You know, when their ray guns were set to “stun” instead of “kill.”Seems like the guys on the Starship Enterprise knew when to set their guns to either level. If only cops were as smart.
Or as courageous. I think I remember when cops had courage. Been a while though. Now when an “assailant” is 25 feet away with a knife, and that assailant is on crack or heroin or meth and can barely speak or move, it’s OK for a cop to shoot that person 15 times. Come on, you only do that if you want to kill someone. If you’ve just been waiting for your chance. Maybe that’s why you became a cop in the first place.
According to the police chief in St. Louis that kind of action is actually protocol these days. When a guy who is shaking and frail is within 20-25 feet with a knife, even a Swiss Army knife, he is considered to be “life threatening” to the officer. An officer who is armed with a baton, mace, taser, a bullet proof vest and a gun. I’m no hero but I wouldn’t consider that to be “life threatening” to myself…without all of that weaponry and armor. I would probably look to just knock the guy out when I got my chance. But if I were a cop I would opt for the safer route and just mace the guy. If he kept coming which is highly doubtful, I would go to the taser. End of story.
Now cops seem to shoot when someone yells “Boo.” Well especially if it’s a black guy yelling. If this is the case why do we even need cops? Any civilian can kill someone for little or no reason. Where does the training come in? With cops like these we might as well just have law of the jungle and kill each other. Who needs them? Who needs to pay them with our tax dollars? Hey, speaking of which why aren’t conservatives screaming about our socialist police department being out of control and over militarized? Why don’t they want our police force defunded like Obamacare? I mean I haven’t heard a word, a whisper, have you?
I digress. We call our cops “warriors” these days but I’ve never seen warriors so cowardly. Like when they shoot at a black woman in a car full of kids because she might have been breaking the speed limit. I mean how dangerous she is! Or when they beat a black woman into submission on the side of the road because she isn’t “obeying.” Or when they beat the crap out of the wrong guy and charge him with “bleeding on their uniforms”. That’s YOU Ferguson PD. Or when they choke a guy to death because he is selling cigarettes on the street. Or when they shoot an unarmed black kid six times because well..who knows.
I could write 100 paragraphs about the 21st century cop and how afraid they are to use their brains or fists or less lethal weapons because someone standing 25 feet away without a firearm is considered a “threat.” Example after example of police “overreach”, of escalation instead of a calming deescalation which is what they are paid to do. Escalation usually means homicide. Sometimes it’s tear gassing an entire crowd because one guy threw a bottle…of water. Once again I’m no hero but I will take the “water bottle challenge” and allow 20 cops to throw bottles of Evian at me and if I survive, all of those cowardly cops (and I don’t give a shit if they were under the command of Ron Johnson) that tear gassed pastors and woman and children, lose their jobs. How about THAT challenge?
I mean cops with helmets and shields and tanks and guns and mace and tasers and they gas an entire crowd because of thrown bottles? And yes there were many journalists who reported that it was only the bottles that got the the cops going…into their default escalation mode. What courageous officers of the law we are hiring! Yes WE are hiring and paying them which means WE can fire them? Right conservatives? I mean you guys would agree with that right?
So here is one of our modern day heroic cops. He continues his complaining and racist wayson twitter. I’m not going to get into all of the disgusting things he says about Eric Holder or the people he is supposed to be “protecting and serving.” I only have one question…why not find another job? I mean he hates being a cop so much, complains about everything he has to deal with so why not quit? Nobody is forcing him to be a cop, and nobody forced him to become a cop. It’s a lifestyle choice.
Our cops are also getting dumb and dumber. When you start to push, threaten and arrest journalists, point your weapons at them and have them overhear you bad mouthing protesters, you really can’t be too intelligent. I mean your I.Q. can’t be very high. Speaking of which, here is an example of what I’m talking about. It is indeed possible to be “too smart” to get hired as a cop in the USA. I’m guessing they don’t have these regulations in any other country. It takes a certain kind of dumb to actually lose the support of the mainstream media!
Then there is the cop who pushed CNN’s Don Lemon. How did this loser get hired in the first place? It’s not like he is able to hide his grotesque beliefs. Maybe it’s because the people who hired him have similar beliefs. These are some of the same cops who were enforcing those protest rules in Ferguson. Like walk but don’t stop. So the protesters couldn’t take a breath and stand in one place without getting harassed by the police. I don’t seem to find any clause in the First Amendment which says “Freedom of speech, except no standing still while exercising those freedoms.” Or “Freedom of the press but only in designated areas as assigned by local police.” Can you? If so send those clauses along to me please.
Where are all of those Second Amendment purists screaming and yelling about all of the First Amendment violations? I can’t seem to find them anywhere. They believe a group of white people protecting a rancher from having to pay taxes is “patriotic” but black people protesting the murder of an unarmed teenager is not. A German Journalist had to come to Ferguson to realize, as so many Americans are finally, at long last realizing, that the USA is not a free country. That all of those heroic soldiers really died for nothing, for shit. But hey, because of “freedom” right conservatives?
Speaking of Germany, police officers in that ENTIRE country shot off 85 bullets in a full YEAR. In the U.K. it was three shots, half of the number of bullets Mike Brown was hit with. In Iceland the first civilian ever was just killed by a cop. The entire country is in mourning. This is civilization, this is freedom, this is real law enforcement.
Maybe we need cops who aren’t afraid of their own shadows. We don’t need super heroes or anything, just people who aren’t 300 pounds, who can run or use their hands to protect themselves in situations where someone doesn’t have a gun. Where the training and the laws REQUIRE them to use the mace or the taser when the suspect has a knife or a bat and is 30 feet away. Cops who can disarm and apprehend without discharging their weapon 6-15 times. Maybe this is what we need.
By the way I love firemen. They put out fires, unlike the police, who ignite them.
Mike.Caccioppoli@yahoo.com
@CaccioppoliMike
Correction: I’m reminded by the loyal followers of DailyKos.com that the Star Trek weapons were known as Phasers not Tasers. If only our police forces had those instead.
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