An unidentified man wears a gas mask as police officers in Cleveland, Tenn., show off their warmaking equipment, including machine pistols, automatic rifles and a sniping rifle on a bipod. (CPD on Facebook)
By David Tulis
Police officers have itchy trigger fingers and are so easily offended by members of the public that they sometimes kill innocent people in a fit of indignation.
The reports are remarkable, and suggest another area in which local economy solutions will help restore the peace and bring more security to the citizen.
Exciting career
Several high-profile crimes by state actors cause a shiver of disbelief in anyone reading about them.
➤ A man intending to enter a burning house to rescue a 3-year-old son is tased three times by a police officer. Police tased Ryan Miller three times as he scrambled to re-enter a burning house to rescue his stepson, Riley. “I was hysterical,” Mr. Miller says. “yes, because I wanted to save my son.” The cop tased him even after he had been handcuffed. The Millers are suing police of Louisiana, Mo., for “excessive, negligent infliction of emtional distress, wrongful death and false imprisonment.” The boy perished in the inferno.
➤ A video shows how nearly a dozen cops milled around a homeless and mentally uneasy man, Michael Lee Marshall, 50, slain by “complications of positional asphyxia” after he was put by the officers into a brain-dead condition. The Denver killing was ruled a homicide by a medical examiner. Closed-circuit video showed deputies spending three minutes strapping Mr. Marshall into a seat; he is already limp in the chair as 10 uniformed officers surround him. District Attorney Mitch Morrissey will not press charges because the officers did not use force “for the purpose” of harming Mr. Marshall. In fact, he says, the officers were attempting to help Mr. Marshall, who “was behaving erratically and inappropriately.” The dead man, essentially, killed himself.
➤ Lonnie Soppeland is a sergeant with the police department of Eden Prairie, Minn. On June 15, 2015, he chased a motorcyclist at high speeds. The rider finally stops. The dashcam shows the Mr. Soppeland approaching the driver from behind and firing at him. He makes up a convenient story about the accident. Shooting Matthew Hovland-Knase “was not my conscious choice. *** I could feel the effect of the adrenaline. As I was giving commands, I drew my firearm with my right hand, I planned to steady it with my left hand. When my hands made contact, the firearm discharged unintentionally.” He cited a training exercise 20 days earlier. “Yes, I feel the muscle memory from that recent training of squeezing the trigger contributed to the unintentional discharge during a high-stress situation.”
➤ Police scalded to death a prisoner in the Miami in 2012, keeping Darren Rainey, 50, in a hot shower so long that the water burned the skin off his body in what a medical examiner calls “slippage.” So bad was the scalding that his corpse had an internal temperature of 94 degrees 12 hours after Mr. Rainey had become one. He had been put into the shower after defecating in his cell and refusing to clean it up. “I can’t take it no more, I’m sorry,” Mr. Rainey had screamed, according to a fellow inmate. “I won’t do it again.”
Peacekeeping, please
You face more danger from a cop than from a member of a street gang. You are seven times more likely to be killed by a law enforcement officer than a Muslim terrorist. You are unlikely to face highway robbery from anyone except the state through the profitable programs of civil asset forfeiture run in all 50 states.
Reform from legislatures is slow in coming. But the marketplace and technology are working to reduce the problem of gang warfare against the general public.
Cody Drummand is a software developer working on a smartphone app that lets members of the “tribe” connect with one another during instances of threat, danger or hazard.
The chief executive officer of Peacekeeper, Mr. Drummand says the the app offers “far superior protection system than the status quo protection offered by police.”
“Peacekeeper is the world’s first decentralized, peer-to-peer protection system. *** It will be a superior protection system, an amazing alternative to the status quo. It will allow individuals to take personal protection to a whole new level.
He says the app is “a decentralized, fast, agile protection system that does an end-run around the state is something that appeals to you, contribute now and help us turn this vision into a reality.”
The app is much in line with the operation of local economy, which favors private solutions to state solutions, local responses to danger rather than responses that come from giant and violent bureaucracies.
The sharing economy is proving to be far better at reducing loss, damage and injury than the state.
Sources
Marc Slavo, “Had It With Police? Peacekeeper App Can ‘Revolutionize Neighborhood Protection,’” SHTF.com, July 9, 2015. http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/had-it-with-police-peacekeeper-app-can-revolutionize-neighborhood-protection_07092015
Countercurrentnews.com
Truthinmedia.com
