“Protect and serve.”

What a joke.

However, the spirit of freedom that lived in the colonists of the time is dead in this country (nearly).

I have no idea how to get it back.

So now every cop who shoots to death a handcuffed suspect, beats a teenager to death, murders the family dogs, executes an elderly person just says, ” I was afraid for my life”, and gets off scott free, no matter how ridiculous the claim. The courts respond that if the cop was “afraid” then it was OK for him to commit murder.

Why should the public be placed at extreme risk by such a low standard? Should we all be murdered because some cop has a conveniently low fear threshold? Why are we employing cops who are so easily frightened even when they have a shotgun in their hand, a pistol on their side, pepper mace, a taser, a club, a tactical knife, lead filled gloves, a bullet proof vest, and several back-up cops standing behind them?

Why don’t the courts accept the very same standard for citizens? Why can’t a citizen say that he killed the cop because he was afraid for his life? At least the citizen wouldn’t lying about it.

The police have no concern about beating, tasering or shooting someone to death because they know the magic words that will guarantee they can murder with impunity.

Am I cynical much? Yeah.

The deputy says he feared for his life.

Miserable coward. Actually, while I think a billboard with that label below a picture of Deputy Puppy-Made-Me-Piss-My-Pants would be a nice gesture, my impression is really “damned liar” since I don’t believe the officer really thought the dog was going to kill him – that’s just the standard lie when shooting a citizen’s pet and he would have said the same thing if it had been a Chihuahua.

BTW, this note regarding the police reviewing their own actions was interesting to me:
[...] [Sheriff's Department spokesman] Ellis said, adding that the department has also begun the standard review it conducts any time a deputy fires a weapon.
Of course, in the Thursday Post story, Calvo’s attorney noted

Neither agency has asked for the family’s version of the raid[...]

So, apparently, the Sheriff’s Department review of possible police misconduct doesn’t place a high priority on getting the statements of those toward whom the misconduct was directed. That sounds like a system set up to justify questionable behavior more than to fix it.

You don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink for days lest they attract roaches. Likewise, you don’t create opportunities for criminals to profit from and expect them not to try doing so. And when the evidence is clear that that is exactly what is happening, and that the process is practically invulnerable to any attempts to throttle it, it’s beyond stupidity to maintain that system. Our grandparents learned that with alcohol Prohibition by ending it; are we any less enlightened?

Again, it’s blame shifting. “We didn’t do this, the big bad drug dealers made us do it.” Sorry, you horrible clowns, YOU did this. You did because you wanted to dress up in your party clothes and go play GI Joe. Because you wanted to act like you were in some TV show or movie. And RUIN innocent people’s lives.