“Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment … unleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares?”

~Murray Rothbard
American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define modern Libertarianism

You with me on not spending any money in Fullerton from now on? Come down to Tustin, the cops don’t beat people to death here. Yet.

I’d suggest strongly otherwise. It’s down to training, both the (often inadequate) training they receive before going on duty, and what they are trained as new cops is the norm for the profession.

Otherwise perfectly sane human beings can do terrible things when they’re trained to do so. This is, of course, not recognised as a defence in most countries legal systems…

Maybe she shouldn’t have been in the car, then. That’s certainly the logic used when an innocent someone catches an errant slug in the ghetto. Using the police’s own internal logic, it’s such a dangerous job that such things should be expected.

Besides that, as above, any former-cop who is “disgusted” with the way cops are now means nothing if they don’t help non-cops understand what’s going on in cops’ heads. It’s not enough to pay lip-service on this topic.

He may very well have had a target on his back. I concede that much. But look at the WHOLE list of incidents. They were not all officer initiated issues. For example:

“In 1993, he was sentenced to two years in state prison for violating probation by throwing a brick at his wife’s truck while she and her 3-year-old daughter were inside. He had been placed on probation in 1991 for forging a restraining order against a former girlfriend’s new boyfriend.”

Where there is smoke, there is often fire, Charlie. Frankly, it sounds to me like he had a problem with women, not just the POlice. It is also worth noting that you never addressed the fact that he fired into a squad car and wounded a police intern:

“Penn then shot Riggs, killing him, and fired into Riggs’ patrol car and wounded Sarah Pina-Ruiz, a woman who had been riding along to learn about police work.”

So is it ok to shoot a girl who was sitting in a squad doing a ride along? That part doesn’t sound like self defense to me. But, if that is your contention, you are not seeking justice, you are simply condoning the same us against them mentality on display in many incidents of police violence.

Again, watch who you lionize. I would have many issues with the ideas of William F. Buckley, but I do agree with his statement that “ideas have consequences.”

I felt it was a word that may erroneously suggest an excuse, and that was not my intent. It does seem to me though, that people who do this are wired for it. So perhaps “organic” is a more accurate term… I don’t know. There’s something very wrong with people like this, and instead of sidelining and ostracizing them, we give them badges, weapons, great benefits, and carte blanc to destroy anyone and anything they wish.

Look, there’s no reason to assign mental illness to the cops here. There’s no reason to believe they didn’t know precisely what they’re doing.

(And I object to amateur DSM-IV diagnoses anyway, I have enough medical training for that, without being able to make them myself…)

He had been stopped after making an obscene gesture to a U.S. immigration officer.

Why the fuck is this a criminal act? There is NO REASON! These pussies need to DEAL. WITH. IT.

These cops are akin to a pro-boxer beating to death a 4-year old who steps on his toes. I don’t know what to call the POS internal investigator who finds no wrong-doing.

You missed the point. Sagon Penn shot and killed a San Diego cop (with his own gun), claimed self defense and was acquitted. What happened after that is irrelevant to my point.

What isn’t made clear either in the article, is that Sagon Penn essentially had a target on his back after that. I lived in San Diego at the time of the Sagon Penn shooting and trial. The SDPD more or less put a bounty on his head. Even though he was acquitted, he never really had a chance after that.

My point only was that here was someone who successfully defended himself against a thug with a badge and gun.

I know exactly how you feel. I read the story, played the video, and just wept. The sound of that poor man’s voice crying out for his father just moments before his consciousness left this world forever seared into me. The voices of observers remarking on the victim being tased five times before the beating alarmed me. Hearing the thugs scream “Stop resisting” at a victim laying at their feet, and hearing witnesses scoff at the notion of resistance while cops were standing on the victim’s back and continuing to beat him infuriated me. And knowing the pain, the futility, and the hopeless impossibility of reform attendant to all of this simply broke my heart.

Twenty minutes after I watched this, my wife came home from a long, eventful day at work. Though there was plenty that she was eager to tell me, the first words out of her mouth were, “Honey, what’s wrong?” I guess it shows.

Small comfort that Kelly at least has someone to claim his body and tell his story. How many have been lost without a word being said or a soul noticing?