I'm a 51 yr old white man, and I grew up supporting the police. I used to support the police 100%. All of them, all of the time. I thought they were great guys doing a really hard job. I thought all these people in poor neighborhoods were scumbags and dope dealers and were making up these stories about excessive force and police brutality to detract from their crimes. But the blindfold has fallen from my eyes.
After these incidents that have occurred in the last few years where cops have been using tasers and shocking people, not once or twice, but ten or fifteen times. Using tasers strictly as methods of forcing compliance. Using tasers and having people die. Not one or two people, but many. Using tasers, as a method of TORTURE. Thats right I said torture and I meant that word with all that implies. Police in the United States of America are engaging in torture.
Where police are killing old women in their homes and getting off scot-free. Where police seemingly routinely enter the wrong house, in what I now consider to be illegal and Unconstitutional no-knock raids. Where incidents like the home invasion (and thats what it was) in Prince George County of a Mayor and his family have occurred and the police pretend absolutely nothing was done wrong.
With all of this my support for the police is gone, and I doubt if it will ever come back. My attitude is now, the less contact I have with the police, the better off I am. I won't talk to them, not even to say hello. I don't trust them. I don't trust them at all.
So to all of you who wear a badge, I do not trust YOU. I do not trust YOU to uphold your oath To Protect and To Serve. I do not trust YOU to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. Your brothers and sisters misdeeds have made me lose my faith in YOU. No matter whether you are personally guilty of any infraction. The misdeeds of police across not just the United States, but in Canada of all places, have cost me my faith in the one thing that I thought was unshakable.
Police at the local level in this country had better policing themselves. Rogue cops better start being prosecuted and fired or imprisoned. The Blue Wall of Silence better start being torn down. The use of tasers better start being treated just like the discharge of a firearm. In short, these Gestapo tactics had better cease. Because, ladies and gentlemen, if these things do not happen, then you will have permanently lost the faith and support of people like me. And then when you REALLY need our support, when you are on some dark street with no back-up anywhere nearby, and the only possible help is a citizen, then the odds are, that citizen will turn away from you and leave you to your fate.
And why? Because youre not a friend and protector anymore. You are the enemy.
I urge every police officer on this website to print this out, pass it to your fellow officers, put it up on their bulletin board, and have it read at the beginning of your next watch. Because I mean everything I say.
