Florida man describes being shot by police Taser as he sprayed fire with garden hose

Miami Herald ^ | November 13, 2012 | KAMEEL STANLEY

[CSM]

“The 42-year-old commercial fisherman....”

“he put himself and officers in danger when he refused to back down from fighting the fire.”

Amazingly, the homeowner is in a profession that is much more dangerous than the police....Yet, we are supposed to feel continually sorry for the poor police officers putting themselves in danger.....

[zeugma]

What irks me mist is that dangling over our heads are thousands of laws, of which no one—not regular citizens nor cops nor lawyers—has comprehensive knowledge, any one of which we can be guilty of at any moment. That, not absence of rules, represents the bad kind of anarchy. The worst are the elastic charges like obstruction, disorderly conduct, etc. through which cops on the scene become absolute dictators.

One that particularly has annoyed me recently is this: There is a federal law against transferring (especially prescription) medication from the labelled bottles they come in to other, unlabelled containers.

What this essentially means is that just about every person who has to take medications at various times during the day is a potential felon if they have one of those mtwtfss boxes that keeps pills separated by day so they can make sure they take their medication properly. This is one of the (allegedly) unintentional consequences of our insane war on drugs. The government needs to be informed that you simply can't legislate everything.

[Altariel]

Indeed, unfortunately, much of the populace is distracted and they do not realize the vast extant of the problem.

[fireman15]

“It sounds like your local community still employs peace officers, not LEOs.

Peace officers are decreasing in number, as LEOs increase.

This shift is a bad one for liberty.”

I am employed by the fire department of a larger municipality, but I work in a smaller surrounding community which contracts for their fire protection. They still have their own police department and jail. Their police chief is an amazing guy. He sets the tone for the department.

I wouldn't say that everything is perfect all of the time, but I do admire the work that the officers do and the way that they treat the public. When someone is in trouble I have seen almost all of them go out of their way to find a way to help. A few times we have gone so far out of our way to help that I was afraid that we might get in trouble. Fortunately, the police chief of their department administration of our fire department is tolerant of us stepping a little outside of our normal roles as long as they can see that we were motivated by kindness.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

That is pretty sad. Really, the changes since 9/11/2001 have been just stunning. We have lost a ton of freedoms since 9/11 which is why I keep saying “the terrorists won”. They made us change every level of our lives from children’s schools right up to our military.

We would have won if we had just nuked a terrorist capital and then ignored them and went about our lives unchanged. Instead, they caused a loss of freedom in every aspect of our lives.

I can see how a person born as late as the 80s could see a dramatic change in the USA — so much freedom lost so rapidly.