Posted on 12/30/2010 4:19:27 PM PST by smokingfrog
Shouts break the evening silence.
“Police! Search warrant!”
Officers burst through the door. A man appears across the room. Metal glints from his clasped hands. Shots echo from a police-issue Glock 22. Todd Blair slumps to the floor.
“Five seconds,” said Blair’s mother, Arlean. “In five seconds, he was dead.”
Officers entered Blair’s home Sept. 16 during a drug raid when he stepped into the hall, wielding a golf club, police video shows. Ogden police Sgt. Troy Burnett shot Blair, 45, in the head and chest.
The shooting was deemed legally justified.
(Excerpt) Read more at sltrib.com ...
Ever since the so-called War On Drugs (WOD) — actually more like the War On The Bill of Rights) — began, our civilian cops have been undergoing MILITARY training. The “authorities” gentle it down with the prefix “Para” but those “dynamic entry” teams would be more at home in Baghdad than Boston. (Well, unless they hit John Kerry’s front door at 3 am, Boston might not be a good example.) Watch “Dallas SWAT” for a dose of how it works.
I have long thought that that sort of activity within the ranks of otherwise “civilian” law enforcement was a push by those with an agenda to bypass posse comitatus for purposes BEYOND the WOD and other currently criminal behavior.
That the mass of that shrinking minority – the American citizen (thank you Mr. Open Borders Bush and Total Amnesty Obama) – has NOT objected to this erosion of personal liberty does NOT bode well for the future of freedom here.
I wonder what sort of body count of innocent grandmothers and others it will take before folks begin to grasp that they might be more at risk from the cops than the criminals and bring the situation back under control?
My Uncle Bob (R.I.P.) would be horrified.
My Uncle Bob was a 30-year veteran of a police force in suburban Cleveland. He was best man at my wedding in 1962. He served in an era when MOST cops embodied the now frequently hollow motto emblazoned on police units all over this country: “TO PROTECT AND SERVE.”
The last 10 years of his career were spent as the chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he had touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.
I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens (see Warren v. DC for some fascinating and frightening reading on that), would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.
Having said that, I must also lament that SOME cops are “cowboys.” Too many are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take.
I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. (See footnote below). Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! — spring to mind.
And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear to anyone with half a brain criminality of the Clintons and now Obama – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem? There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?
Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck… This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.
Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my uncle would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” — referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
Dick Bachert (1999) Updated 12/2010
FOOTNOTE:
At a cocktail party back in the late 80’s, I struck up a chat with a fellow — his name was Joe M. — whom I’d met on one or two previous events. After my first encounter, Joe’s neighbor and my boss at the time told me that Joe was an alcoholic who had just retired from 25 years with the IRS. Needless to say, I was guarded in expressing my political views to Joe as the IRS had helped my dad into an early grave in 1977 — at age 59 over an estate matter. Joe was pretty deep into his cups at the function in question and began telling IRS “war stories.” Most had to do with clear cases of criminal conduct by not very nice people. Joe — who was a few years short of 60 — sounded to me like someone who enjoyed helping getting really bad people off the street and I asked why he’d retired early. He told me that what he called “the service” had changed for the worse. Then I asked him about the new people coming in. He shook his head, actually teared up and said that many of them were “really bad.” I pressed. “Really bad” meant incompetent? “No — DANGEROUS,” he responded “they like to hurt people.”
It was then that I think I understood why Joe drank.
The coward that shot him should be tried and executed for murder.
You must be one heck of a shot!
See post 12, that’s what.
I don’t own a golf club so I confront home invasions with a shotgun instead.
There is ZERO justification for a police “raid” except when innocent lives are in imminent danger, e.g. hostage situations, or when there’s an active shooter. The military is for killing people and breaking things ... killing enemies and breaking their stuff. Killing US citizens, even criminals, or rather, criminal suspects - don’t forget “innocent until proven guilty” - is not something the US military should ever do, and is certainly not something the police should do. The costs of their doing so is no less than the cost that meth exacts on its addicts, except that what is rotted is not teeth, it’s freedom.
That’s not what the law says. Learn the law, then you’ll realize that your notions are not the law.
I view 99 percent of law enforcment as publicly financed street thugs and gangbangers. I used to respect law enforcement, but no longer.
Armed cops kicking in doors unannounced to conduct no-knock searches have been known to make mistakes, to kick in the wrong door.
Armed home invaders have been known to kick in doors and scream 'Police!' to deceive their victims into disarming themselves and becoming completely compliant.
Armed home invaders have been know to summarily execute their victims after burglarizing their homes and perhaps raping them.
In my opinion, no-knock searches like this one put the public in much greater danger than the drugs the cops are after.
This is gravely stupid, heavy-handed police work.
Then the media has done their job, and you bought the dope. You have been brought over to the Communist’s side, for the Communists have been waging a war on American police since the 1950s, and the media has been their willing accomplice.
But then you could be Al Bundy, who wants nothing more than a moment's peace to put one into his own brain housing group. :-)
The law is whatever the hell the cop holding the gun says it is. Fact, jack.
Awards pension boosts promotions etc.
I agree that no-knock raids need to have specific parameters and some might be too quick to use them where they are not necessary. However, the answer to that problem is working within the law to establish clear guidelines when and in what situations such a warrant will be issued.
Regardless, in this situation, the officers were acting with a warrant, issued on probable cause, signed by a detached neutral magistrate.
Nobody wants to place any blame on the worthless doper in this case, who brought the problem on himself, both by selling drugs, and then by bringing a golf club to a gun fight.
Incorrect.
There are good cops. I know some. Their jobs are made difficult by jackasses like the trigger-happy blue suit in this story.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.