photo credit: katesheetsLet me tell you how I feel about the police. Better yet, I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.
Okay, I admit it. I was sleeping. When the G-20 meetup came to Pittsburgh a few weeks ago, I was preoccupied with health care reform, and I didn’t give the event the attention it deserved. Especially the protests. That was a mistake. I missed something really important, and I suspect you did to.
Sure, I heard a couple of news reports about demonstrations of the kind that normally occur at meetings of the G-20 and WTO, and I remember that some of them had become a bit unruly. As I said, I wasn’t paying that much attention. But somehow I don’t remember hearing any reports about large gangs of cops launching utterly unprovoked attacks on even larger numbers of peacefully assembled students—even students located on the Pitt campus five miles away from the G-20 conference and uninvolved in protests, demonstrations or political activity of any kind.
The attacks were carried out by the Pittsburgh police department, evidently, just for the hell of it. Just because they could. The same sort of state sanctioned thuggery that led to the deaths of students at Kent State so many years ago. (see video at right)
Earlier in the week I posted videos depicting police officers using box cutters to destroy the tents of homeless folks in St. Petersburg, Florida, another video showing the aftermath of a police raid of a homeless camp in Nashville, and still another of two cops beating a homeless man in Fresno. Sorry stuff.
Keeping cops under control has never been easy. Like undisciplined children who shoot off bottle rockets in the house, cops love to wear cool helmets, carry big sticks, hear guns go boom and watch people scatter. It’s the most fun they’ve had since dropping horny toads down the girls’ blouses back in the third grade. Yeah, yeah, yeah… some girls did it too.
So, make up your own mind. It’s time to reign this in, right?
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This is not a good thing to see. I am afraid that our country is coming apart at the seems and that it won’t be long before everyone is fighting everyone. When the police start attacking citizens without provocation you are correct that things are getting out of hand.