You are here: Home » Featured » Granny Tasered & Arrested?

Granny Tasered & Arrested?

What’s going on with the cops? New videos of really odd police brutality are popping up every day on youtube. Look at these too:

What’s going on here? Did they start giving the cops steroids or something? I’m very worried that as the economy drops, our government is preparing to contain riots, and I guess us in general. Couple this upsurge in police brutality with the Supreme Court‘s 5-4 decision to pretty much decimate the 6th amendment on the same day Prop 8 was upheld, and you can color me deeply concerned about what’s happening.

“Certainly our decision in Jackson did not mandate such an odd rule.” From Justice Steven’s dissenting opinion. Please read the entire ruling yourself in a pdf. here, and see what you think about it. Let me know. I care; I’ll listen to your opinion. I’d also Really, REALLY like to Sonia Sotomayor’s opinion on this subject. We better let our representatives know we want it asked!

Please also check out this Pdf. of the Ammicus Brief from 19 former judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials, arguing strongly against overturning Jackson.

“Law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, and trial judges will have to start anew in developing a common law from particularized decisions reflecting inherently subjective assessments of the tactics as well as the intent of investigators, the timing as well as the content of interrogations, and the understanding as well as the free will of defendants.”

Their brief also argues that the purpose of the Sixth Amendment goes beyond merely preserving the adversary process and that the Jackson rule protects crucial Fifth Amendment due process protections that help ensure a fair trial and public confidence in the integrity of the criminal justice system:

Third, Jackson links two key criminal procedural rights — the Sixth Amendment right to counsel under Gideon v. Wainwright and the Fifth Amendment rights of an accused under Miranda — which are fundamental to the adversary process and maintain public confidence in our criminal justice system. Discarding Jackson would undermine both rights. Allowing the police to initiate interrogation of a represented defendant and to use any resulting statements would strip away protections the attorney can provide, interfere with the relationship between counsel and client, and undercut the integrity of criminal trials…To abandon a rule that safeguards them would erode the public confidence they foster. It would signal that enduring legal principles and important constitutional rights are no longer so enduring nor so important.

Just another example of the Obama administration adopting Bush administration positions and undermining constitutional protections.” Ed Brayton, Science Blogs, May 31, 2009.

And here’s your new ID card America. Papers Please!, a blog chronicling the increasingly Orwellian control grid that’s being forced upon us.

“As of today, June 1, 2009, even U.S. citizens are officially prisoners in the USA, or exiles barred from entering our own country without the government’s permission.

We are now forbidden by Federal regulations from leaving or entering the USA, anywhere, by any means — by air, by sea, or by land, to or from any other country or international waters or airspace — unless the government chooses to issue us a passport, passport card, or “enhanced” drivers license (any of which “travel documents” are now issued only with secretly and remotely-readable uniquely-numbered radio tracking beacons in the form of RFID transponder chips), or unless the Department of Homeland Security chooses to to exercise its standardless “discretion” to decide — in secret, with no way for us to know who is making the decision or on what basis — to issue a (one-time case-by-case) “waiver” of the new travel document requirements.

If you’re in the USA without such documents — even if you were born here, or are a foreigner who entered the USA legally without such documents (a Canadian, for example, who entered the USA by land yesterday when no such documents were yet required), or your document(s) have expired or have been lost or stolen — you are forbidden to leave the country unless and until you procure such a document, or unless and until the DHS gives you an exit permit in the form of a discretionary one-time waiver to leave the country — but not necessarily to come home, unless they again exercise their discretion to “grant” you another waiver.”

As the rules go into effect people are being allowed to pass through the border with a notice that the rules have changed. MSNBC is reporting that 90% of people crossing are already complying with the new rules. I think that they don’t actually have a right to do this. We have a constitutional right, as well as a human civil right to travel due to international treaties that the U.S. has signed, to free travel. Its a human right. Why people are just shrugging and saying “no big deal”, I just don’t understand. Why are we so complacent as our government usurps the rule of law on a daily basis?

Suddenly I find myself in a country that seems to think I’m a terrorist. I think it’s time the people in power be reminded that it is us, the “little guys”, that keep this country running. I’m tired of taking my shoes off at the airport,  of not being abled to take my goddamn drink through security, of having to be frisked and even have fingers of some strange TSA agent in the waistband of my jeans, I don’t even know what that air poof booth at SFO was doing to me, and being treated like a goddamned criminal. These dragnet type policies are making rules based on the exceptions, not on what’s best for you and me.

Its about controlling us, getting us to submit to control grid of biometrics, and destroying any semblance of privacy left in our lives. I’m sick of it. I’ve had way more than enough. We’ve got to start standing up for ourselves, things are spiraling out of control.