In Washington state, a 29-year-old law that essentially grants police immunity to kill on a whim is being reconsidered in the wake of a June report by Amnesty International and an increase in the number of deadly police-on-citizen encounters.
The law’s language, which absolves police from prosecution in deadly encounters unless “evil intent” by the officer can be proven, is so overly broad that even the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys wants the law changed. According to a report by the Seattle Times, despite 213 fatal police encounters during the period 2005 to 2014, only one officer was charged following a deadly encounter, and that officer was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter after the jury was instructed to consider whether he acted with malice and evil intent. In that encounter, the officer shot a drunken man through the rear window of his parked car in 2009.
At the trial in Snohomish County, Officer Troy Meade told jurors he arrived on the scene after getting a report that a drunk man was about to drive away from a parking lot. The man was sitting in his car, which was parked between two other cars. Meade said the man refused his orders to get out of the car, and he (Meade) feared the man would back the car up and try and run him over.
Another officer on the scene testified that he didn’t believe anyone was in imminent danger and he heard Meade say, “Enough is enough. Time to end this,” before firing into the car’s back window, killing the man.
But the egregious nature of the law granting Washington police license to kill came into focus for state residents and prosecutors after a mentally challenged and unarmed 36-year-old man died after he was beaten, tased and hog-tied by Spokane officers in 2006.
Responding to a report, later proved to be false, that Otto Zehm might have stolen money from a cash machine, Officer Karl Thompson Jr. arrived to see Zehm leaving a convenience store carrying a 2-liter drink bottle. Thompson, who in fine, brave public service fashion later said he felt threatened by the drink bottle — even though the drink bottle was not fitted with a standard 30-round magazine and did not contain an attached edged weapon — hurried to Zehm and without first questioning him, promptly bonked him on the head twice with a baton.
Zehm fell to the ground in a fetal position where Thompson tased him, hit him at least seven more times with his baton and a thugscrum of more licensed killers jumped on Zehm, hog-tied him and left him lying on his stomach. Zehm’s last reported words were, “All I wanted was a Snickers bar.” He went into a coma and died two days later after being removed from life support.
Despite evidence that Thompson — and other officers on the scene — lied about the encounter (as surveillance video showed) and interfered in the subsequent death investigation, the county prosecutor declined to prosecute anyone.
Thompson was later convicted on federal civil rights charges and for obstructing an investigation, and he was sentenced to 51 months in prison. Other officers in the case also resigned, and some later pleaded guilty to various charges.
But while some in Washington are looking to hold police to some semblance of reasonableness, Oklahoma legislators are going the other way.
Latching onto the false but popular meme that there is a war on police, a new Oklahoma law makes any so-called “assault” on an off-duty officer a felony. Given that officers often claim almost any contact — even if they initiate it or if it was incidental or occurred in the case of pulling away from the officer’s grasp — is an “assault,” the badge-wearing caste has now been granted great license to abuse the public while off duty and more special privileges not granted us common folk.
Combine this with a law passed in November 2009 making it a felony punishable by a five-year prison term and $10,000 fine to “fortify” a home “for the purpose of preventing or delaying entry or access to a law enforcement officer,” and we see that Oklahoma has gone off the rails.
The law forbids Oklahoma residents to “construct, install, position, use or hold any material or device designed … to strengthen, defend, restrict or obstruct any door, window, or other opening into a dwelling, structure, building or other place to any extent beyond the security provided by a commercial alarm system, lock or deadbolt, or a combination of alarm, lock, or deadbolt.” In other words, Oklahoma residents are forbidden from taking the security measures they feel are necessary to protect themselves in the off chance that police want to one day make a warrantless or no-knock raid on their homes.
Or, as William Norman Griggs writes:
So it is that in Oklahoma, if you fight back when an off-duty cop shoves you in a bar, you can be charged with a felony. If, on the other hand, a SWAT team attacks your home in a no-knock raid, and its effort to breach your dwelling is thwarted because you installed “burglar bars,” you can also be charged with a felony.
Granting one class special “rights” or “privileges” not granted others deprives the others of their rights. Blue privilege is no exception and is further evidence we are living in a police state.
The post Blue privilege means police state appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/blue-privilege-means-police-state/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/blue-privilege-means-police-state/
No comments:
Post a Comment