[WARNING: This is a rant. I wrote it in a fit on creativity after watching a few videos on YouTube that involved police brutality, most of which involved a tazer. While police brutality IS wrong, I realize that most cops are just average joes. Unfortunately, I have a stiff position about Police in that no cop is allowed to commit violence on civillians unless absolutely called for. The man shouting at you over a speeding ticket is an asshole, but until he grabs a weapon, you have no right to hit, taze, shoot, or otherwise subdue him. Period.]


I find it shocking that anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together would trust the police. It's astounding what they get away with on a daily basis, what they HAVE been getting away with for decades. If not for the invention and affordability of cheap cameras inserted into phones, blackberrys and the other modern accessories of todays youth, we would never have gotten such an inside view into the crimes of those we dub our protectors.

Every other week on the internet you can find a video of some cop openly breaking the law and endangering the citizenry, especially come time for large political movements. Just the other day I watched a an appointed "defender of the peace" shot am eight month pregnant woman in the chest with a tazer for not signing a speeding ticket. A device designed and sold to be used for deterring VIOLENT criminals being used on an unarmed, pregnant civillian, for nothing more than shouting over a speeding ticket.

And more news abounds. Images of police assaulting a man for flipping them off, pepper spraying protesters at point-blank range for trying to leave the protest, cops shoving a cyclist in New York, then claim he tried to ram the officer. Thank goodness for the person with sense enough to have a camera running to put lie to this officer's word.

Even the one man who was arrested on false charges for sitting in an empty commuter parking lot. That he had sense enough to have a camera running when the cop came to his window was a pure stroke of genius. Had he not, he might be in jail for nothing, and that officer would still have a job.

God forbid you should dare to question the tactics of the police to their face. Every day they reach for their weapon of choice just a little bit faster. Someone being belligerent? Pepper spray. Unarmed man wants to dispute his traffic ticket? Tazer. Protesters on your street? Well damn if that doesn't call for liberal use of a Night Stick. What bystanders catch on camera in undoubtedly only the tip of the iceberg.

It is disgusting that we as a public treat these men as heros only because they have a piece of gold-plated tin at their chest and a gun at their hip. These little accessories do not make a bastard a hero. They give the bastard more license to be a bastard, believeing they can get away with it 90% of the time because no one is watching, and the court always believes the cop over the civillian. And most of the time they're right.

A badge and a weapon does NOT make a man a hero. A man with a badge is just that, a man, prone to all the weaknesses and stupidity entitled therein. We cannot continue to blindly venerate the average shithead just because of some pre-supposition that because he's in blue and wears a bade, he is a God come to earth to protect us. Heros, real, honest heros earn their title and respect. A Hero runs into a burning building to save kids. A Hero stands up to corruption. A hero looks his baser impulses to violence and stupidity in the eye and refutes them. THAT'S a hero.

Power Corrupts, and nowhere is this more obvious and vicious than in the police officers who are caught abusing the public and breaking the laws they are charged to uphold. Every cop who breaks the law should be stripped of his rank and shoved into a prison. If you are going to uphold the law, you must BE the law. No exceptions. Your power and authority only go so far as nessecary to do your duty. Save the tazer for the gunman, or the man on drugs who won't stop for a bullet. The unarmed citizen doesn't have to put up with your shit, and someday, when you think no one's watching, we'll catch you and you'll answer to the courts, where the honest man gets his justice.
Tad Demartelaere.