What is going on in the metropolitan Jacksonville, Florida, Duval County USA law enforcement community these days, I wonder? "Guns play a vastly larger role in Jacksonville's violent crime than in other big Florida communities, researchers at the University of North Florida have found." Weird! What else though? Any good... charity events?
"Virginia Is for Lovers." This state slogan is a great, cheap way to "make a point" whenever something fucked up happens in the state of Virginia. Such as, for example, "school security personnel" relentlessly blasting Norfolk-area public school students with pepper spray. For lovers? Yeah, lovers of pepper spray!
What would cause a heartless jack-booted armed thug cop to heartlessly slap a tiny little bitty dog? (What!) A wee little Pomeranian mix, slapped out of a third story window? (No!) A tiny sweet little pet trying to protect his precious family, only to be heartlessly—heartlessly—slapped, by a cop, out of a window, falling three stories, its tiny body twisting as it plummeted to the hard, heartless ground below? (I never!) Outrageous!
A new report from the New York Civil Liberties Union says that police in New York are "consistently misusing and overusing Tasers." The study of hundreds of taserings found that the majority of them "did not meet expert-recommended criteria;" that 15% were "clearly inappropriate" cases, such as shocking someone who was already handcuffed; and that only 15% of Tasering victims were armed when the police zapped them.
What is that highly trained squadron of commandos charged with tackling life's thorniest situations and defeating the scariest malefactors in our society, the Los Angeles SWAT team, up to now? Oh just getting robbed for a bunch of machine guns, by malefactors! I guess commando training doesn't include irony appreciation, which is quite an oversight!
Let's not jump to conclusions about this video, which (at about a minute in) shows a woman dressed in a business suit, carrying her Citibank checkbook, trying to leave her bank only to be dragged back inside and arrested by a plainclothes NYPD officer.
Here's a video of normal-sized middle-aged female journalist Amy Goodman being arrested by multiple hulking stick-wielding riot police dressed in full body armor at the Republican National Convention in 2008. Sometimes you just have to laugh at the police state. Hey guys, are there enough of you there, you think? What if she scratches your eyeballs?!
New York City is the world's greatest cultural melting pot, so it stands to reason that its police force would be a beacon of tolerance and understanding. Right? Sorry. It turns out some NYPD officers may be racist.
Puerto Rico! The island that just won't become our 51st state, no matter how much we bat our eyelashes. Still, as a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico has the right to have a police force just as brutal and corrupt as any in the USA.
Michael Pena, the off duty NYPD officer charged with raping a Manhattan woman last Friday night (not to be confused with the on-duty NYPD officers charged with raping a Manhattan woman) allegedly showed a gun, pulled the woman behind an apartment building, and raped her. Police arrived and found him still in the act, drunk, with his gun and badge next to him.
West Reading, Pennsylvania police Sgt. Matthew Beighley has a thing for Tasers. Not long after becoming a certified Taser expert, Beighley zapped two fellow officers in March. He also Tasered his dad, and recorded it on his Blackberry. Here's how police investigators say the incident happened, from the Reading Eagle:
It's hot, huh? The whole country is burning up. Make sure you stay cool out there! Especially make sure that you don't get heatstroke, bite a zookeeper, attack a police officer, and get yourself killed by the cops.
