OK, I’ve had enough of reading about people getting tazered by the cops under the most ridiculous of circumstances. Now we have cops killing people with tazers for not speaking English. This needs to stop. This is the third time I’ve had to write about this crap in as many months. (Article one | Article two)

Twenty-four seconds after Canadian police approached Polish immigrant Daniel Dziekanski, police welcomed him to their country by jolting him with a tazer. Minutes later, the man died from the attack. Zofia Cisowski, mother of Daniel, grieves over the loss of her only living family member after spending months saving money to get her son into Canada.

Daniel, seeking a new life in Canada, had spent fifteen hours flying to his new home. As he spoke no English, he had previously arranged to connect with his mother at the airport. He proceeded through post-flight customs and then into a secondary customs check, standard procedure for an immigrant that doesn’t speak English. What happened after that defies explanation.

For ten hours, Dziekanski stayed in the Arrivals Hall trying to connect with his mother. Meanwhile, his mother paced the halls for six hours, trying to locate her son. After repeated attempts by the mother asking airport personnel where her son was, they were unable to locate her son. Eventually, Canadian airport personnel informed Daniel’s mother that he was no longer at the airport. Truth be told, he was probably less than 200 feet away from her. Thanks to nearly impenetrable airport security, the two were unable to see each other and received no assistance from airport security in locating one another.

Daniel, unable to communicate with anyone around him, became increasingly frightened and agitated in the busy Vancouver airport. He became increasingly disoriented and desired only to connect with the familiar, his mother, whom was less than a football field’s length away.

After 10 hours in the airport, police approached Daniel. Exactly what happened in the exchange is not entirely clear, but according to reports, twenty-four seconds after approaching Daniel, the RCMP (police) pulled their tazers in an attempt to disable and handcuff the man. He sustained “a couple shots” from a tazer, lost consciousness moments later and failed to receive medical treatment for at least 12 minutes after the attack. A few minutes later, Daniel died from injuries sustained by the ultra-high voltage tazer gun.

Here’s our security bureaucracy at it’s best - admittedly it’s not in America - but the same kind of thing could happen here just the same. Thanks to zero-tolerance police training and the human immigration process being buried by hundreds of layers of red tape, we have set the stage for killing people, simply because they are unable to speak English. It’s reasonably safe to assume that if the guy could’ve spoken English, the situation would have been quickly diffused, or more likely, never would have occurred.

My heart goes out to Zofia Cisowski, the mother. This never should’ve happened and I grieve for her loss.

What we’re doing here in “the war on terror” is not good. We have to find a better way.

Last month I wrote up an article about a student being tazered by police for simply asking a question. I present you another video showing the exact same kind of abuse of power that we’re seeing today. In this case, we have a student that was using the campus library late at night and had forgotten his student ID card.

This actually happened back in 2006, I believe…but I must’ve missed it. Not watching TV or reading magazines or newpapers & always having to work for your info does have it’s drawbacks. I have to warn you…the video’s a little graphic. Not bloody graphic - just the graphic display of cops, hard at work, abusing their power of authority.

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Instead of police just cuffing & bagging to diffuse a situation, which you can’t tell me two or nine cops couldn’t do, we’re seeing rampant abuse of power all over the place. Things like this are extreme cases, but on a much larger scale with much smaller impacts, police are advancing upon us like a professional military. Instead of justice being the goal, we have public displays of outright torture by police for things that aren’t even a crime. Learn to fear, America. That’s what they’re trying to ingrain into your minds.

What angers me about this is the police officer’s unwillingness to identify themselves. They are required, by law, to identify themselves, both as a police officer and a name or badge number when asked. That, and the fact that *while* tazering the guy, they were demanding he stand. I dunno if you’ve ever been tazered, but as someone that’s touched a 110V circuit inadvertently (errr, more than once), I believe the voltage those things put would be more the enough to make it difficult to stand. Police should never give an order while making it completely impossible to follow. That is abuse of power.

It’s almost like basic civil rights are not being taught in police academies these days. Their training is designed to override human decency and patience. The Constitution and ethical behavior is most certainly not being taught. A tazer, which is known to kill people (by the way), is capable of completely disabling a person…and in fact, is what it was designed for. We allow police to have these because A) we believe every problem isn’t best solved with a gun and B) there are situations where disabling a person (e.g. meth-head gone freakin’ bezerk) might be necessary. A person that is willing to leave on their own accord, after realizing the seriousness of the situation, and committed the “crime” of forgetting a piece of identification, does not classify a justifiable use of such non-lethal force, in my opinion.

All this over a forgotten ID, by a student, in a library. (Imagine that…I thought that was a *good* thing?) Sure, he resisted leaving (probably because he wanted to study) and it was escalated into a violent crescendo of tazering, physical roughhousing and impossible demands. Despite even being willing to leave on his own accord…why must police take things to this level? Of course this all erupted from one of those ingenious plans to protect you…a policy of random ID checks after a certain hour in the library…and a hard line stance against any violations. Nothing bad could ever come from such a thing…or could it?

Of course, if you watch COPS every night…you’re nearly immune to seeing abuse of power. Cops that do this kind of thing rightfully earn the disrespectful term of “pig” and honestly, I hope these cops have a special place reserved in hell. That’s all I have to say.

You didn’t think things like this were going to happen…but you can now be arrested and tazered by police for simply asking a question.

In utter disgust, I learned of an arrest and brutal treatment of a young man, by police, for redressing grievances to a public politician in a public venue. He was dragged away, against his will, thrown to the ground, handcuffed and then tazered by police. His crime? He asked some questions.

Freedom of speech is gone, America. Freedom to redress grievances is gone, too. Freedom from wrongful arrest has been polluted by a militaristic police state. The protections from tyranny provided by Habeas Corpus are just a faded memory. I get the feeling that most of you don’t really need those freedoms because you’re not doing anything wrong, right? Look around people. Things are wrong, more now than ever.

Don’t believe me? Here it is, straight from YouTube…and oh yeah, that’s kind of a prominent politician in the video. None other than Skull & Bonesman, John Kerry.

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Thank God there was a woman who was aware enough to realize what was going on and came to the young man’s defense. That’s like one in a room full of 100. I’d have a complete feeling of disgust if nobody did anything. Especially after the near unanimous round of applause the American people gave just moments before police sent upwards of 800,000 volts through the guy’s body.

From what I understand, there are actually quite a few Americans that believe what happened here was right. I really wish they would go live somewhere else under a more suitable type of government, say Communist. I really just don’t see what was wrong here…a hard question? Has our sense of freedom really been so degraded that we can’t tolerate a question to a public politician in a public venue? The comparison I’ve heard made is that you wouldn’t want someone to come into your house and ask you such questions. Well, one…you’re likely not a public politician living in AMERICA and two, this was a public forum where the public was permitted to ask questions. If not here, then where?

There’s quite a few angles of the incident on YouTube available. Oh, and if you can’t digest any new information without it first being spinned/slanted by the media…you can see they (MSNBC, in this case) are reporting the same evidence and coming to nearly the same conclusion.

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Of course, they had to spin the “disruptive behavior” piece, when in fact, had they not interrupted the man, it might have taken a minute or so to ask his three questions. What were his questions? Why, with all the evidence, did you concede the 2004 election so quickly? Are you a member of the skull and bones society? (Fact.) If you’re against going into Iran, why aren’t you calling for Bush’s impeachment before we can enter Iran? All good questions, in my opinion, that the American people should be entitled to know the answers to. Are these questions really enough to be arrested, charged with a crime and sentenced to a criminal record?

What are we going to do about this? Oh, wait…if you get tazered for just asking a goddamn question…what the fuck will they do if we stand up and fight for our rights? Better go back to being sheeple…