Some are asking why…

June 7, 2012 By 32 Comments

the random citizens of Aurora, Colorado who were handcuffed and their cars searched by the jackbooted thugs police for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time did not fight back or resist this outrageous eruption of Soviet tactics into American life. Here’s why:

Look at that menacing child. It’s good to know the police state has free rein to arrest and, if need be, blow that kid away for resisting whatever the hell it is police feel like doing.

We must we willing to sacrifice our most basic freedoms to the State if we are to preserve our liberty or the terrorists will already have won.

Feel safe, or you just might be an Enemy of the State.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 32 Comments
  • IdahoMan

    Act like terrorists, be treated like terrorists.

    If “police” keep this up, they are going to regret it. If they have no problem pointing guns at/attacking us in mass, then it work both way: We can respond in kind. If not during the attack(an ambush), then after the fact(counter-attack).

    You arrogant BASTARDS. You want to act like an occupying enemy army? Remember this:

    “If ‘police’ insist on acting like an occupying enemy
    army, they should not at all be surprised if the citizenry
    play their opposing role in return.”

    Do you people (APD, LE in general -seeing the way it’s all heading) really want to go down that road?

    • Michael

      I should think the answer is obvious by know. Yes, yes they do. They already view the population as the enemy and if we shoot back that will just reinforce their worldview.

      • SecretAgentMan

        You guys should stop regarding cops the way the cops regarded the people at the intersection. Exhale. Every freedom we cherish has always been under threat from overzelous officials. The fact that these cops ignored the Constitution (and there’s always the possibility they did so as the result of some very incompetent Constitutional law training) just proves that eternal vigilence is the price of liberty. This is not a Red Dawn apocalypse. It’s how things always are. The best reaction would be — and this is assuming things are as bad as they seem in the story — to ensure that these police and, their political and uniformed superiors — pay for their misdeeds by appopriate civil suits or job sanctions. I would stress that the offficers and politicians should bear the full weight of any such sanctions.

  • Sean O

    That picture tells you how far gone the police mentality is.

    Andy Taylor with his restraint, common sense and decency is long gone. The new sheriff is an officious and aggressive Barney Fife. Nothing funny about it. Mayberry has greatly changed for the worse.

  • ivan_the_mad

    They should be ashamed of themselves.

  • Ye Olde Statistician
  • kmk

    In Baltimore this past week, the police handcuffed and arrested a teen at her graudation practice on Thursday and didn’t release her from jail until Monday–she was entirely innocent. Her arrest was based on a citizen’s accusation. She missed her graduation– 4 days in jail!!! Seventeen yeasrs old!!! I hope her family sues the BCPD. We moved out of the city years ago and are very glad we did.

    http://www.wbaltv.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/Student-misses-graduation-after-police-mistakenly-arrest-her/-/10131532/14510502/-/item/2/-/11b8ytm/-/index.html

  • Dan C

    Such has been life in the inner city since the 1980′s. It was acceptable then, because “good people” weren’t involved and it was St. Ronnie’s War on Drugs and it involved folks perceived as “other.”. I lived and went to school at the time in the inner city. So…now it’s a bunch of white folks having this happen.

    I cannot get incensed since I’ve seen worse perpetrated by police. But the victims we now see are white.

    You all are far far too late.

    • http://confederatepapist.blogspot.com/ Confederate Papist

      I would say before the 1980′s…more like the 1880′s. Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and on and on and on…….

  • Ben not the athiest

    Well this is disturbing. Someone needs to sue the police in Aurora. Makes me want to leave the country.

  • Mark S (not for Shea)

    I understand how “the system” could do this. Bureacracy breeds stuff like this.

    But I don’t understand how police officers can behave this way. Are they truly there “to protect and to serve?” Or are they thugs? Are these a few bad apples? Or is our current culture of law enforcement breeding thugs like this? Anyone know…?

    • http://www.innocenceexperience.org Bethany

      15 years ago a friend told me about incident where he had gotten pulled over for speeding. When handing back his driver’s license and registration, the officer accidentally dropped the license on the ground, but was unaware of it. The officer walked back to his vehicle, my friend thinking everything was over, opened his door to retrieve his license and suddenly found the officer with his gun trained on him calling for back-up.

      At the time I had another friend going through the police academy. I questioned him about the incident and he said that is how they are trained to respond to all situations, “to protect themselves, for safety.” I always thought that was wrong. It’s assuming guilt.

    • Ted Seeber

      The Battle of Seattle, back in 2001, proved to me that most police *are* just thugs of the rich against the poor.

  • dpt

    Dan C.- I’ve heard similar from someone who was involved in local police “watch” activities. This police nonsense is nothing new in the poor and minority communities.

    Well the officer pointing the shotgun at the youngman is clear to identify. Hopefully his neighbors will have the nerve to question him and ask him why he behaved this way.

    • Dan C

      I would also suspect that this is a troubled police department, with poor behavior tolerated if not encouraged, by leaders and the general populace.

  • john

    I cannot help but wonder if the bank in this incident handles the police department money…In any case it is clear that the banks must be served and protected from the people

  • john

    The look on the face of the cop with the shotgun is frightening…he looks as though he is facing down a serious threat and the guy behind the shield obviously feels threatened by the teenager…this whole thing is scary, scary, scary. What is more frightening is the number of commenters on the articles who justify this action…the new price of peace and security is violence and fear.

  • quasimodo

    So… is there any chance that the teen in question is the bank robber? Not the that bank robber was a teen but you can’t see his face. The picture I’ve seen of the robber … again no face in the photo … is dressed the same way.

    I could be wrong.

  • Dan C

    @Quasimodo: 45 yo Christian Paetsch was arrested. The gentleman in the photo, or the women in the other photos, or the over one dozen other folks arrested and cuffed on the side of the road did not look like this at all, and suggesting so is kind of weird and distracting.

    • ivan_the_mad

      It really was just a simple question.

  • quasimodo

    Weird & distracting to what …. the narrative? It was a simple question. Sorry to distract you.

  • Observer

    Say you lived in a city where your police needed quite a bit of tax revenue. As things turn out, the police have to get enough revenue to keep operation (of course depending on the size and operation of the department.) So, they soon learn their biggest contributers are perhaps people who have a living arranged for an expensive lifestyle (and spending a lot of income in the city.) Board members of city councils probably know quite much, as well, of who are the biggest contributers and viable people for supplying a much better cash flow of tax revenue. As a result of the council members investigation and working with both police and mayor, the priorities of the police are now aligned to what protects and serve’s those whom the council members are the most advantageous contributers. And here you have a case which strongly suggests the hypothetical illustration.

  • Kim

    Listen, I do not want to condone the police tactics here, but if you read the whole article it makes a little more sense. Someone decided (in what seems like it was a split-second decision) to blockade the intersection because they knew the robber was somewhere in that line of cars. That was a bad decision. But, now that the decision has been made, all that the other officers there know is that someone in that line of cars has a gun. They don’t know anything else. They don’t know age or race (I’m not sure if they know gender) of the suspect. They don’t know the make, model, or even color of the car. They don’t know if the person is alone or with others. All they know is that someone there can kill them.
    I am not, I repeat, not, justifying these tactics. I just don’t think it takes a conspiracy to value banks over people or the equation of these officers with Nazis to explain why, once they were in that situation (which, I repeat, I agree that it was the wrong decision to set this up, but it happened because of one person’s decision and the rest of these guys had to deal with it) they would act like this. Just a few months ago, in my little town which normally has no more crime than the occasional bar fight or shoplifting in Wal-mart, a police officer was shot and killed at 4 in the afternoon as he walked up to a house accompanying a city inspector delivering a nuisance warrant. I think these guys live every day with a sense that “normal” can become “deadly” without any warning. I don’t think that makes this ok, but I do think this situation is different from the pepper-spray in the face of student protestors stuff. In this case, someone made a mistake, and that mistake put a bunch of people in a really dangerous situation, and they probably over-reacted, but I think a much more charitable interpretation than thuggishness or conspiracy is possible here.

    • http://chicagoboyz.net TMLutas

      If it were only thuggishness or as organized as a conspiracy. These people are tearing up an important part of US fundamental law *by accident* and then trying to cobble together justifications why it is ok. It is completely unprofessional and contemptible. It is as bad as the old English general warrant.

    • Sharon

      Kim, you made a lot of sense.

    • SecretAgentMan

      I’d agree to be cautious here, as we’re all commenting from a lack of knowledge (it is a media report, after all). But if, as the story says, police “tracked the robber” to the intersection, how did they not know what he or she looked like, or which car he or she was in? Sounds more like police heard the robber was in a vehicle heading toward the intersection, had no description of him/her or the vehicle, and based on the elapsed time figured that a mass arrest was good bet for nabbing the crook.

      So they shoved guns in the faces of dozens of people, forced them out of their cars, and handcuffed them. Based on that tactic, I’d say we have no way whatosever of knowing if the police actually arrested anyone responsible for anything. I’d hate to think they identified the suspect by evidence in his car, particularly if the evidence was visible from outside the car. They could have slowed or temporarily stopped the traffic and identified the robber by looking through the windows in the manner of a DUI checkpoint, which has its own problems but isn’t the 1984 stuff we see here. I don’t see how the risk of an armed confrontation would have been greater in that situation than the one the police actually created – recall the alleged robber was the last one found, and may well have had plenty of time to see the police arresting the other drivers.

      There’s a cop culture that says aggression is the better part of honor. They’re driven to it in part by machismo, and in part by chickenhawk sentiment in the public, media and political establishment who love shootouts and bustin’ the bad guys. (I use sentiment because it’s the luxury of having an emotion without paying for it, and only the cops have to do that). A lot of that chickenhawk sentiment is a fascist belief that obedience to the law only aids the guilty (torture proponents take note), and namby-pamby whinging about the Constitution is just moral or physical cowardice. So the police are seen as a force that busts the bad guys or rescues victims, but not as a power required to enforce the law. I get all that, and I get how hard it must be for someone whose family, career, and (misguided) self image would require him or her to break the stereotype.

      But, as we’re constantly telling robbers who were under financial strain or strung out on drugs, if the law doesn’t apply in dire and stressful situations then it’s not the law at all. Sometimes and paradoxically, we let the gulty escape because it’s the decent thing to do.

      • Mark Shea

        I read they were acting on a tip.

        • SecretAgentMan

          Ah, missed that in the linked story. If the tip was just “hey, the guy you’re looking for is heading toward the corner of 9th and Vine,” then I dont see it changing my analysis much. A tip and a cup of coffee can get you ont0 a drone strike list nowadays.

  • http://confederatepapist.blogspot.com/ Confederate Papist

    This scene will soon be taking place in front of Catholic churches, and any other denomination that supports them.

  • Big Sista

    Citizens need to start looking at police budgets and ask why every town needs a SWAT team who are armed to the teeth, dressed with bullet proof vests and masks and ready to kill. These are not ordinary police anymore they are paramilitaries like we see in Europe. Also I am tired of hearing about “officer safety” as an excuse to put their boots on our necks. If they can’t take the heat get out of the business. Not everyone is a thug and criminal. What about our safety? In my high end neighborhood about 8 years ago a SWAT team showed up to arrest a bookie and accidentally shot and killed him…BS…stop the oppression

    • http://mondayevening.wordpress.com/ Marcel

      I thing the bullet proof vests are probably okay.

    • Sean O

      You are correct. The vast majority of towns have no need for these SWAT teams. They are a waste of money and potentially dangerous to local populations. There is always the itch to use this kind of force once local police have it.

      Ubiquitous, heavily armed swat teams are a manifestation of the police state we are half submerged in.