Judge, Jury, and Executioner

I know that a policeman's job is difficult and dangerous, but they are supposed to be trained and realize that their job is to apprehend, not beat up a suspect because their adrenaline is running high...



Not only do the police gratuitously kick the guy in the head. They high five afterwards. This is outrageous. Notice how the NBC report ends with a seeming "justification" for the brutality: "Authorities said the driver was wanted in connection with an attempted murder. Authorities said the incident occurred earlier Wednesday." But it isn't a justification. The police are not supposed to mete out "justice" at the end of a kick in the head.

This is the umpteenth example of police brutality in California (and it happens here as well in Canada, not just cops beating up people but on occasion they kill people). This has to stop. We are sold on a system that claims justice, but there is no justice when the police function becomes judge, jury, and executioner. Their job is supposed to be limited to apprehending. It is up to the the court to decide what crimes are committed and what appropriate "justice" is to be applied.

In Canada there is the classic case of an immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, who didn't speak English coming to stay with his mother. She had left instructions for him to stay by the luggage carousel. Unfortunately she didn't know that was inside the "secure" area and while she waited outside and repeatedly asked authorities about her son and the unfortunate instructions she gave him, he was inside for hours getting more and more desperate because he mother had not shown up as she promised. The police decide that he is a serious security danger so they taser him 5 times and kill him. You can watch the police act as judge, jury, and executioner (or as a police psychologist says "the decision to fire the Taser on a man with a stapler was a level-nine response to a level-two threat", sadly the "level-nine" response means that they killed him):



In the US, a student in Florida asks a question during a Q&A session with John Kerry, gets arrested and tasered. You can hear Kerry saying that he wants to answer the question, but the police have decided to act as judge & jury and take him off an taser him: