The US has the highest incarceration rate and the biggest prison population of any country in the world. With 5 percent of the world’s population, the US has 25 percent of the world’s prison inmates. Recent research by the Pew Center concludes that one in every 31 Americans is in prison or jail or on probation or parole. FULL ARTICLE
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11 comments ↓
I think it was Thoreau who said it….“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison”
MIchael, Roberts is so on target. Usually when there is a charge of police brutality, unless it is caught on tape, the victim has no recourse. And even on tape is not very often much help.
I have wrote on the populist of an incident that I was involved in many years ago and I read of similar things going on all the time. The incident I won’t go thru again, but I had a neighbor who was a long time friend and retired Sargent of the Police Force.
I told him the story of what I saw and reported and the absolute ignoring of my report. I told him that I noticed that the police involved seemed to usually be involved when some questionable event occurred. Then my friend told me that there were police on the force that actually looked for an excuse to shoot or beat someone. That was how they got off in life. And one of the four that I had been talking about, he told me was very dangerous to any person he approached. He believed the guy was a psychopath and always looking for the opportunity to kill someone.
And this guy would be backed by the DA to the hilt. If you read my story about the event, one of the victims of the brutality I reported was a member of the District Attorneys office. The realization by the police that they were attacking a member of the DA’s office is what stopped the carnage.
The incident was laughed off by the press.
The DA employee wouldn’t testify against the police.
Unless it is caught on tape.
6 words that say so much about “justice” in this country. They get away with whatever they want, unless people are protecting themselves with video.
That’s why I can’t stress enough – for people to start using a service like http://qik.com/
which streams video live right from your phone to the web…on faraway servers that cops won’t easily be able to destroy the evidence.
I think step one would be to end this insane, immoral, disgusting war on drugs.
You know the one – where people go to jail for a plant.
Many years ago, I worked for a fire department. We had an ambulance. One cop in the PD used to find a drunk beaten or mugged in an alley almost every night. He always wore loaded leather gloves.
One evening, we responded to one of our less than polite druggies who was causing a scene. Our medics had her restrained in the gurney and were putting her in the ambulance for a trip to Ward B. The cop was present and she swore and spit at him. He smashed her in the face, while in restraints, strapped to a gurney! The attendants filed a complaint. After a closed door session with the Chief of Police, he moved on to another department to continue his avocation. End of story.
Not too often that you’ll find one member of the government prosecuting one of their own kind. That’s why I don’t expect to see any prosecutions of the Bush-Cheney regime.
Dave
Speaking of the war on drugs, there was an arrest of a drug kingpin in my home state a few years ago. A key witness had been a victim of Police brutality a year or so before the arrest.
The key witness refused to testify for the DA. The DA publicly vowed revenge against the witness. Originally the witness had been arrested for owning an unlicensed gun. He had won his case and still retained the gun.
So the DA got together a SWAT team and and raided the guys home one night with the claim that they had received a report that he had unlicensed guns in his house. The once key witness was shot to death in his bed. The DA claimed that he tried to shoot them as they entered his bedroom.
Even though there were bullet holes through the bedroom walls from the living room ( from a point where one couldn’t see into the bedroom), basically the scuttlebutt was that he should have testified for the DA. DA was exonerated. Case closed.
P.S. There was only one gun found in the home. The original gun.
Think what a great fix for the economy ending the war on drugs would be! They could save billions on foreign policy, billions on prisons and the “justice” system, billions and billions…..
But no, they don’t trade power for savings, do they.
After reading all of the responses thus far, No has bothered to mention that for centuries all over the planet there has been a 2 tiered justice system. as mankind got more sophisticated, the 2 tier system was broken down to race,wealth. And here in the USA, it is still no better. And we the people including populists sit here and physically do nothing to actively change it. Gee sounds like people are desiring freedom, without the respondsibilty that goes along with it.
Steve. There is obviously a two tier system of Justice in this United States. Just look at how our Senators get away with breaking the law. Corruption reigns in Washington.
Yup, 2 tiers is right. How about those Obama appointments that skipped out on taxes and barely got a slap on the wrist? If I did what I thought was right – and stopped paying these crooks – they’d tear my house down if need be to come get me.
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