The Killing Comes Home

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Just STOP fucking killing us

Actually, the beast has been at my doorstep before. Just over the bridge, the bastards murdered Oscar Grant on New Years Day 2009. But that was the East Bay - they have real racial problems over there, racist cops, a lot of minorities, a history, you know? This is Silicon Valley - Home of Intel, of San Jose State University, the beating heart of the tech revolution, the font of so much wealth and success. How could the beast come here to feed?

And yet.

And yet, once again, early on Thursday morning, three so-called 'correctional officers' - nothing but thugs and gangsters with a government sanction and a license to kill savagely beat Michael Tyree - a homeless bipolar kid being held on a nothing paraphernalia charge until a bed in a mental health facility opened up - to death. The inmate in the next cell heard the beating, and watched them turn out the light and close the cell door, leaving Michael Tyree to bleed out slowly from his torn and ruptured organs.

The Santa Clara Sheriff's office knows exactly which way the wind is blowing. The three officers were promptly charged with Tyree's "cowardly" murder (Sheriff Smith's words) arrested and held without bail. That's the good news - the free pass that uniformed law enforcement personnel have enjoyed to kill, torture, maim, injure and humiliate the citizens they are responsible for protecting is slowly ending. Accountability, at least in some jurisdictions, is coming.

Of course, there is a true gang mentality within law enforcement organizations, and it's going to take a while for the new realities to sink in, and more will die hard before the murderers, bullies and thugs figure out that they very well might NOT get away with it. Meanwhile they push back, characterizing the disgust people feel when the cops kill the citizens as a 'war on cops'.  It's a well known and oft-used tactic to try to silence the people trying to upset their apple cart, but I don't think it will work this time.

We've had it. 

We've had it right up to here with criminals killing us on one side and cops killing us on the other. We've had it will living in a crossfire, surrounded by the various heavily armed gangs who think they can kill us with impunity. War on cops? Nah. War on COPS KILLING US. And all it takes is doing what we do, prosecuting murderers. As soon as the bullies and thugs in the blue uniforms realize that they are going to be held to the same legal standard as the 'dirtbags' they lord over, they'll have to behave the way they're supposed to, or switch sides.
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