CelticBear’s Musings

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I DO have a lot of respect for the police profession. Police officers do a job most of us, certainly I, don’t want, couldn’t do. Responding to crime scenes, witnessing the results of man’s inhumanity to man, man’s stupidity, and just horrible accidents. Most police take their job to serve and protect seriously, and I have great respect for them.

And that’s one reason why when I see thugish, fascist, barbaric behavior from police I feel betrayed. I feel scared for the slow encroachment into a world in which the police are becoming less servants of the people and more servants of a political agenda. Where “police” starts becoming equated with Gestapo and Tonton Macoute and Soviet Secret Police.

And feeding that fear are things like this:

Regardless of the purpose of the crowd, that kind of unwarranted, extreme, thugish behavior against unarmed, peaceful people is disturbing and disgusting. You expect to see that kind of gleeful brutality of paramilitary “police” in 3rd-world countries with systemic civil unrest, not in the United States. Shooting at people (with “non-lethal” but rib breaking ammo) for not moving away fast enough, accosting and manhandling and abusing the press–it’s astonishing and frightening.

UPDATE: That above video clip is from FOX News. If you’re like me don’t trust anything FOX News has to say, here’s MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann’s report.