A Louisiana, Missouri father was prevented from saving his 3-year-old son from a house fire when cops tased him three times for attempting to enter the burning building. The fire started in a ground floor play room while the parents were asleep in the living room. The toddler was asleep upstairs in his bedroom. After waking up to the smell of fumes, the parents managed to get outside before calling 911. Stepfather Ryan Miller then kicked down the front door to the building as police and firefighters arrived.

The house was too hot for firefighters to enter, but when Miller attempted to rush in to try and save his stepson, he was restrained and then tased three times by a city police officer.

"He tried to get back in the house to get the baby," grandmother Lori Miller told KHQA. "They took my son to jail because he tried to save his son."

3-year-old Riley Miller was later found dead near the doorway to his bedroom and the house was completely destroyed.

"It's just heartless. How could they be so heartless?" said sister-in-law Emily Miller. "And while they all just stood around and waited for the fire department, what kind of police officer wouldn't try and save a three year old burning in a house?"

This is perhaps the most egregious example to date of police officers engaging in the kind of behavior that defies any rational explanation.

From unnecessarily shooting people's dogs, to violently invading people's homes for no reason, to sending SWAT teams to deal with minor domestic disputes, cops are rapidly being turned into a predatory force that serves little other function than terrorizing the public.

The sheer scale of police brutality on every level is now so chronic that many people now suggest not calling the police in the event of a crime because in many cases they make the situation immeasurably worse, often with violent consequences.

When a public is so afraid of the police that they would rather be a silent victim of crime than run the risk of coming off on the wrong side of law enforcement, that society is turning tyrannical.

Responsible police officers who honor the constitution and actually seek to be public servants in the line of duty need to condemn police brutality at every opportunity because they are being tarred with the same brush and it's creating a climate of fear and distrust -- a toxic cocktail that rarely goes unchecked without acting as a wrecking ball to liberty and free societies.