"Mommy, am I gonna die?" — 4-year-old Ava Ellis after being inadvertently shot in the leg by a police officer who was aiming for the girl's boxer-terrier dog, PatchesChildren learn what they live.
"'Am I going to get shot again.'" — 2-year-old survivor of a police shooting that left his three siblings, ages 1, 4 and 5, with a bullet in the brain, a fractured skull and gun wounds to the face
As family counselor Dorothy Law Nolte wisely observed, "If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn. If children live with hostility, they learn to fight. If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive."
And if children live with terror, trauma and violence — forced to watch helplessly as their loved ones are executed by police officers who shoot first and ask questions later — will they in turn learn to terrorize, traumatize and inflict violence on the world around them?
I'm not willing to risk it. Are you?
It's difficult enough raising a child in a world ravaged by war, disease, poverty and hate, but when you add the toxic stress of the police state into the mix, it becomes near impossible to protect children from the growing unease that some of the monsters of our age come dressed in government uniforms.
Case in point: in Hugo, Oklahoma, plain clothes police officers opened fire on a pickup truck parked in front of a food bank, heedless of the damage such a hail of bullets — 26 shots were fired — could have on those in the vicinity. Three of the four children inside the parked vehicle were shot: a 4-year-old girl was shot in the head and ended up with a bullet in the brain; a 5-year-old boy received a skull fracture; and a 1-year-old girl had deep cuts on her face from gunfire or shattered window glass. Only the 2-year-old was spared any physical harm, although the terror will likely linger for a long time. "They are terrified to go anywhere or hear anything," the family attorney said. "The two-year-old keeps asking about 'Am I going to get shot again.'"
The reason for the use of such excessive force?
Police were searching for a suspect in a weeks-old robbery of a pizza parlor that netted $400.
While the two officers involved in the shooting are pulling paid leave at taxpayer expense, the children's mother is struggling to figure out how to care for her wounded family and pay the medical expenses, including the cost to transport each child in a separate medical helicopter to a nearby hospital: $75,000 for one child's transport alone.
This may be the worst use of excessive force on innocent children to date. Unfortunately, it is one of many in a steady stream of cases that speak to the need for police to de-escalate their tactics and stop resorting to excessive force when less lethal means are available to them.
For instance, in Cleveland, police shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was seen playing on a playground with a pellet gun. Surveillance footage shows police shooting the boy two seconds after getting out of a moving patrol car. Incredibly, the shooting was deemed "reasonable" and "justified" by two law enforcement experts who concluded that the police use of force "did not violate Tamir's constitutional rights."
In Detroit, 7-year-old Aiyana Jones was killed after a Detroit SWAT team launched a flash-bang grenade into her family's apartment, broke through the door and opened fire, hitting the little girl who was asleep on the living room couch. The cops were in the wrong apartment.
In Georgia, a SWAT team launched a flash-bang grenade into the house in which Baby Bou Bou, his three sisters and his parents were staying. The grenade landed in the 2-year-old's crib, burning a hole in his chest and leaving the child with scarring that a lifetime of surgeries will not be able to easily undo.
Also in Georgia, 10-year-old Dakota Corbitt was shot by a police officer who aimed for an inquisitive dog, missed, and hit the young boy instead.
In Ohio, police shot 4-year-old Ava Ellis in the leg, shattering the bone, after being dispatched to assist the girl's mother, who had cut her arm and was in need of a paramedic. Cops claimed that the family pet charged the officer who was approaching the house, causing him to fire his gun and accidentally hit the little girl.
In California, 13-year-old Andy Lopez Cruz was shot 7 times in 10 seconds by a police officer who mistook the boy's toy gun for an assault rifle. Christopher Roupe, 17, was shot and killed after opening the door to a police officer. The officer, mistaking the remote control in Roupe's hand for a gun, shot him in the chest.
These children are more than grim statistics on a police blotter. They are the heartbreaking casualties of the government's endless, deadly wars on terror, on drugs, and on the American people themselves.
Then you have the growing number of incidents involving children who are forced to watch helplessly as trigger-happy police open fire on loved ones and community members alike.
In Texas, an 8-year-old boy watched as police — dispatched to do a welfare check on a home with its windows open — shot and killed his aunt through her bedroom window while she was playing video games with him.
In Minnesota, a 4-year-old girl watched from the backseat of a car as cops shot and killed her mother's boyfriend, Philando Castile, a school cafeteria supervisor, during a routine traffic stop merely because Castile disclosed that he had a gun in his possession, for which he had a lawful conceal-and-carry permit. That's all it took for police to shoot Castile four times as he was reaching for his license and registration.
In Arizona, a 7-year-old girl watched panic-stricken as a state trooper pointed his gun at her and her father during a traffic stop and reportedly threatened to shoot her father in the back (twice) based on the mistaken belief that they were driving a stolen rental car.
In Oklahoma, a 5-year-old boy watched as a police officer used a high-powered rifle to shoot his dog Opie multiple times in his family's backyard while other children were also present. The police officer was mistakenly attempting to deliver a warrant on a 10-year-old case for someone who hadn't lived at that address in a decade.
A Minnesota SWAT team actually burst into one family's house, shot the family's dog, handcuffed the children and forced them to "sit next to the carcass of their dead and bloody pet for more than an hour." They later claimed it was the wrong house.
More than 80% of American communities have their own SWAT teams, and more than 80,000 of these paramilitary raids are carried out every year. That translates to more than 200 SWAT team raids every day in which police crash through doors, damage private property, terrorize adults and children alike, kill family pets, assault or shoot anyone that is perceived as threatening — and all in the pursuit of someone merely suspected of a crime, usually some small amount of drugs.
A child doesn't even have to be directly exposed to a police shooting to learn the police state's lessons in compliance and terror, which are being meted out with every SWAT team raid, roadside strip search, and school drill.
Indeed, there can be no avoiding the hands-on lessons being taught in the schools about the role of police in our lives, ranging from active shooter drills and school-wide lockdowns to incidents in which children engaging in typically childlike behavior are suspended (for shooting an imaginary "arrow" at a fellow classmate), handcuffed (for being disruptive at school), arrested (for throwing water balloons as part of a school prank), and even tasered (for not obeying instructions).
For example, a middle school in Washington State went on lockdown after a student brought a toy gun to class. A Boston high school went into lockdown for four hours after a bullet was discovered in a classroom. A North Carolina elementary school locked down and called in police after a fifth grader reported seeing an unfamiliar man in the school (it turned out to be a parent).
Cops have even gone so far as to fire blanks during school active shooter drills around the country. Teachers at one elementary school in Indiana were actually shot "execution style" with plastic pellets. Students at a high school in Florida were so terrified after administrators tricked them into believing that a shooter drill was, in fact, an actual attack that some of them began texting their parents "goodbye."
Better safe than sorry is the rationale offered to those who worry that these drills are terrorizing and traumatizing young children. As journalist Dahlia Lithwick points out: "I don't recall any serious national public dialogue about lockdown protocols or how they became the norm. It seems simply to have begun, modeling itself on the lockdowns that occur during prison riots, and then spread until school lockdowns and lockdown drills are as common for our children as fire drills, and as routine as duck-and-cover drills were in the 1950s."
These drills have, indeed, become routine.
As the New York Times reports:
"Most states have passed laws requiring schools to devise safety plans, and several states, including Michigan, Kentucky and North Dakota, specifically require lockdown drills. Some drills are as simple as a principal making an announcement and students sitting quietly in a darkened classroom. At other schools, police officers and school officials playact a shooting, stalking through the halls like gunmen and testing whether doors have been locked."
Comment: That's how many of the school massacres in the US take place: the perps literally know the drill. At the Parkland school shooting in Florida in 2017, students and teachers didn't know during it whether it was a drill - as had apparently been announced that morning - until they either experienced being fired upon or stepped over schoolmates' dead bodies. Same for the school security officers and first emergency responders on the scene: they were delayed and distracted by confusion as to whether it was 'the real thing'...
Police officers at a Florida middle school carried out an active shooter drill in an effort to educate students about how to respond in the event of an actual shooting crisis. Two armed officers, guns loaded and drawn, burst into classrooms, terrorizing the students and placing the school into lockdown mode.
What is particularly chilling is how effective these lessons in compliance are in indoctrinating young people to accept their role in the police state, either as criminals or prison guards.
If these exercises are intended to instill fear, paranoia and compliance into young people, they're working.
As Joe Pinsker writes for The Atlantic:
"These lockdowns can be scarring, causing some kids to cry and wet themselves. Others have written letters bidding their family goodbye or drafted wills that specify what to do with their belongings. And 57 percent of teens worry that a shooting will happen at their school, according to a Pew Research Center survey from last year. Though many children are no strangers to violence in their homes and communities, the pervasiveness of lockdowns and school-shooting drills in the U.S. has created a culture of fear that touches nearly every child across the country."Sociologist Alice Goffman understands how far-reaching the impact of such "exercises" can be on young people. For six years, Goffman lived in a low-income urban neighborhood, documenting the impact such an environment — a microcosm of the police state — has on its residents. Her account of neighborhood children playing cops and robbers speaks volumes about how constant exposure to pat downs, strip searches, surveillance and arrests can result in a populace that meekly allows itself to be prodded, poked and stripped.
As journalist Malcolm Gladwell writing for the New Yorker reports:
"Goffman sometimes saw young children playing the age-old game of cops and robbers in the street, only the child acting the part of the robber wouldn't even bother to run away: I saw children give up running and simply stick their hands behind their back, as if in handcuffs; push their body up against a car without being asked; or lie flat on the ground and put their hands over their head. The children yelled, 'I'm going to lock you up! I'm going to lock you up, and you ain't never coming home!' I once saw a six-year-old pull another child's pants down to do a 'cavity search'."Clearly, our children are getting the message, but it's not the message that was intended by those who fomented a revolution and wrote our founding documents. Their philosophy was that the police work for us, and "we the people" are the masters, and they are to be our servants.
Now that philosophy has been turned on its head, fueled by our fears (some legitimate, some hyped along by the government and its media mouthpieces) about the terrors and terrorists that lurk among us.
What are we to tell our nation's children about the role of police in their lives?
Do we parrot the government line that police officers are community helpers who are to be trusted and obeyed at all times? Do we caution them to steer clear of a police officer, warning them that any interactions could have disastrous consequences? Or is there some happy medium between the two that, while being neither fairy tale nor horror story, can serve as a cautionary tale for young people who will encounter police at virtually every turn?
Certainly, it's getting harder by the day to insist that we live in a nation that values freedom and which is governed by the rule of law.
Yet unless something changes and soon, there will soon be nothing left to teach young people about freedom as we have known it beyond remembered stories of the "good old days."
For starters, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it's time to take a hard look at the greatest perpetrators of violence in our culture — the U.S. government and its agents — and do something about it: de-militarize the police, prohibit the Pentagon from distributing military weapons to domestic police agencies, train the police in de-escalation techniques, stop insulating police officers from charges of misconduct and wrongdoing, and require police to take precautionary steps before engaging in violence in the presence of young people.
We must stop the carnage.
Reader Comments
R.C.
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If you've ever seen them in concert, they would often start with this song. But I was listening a little closer than normal to the lyrics and they sure seem to be apropos. R.C.
Have you been red-flagged? (Optional!)
Do NOT agree to ANYTHING unless a well known to you and competent friend of family member (preferably 2 or three) agree(s) on anything!!!
R.C.
I have no memory of the events I’m about to describe. I went on a date, arranged through an app. I remember meeting up with the girl. I don’t remember what happened after this but I was able to get the information from the police, although they were very shady and reluctant to tell me. It turns out I was the victim of a scopalimine attack. I have never even heard about this drug. My bank account has been emptied, and I tried to commit suicide by hanging. Luckily a member of the public tried to stop me, I then tried to throw myself in front of a bus but was pinned down by two members of the public. I have no memory of this. I was under police guard and not allowed to do anything, kept in a room in the hospital. They refused to say anything to me. The police tried to confiscate my phone and told me I was detained under the mental health act. I know my rights and tried to go outside for a cigarette. Again refused to me. They wouldn’t even let me have legal assistance. Only when I was able to prove my account had been pillaged (90 pounds on pizza being a red flag, as was a large cash withdrawal) was I started to be believed. After tests showed scopalimine in my system I was able to get home. Probably the scariest time of my life. They only told me everything earlier today. They still want my phone, but I don’t trust the police. Especially how they treated me. I know I don’t have to explain myself but I feel the need to after my initial comments and then reading your lovely messages of support. Thank you very much!!!
I was worried you were going through something like that when you posted your first post; hence my legal advice.
As to family and friends, the more the merrier. Especially SOTTfolk*. I detect there are more in the UK (on SOTT) than from the US. (Probably from some Google et al. way to hide this site better over here.)
*If you don't know any:
- Prostheletyze them into it - (they've gotta be WAY open minded people.) - The best conversion tool are the facts of 9/11/2001's proof of Murphy's law - WTC7. Ask 'em how many buildings fell that day. How many planes hit, etc. Study up if you need to. THEN show the folks who answer 'Two'; 'ever seen a building get taken down by implosion?" Sure! "Whadda ya think of this one." (Show multiple WTC7 videos.) THEN say, no, that was at 5.20p; was the farthest building but was likewise owned by Silverstein, NO PLANE CRASH, U. Alaska study, etc.
Or, given you are in UK, perhaps you're not far from potential open minded friends; to wit: We SOTTites! - More specifically ye UK SOTTites.
That is some scary shit. (I watched that whole video.)
R.C.
2. Release them from service with a good kick in the pants see ya, not.
3. Hire them on as your local police force.
4. Watch as they storm the doors to kill off the Taliban, errr, local populace.
5. No liability, no worry. Murder at will and judge Pheelaboy will happily commute.
You have to ask what type of person really wants this sort of job. Are they taking the job because they don't want to be a stock boy at Walmart? Are they taking it because they are on some power trip? Are they (as mentioned) ex-military who still likes to play soldier?
Read A.S.'s Gulag.
Our decision (to NOT join the Secret Police) even ran counter to our material interests: at that time the provincial university we attended could not promise us anything more than the chance to teach in a rural school in a remote area for miserly wages. The NKVD school dangled before us special rations and double or triple pay. Our feelings could not be put into words — and even if we had found the words, fear would have prevented our speaking them aloud to one another. It was not our minds that resisted but something inside our breasts. People can shout at you from all sides: "You must!" And your own head can be saying also: "You must!"
But inside your breast there is a sense of revulsion, repudiation. I don't want to. It makes me feel sick. Do what you want without me; I want no part of it. This came from very far back, quite likely as far back as Lermontov, from those decades of Russian life when frankly and openly there was no worse and no more vile branch of the service for a decent person than that of the gendarmerie. No, it went back even further. Without even knowing it ourselves, we were ransomed by the small change in copper that was left from the golden coins our great-grandfathers had expended, at a time when morality was not considered relative and when the distinction between good and evil was very simply perceived by the heart.
Read Gulag. (II downloaded a copy a while ago and just found what I've never been able to find via online searches of A.S. Quotes.)
R.C.Andrei Tarkovsky
R.C.
Your immediately above observation seems right on point (and I guess my first point, also). Conrad’s Heart of Darkness , is fantastic, WAY ahead of his time, and is based on a trip he took as a steamboat captain, when he couldn’t find work as a sailing ship master.
I knew that HOD was the basis for the plot line in Apocalypse Now, and (rightly) figured that it had been used in other works. So, just did the following search on ‘duckduckgo com: <"Valhalla Rising" CONRAD'S "HEART OF DARKNESS" >. And here is the text from the first three results - links omitted. I may enlarge on this point elsewhere. BTW- very many Twentieth Century tbooks are free online. (Often based in Australia, due to a glitch? a pro-citizen copyright law? which has allowed many books published in the Twentieth Century there to become free online. That's likely also why google's advanced search engine is based there. (Note the au. in the address.)
R.C.
It is said that in Columbia, guys place some in their hand, walk up to girls - or whoever - blow it in their face, and they completely lose free will and memory.
For a good discussion of it, read the final BOOK of the Hannibal Lecter trilogy: Hannibal.
R.C.
Given me knowing me, I am curious if I might be the exception from the free will effect (I hope to never find out.)
R.C.
When he says 'park over there'; wisdom keeps them where they are.
I wouldn't go there without a bulletproof vest and at least two sidearms and hopefully a detachable magazine 12 gauge with every third round a slug.
When he comes back from the bar- he's already high as a kite, which seems different already, so my guess is he had a microtaste himself there.
I wonder if he ended up dead. Damn sure wouldn't be a surprise.
As you said, F*cking SCARY.
R.C.
Catchy phrase - straight out of The Godfather.
(But at least they did, and I guess I believe him more than not; so there's at least one happy ending, in accordance with the rules I grew up with.)
R.C.
Police have since informed me no action can be taken. Insufficient evidence and my reluctance to hand my phone over apparently. Even now they want my blower. I have enough of google and apple snooping on me I don’t want to add pigs to the party! Bloody swines.
Wow. I'm glad you're back!
R.C.
I don’t have many friends, I am that kook because I spend my time trying to tell the truth. I’m the conspiracy fruitloop and considered as someone to be avoided. Every now and again I can roll out a massive “I told you so” but still I am the local pariah. I, however will not change. It seems like trying to find the truth is a bad thing.
Is there anyway I can remove the comments that was made stating my name? At least from now on I can sign off with my name haha.
Question for you RC... I’m struggling with their and there, how can I differentiate the two. It constantly bugs me! Cheers pal in advance
One thing: it seems that it is more typical of the male human to explore new areas - see, e.g., Ayn Rand's first? novellete, 'Anthem.' And that is basic common sense, given our closeness in time to hunter gatherer times. (C.f., the now politically incorrect truth, 'men hunt, women nest.'** Thank GOD for women, who have basically been responsible for life in civilization being less 'brutish and short'.
It then results in the fact that the places where people are moving TO (like Fla. & Cal.) are always going to have a disproportionately high ratio of single males vs. females, while where they are moving from, it's vice versa. Thus, in the USA, the best ratios for finding worthwhile open minded femmes are in the upper midwest (aka, 'the Rust Belt') because all the males there moved here or So.Cal.
I've moved across the US a couple of times. Most women would only do that when married.
"By their fruits/actions you shall recognize them." SOTTfolk commenters routinely write (which here, IS an action) truths that no PTB flunkie would be: a) allowed to write, nor b) capable of being aware of. See, e.g., Mandatory Intellectomy’s EXCELLENT Series on ‘Evolution’/I.D./Other.
Some SOTTites I believe you can trust (no way I could list them all) HFL, arcsmith, sbc, ChewyBees, Joan, lsjarvi, sottreader, joyly, anna1, (this list should be thrice this long). I’ve gotta go, though!
In the meantime, a) hang tough, b) try to exercise as much as possible, c) do something I guess I’ve been doing - drinking less, etc. (Read the books discussed in Mind Matters by S. Covey, plus others in the comments), d) throw your TV Out the Window (Network - don’t do that, but do watch DVDs and NOT normal ‘programming’); and e) if you like reading, try some classics, such as Heart of Darkness.
Gotta go. Good luck! Willl chat later.
R.C.
*"SOTTypes" are those (1) open minded et seq., above, souls who've never been to this site - but who, upon finding it, and seeing SOTTfolk's truths, verisimilitude , objectivity, and relatively non-judgmentalness because they are aware they humans and capable of error/flawed/not perfect - hence 'subjective.' They try to keep that awareness of their own flawed subjectivity in sight at all times.
** A 'generalization'. Same REQUIRE exceptions.
RC
R.C.