Murder
How to tell that the theofascists have taken over.
Not to say necessarily that the political situation in this country will so deteriorate that ICE expands its roundups to political dissidents or the dangerously informed, but never say never.
– American Manifesto (2020), p.1 by Bob Garfield
Back in the day, there was a fantastic joke that slyly ridiculed the relative impotency of British constables versus their American counterparts.
A bandit was running from a burglary in East London. “Stop!” the coppers shouted at the fleeing suspect, menacingly waving their nightsticks. “Stop, or I’ll shout ‘stop!’ again!”
Cute, except for two things: 1) British police have long since themselves been armed to their bad teeth almost as extravagantly as American cops. 2) For many decades, ultimately under the provisions of the 4th Amendment, “Stop or I’ll shout ‘stop’ again” has legally governed the subduing of fleeing suspects in America, too.
By a variety of statutes, published law-enforcement policies and court decisions, unless a suspect is brandishing a weapon or otherwise a direct and imminent threat to police or the public, lethal police response is absolutely prohibited. That is, against the law. As the killers-in-blue who suffocated George Floyd can attest from prison, it is a major felony.
The law doesn’t even make allowances for the severity of the crime. For example, if someone robs a bank and machine-guns down six tellers and customers, then drops the gun and runs away with the victims’ blood soaking his own clothes, the police may chase him. They may tackle him, pin him between their patrol cars or throw a net around him. But they must not shoot him, run him over, pummel him to a pulp, kneel on his windpipe or otherwise exert force beyond what’s needed to get him handcuffed.
Mind you, the suspect in this example has just (allegedly) committed mass murder in front of a dozen living witnesses. But the police are neither judge nor jury, never mind executioner. When the suspect dropped his machine gun at the crime scene, he ceased being an immediate threat. If he managed somehow to hop into a getaway car and evade immediate capture, the police’s job remains limited to eventually locating him and taking him into custody. Remember the notorious OJ Simpson “slow speed chase”? Remember how none of the cops shot him to death on the freeway?
Because that is the law. For federal agents (and most police agencies) it is expressed in the following language, drawn from the 1989 Supreme Court decision Graham v. Connor:
It is the policy of the Department of Justice to value and preserve human life. Officers may use only the force that is objectively reasonable to effectively gain control of an incident, while protecting the safety of the officer and others, in keeping with the standards set forth in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386. Officers may use force only when no reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternative appears to exist and may use only the level of force that a reasonable officer on the scene would use under the same or similar circumstances.
For a non-OJ hypothetical, if a federal agent were trying to intervene not with a fleeing, bloody murder suspect but an annoying protester allegedly using her car to block a roadway during a (very likely illegal) immigration roundup, and as the cops shouted “stop” the protester calmly and extremely slowly backed the vehicle up six feet in order to maneuver slowly out of the roadway, and (this is crucial) one officer had his hand on the door handle and other other stood in front with his gun aimed at the driver, the only lawful way for agents to defuse the threat is … ready? a) for Cop 1 to take his hand off the car, and b) for Cop 2 to step aside, permitting the driver to leave the scene.
At that point officers would have a license number and a description of the protester and the vehicle, easily followed up on in an hour. Or the next day.
Or never.
Failing to obey an officer’s instruction is almost always a petty offense punishable by a small fine. It is not a capital crime. But in this hypothetical — and real-life Minneapolis last week — one of the fucking bloodthirsty fucking stormtroopers fucking shot the driver to death. Whereupon the criminal Justice Department and the criminal White House slandered the dead protester and lied (“self defense!”) about the incident filmed from four different angles so that the whole world can see the truth.
Nonetheless, according to Reuters, the government has branded protesters as “terrorists” and continued to shoot to kill in violence so brazen the world is girding itself for greater violence, more victims, more chaos, even the toppling of the government.
Oh, wait. Forgive me. That’s in Iran, where the theofascist dictatorship has unleashed its security services with impunity to quell a democratic uprising that has ignited amid a failing economy. An understandable error on my part. Because we, too, live amid growing theofascism: Christian nationalists, white supremacists, and various other bigoted bible-thumpers who have been warning us for decades about Sharia Law, but now imagine our secular Republic should be governed by not by the Muslims, Jews and darkies, but by Christ’s Word. The White House has embraced, endorsed and abetted them with dozens and dozens of illegal decisions in defiance of the dozens and dozens of court rulings against the administration.
ICE’s masked stormtroopers are nothing less than our own criminal security forces operating brutally at the behest of our Orange Ayatollah, as are the FBI and Justice Department to pervert criminal statutes against political rivals, as well the military to commit war crimes where there isn’t even legal basis for military intervention in the first place.
Against these mullahs, Graham v. Connor, the 4th Amendment, the whole Constitution are mere documents to be shredded and flushed down the Oval Office toilet. The Christian warriors are mere attack dogs and dupes of the anti-Christ and Renee Nicole Good is a martyr to their blood-soaked crimes.