MESSAGE TO THE POLICE OFFICER
J. Croft
http://freedomguide.blogspot.comRead also on this page:
THE TASER: A POLICE DEVICE FOR TORTURE – AND DEATH
Christopher Bollyn
DEATH BY TASER
THE TRAGIC DEATH OF ROGER HOLYFIELD
Christopher Bollyn
Picture added by GLF --
Read the original article at: http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027315.phpEver feel like a tool?
Ever feel like a ass enforcing a arbitrary speed limit with the same force as you would chasing away drug dealers and creepy trench coated old men from elementary schools? Ever wonder what the hell you or your partner were doing arresting that victim of criminal assault-ever wonder what you were doing making that assault? Making a anthill into a 'prosecutable' mountain so that your partner, or God forbid, yourself can make a collar? Or standing by and stonewalling a desperate person pleading for your help, turning them away so that they go over the edge and create another bust or two for yourself?
Ever feel like part of the problem, even though you're told that you're part of the solution? Well, thank God you at least feel some responsibility for what you and your 'brother officers' have done to help destroy America.
That's right; modern American policing is destroying America. It's a preening cult of overtestosteroned man-children; 'cowboys' looking for the slightest excuse to wreck some lives to make busts… for the 'law'.
And who do you wind up sending to the disease-ridden homosexual rape camps known as prison? Poor white, black, and brown trash deliberately dumbed down and corrupted by a covertly communist education system and mass media
You're rousting the wrong people-while the criminal rich steal from us all. The criminal rich who are behind the shows that you recoil in disgust at… if you still can recoil in disgust. The criminal rich who back the foundations and unions who have long ago transformed American education into a manufacturer of adult children-unable to think for themselves, ignorant of their heritage of Freedom and God, conditioned into having a programmed hostility towards knowledge and those who still value it despite the programming. The criminal rich who have over the decades progressively made living in America a desperate struggle for survival as the jobs that can still sustain that seductive lie known once as the 'American dream' are sent overseas to poor Chinese and Indians who will NEVER know of it.
The criminal rich who are mass produced by this nation's overabundant law universities and become the trial lawyers, judges and representatives. The same pack of lawyer rat bastards who have literally downed entire forests to print all the bureaucracy that has killed all the joy of being a Free Man in America… and given you 'peace officers' a cornucopia of 'law' to 'enforce'.
Law-a rich man's game as it takes a rich man to go through eight years of law school and college and a hundred grand in tuition to become a lawyer. A move to keep as much of the people the laws are targeted against from learning their convoluted rules as possible, and still maintain this fiction that their 'laws' come from the People.
Oh, what-the law is the law to you? It hasn't sunk in that the law is one of America's worst rackets? Let me run down a few catagories for you, see if they mesh with what America's supposed to be:
Traffic laws-nominally to keep about two hundred million motorists safe on the road, they've long ago been turned into a vile source of revenue and colossal waste of police resources. A vile source of revenue as it's a fear based tax based mostly on driving habit, and a colossal waste as traffic detail ties down you guys-who could be investigating shady folks like Ken Lay of Enron, or tracking down who's really bringing more and more dope into the country. Or even something as picayune as the corruption of the local government-which cuts your paycheck. But it's a lot easier to play with some hapless Citizen than any local power broker who could break you, isn't it?
DUI-Used to be you had to be honestly drunk and a threat to get pulled over for this. Now, it's past overkill; the new drunk laws can mean a single beer and you're screwed. That and your Goddamn checkpoints are killing off being able to go out. This is one of the few outlets Americans seem to have left, and what do we find-a gauntlet of you bust hungry bastards to run through. "Thanks".
And if you're homeless! These lawyer made 'anti-vagrancy' laws mean if a American loses their job, winds up sleeping in their car or on the street, you guys roll on them and give them a ticket to the nearest homosexual rape palace-which you call the county jail. What the hell did these people do besides come out losing in a increasingly hostile economy? They drink and take drugs, yes-you would too if you were cast to the bottom of a socio-economic pit you have no hope of climbing out of.
Persecuting crime victims for protecting themselves; too many of you get mortally offended when average folks use a gun to prevent their own mortal demise. You see anyone but a fellow bureaucrat armed, and it's like he or she might as well have raped schoolchildren with you. You forget the Bill of Rights recognizes each and every one of us has the God given Right to armed self defense? What is about the very thought of the People being able to match you in firepower that scares you? Are you looking at all of us as opponents?
Are you that twisted, that brainwashed by that perverted cop culture you've swan dived into that your fellow Americans are your enemy? Are you even aware that you are brainwashed, conditioned into being the razor edge of the spear of totalitarianism that's being thrust into the very heart of our People?
What does freedom mean to you?
Does it mean anything? Or is it just another word?
Does it mean an ever increasing stranglehold of 'laws' that just give power to the state and it's bureaucrats in a piecemeal fashion, so as to not arouse righteous opposition?
Do these laws reflect the respect for you as a free person? Do they protect us all from a evermore invasive and belligerent government?
Does more bureaucracy not expose the people to more and more pushy, uppity, obnoxiously authoritarian small minded cretins in cheap suits-given way too much power? And, if more bureaucrats are a threat to all of our livelihoods and freedom, then doesn't it make sense that more laws and regulations would only give these white collar scumbags just that many more excuses to rob us of what is rightly ours?
Wouldn't LESS LAW be better for a free society?
You know the answers. You also know that the lawyers are not going to have a sudden change of heart and start reversing all the damage done to our nation. You also know that most bureaucrats are not going to look at a person and a rule and not enforce it.
So that leaves one person left, one safeguard remaining from the state confronting another innocent vitcim-you.
YOU are the people's last line of defense from a out of control state!
It's your choice: stand with the People or stand against them!
The time is NOW to choose! More tyrannical law is being passed by more and more tyrannical lawyers and other sycophant bureaucrats. Enforced by tyrannical bureaucrats mistakenly armed and sworn, they cause more and more people to HATE YOU. This added hatred, along with the increasingly technostalinist bent of our "laws" will make YOU a TARGET for those unable to "cope" with the loss of their Freedom. A target literally.
For the sake of our Children, our Nation and your own ability to look in the mirror without recoiling in shame, resist.
How you can resist
Get to know your non-cop friends again, and your neighbors. You probably let those relationships go bye-bye when you bought into the crap that cops are "a breed apart". The people you joined the force to 'serve and protect'; and you view them as scum?
Your mindset will be the first obstacle to overcome, but since you're reading this you're hopefully already on that road. The 'cop culture' like most aspects of American culture is managed by it's own 'gatekeepers' who serve an Agenda-to fill your discipline and duty oriented mind with all sorts of psychological cues that herd you into being a insufferable elitist.
Yeah, that's what that 'they' want-there's always a 'they' around to ruin it for everyone. You blindly enforcing laws which oppress everyone. 'They' fill you with pride in your profession, give you a cool looking uniform, all sorts of means to carry out your job-and you get guns! All of which are but bait-egotistical masturbation.
Assaulting this egotistical masturbation is your first duty, assaulting your 'brother officers' programming as you can is your second duty. There is a line, and it's different with each individual, but it basically is their patience at listening to you challenge what they've been programmed with. Don't count on getting them to see the light quick, as you know the programming's thorough and very deep. Don't push too much, and use examples you come across. This is a war-not a battle.
Your third duty: shielding the People as best you can from the ravages of the laws lawyers pass. Look into your heart-if you are with God, you will know which laws are sensible(stopping murder, rape, robbery, reckless drivers, crack dealers selling to grade school kids). The rest(niggling regulations, laws that rob people of their rights) must not be enforced. They must be IGNORED.
Ignoring as best you can, because your supervisors watch you to make certain you do your job as proscribed by them. You're in a bad spot, and sometimes you will be forced to pick your battles. Sometimes you won't be able to directly help someone about to get steamrolled by the state. You'll have to surreptitiously get evidence of their innocence and get it to a attorney willing to fight for their freedom. Sometimes you'll encounter a scumbag son of a bitch-who's shielded by the local powers-that-be. That person might even wear the same badge and uniform as you. Here is where you shall have a real gut check: what if there isn't a way to stop this bastard legally? What if this state sanctioned criminal plants dope to cause a raid and asset forfeiture seizure? What if this human sized cockroach is going to whack a 'troublemaker'; someone working for Freedom just like you?
How far will you go to do something about it? And can you do it smarter-as in being able to get away with it? There are people who know of these things, and one or two even wrote books on the subject if you can't get a hold of that someone. Beyond that I dare not say what you should do, except that it needs doing, and nobody's doing it at all.
There's more you can do; a lot more. You can do this under a alias or not, but it's my wish you cops would start showing the People on a individual and community level how they can defend themselves from the bureaucratic predators. How to get around the bureaucrats, and who among them are still patriots. There are bad and good in every walk of life, and if bureaucrats can see that they too can join in renewing freedom, this struggle shall end in victory that much faster! Motivating them as officers to actually stand up and as a group demand that laws start getting scrapped. Tell them that they wouldn't have so many cops and bureaucrats in their lives if there weren't so many laws for them to enforce. Make it plain that their lives will NEVER get better if they let themselves keep being hypnotized by that electronic narcotic called the TV.
Teach the People how to physically defend themselves and their communities. Yes, if you love freedom this would include the safe and effective use of firearms and when to do it. Your police and military training makes you a natural choice to teach the People. Yes, this incurs the risk of being labeled a 'militia', but for hundreds of years the gathering of all able bodied adults in case of a collective danger was a key part of American civilization. They organized and drilled and shot their rifles in public square it was that enshrined. It was when a permanent, standing US Army and a permanent standing professional police force that the Citizen's Militia quietly faded away from American public life.
The militia isn't a bad thing actually. If you actually read the older historical accounts there are examples-like during the 1800's when the James Gang got cut to pieces in Minnesota; the townsfolk got their guns and resisted, and won. Likewise, in Athens, Tennessee in 1946; returning GI's tried to win a local election to clean the crooks that had been running the town into the ground for decades. The crooks attempted to rig the election and went so far as to hide in the jail and shoot at gunpoint anyone who tried to stop them. The GI's borrowed some National Guard rifles and shot it out with them, and won. More recently, a few years ago, the State of New York attempted to enforce cigarrette taxes on a Native American Tribe and came with dozens of State Troopers; the entire Tribe greeted them with muzzles of their assault rifles… the Governor wisely negotiated a compromise.
So that's the point: collective resistance works! And it doesn't and shouldn't if at all possible have to be violent. A second hand personal story: days after the Columbine massacre a public school mandated ID tags for every student… obstensivly to stop a massacre. A bunch of them got together and smuggled in water guns painted to look like real guns, and objects made to look like sticks of dynamite. They presented them to the principal and asked him if ID tags stopped them from bringing in their made up weapons, and would it stop real weapons from getting in… the ideal was scrapped.
Peaceful noncompliance works if done en masse. The emphasis should be first local; pushing back the bureaucracies that strangle our lives. Start small, always, and build on that. First you and your people could do something like get the parking meters removed. Then build on that with pushing back niggling housing codes. Your weapons are your wallets; collectively threaten to wage a tax strike, or a labor strike(don't forget to prepare with extra cash and food).
Then expand to strike at the big oppressions; property taxes, traffic laws, anti-constitutional gun bans, drivers licenses and car plates, caps on laws made. Each victory builds on itself and similar advances made by other like minded individuals. YOU can lead this; you have the drilled in discipline, social standing and leadership, AND, you know something of the dirty tricks the bureaucrats and traitor cops will pull to stop us. You're in a position to protect this necessary revolution. Yes… a revolution to win back what our ancestors gave all for over two centuries ago.
Together we can resist and win back our freedom. Our first obstacle to unifying as a people is to overcome our racial and caste barriers-and as a cop, you are part of a caste… call it the enforcement caste, made up of bureaucrats and law enforcement. You as a American must reach out to those that have been maneuvered and manipulated to be your intended enemies, the working and underclass castes-the people you're sent out to roust for fines and make busts on.
Unite with them, because our enemies are the lawyer caste that makes and judges on the 'laws' they make, and the caste of the super rich. These people buy the lawyers out, and have systematically looted America of our industry, our technology, our prosperity, and by their house slave lawyers, bureaucrats, and cops, our freedoms. They've reduced us Americans to being a military state-our real economy, our society propped up on a life support of debt that they, the super rich can yank with but a few manipulations of their financial markets. They will most likely do this in a manner much like yanking the cord on life support for a dying man… which is what America is.
They want the world, and have used America to trample any and all opponents. They now look to use the last allotted strength of America's military might to batter the nations of Earth into a global empire run by them-with America to be consumed by economic and political collapse and a engineered multi-front civil war NOBODY but the super rich will win. And that's why you acting NOW to begin fighting for Freedom must be your one priority. This war we are in, it's bigger than one individual or family or community. But if you don't join the fight, you make victory for us all that much more difficult, and how will you face God with THAT crime on you?
SECOND MESSAGE TO THE AMERICAN POLICE OFFICERJ. Croft
We have problems in America Mr. Police Officer-a lot of them.
We have, obviously, problems with crackheads and meth addicts causing all kinds of havoc to anyone they come in contact with to get their next hit.
We have, obviously, problems with street dealers strutting around being problems to their neighborhoods-what with the fight over "markets" that ends with shootings, and all the crackheads they attract to make their pay.
We have, obviously, problems with these dudes being able to so readily get a kilo of cocaine to sell in their crack houses. Problem is, they get it so regularly despite a decades-long "war on drugs" that's locked up a generation of inner city Americans.
There's something way the hell wrong here!
We've had, for decades, huge problems with sealing up our nation's frontiers-with the most powerful armed forces, including your police department, in human history. And the drugs keep flowing in like water going over the Niagera Falls.
How the hell does that happen?
How the hell do you penetrate the world's best defended airspace and coastal waters in a private craft? Airplanes have transponders, and any deviation from flight course gets you a fighter escort with shoot to kill orders. The Coast Guard-now part of Homeland Security-guards all the ports and makes nuisances of themselves to every boater on the waters. The minimum wage perverts the TSA employs at the airports grope everyone, and the ones they get boners for twice. Or more. Our southern border is a virtual wall of… empty desert given a token patrol by the Border Patrol and… private citizens from the Minuteman Project… and there are gunmen with automatic weapons shooting at them… and the Bush Administration told the Border Patrol to "stand down" while the Minutemen were patrolling?
How the hell do the drugs NOT get in?
Why would our government in a time of a "war on terror" leave our southern border as wide open as a homeless crack whore's legs when craving for rock? Why would the government allow drug smuggling like that when there are more people locked up for drugs than ever? Why would the government make our southern border a four lane highway for cocaine, illegals, and vengeance seeking terrorists?
Why is the government so intent on being part of the problem? Why-especially after incarcerating millions? Why after creating a police state after 9/11 that's turning the Constitution and Bill of Rights-the greatest achievement in government in human history-into a quaint museum piece to be eventually forgotten?
Or is it the government-or elements high up yet hidden-that IS the problem?
Is it a bloated, out of control government so greedy for power that it's willing to tolerate the addiction of millions to hard drugs and the criminal empires such trade produces so as to gain power by a fear-struck America? With a "war on drugs?" If there's a war, how come each of our inner cities can practically build a snow castle out of cocaine?
Is it a bloated, out of control government so greedy for power, it punishes generations of people for succumbing to illegal narcotics, and yet practically imports the shit at the same time? Because I cannot figure how else we can have so much drugs AND drug enforcement simultaniously.
So the government, or elements implicit thereof, are part of the problem. And yet you as a sworn Officer, do you at least think through their logic before you accept their marching orders? With such criminals? When they spend more time trying to regulate to death average Americans with a nazi-ass "Real ID", than staunch the high tide of drugs, illegals, and probably suitcase nuke-bearing terrorists?
What's going on? What's the agenda?
The agenda can only be to profit off America's fall as a necessary byproduct of world domination. Before you think I'm smoking crack myself think about this:
Where have our manufacturing gone-the good paying blue collar jobs that used to employ the simple folks that would otherwise try and deal drugs to get by. Or not and smoke their problems away.
Where have our high technology jobs gone, that used to make America the cutting edge of innovation? That used to give millions of innovators a outlet and reward for their ingenuity.
Anywhere but here. And yet, that siren call of the "American Dream" calls for us on the TV. Calls us to buy that bigger house, no matter our income prospects, buy that stupid ass SUV, buy that newer TV that'll be obsolete or unrepairable in a few years-all borrowed at interest.
Rambling all over the place? No-it's a jigsaw puzzle, bigger than what we're conditioned to usually look at. Because that's what scale the scum that smuggle the drugs operate at. Same scum that write the drug laws you enforce on the crackheads and street dealers they create when they can't get jobs-because they're now in Mexico or China. Same scum that control public opinion via their idol, the television. Same scum that offer those sorry, broke bastards an "opportunity" to borrow at interest to get that made in Taiwan junk. Same scum that attack our Freedoms and won't stop with their bullshit "patriot" acts until they can make America into some kind of flag waving dictatorship and use the Constitution and Declaration of Independence for kindling. Or a ass wipe.
And these scum are the ones behind
YOUR ORDERS, YOUR TRAINING, YOUR CONDITIONING!!!They make you Mr. Police Officer-as hardcore patriotic American as anyone, into part of the problem. How? Your orders, your training, your conditioning. You're ordered on a daily basis to harrass otherwise average, patriotic, law-abiding Americans by enforcing "laws" and "regulations" crafted by scumbag lawyers in our city halls and legislatures, and judged over by the same class of parasites in court. Traffic ordinances designed for revenue generation, rules governing everything from the color of your house to whether you can have the privilege to have a yard sale, gun control that leaves those citizens naked before the crackheads, robbers, and murderers. And the state.
Your training: after years of observing police behavior I've come to the conclusion that your paramilitary training is geared as much to perform as your superiors want as it is to narrow your mental horizons to think the way you're told to. There's something way off with some of your training-like how you're mentally corralled into making officer-citizen contacts into making any kind of ticket or arrest, even for something so picayune as rust spots on cars and some other bureaucrat made rule. Break the arm of a crippled or elderly person when they reflexively reach out to you for support. Pass the buck on situations you're repeatedly called out for because it's not "departmental policy".
Taser small children. Cuff them. Arrest them and expose them to the patently brutal and corrupt "justice" system. All this as part of your conditioning-the sum of your orders, your training, the cop "culture" of beating your chests and throwing your weight around because you're superior in modern America to the average citizen. Your peers who accept how they're being turned into federalized agents of destruction of our nation and our Freedoms. They are the problems.
As to you Mr. Police Officer, are you willing to be part of the solution? Some nice sounding noise out of your mouth about loving 'Murica is not pushing back the homegrown police state your scumbag bosses are making, rather than enforce our laws and national boundaries. Time is not a commodity we have much left of. Neither can we afford to let our nation's problems be someone else's to fix. Each of us much pull together, across whatever social divides there are if we are to stand a chance of reclaiming America. That's not going to happen if you keep blindly enforcing the 'laws' the lawyers make. It serves those in power for you to harass, fine, imprison, inflict pain and commit murder. Think I'm talking about you doing that shit to robbers and rapists and serial killers and all those other no account motherfuckers who need to be permanently removed from society-no!
When I talk about those in power who direct you to harass, fine imprison, inflict pain and commit murder, I talk about the poor and the homeless your "brother cops" direct their sadism towards. I talk about people who've worked all their lives to get that coastal property, and then have their government put a few marijuana plants so they can sieze it. And execute the owner when their "public servants" enter on a bogus no knock warrant.
I talk of the man in Vermont who's had various lowlife bureaucrats harass him and inflicted great distress towards over their petty rules; the man a couple of your "brother officers" pull over and harass for a couple of rust holes in his truck!
I talk of people rushing to the hospital with their loved ones, and instead of getting an ambulance or at least a police escort, your "brother officers" force them to wait while they ticket them… or worse, assault them when those victims rightly decide their loved ones' lives are more important than your "brother officers" power tripping.
I talk about 13 year old children getting arrested for trying to help save a handicapped woman condemned to starvation by a scumbag judge. I talk of children younger than that getting tasered. I talk of accident victims having state troopers gloating over them, looking up in their lawyer-made rule book what offence they can slap on them regardless of fault. I talk of protesters exercising their Constitutional Rights to freedom of speech, association, and protest getting assaulted and arrested en masse for opposing treaties drafted by traitors that rob America of it's future.
I talk of average "productive citizens" who fear the crime and carry protection in spite of anti-Constitutional, lawyer-made rules illegally prohibiting such bearing of arms and how your "brother officers" bust them like they were crack dealing gangbangers. I talk of unwanted advances made on attractive women, and being coerced into granting sexual favors in exchange for your "brother officers" not throwing the state on them… or worse-there have been rapes committed.
Didn't you sign on to stop such crimes? Or did you sign on to be able to commit those crimes and more under color of law?
I will tell you this: all those homeless, all those property owners robbed by the state, all those motorists endangered by sadist cops, all those protestors wrongly beaten and jailed, all those sent to prison for assuming the Constitution meant what it said, all the women raped by your "brother officers"-each offense you and your fellow police officers commit helps fuel a righteous anger. An anger that if you don't start policing yourselves and get serious about shaping your departments up, start resisting this lawyer-made creeping tyranny of legalism will spark a Second American Revolution. And you will be among the first targets of their wrath, by guilt of association.
I don't want that to happen to you. I LOVE a righteous Street Cop who looks out for me. Such a man or woman I'd gladly help out in their time of need. Well, we Americans need you!
We need you to start yelling at these foolish spineless sheep that try to pass themselves off as Americans these days. Do your traffic stops or questions on the street: make it real plain that the laws lawyers make you enforce wouldn't be enforced if they would do their duty.
Make it real plain that there's much worse coming their way-for you to enforce and they to obey. Make it real plain that the time's going to come when the velvet glove's going to come off the steel fist of state power, and that the only people left on the force will be those that will gleefully wield that steel fist and smash their heads in. Make it real plain that it's already happening. Make it plain that the time to keep themselves narcotized with the TV set to alleive the stresses of the day are over.
Then you can tell them what the hell they can do about it:
Telling them it's time to get their own houses in order. Get out of debt, store spare food and fuel, get a rifle.
Get organized, with selection of candidates and a campaign, to take over city, township and county governments and liberating them of the bureaucratic fat that's accumulated because we've all been lax in policing our public servants. This is all of our civic duties.
Organizing self-defense courses done in private with everything from hand to hand to non-lethal weapons to pistols to rifles. From defending against individual attack by a criminal, to defending the community against threats to life and freedom. This is the essence of the Militia: not a pathetic pack of beer guzzling loudmouths who can barely handle their guns safely, but every able bodied Citizen ready with rifle to defend what's theirs.
So, you're asking how do you do all this in a few minutes or seconds, with cameras monitoring your conduct, and the certain wrath of your corrupt 'leaders'? Make pamphlets up, and include a address and time for a private meeting later. Preferably as a group-that'll impress them of the seriousness of our situation. That and the fact that it's you, as a police officer-acting as a patriot. A modern day Paul Revere warning the People of danger. You'll actually be heroes!
Make connections with any groups wanting Freedom back, wanting something of that America we all grew up in. Only without the scum in three piece suits that import drugs and terror and trade our jobs for it. There are many different groups in America-we have to realize we are all in this together and the only ones who are going to get our Freedom back is us!
Beats spending your life just collecting fines for the state from irate motorists and guarding the donut table, doesn't it.
Reproduced from: http://freedomguide.blogspot.com
Christopher Bollyn
One month after I posted this article about how the police use the TASER torture device to gain compliance, a 17-year-old boy in Jerseyville, Illinois, was TASERed to death. His name was Roger Holyfield.
Roger's only offense: Holding a Bible and calling for Jesus near the main street of Jerseyville, a town of some 9,000 people near St. Louis, Missouri.
Roger Holyfield was TASERed at least twice while he was already in handcuffs. There were at least 6 officers involved in the TASER assault of the youth who stood only 5 foot 7 inches and weighed 130 pounds. He had also reportedly been beaten.
I have been told that Roger had already been handcuffed and put in a police car when the police decided to take him out of the squad car and TASER him on the site he had arrested - at least twice.
If this is correct, it would indicate that the TASER weapon was used to torture him for something that he had said or done while he was in the police car and already completely subdued. It was not done to gain compliance or subdue him because he was already subdued, handcuffed, and restrained in police custody.
So, why was he taken out of the squad car and TASERed? What does this tell us about the reason he was TASERed? What are the instructions that police receive about how to use the TASER?
I have learned that Roger had been taking anti-anxiety medication, reportedly Klonopin, and that he had only begun taking it "again" five days before he was TASERed.
This raises a whole host of questions about his mental state, medical history, and possible drug interactions, adverse reactions of Klonopin, and how TASERing could be more lethal when administered to a person in a medicated state such as Roger's. Did the police even recognize that this person appeared to be having a reaction to his medication?
If Roger was reacting to his medication, why did the police respond with force and TASERing rather than calling his parents or a doctor? This is an unfortunate example of the expression critical of police that no situation is so dire that the presence of a police officer won't make it worse.
The TASER weapon was used on Roger not in the stun-gun mode but in the barb-firing mode, in which case electrodes are fired at the person and pierce his skin as the shock is applied. The weapon was fired at least twice, although we don't know how many times Roger Holyfield was actually shocked with the 50,000 volt current. When the barbs are attached to the subject, the shock is given by pulling the trigger. Each shock session lasts 5 seconds and releases at least 50,000 volts. It can be repeated as often as desired by simply pulling the trigger.
The medical examiner said that his body had about a half-dozen burn marks on his trunk. This electric current can easily cause the heart to become dysfunctional and go into an irregular rhythm or cardiac arrest. The electric shock can also cause permanent damage to other vital organs.
After being TASERed, Roger vomited and went into a coma as the ambulance workers put him into the ambulance. He died the following day, Sunday, October 29, the day he was to be baptized.
The TASER is an extremely cruel and dangerous weapon that is considered to be a tool of torture in most of the world. Only the United States and Canada allow police to use this weapon routinely.
Amnesty International (AI), the leading anti-torture watchdog organization, has long called on "U.S. state, federal and local authorities to suspend all transfers and use of TASERS and other electro-shock weapons pending a rigorous, independent inquiry into their use and effects."
AI considers the use of TASERS to constitute "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment – and torture."
AI has reported that TASER devices are frequently used to torture and interrogate people such as political prisoners and that TASERS are used by police in the U.S. "particularly for torture to 'gain compliance.'"
The following video from a routine traffic stop in Boynton Beach, Florida, in which an officer TASERed a 22-year-old woman in 1994, shows how the TASER is abused to "gain compliance."
WARNING - This video is very disturbing to view.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/taser_video3a.html
It lasts for several minutes and there are a few points that need to be made:
The woman is TASERed in order to make her comply with the demands made by the police officer to get out of her car. She is not violent or threatening the officer in any way as she speaks on her cell phone telling her friend or relative that the officer is pointing a gun at her.
When she is TASERed she falls from the car onto the street. She falls from a height of at least 3 feet onto the asphalt. This falling from the vehicle apparently injured her arm and could have killed her if she had landed on her head.
When the police finally lift her from the asphalt and she notices her wounded arm, the officer says that she should not have "taken a swing" at the police. The video clearly shows that at no point did she take a swing at anybody. Her wounded arm is from her falling from the car when she was TASERed.
Photo: A TASER gun - a tool of torture and death - is used by police in the United States and Canada. At least 200 people have been killed by this "non-lethal" weapon. Why do we tolerate such cruelty in this society?
WARNING - Video of TASER Abuse on a non-violent woman in Florida
Reproduced from: http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=96715
THE TRAGIC DEATH OF ROGER HOLYFIELD
Christopher Bollyn
Reporter Sans Frontières
I have taken a special interest in the widespread use of the supposedly "non-lethal" TASER weapon after being assaulted and TASERed without cause or justification at my home in mid-August by a so-called "tactical unit" of three out-of-uniform undercover cops.
It was, after all, with no small amount of trepidation that I had returned with my family to our home in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, in July 2006, after an absence of nearly one year.
We were compelled to leave our home in the fall of 2005 because we no longer felt secure after discovering that two people who had attached themselves to us over a period of years were actually informing the FBI on our comings and goings. Their daily intrusions had forced us to change our telephone number and make ourselves scarce in our attempt to protect ourselves and our privacy.
We had only been back at home a week from a trip to North Dakota when I noticed a strange car loitering around my house with three heavily-armed men wearing body armor. I called 911 to report the suspicious vehicle and was very surprised to see the same three heavily-armed men on my driveway 15 minutes later confronting my wife and 8-year-old daughter.
Contrary to the police report, these men did not introduce themselves or explain their presence and adamantly refused to identify themselves when asked. When I turned to get my brother from the house, I was suddenly attacked from behind, handcuffed and pinned to the ground.
At this point, the unidentified man who acted like the leader of the group (who I later learned had worked with the Department of Homeland Security), applied the TASER gun without warning directly to my back and shocked the hell out of me. As I now know, at that moment I came very close to death.
At least 200 Americans have died recently in similar circumstances after being TASERed. Roger Holyfield is one of them.
The case of the 17-year-old Roger Holyfield is a very tragic case which should serve as a wake-up call for Americans. If we learn something from his death and save lives in the future, Roger's death will not have been in vain. If that happens, Roger Holyfield may be remembered as a martyr whose death served to save others.
Roger lived in the village of Dow, near the town of Jerseyville, Illinois, and certainly had not had an easy time of things. Although, he was well-liked he had gone through a very difficult period after his father had committed suicide in the spring of 2003.
Like many Americans, Roger had been taking an anti-depressant medication, which created adverse psychiatric side effects, which led to additional prescriptions to deal with the side effects. In Roger's case, an anti-psychotic medication, Geodon, was added to the anti-depressant Wellbutrin, creating a dangerous pharmaceutical cocktail. He had been taking these medications for several years prior to his death and had only recently been taken off them. The record is not clear but it appears he had been in withdrawal and may have begun taking another medication shortly before he died. In any case, prescription medications had affected his behavior at the time of his death.
Through the haze of the pharmaceuticals, Roger was looking forward to being baptized the next day, Sunday, October 29. Unfortunately, he did not survive Saturday night in Jerseyville.
He was on South State Street, the main drag of Jerseyville, across from the Pizza Hut, the Arbee's and the Salvation Army store, holding a Bible in one hand and a cordless phone in the other.
"I want my Mama, Jesus," he had been calling, an eyewitness said, when police intervened – tragically – and ended his short life. As the people who knew Roger said, "He was simply asking for God's help."
Although he did not pose a threat to anyone – including himself – a local police engaged Roger, but rather than alleviate the situation, they created a conflict. Before the conflict was over, some 7 police officers had become involved in the altercation with the 5-foot 7-inch lad who weighed no more than 130 pounds.
Furthermore, while it may be annoying, Roger Holyfield's calling on God was certainly not illegal or criminal in any way and did not warrant any action by the police. If the police had not intervened, Roger would certainly still be alive. On any given day in an American city one is likely to come across a person calling for God's help. This is, however, certainly no reason to TASER them.
At this point the narratives divide: the police version, which is dutifully reported by the mainstream press, says that seven police officers were overwhelmed by a 130-pound person who exhibited super-human strength as a result of so-called "excited delirium."
This "excited delirium," which does not even exist as a medical or psychiatric condition, supposedly gave Roger incredible strength and then caused him to suddenly give up the ghost – after the police had beaten and TASERed him.
The eyewitness narrative is somewhat different. After the police had confronted Roger, the police had provoked him and put him into handcuffs and a squad car. An eyewitness told the local paper, The Telegraph, that there were at least four police cars, two Illinois State Police troopers and another man in street clothes [Johnny Lawson, an off-duty police officer] surrounding Holyfield.
Another witness said there were more than enough police officers present to subdue Holyfield without using the TASER shock treatment. The police had also struck Holyfield a number of times during the encounter, according to the witness.
One eyewitness, who wishes to remain un-named, spoke candidly to this reporter about what he saw. When only three officers were on the scene, the eyewitness saw how they had apprehended Holyfield. Officer Lawson, who recognized Holyfield, had said, "Take it easy, he's sick," the eyewitness said.
"Let's fry the mother ------." Officer Todd Witt, a new officer on the force, had said, and is the one who delivered the TASERing.
Holyfield was put into the squad car, where according to the witness, the police claim he had damaged the back seat. At this point Holyfield was taken out of the car and TASERed again.
Although he was handcuffed, police had shocked Holyfield at least twice with the TASER. The eyewitness said he had seen Holyfield "twitching on the ground." Holyfield's rolling on the ground had dislodged the TASER barbs, so he was TASERed again.
What is unusual in this case is that the TASERing of Holyfield was done with the weapon firing the electrode barbs into the trunk of the 17-year-old youth. TASER International of Scottsdale, Arizona, had not responded to a written request asking about how the TASER was applied to Holyfield. The only training that police receive in the use of the TASER comes in the form of a short DVD-video presentation presented by the company that manufacturers the weapon.
Dr. Phillip Burch, deputy chief medical examiner for St. Louis, said he had done an autopsy of Holyfield on Tuesday, October 31, two days after he died. He had seen a number of burn marks on Holyfield's trunk and had examined one of them closely. Asked if he thought that the TASERing had caused Holyfield's death, Burch had simply said, "No opinion."
Burch has promoted the idea that Holyfield died of "excited delirium," although no such condition exists in medical journals. Asked if an autopsy would reveal if Holyfield had died from TASERing or "excited delirium," Burch said, "not directly."
When asked how "excited delirium" could be claimed as a cause of death when it is not a recognized medical or psychiatric condition, Burch said, "It exists for me."
Roger's mother, Rita, said that he had been TASERed about 6 times. He had vomited at the scene and his heart had stopped, she said. The paramedics had tried to revive Holyfield using CPR, but his heart had "stopped right there," she said. The hospital would not comment on his condition.
It is very likely that the anti-psychotic medication that Roger had been taking, Geodon, may have contributed to his death.
Geodon is known to have a serious side effect on the heart, which can be fatal.
Geodon has been found to change the heart's rhythm. It is known that drugs, like Geodon, produce rare, dangerous heart rhythm abnormalities.
The risk of these dangerous side effects increases when Geodon is mixed with other medications. The side effects can be so extreme as to induce coma or death.
What may have happened with Roger Holyfield is that his long term use of Geodon and Wellbutrin affected his mental condition and compromised his heart. The stress caused by the TASER may have caused Holyfield's heart to go into cardiac arrest and directly led to his death.
Winn Parker, a licensed medical scientist in Palo Alto, California, said that the barbs of the TASER act like a "cauterizing pin" causing damage to the tissue and organs. "His organs got cooked," Parker said. "Organs are burnt from trauma."
Marion Fulk, a former staff scientist with the Manhattan Project, said that TASERing is very likely to affect the vital organs "especially the heart." While TASERing probably does permanent damage to the vital organs, Fulk said, in the case of Holyfield, it may have "induced a systematic irregularity in the heartbeat," he said, leading to his death.
More than 5 weeks after his death, his mother still does not have his death certificate. This is being held up, she said, pending the results of the toxicology reports.
As the signs around Jerseyville say, "Jesus saves. TASERs kill. We love you Roger."
Photo: Roger Holyfield, the 17-year-old boy from Illinois who was killed by a police TASER on the eve of his baptism.
Website for Articles by Christopher Bollyn