outrageous conduct by police officers who are supposed to protect us

UPDATE on the shooting of John T. Williams:  the police officer who shot the homeless man has resigned, following the Police Department's Firearms Review Board calling the shooting "unjustified and outside of policy, tactics and training."   I, for one, am very relieved never to meet this guy in a police uniform.

"Anyone who's watched the dashcam video I think is troubled by the short span of time between the time the officer got out of his car, tried to grab the attention of Mr. Williams and the time that he fired his weapon." 

So said King County Prosecutor Dan Satterber, who also stated that he won't file charges against Birk in Williams' death -- a decision that is raising some outrage in the community. 
 

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Originally published August, 2010:

Stories of police brutality are becoming more and more abundant.  Here is an awful, recent example of a Seattle officer shooting a homeless Ditidaht (Vancouver) nation member four times... for apparently being deaf while holding a carving knife.



More information here and here. Also, some of John T. Williams' carvings:

I am relieved for the greater transparency our digital age is fostering -- not that it's not totally creeping me out in the meantime; me, who never had reason to fear cops before in her life -- but because I hope it eventually brings justice for the people who have in the past, and are now, treated with so little care, or as animals to be shot down. I'm not normally a fan of tasers, because probably like you, I've seen one too many awful, awful video of a police officer tasing someone within an inch of their lives for nothing.  (If you look close, you will see the same officer's name show up twice... interesting little tidbit, eh?) But in this instance?  If the officer really was that freaked out? A taser might have made a little more sense.

What are they feeding cops these days to make them so hopped up, so strung out, too-freaked-to-live? It seems to me that if a police officer is so high strung that they make hideously fatal mistakes like shooting a hard-of-hearing man for not putting down his knife -- his art knife -- that they should at the very least be put permanently in a desk job. After their trial.  The last thing the world needs is for them to have a gun in their hands.