The paramilitarization of American life

[Locutus]

Death Panel


By Mark Steyn


The paramilitarization of American life proceeds apace. Following the seven armed undercover agents required to confront a female college student in last month’s sparkling-water stand-off and the 13 armed officers needed to take down a baby deer called Giggles, in Cook County the other day five-to-seven police officers showed up at the Victory Centre senior living facility to tase, fire at, and kill a 95-year-old man for refusing to take his medication:

First they tased him, but that didn’t work. So they fired a shotgun, hitting him in the stomach with a bean-bag round. Wrana was struck with such force that he bled to death internally, according to the Cook County medical examiner.
“The Japanese military couldn’t get him at the age he was touchable, in a uniform in the war. It took 70 years later for the Park Forest police to do the job,” Wrana’s family attorney, Nicholas Grapsas, a former prosecutor, said in an interview with me Thursday.
​

Mr Wrana used a walker. For his entire “confrontation” with the five-to-seven cops, the nonagenarian veteran was apparently seated in his chair. This detail from his daughter is poignant:

Wrana wanted to talk to her. The doctor held the phone up to his ear, she said.
“He just said, ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I love you and goodbye,’” Mangerson recalled, her voice cracking. “That was it.”
​

I wonder what Mr. Wrana’s final thoughts were of the country he fought for 70 years ago. Too much law enforcement in America has lost all sense of proportion: If you need six armed officers to police a nonagenarian in an old folks’ home, seven armed officers to police a 20-year-old female you suspect might have a beer in her shopping bag, thirteen armed officers to terminate Giggles the baby doe, you’re doing it wrong — and you’re the real threat to public order.


Death Panel | National Review Online

 

[BaalsTears]

Policing in my state has changed over the course of my lifetime. Today police tend to treat people they encounter as if each is armed and dangerous.

 

[karrie]

one of the others that blows me away is the state sending in swat teams to enforce the rules regarding raw milk. I'll try to find the video clip I saw on it if I have time

 

[EagleSmack]

They so love playing dress up.

 

[darkbeaver]

Canadian police and security people are learning Israeli tactics from Israeli advisors. Ask Mr Baird, ask Mr Mckay, ask Rev General Harper. Canada is about forty two millimetters behind uncle sham in the police brutality business.

 

[Zipperfish]

Yeah, there's just wayyyy too many cops, not to mention the of other state security agencies.

But the forumla is pretty solid: Instill urgent sense of fear in the population, use ensuing crisis to further build state security apparatus.

The take down by the cops in TO was another example. About 50 cops and nine shots to drop a guy with a knife. Clearly about 46 of those cops are not busy enough.

Mark Steyn though--"Death Panel" Really? Drama much?

 

[petros]

Good thing we have SUN altering us to the tyranny now. It could have been going on for another 30 years and we'd have never known.

Thank you for this stunning and revealing information.