YHGTBSM, part WTFever.

Earlier today, my friend Marie posted the following Faulkner quote on Facebook:

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

I kind of laughed bitterly, because we can't claim to be practicing freedom right now, by any stretch.

Making nighttime blog rounds, Roberta X & Tam broke the news that the Boston PD is flat-out stealing TJIC's and his fiancée's stuff.

This is of course the police agency recently known for this shit:

(Photo links to source.)

So I think it's fair to say that BPD has no fucks to give when it comes to things like illegal search and seizure, First, Second, & Fourth Amendment violations, and outright theft.

But this note from TJIC was extra icing on the shit cake:

At the end, some of the cops who ransacked the house tried to shake hands with me. "No hard feelings".

Be sure to read the whole comment, by the way.  "No hard feelings, subject.*  We're just doing our job of fucking over the Constitution and human decency."

Seriously, between this, the kid who wore the NRA t-shirt to school only having charges against him dropped when his family agreed to not pursue a suit against the school district, and Las Vegas PD arresting several members of a family, and throwing in some illegal searches, for not allowing them access to their homes (a story which I posted to Facebook with the tagline "Because fuck every last one of the Bill of Rights**), it is getting harder and harder for me to defend the police.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Every time somebody wants you to be unarmed, ask yourself "What do they have to gain by me being weaker than they?"

I will say that the cops I have dealt with here in San Antonio have all been fucking gods among men in comparison to this, and pretty damn nice all on their own.  They have nothing to fear from the community because they have nothing to fear from the community.  This seems to be becoming less and less common as time goes by, however.

And it's a damned shame.




*I almost wrote tovarisch instead, but then remembered that "Comrade" implies equality, which would totally be the wrong thing here.

**My brother said a Third Amendment violation would be difficult to prove in this case because of the fact that the police aren't soldiers. However, if the LVPD cops that came to those folks' doors looked anything like the BPD in that picture up there, I can understand where they're coming from.  They're a de facto military force, at this point.