Sadly, yet more evidence that the ongoing militarization of America's civilian police departments is totally out of control and, to state it bluntly, unnecessarily killing people:
When John Wrana was a young man, fit and strong and fighting in World War II with the U.S. Army Air Corps, did he ever think he'd end this way?
Just a few weeks shy of his 96th birthday, in need of a walker to move about, cops coming through the door of his retirement home with a Taser and a shotgun.
The old man, described by a family member as "wobbly" on his feet, had refused medical attention. The paramedics were called. They brought in the Park Forest police.
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.http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-08-03/news/ct-met-kass-0802-20130803_1_butcher-type-kitchen-knife-park-forest-police-taser
Read the whole thing. It will make you sick to your stomach.
What The Gadfly is astoundingly confounded about is - the details of the "standoff." Seven cops armed with their service pistols, taser guns, a bean-bag shotgun and riot shield vs. a 96 year old, physically debilitated man armed with a walker and a shoehorn. What the fuck is wrong with that picture? And it goes without saying - just take a wild guess at who ends up dead in that scenario?
Once again, on the heels of the baby deer SWAT incident, the question is begging to be asked -- how far are we, as a purportedly civilized nation, going to allow this shit to go?
There needs to be a clear and unambiguous line drawn between civilian police organizations and the greedy, whacked out of their minds military industrial complex, fuckfaced proponents. Small, nearly crime-free towns don't need fucking armored fighting vehicles m-kay?? Has this country gone completely fucking insane on this issue or what?
The Gadfly implores you dear readers -- if you are truly disturbed, not just of the John Wrana killing, but of the way your local police are being turned in to Imperial Stormtroopers, you have to let your voice be known. Sitting around reading and agreeing with The Gadfly's rantings isn't going to change anything.
----TFG
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