[Lazamataz]

This is insane. This is the Soviet Amerika today. We are a full-on Soviet-Style State. We now have police with rifles in the face of citizens, innocent or guilty.

[I want the USA back]

Officer, you are pointing that gun at me and I feel threatened. Please point it away from me.

You’re resisting arrest. You have the right....

The USA stopped being a nice place to live in a few years ago. I don’t know how long ago. It’s nice to think that it’s the land of the free and all that bullfeathers, but it’s not. No more.

How do you explain this to an very elderly man who has always respected the police and would never resist them? I’m thinking of one person in particular and you don’t need to know anything more about him. How do you tell him that the police now assume you’re going to fight with them, and assume that your TV remote or hedgeclipper is a gun? How do you explain that his partial deafness is a big problem - that if he doesn’t obey the order right away he will be shot? He was always comfortable around the police. How does anyone explain this to him?

[gaijin]

Omg...! :O

[markomalley]

In regards to the one in the helmet...I thought Chris Farley died years ago:

[444Flyer]

The guy CLEARLY looked nothing like the suspect. Thank God the guy had the common sense to keep his hands where Mr. Muzzle pointer could see them.

The officer violated #2 and #4!

[Dick Vomer]

typical donut muncher, dumbass POINTING A WEAPON AT A CIVILIAN’S HEAD.

Nice muzzle control, sport. Then you’ve got the pillsbury doughboy stuffed into his super-dee-duper special operator costume for Halloween.

[PghBaldy]

“I Know Why the Caged American Sings”

[Lancey Howard]

“...home of the free.”

[BulletBobCo]

Good thing Travolta wasn't the cop.

[RKBA Democrat]

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

You’re right, Laz. That photo is a must see. I guess we can be thankful for small miracles in that his finger wasn’t on the trigger.

[GeorgiaDawg32]

Rule #3: Never cover anything you aren’t willing to destroy. This cop was willing to destroy.

[2ndDivisionVet]

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[Ken H]

That goes well with this =>

Watertown, Mass.

[EternalVigilance]

I’m probably going to take some flak for saying this, but while the camera angle makes it look like the barrel of the gun is pointed right in the citizen’s face, it may well actually be pointed closer to the left rear tire, or even further away from the vehicle. Such is the nature of such camera shots at times.

I have no idea if anyone else has broached this thought, and I’m too close to hitting the sack to read through a couple hundred posts tonight.

[XHogPilot]

I’ve read thru 280 plus post to this photo. So many wafflers, so many seeing is not believing...

Look at the photo, at the reflection in the drivers side door. The pin-striping of the Hiway Patrolman’s pant leg is clearly visible. He is in fact within inches of the door. There is no photographic paralax, the muzzle of the carbine is directed at the driver. Not at the back seat, not at the back tire.

[deks]

[from article linked below]

The manhunt was reminiscent of what was seen in the Los Angeles area earlier this year, where police sought an ex-cop named Christopher Dorner. During that manhunt, police shot up 3 innocent people in separate incidents, misidentifying their targets’ identity, gender, vehicle, and race.

Police show particular ferocity during manhunts involving one of their own was wounded by the suspect.

Duran was a dangerous suspect and wounded several officers in his apprehension. But danger is not a valid reason to treat innocent people like criminals and force them look down the barrel of a rifle while driving down a public street.

Duran was a Hispanic suspect with a shaved head. Clearly the motorist being threatened at the checkpoint in the photo above did not match Duran’s description. California Highway Patrol had no reason to stop him and certainly no reason to point their rifles at him. It is grossly negligent to point a rifle at anything you aren’t willing to destroy.

At any given time there are numerous wanted criminals on the loose all over the country. We must ensure that our rights aren’t discarded just because of fear and danger.

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/innocent-citizens-held-at-gunpoint-in-terrifying-california-checkpoints/

[WildSnail]

I showed this photo to my wife. Until 2001, she lived in Ukraine, and grew up in The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Her reaction was, "This was normal for me. Whether or not guns were out, you feared militia. They do what they want." (Militia being what they call police there.)

There have been a LOT of things I've been showing or telling her lately where she says that's the way things were when she was growing up.

It has been slowly getting worse over the past several decades. The acceleration into tyranny the past 10 years has been astonishing and depressing.

[Ditter]

The only time I have had a gun pointed at me was at a road block in Mexico. It was the Mexican Army and they held us while our truck was searched. They didn’t find anything and let us go but it almost scared me to death.

This happened in 1984 I would be even more scared if it happened today.