Ah, the Santa Rosa police have struck again. Yes, the police department rated the second-most needlessly violent in the State of California, just below the Fresno PD (yes, that means worse than the LAPD, Stockton, Oakland, Vallejo, Compton, Long Beach, Inglewood... you get the picture), have shot and killed a boy who had a dull pocketknife (swiss army style). TWO experienced police officers were confronting a 16 year old boy who was in an argument with his younger brother and eventually threatened him with the knife. You'd think these two officers could rush-and-cover, use a taser, talk the threat down, use pepper spray, or at the very most shoot him in the leg if they actually were convinced he was going to get this dull pocketknife into his brother somehow and actually instantly kill him with it, in front of onlookers, instead of talking tough and then backing down, as is always always the case involving testosterone-filled adolescent boys. But no, they shot with deadly force and destroyed a human life needlessly, in an act of "prevention" completely out of line with the threat. I've no doubt this kid was a punk (although it says he was a straight-A student), but that doesn't matter. It's the police force's duty to protect its citizens, not kill them when they have Swiss Army knives and make scared threats when backed into a corner.

We've descended a long ways since the heady days of the 60s. Then you had race riots and (mostly) peaceful war demonstrations, but the average apolitical white person (hah) had nothing to worry about from their neighborhood cop, who they might even know by name. Since Reagan's War On Drugs created an entirely new criminal class, the USA is starting to resemble the dystopic nation of The Wall. Morrissey was 100% right when he said Americans think of themselves as free because we are constantly told so by the press and our politicians, when in reality we live in one of the most fascist, law-obsessed countries in the Western World (note he did not say the third world, where there are many countries with worse human rights situations). He should know, he lived here eight years and has said while he loves the country for many reasons, the oppressive regime and the overzealous religious idiots who vote them and their policies into power has worn him out. Europeans think we are a backward, barbaric culture in the mold of a declining Rome. While cops here are hustling around busting kids for having pot, there is real organized crime and gang activity going on domestically and internationally feeding those end users and paying off the pawns set against them. But that rarely receives headlines.

Police forces are notoriously brutal and corrupt, because they have power. Or maybe they're overworked, or they've been ordered to come down hard to teach us all a good lesson, or maybe it's something bad in the Krispy Kremes. But Bush's global policy of justifying preemptory strikes (acts of war, to call them what they are) on where we think an attack might soon emanate (judgments which are made by the same intelligence agencies who told the President with a straight face there were WMDs in Iraq and which failed miserably to predict 911 or any scenario like it even though Al-Qaeda had planned it for years and had even practiced their logistics by bombing the World Trade Center earlier, then a US embassy and then the USS Cole), seems to have filtered down to its internal law enforcement agencies, where a cop will shoot when he sees someone reach into their pocket, because it "might" be a gun, or an ICBM, or will pop your arm out of its socket making a behind-the-back cuffing no matter how trivial the alleged crime. They take no chances and they take no crap these days. I have first hand experience, I regret to say. I was senselessly abused by a cop who either got off on that kind of power or else righteously thought I was some kind of wife-beater, even though I'm supposed to be presumed innocent and this idiot had no idea what even happened that night. Sure seemed to enjoy kicking and pushing me around though, since it was just he and I and no witnesses, and no one believes a suspect over a cop. But it's ok, I insulted him verbally in so many creative ways that he's probably using my lines now on other people. My legacy is no doubt assured.