John Chuckman
COMMENT – WHAT KIND OF A COUNTRY?
A young woman, Breonna Taylor, was killed recently by a gang of police officers as she was peacefully enjoying her own Louisville, Kentucky apartment.
They were plainclothes officers executing a “no knock” search warrant of her apartment in the belief there might be drugs there.
They crashed through the door suddenly after midnight while Breonna and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were together.
Her boyfriend, a licensed gun owner, naturally, grabbed his gun and fired a warning shot at a gang of unknown, violent intruders.
His warning shot mistakenly wounded one officer in the thigh.
Three officers immediately opened fire, and in a hail of bullets, estimated at between 35 and 50, unarmed Breonna was killed.
What kind of a country, outside of an authoritarian state, has “no knock” search warrants?
What kind of a country has police use such warrants where there are an estimated 300 million guns in private hands?
What kind of a country has police crash open the door of someone’s apartment after midnight?
The apartment of a woman, no less, making no disturbance?
In what kind of country does a city commit the resources to send a gang of armed plainclothes police to a woman’s apartment after midnight?
In what kind of a country do police start firing guns blindly when no one has genuinely threatened them and before talking to a man clearly just legally defending himself?
The same kind of country that would spend ten years killing 3 million Vietnamese and a million Cambodians, people who had never threatened the United States.
The same kind of country that would kill a million Iraqis and destroy an advanced Arab society, bragging about a huge display of “shock and awe,” something very reminiscent of Hitler’s Blitzkrieg.
The same kind of country that would invade Afghanistan and spend 19 years killing people, achieving nothing.
It truly is a sick society, both abroad and at home.
