Police abuse man investigating police abuse

An “undercover investigator asks for a complaint form and gets his head smashed into a plexi-glass partition in the police station lobby.”

This is a typical abuse of power, and unfortunately not an uncommon story. Excuse this long winded rant, but this echo’s a little close to home as I was once violently arrested in similarly bizarre circumstances & can say that it is a frightening experience. You’re lucky if you get told *why* you’re being arrested, and if you do, it’s likely in abstract terminology designed to provoke you into committing a real crime.

People have used the term “Power Corrupts” in the past, and in the last 5 years we’ve seen more examples of officials being corrupted by power than I personally would like. There seems little recourse for individuals against this type of corruption. I would personally like to see more people excercising their freedoms in a display of civil disobedience. We should all request complaint forms & we should all film police. They have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted, politicians have demonstrated that they cannot resist the urge to “vote whore” by attempting to be seen as “addressing terrorism”, commisioners have demonstrated they are incapable of employing police officers with any kind of intellect or ability to use discression, so it is left in the hands of the people to make sure that an eye is kept on Big Brother.

I appreciate the police & everything they do for our society. I think as well as doing away with “quota systems”, a solution can be reached by dividing the police force up into divisions. For example, security cameras should watch for bashings & that particular arm of the force would be on the look out for violence and violence alone. If someone abusing drugs gets beaten up, they are as likely to arrest the drug user as the violent animal bashing them, and this is unacceptable.

My biggest contention with the police force is that addressing police has only ever been met with suspicion. I have friends who consistently get searched by police, and wouldn’t consider calling out for a police officer even if they were being mugged.

On the issue of traffic, Police in Australia are now stopping every driver on the road in certain areas under the pretence of “RBT’s”, issuing speeding tickets to more than 20% of the population, intimidating people into believing they have to succumb to a search or drug test, and generally criminalising otherwise good people. I’ve had experiences with police where stopping by the side of a creek to look at the view has prompted police to ask the nature of our business. Of course answering “None of your fucking business” would lead to your wrongful arrest, and up to 20 hours of your life taken away, as well as a minimum of $120 (going up to a possible $1000 in fines), but frankly this right needs to be preserved.

My recent visit to the Court House saw a 87 year old Great Grandfather defending himself (at the cost of $65 a pop no less) over charges of failing to wear a helmet. The circumstances where that he was given a bicycle by his grandchildren that day, and he rode the bike out of his gate, two houses down to the end of his deserted and isolated culdesac and back, and was met by some bored power hungry police officers.

The next case involved a man who was charged with running a red light. The details of this one are even more dispicable. Though he was reluctant to say so, the prosecuting officer had to admit that the light was red for exactly 0.3 seconds as the 65 year old man went through it. In other words the man went through a yellow light. Furthermore, this was exactly 3 days after the famous “innisfail cyclone” decimated the area, including this man’s House & Farm. To watch this man, shaking, and on the verge of tears as he recalls how he’d lost everything 3 days earlier, driven down the deserted streets of cyclone decimated innisfail to the airport to pick up his son, only to recieve this red light ticket weeks later was heart breaking. I managed to start a small “behind the chairs” applause for this guy, and much to my delight, the prosecuting officer didn’t appear to happy with this.

For a large number of these cases English is not their first language, and when faced with nonsense such as “There are issues of Fact, and Issues of History… The Law requires that the issues of fact be adhered to as a provision of the Road and Transport Act of 1998″ it is *nonsense* - Jibberish to the best of us, and incomprehensible to 90% of people who are not savvy enough to avoid being dragged into this. Simple human events can be discussed using simple human language, and as far as I am concerned the courts shouldn’t be this grandiose pedestal for a judges ego or turned into a source of income for greedy lawers. It should be individuals sitting at a table and discussing the event through a mediator.

Power Corrupts, and yet we keep throwing more power and more money at those who have demonstrated time and time again to abuse it.

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