Pastor asks what's going on – then gets tasered, beaten and jailed (without an answer)

First of all, I do not know who Pastor Anderson is. I do not know who he may be affiliated with, or what he might've done. But I do know that if these videos are reliable, then he's got a major case of police brutality to flog around.

Police fascism is alive and well in America, I see.

I've been seeing (especially over at the YouTube comments) people accusing the pastor himself of this and that, of being a wingnut, of not "doing as he's told", etc., and some particularly vile fucks even whining that he should've been tasered some more. Seriously ... what the fuck is wrong with people like that? Okay, so the guy was a bit stubborn and refused to cooperate. But, hey, you know what that's called? As he put it himself: "standing up for his rights"! In particular, his right not to have his possessions ransacked and strip-searched for drugs that weren't there without a warrant. I don't care what the hell sort of checkpoint it might be; it'd be a military checkpoint, and still if someone came up and demanded to check my possessions, they had better be carrying a warrant, or else this set of wheels is screeching off.

Even then, him disobeying and refusing to submit his car to a search might've been against the rules. Okay. But please, I invite anyone to explain to me how that is, in any way, a reasonable cause for the incredible brutality that followed (tasered, car ransacked, viciously beaten, then jailed)? All he deserved was some tongue-lashing, and maybe a ticket or citation or whatever the hell it is they hand out in these cases. Being sent to the E.R. (literally) sounds a wee bit like overkill to me.

Pastor Anderson then wrote up a little poem. It's a nice one, methinks.

Whatever the guy may have done (or not done), the cops' reaction and handling of the situation was irrevocably, provably wrong, vicious and horrific. No sane human being can dispute that. Unless something else was going on here that I'm just not picking up on, he didn't deserve to have his face bashed in, his car vandalized and his possessions searched without a warrant. These "checkpoint cops" are rising ever more into the territory of "thugs". (Thus, joining the rest of them.)

(via Skeptical Eye)

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