Here's what bothers me so much about this. A father of 6 is dead. Why? I can't find a good reason. Can you?
So here's what bothers me of the reason why people give: "He was RESISTING arrest."
Was he? He didn't want to be arrested for certain. But I don't see him fighting anyone. He didn't like someone poking at his chest or grabbing at his arm. I don't hear any commands of turn around or get on the ground or put your hands behind you back.
I have come to completely disagree with - for petty infractions - if a person isn't INSTANTLY totally submissive they are "resisting" is given by armchair police groupies and wannabe pretend tough cops themselves - and therefore can be jumped by a bunch of police, thrown to the ground, face shoved into concrete, beaten, tasered, chocked, kicked, and clubs - often with horrific massive injuries, disfigurement, and occasionally killed.
That father of 6 had not threatened those officers in any way. He had not tried to flee. He was arguing that there was no reason to arrest him and that he is tired of police arresting him every time they see him. Yeah, I'd get tired of that too. I don't see him "RESISTING" at all. Yet if he was, the level of his resistance is relevant.
If that HAD been a street gang who had jumped him for his wallet (instead of government enforcers jumping him for his wallet via fines), without a doubt those gang members would have been indicted for murder. Yet not one of those officers will even be admonished. And the police union would win a grievance if they were.
YouTube if FULL of those videos. Now and then we debate them on the forum - for which the "but he was RESISTING" - which then justified any gang violence of any kind against the person. We've seen a person whose only offense was a being a street person in a nice part of town beaten and crushed to death by 5 officers. That's ok, because he was "resisting." This guy is dead - justified because "he was resisting."
Totally, absolute submissiveness or any amount of violence and assault then is done to the citizen by the government.
Somehow that doesn't seem what the American Revolution and the concept of "land of the free" is about. Each instance of this has more angered me. Those officers jumped that obese old guy like a bunch of street gang punks trying to take his wallet. What he was accused of - no evidence seen of it - was so trivial, so petty, and so common it almost laughable at their radical response - their gang assault leaving 6 children without their father.
Screw this. This "resisting" justifies any level of police violence needs to stop. Seriously, "resisting" isn't justification to violently gang attack someone because the attackers are police officers.
A citizen is dead because a group of government agents jumped him like a pack of gangsters for an allegation that he had not paid a 29 cent tax on an alleged - but unseen - cigarette he sold.
This fellow citizen doesn't like that. I don't like it a lot. I bet his children and their mother like it even less.