I have long ranted and raved in these pages and elsewhere about police abuse of all sorts. The research I've done into the "cop mentality," the psychological profile of a would-be officer and the concomitant disinclination of most states and municipalities to put a choke-chain on their uniformed, two-legged pit bulls are all fodder for a massive public outcry...but none have been forthcoming. Primarily, most of them are just punks...but we've given them guns and badges.

Are we all that scared?

Wired.com
A notorious New Jersey hate blogger charged in June with threatening to kill judges and lawmakers was secretly an FBI “agent provocateur” paid to disseminate right-wing rhetoric, his attorney said Wednesday.

Hal Turner, the blogger and radio personality, remains jailed pending charges over his recent online rants, which prosecutors claim amounted to an invitation for someone to kill Connecticut lawmakers and Chicago federal appeals court judges.

But behind the scenes the reformed white supremacist was holding clandestine meetings with FBI agents who taught him how to spew hate “without crossing the line,” according to his lawyer, Michael Orozco.

“Almost everything was at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Orozco said in a 45-minute telephone interview from New Jersey. “Their job was to pick up information on the responses of what he was saying and see where that led them. It was an interesting dynamic on what he was being asked to do.”

“He’s a devoted American,” added the lawyer, who claims Turner was paid “tens of thousands of dollars” for his service.

Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman, said in a telephone interview the bureau’s policy is “to neither confirm nor deny whether an individual has an association with the FBI.”

More

they are really nice guys and will let ya get a picture taken n everything

http://www.bikemojo.com/speak/showthread.php?p=905678-

Texas is fixin to buy China

A burst of bad news for Fuzz Fans here in Minnesota. A) the Metro Gang Strike Force was seizing all sorts of property and giving it away under pretense of drug seizure, and now the FBI and a blueribbon panel are all involved, finding major major crimes around. see the panel remarks.
B) The cops beat the hell out of a guy in Minneapolis, it was on tape and is becoming a big mess in the last couple weeks. Yes, he was tazed. Video:
Also a DJ here died after getting blasted with a Taser.
In my opinion the only time it's acceptable for police to use a Taser is in situations where it would also be acceptable to shoot someone in the face. The Taser is a less lethal weapon, not a nonlethal weapon, and its use should be regulated accordingly. (i.e. your odds of dying from it are a greater-than-zero fraction of dying from getting shot in the face).
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Hongpong.com

...looks like a loony bin. Having visited 2 years ago, I realize it wasn't quite as bad as the media portrays. The Tazering is getting way out of hand because it's not "lethal"; unless of course, your one of the dead. I think it speaks to the poor training/screening of many policemen. Got to remind myself not to read so much media crap.

www.iauthorbooks.com
http://iauthorbooks.blogspot.com/

PopSci, By Jeremy Hsu, Arpil 12

The study aimed to test whether Taser devices have caused heart-related problems or death in meth-addled suspects

Cocaine is a hell of a drug, but getting shocked with a Taser while riding high on methamphetamines probably beats any white-knuckled cocaine experience hands down. And that's exactly what happened to some lucky sheep in a new study that tested the effects of Tasers on meth-addled targets, funded in part by Taser International.

There's at least some scientific reasoning behind all the apparent madness. Growing abuse of methamphetamines has led to arrest-related deaths in situations where law enforcement officers used their Tasers on drug-intoxicated suspects. The latest study was designed to test whether electronic control devices (e.g. Tasers) can lead to dangerous cardiac responses in meth-intoxicated humans, with sheep standing in for people.

The less-lethal device of choice was the Taser X26, a standard law enforcement tool which can fire at suspects from a distance of 35 feet. Researchers shocked sixteen anesthetized sheep after dosing the animals with an IV drip of methamphetamine hydrochloride.

Some of the smaller sheep weighing less than 70.5 pounds suffered exacerbated heart symptoms related to meth use. But neither the smaller nor larger sheep showed signs of the ventricular fibrillation condition, a highly abnormal heart rhythm that can become fatal.

The study that appears in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine openly lists a few caveats. Aside from being partially funded by Taser International, the study authors include two physicians who represent medical consultants and stockholders of the company. One of the two is also the medical director of Taser International.