Why Are US Police Licensed To Kill ???

On April 12, 25-year-old Freddie Gray “made eye contact” with a Baltimore police officer; a week later he was dead from an episode of brutality and torture that left three of his vertebrae crushed and his spinal cord mostly severed.

A bystander video, depicting only part of the man’s ordeal, shows a stony-faced group of police officers loading Gray, who is visibly injured and crying out in pain, into a small steel cage in the back of a police van. Thirty minutes later, he arrived at a hospital on the edge of death.

Prior to the beginning of the video, bystanders said that police officers subjected Gray to what can only be described as a horrific form of torture in which he was “folded up like he was...a piece of origami,” with his heels on his back, leaving him praying for medical assistance and unable to walk.

Subsequent press reports have revealed that giving shackled prisoners a “rough ride” inside small, steel-caged police vans is a form of “touchless torture” used by police in Baltimore, Philadelphia and other cities.

Baltimore has a long history of police brutality, which has resulted in $5.7 million in payouts to victims since 2011. The Baltimore Sun reported that “Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson.”

The killing of Gray is reminiscent of a 2005 police murder in the city, in which Dondi Johnson had his spine fractured after he was given an intentional “rough ride” in a police van that arrived at the station in half the time it would have taken if it were driving at the speed limit. His family received a $7.4 million judgment, which was subsequently reduced to $200,000.

In both cases, police were forced to admit that, contrary to protocol, they did not use seat belts to restrain the handcuffed prisoners. The city of Philadelphia has paid more than $2 million to settle lawsuits alleging that “rough rides” left two people paralyzed.

The homicidal character of the police officers’ actions underscores a fundamental reality of American life: in working-class neighborhoods throughout the United States, the police function as de facto death squads, treating workers and youth as an occupied population, to be put down with arbitrary violence and even murder.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/04/24/pers-a24.html

Here's another explanation of how they do it in Baltimore:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Did-a-nickel-ride-kill-F-by-Dave-Lindorff-Police_Police-Abuse-Of-Power_Police-Brutality_Police-Culture-150423-573.html

Q: The biggest question I have is this: similar events led to a mass uprising in Tunisia and the "Arab Spring". Why do Americans remain so docile in the face of continual police attacks on the populace?

A: Hollywood has programmed us via movies and TV to accept and do what we're told. We're brain dead and emotionally retarded.

And "our" police are licensed to kill just in case some of us get out of line once in a while, even by just making eye contact with an officer of the law.