Natural News – by Jonathan Benson
A Pittsburgh area woman recently met the heavy hand of local law enforcement during an intense 12-hour police roundup, which serves as yet another reminder about the fragility of our individual liberties. As reported by WTAE News in Pittsburgh, police officers barged into Robyn Ruckman’s home after demanding that she procure proper identification for an arrest warrant, all over uncut grass that was the responsibility of her landlord.
The sweep was initiated in the Turtle Creek area of southeastern Pittsburgh in response to more than 100 outstanding warrants, one of which was aimed at Ruckman’s property. Reports indicate that Ruckman’s lawn had been improperly maintained by her landlord for quite some time, which resulted in a warrant being issued on the owner for Failure to Maintain.
When police approached Ruckman’s door to serve the warrant on the day of the sweep, they demanded to know her name and ordered her to show her ID. When she tried to close the door to retrieve her ID, officers from East Pittsburgh, Turtle Creek, and the Housing Authority forcefully pushed it back open and proceeded to follow her inside against her wishes.
When Ruckman inquired as to why the officers did not appear to be wearing proper identification, they cursed at her and once again demanded her ID. As she turned around to walk back inside the house, officers followed Ruckman, showing clear signs of aggressive animosity and brute intent. Fortunately, Ruckman was able to capture the entire harrowing encounter on video, as she had previously planted a hidden camera.
“I didn’t want to tell them anything because I figured this is a test of my civil rights,” Ruckman is quoted as saying to WTAE about her encounter with law enforcement. “You don’t need to know who I am if I’m in my house.”
You can view a WTAE news report on the encounter, complete with Ruckman’s captured footage, here:
http://youtube.com
Law enforcement becoming increasingly more hostile, violent in militarized American police state
Though police officers technically have the right to request ID in search warrant cases, Ruckman was particularly incensed by the fact that the officers who showed up at her door denied her request to simply wait outside. Since she was not the culprit they were looking for, she reportedly felt violated by their abrupt and crude entry into her home, not to mention their refusal to act civilly and humanely in dealing with her.
“They could have defused the level of animosity in the situation had they been a little more polite,” says Wesley Oliver, a law professor at Duquesne University, about the situation. “Officers can be very authoritative while being polite. The two are not inconsistent.”
Unfortunately, such verbal and behavioral brutality by law enforcement seems to be the new norm throughout much of the U.S. This is evidenced by a number of other recent incidents, including the case of police officers shooting an individual’s dog point blank in Texas, for instance, and officers violently detaining suspected drunk drivers and forcibly drawing their blood in Georgia.
All of these things and more point to the increasingly authoritative police state that is growing in America today. Even if Ruckman’s landlord was in violation of the law with her poorly maintained property, does this relatively minor infraction really warrant such barbaric treatment by police officers against a member of the general public?
“It’s bad enough that the police now look like the military — with their foreboding uniforms and phalanx of lethal weapons — but they function like them, as well,” wrote John W. Whitehead, President of The Rutherford Institute, in a recent piece at Huffington Post. “No longer do they act as peace officers guarding against violent criminals. And no more do we have a civilian police force entrusted with serving and protecting the American people and keeping the peace.”
Sources for this article include:
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/041163_police_state_civil_liberties_private_property.html#ixzz2YrlipMvm
If you saw the video, there goes the 3rd Article as well as the 4th article of the Bill of Rights. They just walk right in without a warrant and refuse to leave saying, “No I’m not going to leave. You seem like you are avoiding us.” WTF?? and the old, “I don’t have to show you ID. See? This is a police badge.” bullshit.
Yea, I’m cool because I have a police uniform and I can do whatever I want. F**KING BASTARDS! No warrant to enter the home. No consent. No nothing and they just nonchalantly walk-in like they own the place going against both the 3rd and 4th articles of the Bill of Rights. Hang all these bastards for treason!
Again, they are using their made up/on the fly penal code regulations/city ordinances as a way to supersede the Bill of Rights when it is supposed to be the other way around. These Penal codes (penis codes) are just bullshit excuses to arrest someone and enforce their police state tactics. Grass too high so we call SWAT? Are you F**KING KIDDING ME!!!!????
Err, I think you mean ‘authoritarian,’ not “authoritative.”
But I think we know what you mean.
My sister-in-law lives in a sub-division which turkeys have walked thru
long before the sub-division ever existed. She feeds the turkeys.
Several of the occupants of the sub-division (outsiders) have
complained to the local police about the turkeys and her feeding
them. She ignores them. One day she was working in the base-
ment and when she came upstairs there was a cop in her kitchen.
He told her he had a right to enter her domain and for her to quit
feeding the turkeys. There is no law forbidding the feeding of the
turkeys. The turkeys are, little by little, disappearing.
And like the turkeys, hopefully the cops will be disappearing. One by one, one by one.
I’ll gobble to that one. One neighbor was allowing his nephew to shoot at
the turkeys with a BB gun. I told the neighbor if he didn’t like the turkeys,
leave.
Before long these pig BASTARDS are going to be shot for this shit. Militant mercenary pigs need to be put in a box and buried out of sight of lawful ,Constitution believing citizens because they are nothing more at this point than traitors.Keep it up you Bastards, people are seeing you for what you really are and your day in hell awaits you!
I think that its going to be sooner rather than later we see retaliation by the people, one day they are going to wade into the wrong person who can and will fight back and it is from there it will begin.
Remember what “V” said about a catalyst? When the police shot a little girl, the nation blew up and this has been seen in the UK a few years back when a police patrol car killed a 16 year old much loved teenager in Newcastle that saw hundreds of residents take to the street armed with lumps of wood and they gave the police a damned good hiding too.
Yet the police seem to frighten even the government, after all the Chicago police if you remember, after shooting innocent people rioted for three days and nothing was ever done, this seems to be the persistent threat that if the police don’t get their own way more riots can be arranged.
Police officers are above all servants of the people and servants of a law and justice, people should NOT be frightened by their police and they have the utmost right to defend themselves from illegally acting police too, if that woman had swung a baseball bat at the man who had not clearly identified himself and then attempted entry she would have been in her rights, of course the police no doubt would have shot the place up and that is how they keep you cowed sadly, the police need to be taught respect for its people and if they act outside of the law they should fear retribution.
I’m surprised that some communities haven’t worked on citizen militias for the people to protect themselves and their property with, the police might get away with brutalising a little old lady but a score of citizens standing there ready to intervene, not just watch but act as protection would make them think again.
The government should be frightened based on history. Municipal officials and judges protect the police so victims can’t prevail. The police grow stronger and eventually decide that they are superior to municipal officials and judges. Soon the officials and judges are seen as obsolete and dispensed with. It happened under past dictators like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and others, and it will happen here too.
John Lennon once said “every country gets the number 1 it deserves. These ignorant police scumbags, militarized by israel, are turning their own country into hell and the american people are letting them.
Thus, do they deserve it?