Police Rain Terror from Above:
San Bernardino Sheriffs Fire on Rush-Hour Traffic from Helicopter
September 21, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Sheriff’s deputies in Southern California opened fire from a helicopter into the middle of Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic on the 215 freeway September 18. The gunfire from the air killed one man the police say was a suspect in a home-invasion robbery a day earlier. And when he jumped or fell out of his car following the barrage of shots, the vehicle collided with another car, sending three people in that car to the hospital. The number of people shot, or injured in resulting car crashes, could easily have been much higher. No one is saying yet how many shots the sheriffs fired, but at least seven bullet holes can be seen in photos of the dead man’s vehicle. It’s not yet known whether the man died from a bullet that struck him or from falling from the car.
The incident reportedly began when the suspect wouldn’t obey an order to pull over. Without any reason to think a life was in imminent danger from the suspect, the sheriffs acted in a way that they became the imminent danger. They chased him on city streets at speeds reaching over 100 miles an hour, risking the lives of all the drivers and pedestrians in their way. Only then did the man enter the freeway going in the wrong direction, and the sheriffs’ pursuit now became even more threatening, leading them to open fire on a freeway full of cars.
How many times have police in this country turned a suspect into a corpse? How many times have they delivered a death sentence to someone—whatever the alleged crime or infraction may be, or for nothing at all—without bothering with a trial, and gotten away with it? And how many times in the process have they endangered or harmed others in “collateral damage”? No, this is not “serving and protecting the people”—this is “serving and protecting the system that rules over the people.”
And if you think the sheriffs in this incident are just a few “bad apples”—it was a gang of thugs from the same sheriff’s department who were captured on news video in April nearly beating to death a subdued suspect—kicking him 17 times, punching him 37 times, and hitting him with a baton four times. (See “San Bernardino Sheriffs Caught on Video: The Savage Beating of Francis Pusok”)
This has got to stop! And we have got to make it stop!
Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.
