Friday, October 4, 2013

About the Death of Miriam Carey at the Hands of Washington D.C. and Capitol Police

I am one who firmly believes that the difference between a genius and a totally crazed nutjob can sometimes be difficult to determine. A crazed nutjob holds views about reality different from ours, but so does a genius. That's one reason I think that full freedom should be given to all people, including crazed nutjobs, unless they plan violence on another. You just don't know when a crazed nutjob is really a genius that sees something in reality that the rest of just can't see.  As Henry David Thoreau put it, "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Which brings me to the case of Miriam Carey, who was gunned down by law enforcement on the streets of Washington D.C. after a car chase.

From reports, we know that Carey started acting strange after she fell, some time ago, and hurt her head. It seems as though some filter we must all have in our head to keep us relatively calm amongst an ever growing surveillance state was shut off in her mind.

According to friends and family, she was concerned that President Obama was monitoring her. Well, how could that not be true? Certainly, after the Edward Snowden leaks, we know it to be truth. And it is noteworthy that Carey visited Washington D.C. just after Obamacare was launched where even more data is being taken on all of us.

Now let's consider the chase:

It started near the White House, which I have passed by many times. It appears close to impossible for most vehicles to penetrate the barriers that are up. It would take a very heavy vehicle, a large dump truck traveling at a high rate of speed, to break through the barriers, but an Infiniti automobile, which Carey was driving, had no chance.

But it is noteworthy as to what Secret Service police did when she was near the barriers. According to an eyewitness:
The Secret Service guys pulled a black metal gate into her path and she slowed to try to go around it, they said.  But the agent moved the gate in front of her again. At that point “she just gunned it,” B.J. said. “She ran the barricade down and the guy; knocked him up onto her hood. He rolled off into the street and she tore off down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
For a woman who was spooked by government in the first place, that must have sent her fear into overdrive. Thus, the chase towards the Capitol where guns were starting to be aimed at her, which must have spooked her even more.

In Los Angeles, car chases are a common occurrence broadcast on live television. You can even get twitter alerts that notify you to turn on your television when one is in progress. The chases occasionally go into very populated areas, the police just follow. Once a chase went right past me in downtown Los Angeles as I was walking on the sidewalk.

Usually, the chases continue until:

A.The suspect runs out of gas.

B. Spikes are laid out ahead of the car

C. A maneuver is made that  forces the car to stop.

At such times the police apprehend the suspect. The only time gun fire is exchanged is when the suspect comes out shooting, never, never have I heard of southern California police shooting at the end of a car chase if the suspect wasn't firing at them.

Unfortunately, Carey wasn't being pursued in Southern California, but in Washington D.C., where police are more paranoid than she likely was. You see, everyone, until proven otherwise, is considered a danger to the state and its key rulers.

Any incident in the area is considered a threat to government unless proven otherwise. A shooting many, many blocks away at the Naval Yard, resulted in the Senate going into lock down. A women, who feared the state, driving with a baby, and unarmed, caused the entire Capitol to be locked down. Who is really paranoid here, the woman who did die at the hands of the state? Or government leaders diving behind desks and sending out their hired muscle to eliminate the "threat"?

The death of Miriam Carey is a terrible tragedy. In some way that most of us can't see, she recognized government as a threat more intensely than most of us. Her trip to Washington D.C. proved what she believed, that unarmed and travelling with nothing but a baby, government could perceive her as a major threat that had to be eliminated.

After this tragedy occurred, inside Congress, members of Congress stood to thank their private police force that "protected" them from an unarmed woman with a baby.

I ask you, who really is nuts here?

16 comments:

  1. 4 Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
    5 Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
    6 More than cool reason ever comprehends.
    7 The lunatic, the lover and the poet
    8 Are of imagination all compact:

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  2. Members of Congress applauding the public execution of an unarmed woman in the presence of her child is a Giant Neon Sign in the Heavens for anyone that can pay attention to something for more than five minutes.

    Self-imposed exile, internal or external, is the smart choice right now.

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  3. Excellent Post !
    EPJ rocks, MSM sucks !

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  4. If I could afford it I'd be in Galt' Gulch Chile right now.

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  5. I think that Ms. Carey didn't deserve to die. When I watch the news and she had he window down why didn't they try to get her out of the car.Also they could have shot at the tires. They didn't have to shoot her so many times. Especially when their was a child in the car. Now her daughter has lost her mother and going to have night mare and questions about what happen to her mom for the rest . All because of the police was thinking about one thing her having a weapon . And I think "God" that there wasn't one .

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    1. the tv news mentioned that an investigation would be launched to see if lethal force ws justified. wonder what the odds of it announcing while a tragedy the officers followed procedure.

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    2. The young woman had a history of NON-VIOLENT mental illness. Despite the MSM characterization of her actions, she didn't "ram" the barricades--- she tried to escape.

      Yes, she sped away from the people she believed were seeking to harm her, and endangered her child, but MURDERING her is a vast and outrageous overreaction.

      Cops Are Thugs With Badges--- just look at the assault in NYC. F*;k all cops.

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  6. For almost 46 years I have watched with dread as the psychotic madmen the public elects to protect them from brown people in foreign lands have slowly but inexorably turned their thirst for live victims to the people who are close at hand. I hated the thought of the militarist police state that the elders of the republican and southern democratic parties wanted to thrust on us back in the 1960s, and fortunately the public's ardor for blood waned for a while. But in the end that did not matter because the psychopaths embedded deep in the government foisted a champion of liberty on three gullible generations of Americans by proclaiming he would get government off the backs of the people.

    Ronald Reagan was put forth as a champion of liberty because he could use his folksy charm to get conservatives to hate antiwar protestors because they looked different, and refused to become murderous drones for the state. Reagan worked hand in glove with that sexual deviant J. Edgar Hoover to destroy the Free Speech and Anti War movements on Cal State Campuses because you had to be a communist agitator to want to put your body on the gears of the state, or have personal qualms about using napalm on innocent civilians half way around the world.

    It hurts to have been wide awake for 46 years, and have been within inches of a night stick crushing my skull at the age of 13 while saving a friend from having his face rearranged and realize the public is clueless to the primal bloodlust that overwhelms police when they are in a pack. Mind you I did not live in a slum, but the a walled enclave which happened to be the richest neighborhood in Seal Beach, California. The Orange County police officers were like a coven of ravenous wolves as they surrounded a group of skinny, affluent and unarmed middle school youth on Halloween night 1967. The supposed men who went about their business of inflicting hideous violence that night were nothing less than the vanguard of J. Edgar Hoover and Ronald Reagan's fascist wet dream of how they would deal with anyone who garnered the genocidal attention of the militarist police state they sought.
    I am sure if George Carlin were still alive he would find it curious that our most fascist presidents have aircraft carriers named after them.

    P.S. I enjoy EPJ because it gives voice to a quiet yet firm rationality in a sea of maddening sirens.

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    1. Anon-

      I salute and praise your actions, Anon.

      If you wrote an autobio of your actions (especially as someone who opposed the senseless murders in Viet Nam at such a young age!) then I suspect your decades of "life experience" would provide the readers of economicpolicyjournal.com and LRC and Zero Hedge (and a dozen smaller sites) with powerful images.

      Please speak openly about these things. PLEASE! It will help me, and other younger freedom loving people, see the truth about our government.

      Please- it will help all lovers of freedom.

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  7. Yes, tensions have been high in DC because of the Navy Yard shooting last week and the shut-down this week, so when someone rams a barricade at the White House and then speeds headlong toward the Capitol at 70-80 mph in a 30 mph zone in the middle of the afternoon, one could legitimately think the person was danger to public safety. The Secret Service are trained to stop people from entering the White House grounds, and they have done so many many times without being injured or causing injury, or being on the national news. They initially tried to stop this woman by blocking her car with a gate, but she persisted and then sped off after injuring one of the agents. How were they supposed to know that she was just a messed-up woman having a psychotic break?

    Plus, DC is not California: this chase was over less then 1.5 miles, which at normal speeds would take less than 10 minutes, so there really wasn't time or space for the her to run out of gas or for anyone to put spikes on the well-traveled road, much less for it to be on TV. The agents had to react very quickly, so they tried to shoot out her tires. I don't really know what happened at the end, but I do know (from the video) that they did try to manuever around her to stop her. I also know that they were very shaken when they found a toddler in the back seat.

    And yes, it is a terrible tragedy. But don't blame the Secret Service or Capitol Police for doing their jobs in an extreme situation. If she had been a suicide bomber, would that have made it OK? If so, how were they to know that she *wasn't* a suicide bomber? If not, how should they react to suicide bombers?

    Hindsight is 20/20, and it is really easy to judge a situation when you don't know what it actually is (especially when you think you do). I am very much against gun violence, but I also recognize that sometimes the people who protect us have to use their guns to stop a greater threat. I don't cheer for this poor woman's death, but I do think the Secret Service and Capitol Police did what they had to do to protect the president, Congress and the general public in DC.

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    1. Hindsight only tells us that the Secret Service and Capitol Police were unable to stop an unarmed, untrained 19 year old woman without killing her. Hadn't they been trained for such situations? Didn't they have the proper tools to do the job? Or is this standard procedure to shoot, shoot and shoot some more? Aren't there any possible alternatives? What chance would they have against a trained, armed determined opponent? Your reasoning seems to justify any action as long as the President is protected from danger, without regard to the actual level of danger being assessed properly or a more sane method of accomplishing this task. No hindsight is involved just common sense and decency.

      By the way I don't know why this woman was in DC but I always shudder when I hear someone wants to take a vacation there

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    2. When was the last time that a 19 year old woman with an 18 month old in the backseat turned out to be a suicide bomber in the US? The police have no common sense or decency. Kill and ask questions later. I do not need them to protect me.

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    3. How do we know everyone isn't a suicide bomber? This is only a minor traffic violation that escalated very quickly to a shutdown at the capital with reports of shots fired, ya shots were fired by the same police that reported them. If this had happened anywhere but DC there would be a federal investigation into the over reaction and criminal behavior of the police.

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    4. Maybe if the US GOVERNMENT wasn't murdering innocent people each day, and hadn't been murdering innocent people in the Middle East (and all over) for over 100 years...then maybe the "Capitol Police" wouldn't be so fucking scared of a 19yo new mother that they had to shoot her a dozen times.

      But, that's just my .02cents, since I can see how evil, corrupt and mendacious the US GOVERNMENT really is.

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