The militarization of our police has been accelerated thanks to qualified immunity and war on drugs, and the city of Washington DC is no exception.
DC Police have decided that their "training and expertise" is "paramount" to the rights we all have. Instead of finding probable cause, they just say they will find something.
In a review of 2,000 warrants, 14% were issued without finding probable cause, only invoking their training and experience. About 99% of these "warrants" involved Black suspects.
Most of these searches have shown up to have nothing. Sometimes they find small amounts of illegal substances, nothing close to the trafficking police claim to justify the search.
One victim of this policy is Shandalyn Harrison.

Her "crime" was that her ex-boyfriend, who had never lived at her home and had broken up with her years earlier, had an obstructed license plate and was found in possession of 5 ounces of marijuana, a misdemeanor.
13 days later, DC police illegally raided Shandalyn's home, where they found her sitting on the couch watching TV with her 7 and 13 year old daughters. Her brother Sterling was playing a video game in his bedroom, so they pointed a gun at his head and handcuffed him.
The officers proceeded to the bathroom, where Shandalyn's 11-year-old daughter was showering. They opened the shower curtain, and pointed a gun at her while she stood there naked.
They ransacked the home and left. It took the family days to clean up after them.
Police found no evidence of a crime, and should've never gone to her home, as their suspect didn't live there.
They had presented no evidence to justify their raid, other than their "experience" that people who have drugs on their person may also have them in their homes, even though he didn't live there.

Thankfully no one was killed in this raid, but as we know, that happens often.
Imagine having police break into your home & point guns at your naked children, because your ex got caught with cannabis.

Protected by policies like qualified immunity, police in DC & all across the US are free to terrorize our communities, our neighbors, possibly even ourselves
Until we elect politicians who actually care about people, these actions will continue, people will be traumatized, and many will die in these raids.

#EndQualifiedImmunity
End evidence-free warrants.
End the #WarOnDrugs.
Protect rights, not power.

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More from @RealSpikeCohen

25 Mar
The Post Office, which employs more than 600,000 employees, has had over $1 billion in losses over the last decade. Postal workers unionize and operate as if they are a private organization, but they are far from it.
With mail volume plunging, package volume is on the rise, which has brought competition from companies like Amazon, FedEx, and UPS. However, the competition is manipulated through the monopoly that the postal service has on letters and mailboxes.
USPS also enjoys a range of other benefits giving them an unfair advantage and a further hindrance to healthy competition. 
They have access to 15 billion dollar loans at low-interest rates from the US Treasury, unlike their private counterparts.
Read 7 tweets
25 Mar
The Kentucky state senate passed a bill that would make it a crime to “taunt” a police officer. The bill's sponsor, Senator Danny Carroll is a retired cop. He proposed the bill in response to protests last summer, sparked in part by the killing of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.
The bill specifically states anyone who “accosts, insults, taunts, or challenges an officer with offensive or derisive words, or by gestures or other physical contact, that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response” would face up to 90 days in jail and fines.
Besides being a blatant violation of your freedom of speech, it also puts the blame for police violence on their feelings being hurt.

Totally unrelated: if you were, hypothetically, going to insult a police officer, what would be your go-to insult? 

Hypothetically.
Read 4 tweets
25 Mar
7 years ago today, doctors told me that it was likely that I had multiple sclerosis.
It took over 2 years to confirm that likelihood, but I knew I had it as soon as they told me. Nothing else could explain the sudden numbness on the entire right side of my body, especially after the MRI showed that I had the telltale lesions on my brain and spinal cord.
After they dropped that bomb on me, they wheeled me into a hospital room to process what had just happened, all night long.

I spent the next few days, including the 4th anniversary of our wedding, in a hospital bed, being poked, prodded and examined.
Read 29 tweets
23 Mar
I support full bans on firearms ownership for the people who are statistically most likely to use them to engage in mass murder: agents of the state.

We simply cannot trust government with these weapons of war.
We aren't coming to take your government away.

We just want to have a conversation about common sense restrictions on government.

If it could save even one life from government violence, it will be worth it.
Despite being less than 2% of the population, US and state governments have killed tens of thousands of people, here & around the world, amounting to as much as 50% of the total killings committed by Americans.

This doesn't include the US government-sponsored genocide in Yemen.
Read 6 tweets
19 Mar
Modifying and racing cars is a proud American tradition. And the EPA is looking to end it.

A few years ago the EPA ruled that even vehicles that are exclusively driven on the track must comply with emissions standards. This is impossible for the vast majority of modded cars. Image
The EPA says that modding and tuning are illegal, and that production cars, truck, bikes or any other vehicle cannot be tuned for racing.

They even announced that they're prioritizing enforcement against high performance parts such as superchargers, tuners, and exhaust systems. Image
Let's be clear: this would end amateur racing, and even some pro racing.

Thankfully, the Recognizing the Protection of Motorsports Act (RPM Act) would reverse the EPA ruling, so a vehicle that's used exclusively for competition wouldn't have to comply with emissions standards. Image
Read 5 tweets
17 Mar
Why has the cost of Lasik and cosmetic surgery plummeted, while all other healthcare costs have skyrocketed?

Why do Rs & Ds argue endlessly over who should pay the bill for healthcare (patients or taxpayers), but not about why the bill is so high?

Because you're being robbed.
R & D politicians rob you for the billionaires who put them in office:

- Insurance mandates & subsidies
- Certificate of need laws
- Big pharma patent abuse
- Generic import bans
- Cost-plus regulations

Get rid of these, healthcare becomes affordable.

They can't have that.
Instead, they pretend to fight over it, while it becomes so expensive that eventually no one can afford to directly pay, and then they make it completely taxpayer-funded, so that those cronies can charge whatever they want, and pass the bill along to you, the taxpayer.
Read 5 tweets

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