"They're just hauling off and killing us now"

I had the exact same thought cross my mind when I saw that travesty unfold in almost real-time on the idiot box a couple of weeks ago, across the channel board.

Seriously scary shit.

Also, take this other bit into account the next time you run across one of those "only ones" types;

"...a profession that should call for the best possible use of reasoning skills because of the life and death imperatives involved with every moment has been reduced to the province of robots whose chief mental ability now is to leaf through a procedures manual in their head. Listen to them: they will apologize for procedures all day long (this includes their investigations), and you will not hear a word of reason anywhere in it."

Loved the THX1138 analogy too. Fitting, and also one of the most underrated Sci-Fi films ever, and for all the same implications that Billy is suggesting.

It also appears to me like that fucker, Mehserle, absolutely realizes what he did, and understands how seriously cooked his goose is over this, being arrested out of state and all, now, awaiting extradition.

This really makes me think about something Jeff Cooper wrote about several years ago in his Cooper's Commentaries, regarding a similar circumstance. He posited that cops don't really need to carry guns. I'm inclined to agree with him.

Mark my words on this; someone, at some point in the not too distant future, is going to be put upon by another one of these authoritarian pricks, and eventually, it's going to be someone who is not about to "go out like that", and knows how to fight back, and probably with lethal consequences to the offending cop.

I can only hope I'm on the jury that acquits him.