Prompted by “Disturbing Dash Cam Footage Surfaces of Teen Killed by Cop Over Marijuana”: http://www.hightimes.com/read/disturbing-dash-cam-footage-surfaces-teen-killed-cop-over-marijuana
Prosecutors announced on Tuesday that the South Carolina police officer who fatally shot 19-year-old Zachary Hammond during a pot bust this summer will not face criminal charges. […]
Tiller shot and killed Hammond on July 26 during a sting operation after police were tipped off that Hammond’s friend, who was also in the car, was planning to sell a small amount of marijuana. Tiller claimed that he was in danger of being run over by Hammond’s car when he shot the teen, but the new video doesn’t exactly match Tiller’s story.
I saw the video on the mainstream news and was outraged by it — especially by the continuous refusal by such news outlets to ask the righteously challenging questions against the legitimacy of Certain Drug Prohibition (logically rendering the mainstream media complicit in that prohibition’s victimization).
No doubt about it, when a cop tells you to stay put, you stay put and leverage your constitutional rights to best possible extent. This teen was in the wrong for panicking and trying to escape, but he’s a teen and we’re all at least likely to do stupid things at that age.
Especially given the “small amount of marijuana” nature of the situation, the officer should have recognized that he was dealing with such panic and responsibly backed off (where was this teen ultimately going to go?) The teen was not trying to hit the officer, but simply escape the situation over a plant not only safer than alcohol — but safe upon proper use, according to the best application of the scientific method to date.
Cannabis Prohibition, however, is devastatingly unsafe (nonetheless ineffective, unconstitutional, and unwarranted — all factually speaking, as I’ve repeatedly elaborated upon and refrain here for brevity).
The prohibition is so insanely harsh, this teen felt escape was safer than stopping for a ‘serve and protect the public’ officer with his gun drawn.
Justice was not served in this case (to somehow still put it mildly).
Law isn’t only an inappropriate tool for risk management, despite obscenely overflowing applications of that tool throughout society (without scrutiny or care over the ironic tragedies that come from such “regulation”), but in our nation with a concisely defined naturally given and unalienable right to liberty (i.e. you can do whatever you want, as long as you don’t infringe upon that right — without slippery slope starting exception), there’s no way that leveraging law to mitigate tragedy via risk management is lawful (huge elephant in the room being mass ignored all throughout national history).
Responsible entertainment (education) is the only proper risk management tool, and the only lawful approach in any society with an unalienable right to liberty.
If your child dies from a drug overdose (gunshot, etc.), you should never turn to law to protect future kids from facing that same fate, because of the mass tragedy from aforementioned regulatory irony. You should always turn to improving education (needing entertainment for learning interest) for that protection.
Never to be defeatist, but tragedy is inherent in reality. That’s a fact at least grounded in the conclusion that each one of us will die regardless of the rule-of-law (as has happened throughout history without exception). Law only shifts the targets of tragedy, because law is all about agenda competition (not justice).
If humanity could stop all deaths right now, we would fairly quickly face overpopulation and its corresponding death.
Law is supposed to be about improving liberty by protecting innocence, but the subjectivity of liberty and innocence renders that statement empty, so leaves a mess too often grounded in insane amounts of reason abuse (e.g. war on some drugs).
Call me radical, but the full set of facts don’t lie. Subjectively defined law is a scam to serve and protect the oligarchy spanning the private and public sectors. What too many oligarchs fail to understand, however, is the Rule of Reality (as I prefer to call it, but you can call it karma, if you want) is paying literally perfect attention, and hardcore science actually concludes there’s no free lunch in reality. If you cause (inclusively mass) suffering, then you pay in full for that suffering strictly in accordance with reality’s 100% dominant need. Reality demonstrably needs corruption, but it also needs correction for its own balance.
The fact is no objective distinction has ever been scientifically proven to exist (reality is an ocean of energy from humanity’s perspective, and humanity is a physical and seamless part of that ocean — at least according to the well-established quantum physics), so the notion of death being such a distinction that ends your personal experience is unwise, especially when science only concludes reality’s need for balance similar to literally 100% of the roughly trillions of systems known to humanity within reality.
Justice requires fairness. Fairness requires objectivity. Law requires objective definition, despite the challenges in achieving that just goal.
Our Liberty Shield entertainment project (think entertainment meets open source software development mentality) is all about just law, so feel free to read my latest refinement of the informational roots defining my (preferably our) political stance in support of scientific constitutionalism (the only path to lawfully fix the disastrous political climate these days).
Our Respect Cannabis campaign (part of my Stress Health entertainment project) is mainly about intentional perception alteration itself (drugs, technology, religion, etc.), and improving education to improve risk management involving that alteration — all sourced from the brilliant cannabis example and consequent legality momentum.
They both serve to logically (so fairly and therefore justly) improve society and at least prevent another young death of a teen dealing with small amounts of a safe plant by default, while respecting the need to address abusive behavior in any of its many forms (on either side of the thin blue line).
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