Matt Agorist, The Free Thought Project
A 16-year-old kid was being harassed because a police officer suspected he was privy to the heinous criminal activity of ingesting the smoke of a marijuana plant.
The officer, in an attempt to protect the community from the evils of this vile marijuana user, began his shakedown.
The situation was quickly escalated to violence and the teen was injured to the extent of bleeding profusely from his face onto the sidewalk.
According to cellphone footage posted to facebook of the May 4th incident, Officer Michael Ramirez used the maneuver that has been eliminated for use for more than a decade, in an attempt to restrain the teen, who allegedly resisted.
The teen, whose identifying information is redacted on the police report, was charged with resisting arrest and evading arrest, which generally are Class A misdemeanors; assault of a public servant, a third degree-felony; and possession of marijuana under 2 ounces, a Class B misdemeanor, according to My San Antonio News.
Wayne Krause Yang, legal director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said Ramirez acted “unreasonably” in the May 4 incident with the teen.
“The officer resorted to dangerously excessive force in a situation that did not involve serious danger to himself,” said Krause Yang. “In fact, it appears that the 16-year-old was the one who acted in a relatively calm manner while Ramirez unnecessarily escalated the situation into a scary one. Choking a person for over a minute would cause anyone to panic.”
The video is intense and violent. The teen is treated like an animal as cops kneel on his neck and smash his face in the ground.
Only a mentally ill person would condone the actions of these police officers in their attempt to protect society from a person who chooses to ingest a plant.
Sadly this is not surprising as the war on drugs is rife with violent injustices and corruption.
However, this was caught on camera so it it will serve to expose the horrible consequences of the state’s attempt to control what you can put into your body.
