Surprised? Hardly. Dismayed? You Could Call It That...

...but outraged would be a better description.

Gettin' a little political, here...

Y'all, I don't want to appear to be beating a dead horse...and I don't want anyone thinking I am against government or all about lawlessness, anarchy, and other social bugaboos...but if this shit keeps happening, how the heck can we call ourselves a nation of laws?

Go read the story...I'll wait.

Don't want to link-hop? Skip to mah loo (or to the summary below).

You may find it helpful to go read the original story if you don't want my hashed-up retelling...again, I'll wait...

OK, here's the summary: A man is sleeping in his home in a not-as-nice-as-he'd-like-it-to-be neighborhood. His wife and one of their young sons are at home as well. His wife cries out that they are being invaded by armed men. Home invasions are not uncommon. The man is an ex-Marine, trained to think and act quickly in combat/tense situations. Intent on protecting his family, he gets his (legally owned) weapon. The safety is on. He never fires a shot. The men breaking into his home fire a collective 70 times. He is left for more than an hour in his home, bleeding to death, his wife and child held outside and unable to offer comfort or say farewell, while the men who shot him will not permit paramedics to attend to him and possibly (although probably not) save his life. A man who served his nation and sought only to keep his family safe dies alone in his own home.

Had this been a movie, the men who broke into the house would be Bad Guys, and Bruce Willis would kick their collective asses for two hours, with a grand finale of several explosions and at least one gruesome but totally karmic impalement.

Instead, it had a rather different ending.

The SWAT team was exonerated of any wrongdoing. Never mind they lied about him firing the first shot (the safety was engaged, remember) or that they found absolutely nothing in his home to indicate drugs, home invasions, or any of their other cocked-up bullshit about why this man's home needed breaking into. Never mind that they let a man bleed to death alone, unsuccored, for over an hour. Never mind that they sealed records after the fact to keep the public from learning about what happened, and almost immediately started a smear campaign to villainize the victim. Never mind that they didn't even know his child was in the home and entered with guns blazing. Never mind that not one person has owned up to what really happened to an innocent man, the participants instead seeking to justify or shift blame rather than face the consequences of their actions. They were exonerated.

Again, I pose the question - is it any wonder that the majority of the people living in this country either distrust, dislike, or outright hate law enforcement? How can we trust law enforcement to self-regulate, when it is the norm to say that they are not to blame for raiding the wrong home, for destroying property and lives, that there is no accountability?

Who watches the watchers??

To paraphrase Goldie Hawn in Protocol...I'm watching...like a hawk...

And one day? The governed will no longer consent to give these people their just powers...and then what?