Police Kill Man For .02 Grams of Pot

Another life taken needlessly in the failed war on drugs. Law enforcement in this country is completely out of control. Even if he had large amounts of marijuana there still was no need for a full SWAT team raid to arrest him. I believe a lot of people choose to enter law enforcement because action movie type raids and cool looking weapons excite them. Having the power to end someone’s life with zero consequences strokes their sick maniacal egos. Unfortunately minorities and people from the lgbt community are targeted more than any other demographic. I guess it gets easier to murder someone when they do not look like you or if their beliefs are different from your own. Whenever I criticize law enforcement I get the same predictable response: “all police aren’t bad”. That may be true but it really depends on what you consider “bad”. If there are huge numbers of good cops on the job, then why aren’t they speaking out when one of their fellow officers misbehave? In my eyes the cops who keep silent when they see an injustice occurring are just as bad as the bad cops who create the injustice.

Izzy Reyes (left); Jason Westcott (right)

It’s been pretty clear to me for a long time that we need to completely overhaul the way police and law enforcement are trained and screened. Maybe someone who matters will die at the hands of police and then the rest of America will open their eyes and finally start working to change things. Until then I will keep writing blogs about it, and keep a record of each death that happens while we wait for change.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Izzy Reyes the live-in boyfriend of the deceased Jason Westcott. No one should have their life taken at 22 years old for less than $2.00 worth of marijuana. It will be interesting to see if conservative media brands Jason a thug whose murder was justified because he had an extremely small amount of marijuana in his house. That’s been their go-to line every time an African-American is murdered by police. This time the young man is white but he’s gay as well so I’m sure Fox and all the others will be conflicted on how to proceed.