One morning, just before or after Thanksgiving Day 2015, in the Gray Haven area of Dundalk, Baltimore County, Maryland, on a bridge over Bear Creek [a short, wide coastal river, really] a drug crazed white dude was standing above the water holding a knife to his own throat. Responding police called for a bean bag shotgun and a cop soon arrived so armed.

The man refused to put the knife down and was shot with the bean bag round, which had zero effect. He was then tazed twice, neither of the charges having any effect on him.

The man then turned on the cops with the knife and one of them shot him in the wrist and disarmed him.

I would wager that no part of this incident conformed to the police training and tactical procedures.

‘Here’s a link to the Albuquerque murder’

I saw this incident on YouTube and thought it was a gross misuse of police force. This man, who seemed disoriented, had a knife, but was not positioned to use it, and was seemingly confused. He was tazed, shot with live rounds, shot with bean bag, and had a dog set upon him.

Like most violence throughout history, what we have here is a clear case of more affluent, and better socially positioned aggressors, doing in a less affluent and relatively incapable defender. This fellow might as well have been a vagabond in colonial Virginia being run down by cavalier's, a Madi being shot in the head by Winston Churchill for the thrill of it, a helot being murdered by a Spartan, an escaped negro slave being beaten to death by well-paid overseers, a poor white guy in Baltimore being stomped by middle class black teens for sport, or an Indian woman being blown away by artillery at Wounded Knee—another indication that most of man's endless atrocities against other men are not cases of the poor seeking to take from the rich, but in the endless pursuit of the conformation of the more successful man's superiority over his inferior.

Information on sub-lethal bean bag rounds