There is a silent epidemic of trauma being perpetrated
These monsters
The sun had yet to come up when the SWAT team in masks and helmets burst in throwing flash grenades and shouting. It was 5 am and Amir Worship a twelve year old boy who lives in a suburb of Chicago was awoken from sleep by the noise and the police who had barged into his bedroom. One of them was standing at the foot of the bed with an automatic rifle pointed at him he later said. Dozens of police had stormed the home.
Here’s how local news station CBS Chicago set it up: “A police raid went horribly wrong in south suburban Markham back in May – with a 12-year-old boy ending up getting shot in the knee.”
Ending up getting shot in the knee.
Amir’s mother Crystal was in bed with her boyfriend and her other sons were sleeping as well she said. They were looking for her boyfriend Mitchell Thurman who was charged with drug possession and having a gun with an expired license although the charges were later dropped so I guess they weren’t that urgent after all not so urgent you’d have to go shoot a kid in his pajamas over it.
A second cop reportedly came into Amir’s room and one thing led to another and next thing a bullet appeared in his kneecap. He will probably never play sports and will have difficulty walking or running for the rest of his life.
“Amir’s mother, Crystal Worship, is suing the city of Country Club Hills, Ill., the village of Richton Park and several police officers for damages in excess of $50,000, alleging negligence, willful and wanton conduct, assault, battery, false arrest and imprisonment, and emotional distress,” according to the Washington Post.
“There is a silent epidemic of trauma being perpetrated upon the children and families of color by Chicago and South Suburban police barreling into the wrong homes, handcuffing innocent adults, holding guns on children, handcuffing children, trashing their homes, refusing to show warrants, and screaming dehumanizing commands,” the family’s lawyer, Al Hofeld Jr. said to the press last week. “Now, children are being shot in their beds.”
As I was writing this I just saw a tweet thread from Ijeoma Oluo author of the best-selling book So You Want to Talk About Race and she said she was on a plane and she got a call from police saying there were reports of gunshots at her home. “My older son is there alone. I called him and woke him up. There were no gunshots. These hateful white supremacists are trying to get my family killed.”
“Someone apparently called and said there were two dead bodies in my house,” she wrote. “These monsters.”
One of my editors forwarded me a note from the newspaper’s internet security team or whatever a few weeks ago and it was like just a heads up looks like your information has been posted on some website where they like to SWAT journalists and celebrities and shit and it made my stomach sink as you can imagine so after a while of fretting about it I called the local police and said hey just as a sort of courtesy if you ever get a call that there’s a shooting at my address could you call me first because it’s very likely not me and that felt real weird to have to say it felt like I was putting myself on their radar as some sort of troublemaker and on top of that I felt sort of ashamed for a minute like here I am this guy who criticizes the police all the time and as the common critique from the right goes I was still nonetheless calling them for help when I needed it but then I realized I wasn’t calling them to come and save me I was asking them politely to please hesitate for a minute or two before coming to kill me.
A little before that another old friend I hadn’t talked to in like twenty years who works in cyber security or something messaged me saying ah this is weird we haven’t talked in a long time but just so you know someone posted you information on this forum.
“Our biggest challenge is figuring out if the rhetoric they post on these sites are legitimate threats or just the musings of a keyboard warrior,” she said of what she does for a living and that is the question at hand isn’t it.
In any case please do not arrange to have me killed by the police I don’t want anyone to be killed I just want fewer guns everywhere in the country which I think will help achieve that goal of less killing. I don’t know if that’s something offensive enough to be killed over but maybe it is I don’t know anything.
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