You have to be crazy to trust the cops.

The case of recently deceased resident of Sacramento, CA Stephen Clark is another page in a long and sad history of cowardly cops shooting first and then trying to cover it up after it is pretty clear that they didn't have any reason to shoot at all.  The M.O. is always the same: they are bitch cowards who know that people hate them for being so corrupt and thus everyone in front of them should be killed first and questions can be asked later "for everyone's safety" and "in compliance with department policy".  While I think we are at the very tail end of many years of such behavior with change clearly on the horizon, nothing so ingrained and institutionalized as this can stop on a dime and reverse course.  It will take time.  It will take cops losing their pension, losing their jobs, losing their freedom into jail and, probably before it is over, losing their lives via the capital punishment befitting their callous treatment of other people's right to life.

In the case of Clark, a trigger happy, steroid pumped douchebag duo of police cowards fired more than 20 shots at him.  Eight of the bullets hit him and, according to a unbiased 3rd party pathologist report, most of these were shots to the back.  Clark, of course, was unarmed.  The cops were not returning fire, they just opened up on the guy "just in case".  And if history is in any guide, they probably initially hit him with one shot causing him to fall and then on the way down and after he was face down on the ground these criminal thug punk bastards just kept shooting and shooting causing most of the wounds to be in his back.  And then they waited around for him to bleed out before moving in and bravely putting the cuffs on his corpse.

Of course, first word out of the cop admin team was that it was a righteous shoot.  The family wasn't buying it so they paid for their own independent forensic analysis.  Now the truth is out and you can bet the cops are going to be in trouble over this.  The question is, what kind of trouble.  Will it just be the usual lawsuit payoff or will the family find a way to prove their their 22 year old son's life actually mattered?  Because if all you do is accept the bribe, which of course is not paid by the cops who did the deed but by everyone in the city, then no, your family's lives do not matter.  In that case you simply hit the cop murder lottery and you have sold your family for a couple million bucks.

These cops must pay or there is no justice.  Other cops must observe individual cops go under the bus somehow, either at the hands of their higher ups who disavow them or at the hands of the family using street justice.  If it does not happen, it sends the message that shoot first, ask questions never is still in play.

One more thing.  Stephen Clark was probably out doing mischief.  And Alton Sterling probably was breaking some kind of law selling CDs. But neither of these things are capital offenses and the cops need to stop gunning people down for every infraction.  One of these days they are going to shoot the wrong person and the herd is going to come together in a scary way and stomp the living shit out of them.  And not just the ones who did it. The herd/mob justice does not work like that.  It could easily turn into open season for all cops.  I'm not calling for it to happen but if it does I will be the first to say that the cops brought it down on their own heads and through their own actions.