Here is an article that I wrote for the state alternative/entertainment rag. Just wondered what ya think? I got a feeling that if more folks spoke up publicly, it would be harder for the goons to pull off things like this. So, I'm encouraging others to write letters to editors of papers in their areas to get the message out. Here 'tis: Lets get right to the nitty gritty. West Virginia is a police state. Not "turning into one" as some of the more left leaning, but politically correct might agree. We are already there. It is just that the majority of "average" citizens have not had the dubious pleasure of the experience just yet. But never fear, because the odds are good that you too, or someone you know will find out first hand what's really happening within our legal system. The statistics are the first red flag. West Virginia has one of the lowest crime rates in the United States, but one of the highest rates of incarcerated per capita. That's 1 in every 136 people in jail in this state, 2 points above the national average. And that does not take into account all those who are out on bail awaiting trial, or those who may have an outstanding warrant for their arrest. "Not me" you say, "that happens to other people". OK, well maybe. But here are some things you may not be aware of. Supposing one of your neighbors has a domestic dispute, which ends up at your house totally by accident. In the right situation, once you have left the premises, the police might very likely decide to totally search your house, without a warrant, by the way. "But they can't just do that" you say. Well, yes they can. As long as they can fabricate a "good" excuse, which could be anything, they can do whatever they want. Don't believe it? Just try asking a lawyer. Heck, ask MANY lawyers. They will all say pretty much the same thing. "It does no good to fight them, they'll just make things harder on you". Here is something else you may not be aware of. Supposing someone you really don't even know should get busted with drugs. And supposing they feel like protecting their supplier. So when asked by the police where they obtained the drugs in question, they decide to just make up a story. That is ALL that the police need to obtain a search warrant for someone's home! No such thing as "probable cause", no such thing as your constitutional right to privacy or freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. So, theoretically, if I were to get pulled over and the police found a bit of green substance in my car, I could tell them that I got it from, well, anybody, and the next thing you know, you have the entire hoard of State and County Police at your door. At that point, you are entitled to nothing whatsoever. Except of course your right to remain silent! Your home will most likely be completely ransacked in the most vicious way possible. Things will be smashed, dumped, ripped apart. The worst vandals could not do any better. And that is if you are lucky. I have known people to be beaten and kicked in handcuffs while their dogs were shot and their homes destroyed. You might say, "but don't SOME of those people deserve it?" Well, there is a very antiquated and worn around the edges saying that refers to someone being innocent until proven guilty, but that is only a fallacy. To be trapped in the legal system means that you must work 20 times harder to prove your innocence as THEY will have to to prove your guilt. Still not a believer? I admit, the extreme militaristic attitude of the police, the State Police in particular, is rather hard to believe. But just try calling 9-11 in an emergency situation. Chances are the "emergency" will pale in comparison to their reaction to it. I know one mother who most likely wishes with all her heart that she never would have called them on her mentally unstable son, when he tried to take her car. She now has one dead son, and cars can be replaced, but your flesh and blood can't. I personally found out the hard way that ANYTHING is possible in a situation where you believe you are doing the right thing. My husband suffers from periodic bipolar episodes and Post Traumatic Stress syndrome. An extremely unusual and unforeseen set of stressful circumstances caused him to have a serious episode. We are talking about someone with NO criminal record of any kind, someone who has always worked and excelled at what they did. Things got out of hand and I could not deal with it on my own, so I called 9-11 and BEGGED for an emergency mental health warrant. I was very adamant about this being a mental health crisis. I requested that my husband be taken to a mental facility. I was LIED to by the man who answers 9-11 calls AND a State Police officer who called back to verify. They BOTH told me that a couple police officers would come to defuse the situation, and that he would then be sent to a mental hospital. What really happened was more along the lines of a bad twilight zone episode. The entire Charleston Swat team was called in. All roads near my home were blocked by many police who thought nothing of aiming their high powered weapons directly in anyones face who just happened to be driving down the road. Thank God that this ended rather calmly, as these cowboys were definitely looking for a fight. But they caused FAR more problems than my husband did. He was whisked off to the regional jail in short order, where anyone exhibiting mental illness becomes a spectator sport. The usual cure there for anyone having "problems" is to throw them in something called "suicide watch", which is nothing more than torture, where you are not allowed to have such things as a blanket, clothes, or toilet paper. And then they just leave you there alone. The justice system moves at a snails pace, and seems to be mostly run by people who have somehow lost their humanity in the rat race of shuffling papers and running as many "offenders" thru as possible in a days time. These people are literally in the business of playing God with peoples lives, but they have a tendency to treat this power as if they were bug exterminators instead. After much maneuvering, we managed to get my husband bailed out of this regional hell hole so that he could obtain the help he needed. Of course part of the conditions of his bail are that we are not allowed any contact whatsoever! So, the torture continues, and now I am also a victim. You can only imagine how impossible a situation that would create for a married couple who are very close, work together, have their insurance, bank accounts, and everything else imaginable together... Requests have been made to get this condition reversed, with no success. And I just keep thinking about that poor woman with the dead son. That could have so easily happened to us. Now, I could go into a tirade about how the legal system wastes an incredible amount of taxpayers money, especially since they have regionalized the jail system, or the fact that there is no room for such a thing as "truth" in a courtroom where "plea bargains" are the order of the day. Or the fact that the police will do ANYTHING at all, including lie, fabricate evidence, or even let someone's house burn down in order to "get their man", and when one of them causes enough trouble in a particular county they are simply transferred to another county. But, as I said before, if you fight 'em, they'll probably make life even harder. So, what's a body to do? Just swallow it and go on? I'm sorry, but that's just a little hard for me to do. I'm a firm believer in educating the masses. What you don't know CAN hurt you! I would like to hear from other folks who have had bad experiences with the Police/legal system. I'd like to put together a website, a book, or both. There HAS to be a way to fight the system. And if we don't try, then this state, and in fact the entire country, will be doomed. Send me your stories. Patsy Buvoltz mail to: Police State WV box 57, HC 73, Spencer, WV 25276 or erthma420@wirefire.com
Great post, I don't want to go into personal experience as i've dropped out of babylon myself because of injustices in the legal system, after years...........I just want you to know your post means alot to me..............if only more people understood the plight of so-called "offenders" ...........and as i've found, once your in the system, it's impossible to get out...........unless you have the opportunity to drop out.
very well put and something needed to be said... power is a drug all its own that can be abused and misused. and it happens way too often. the justice system is all out of whack and proves to be useless at times, especially towards BLACKS and Hispanics. and why this is is a question that keeps me up at night. you've made a lot of excellent points in your post and if you do decide to write a book, i'll be the first to buy it!!!
The power of the state has been expanded in the last few years, because especially through drug related seizures it adds to the local government coffers that have been over taxed due to mandated regulations without funding. It's just another way to fund and balance agendas of some that have others interests in mind, but found an easy out by making the little man fund their agenda. We are told it will lower our taxes or insurance costs. It rarely does. But it gets them what they want with no expense to ther segment of the population. And a far greater liability to the little man. Such are the new credit and bankruptcy laws. Who do they really benefit? Time to ask these questions before you allow them to become law.
have just seen and heard the news here in the uk about those new york cops shooting (50 rounds ) i think the newscaster said "and killing a bridegroom to be ...........man why those gun happy pigs not accountable for their actions its a sad state of affairs .
They aren't accountable because they investigate themselves. "Internal investigation" they call it. Police investigating the police. Bullshit. They tried to create a citizens review board here years ago, several times, but the police didn't want it. Wonder why!!!
The I/me/mind of this epiphenomonal wonder of individual being contemplates that there is another I/me/mind, known here as Earthmother and dwell/contemplates on this others experience of being, and in the nested distributed system of local neural circuits that constitute consciousness brings a new phasic reenterant signaling loop of four dimensionally encoded fields of pure energy, into existance; it pulses with comfort support, and understanding, and the rythem deepens, heart is now brought full into this construct a harmonic is reached, and by the impetus of empathy, resonates... Strength and peace dear sister, how are you doing and how is your husband? Very well written article, I knew from quite early on that some personal experience was going to be related, when it came, so did the tears, I know your plight, for I know bipolar intimately. I have experienced it first hand since I was 12 years old, back then it seemed to come and go, until at 33, seventeen years ago it struck full force and laid waste to my entire mentality in a catastrophic failure of the integrity of mind. This occured one year after this vile thing murdered my father. I know the thing all too well, and I know just what kind of living hell it can make of what ought be, the wonder of life. Know this now as an assurance from me, and down the road a bit, if you wish, I can provide complete, rigorously investigated support for everything I say on this issue. Bipolar is not a disease of the brain!!! It is a dis-order of mind/brain!!! This is no mere semantical difference, it points to the very basis of the current accepted model and shouts ERROR The current model and the dogmatic pronouncements of the "professional" community are the purest poppycock, and tantamount to scientific blasphemy. Incurable!?!? No shit, would you cure extraversion?? I am of the total conviction that what is possible, is the resolution of the dis of order. By the way, I was one semester from finishing my undergraduate degree in behavioral neuroscience and accepting one of three offers for a"full ride" (fully funded, including housing and expenses) for a Ph.D. program. Those offers came as a result of numerous published papers on the part of a research group that I was running the analysis section of. One reason that you may be assured this is not some manic rant. The other is my experience with this disorder defies the current model, for according to that model I should not be at all functional outside of an institution at this point. From 33 years of age till 44, I refused to seek "professional" help, and of course the disorder deepened, I was running, my father suicided while hospitalized for treatment of this disorder, no way I was going there. The result was that when I finally had no choice my diagnosis was bipolar one, ultrarapid cycling, mixed states, with psychotic component, about the severest dx in the book, and hell beyound, well beyound Dantes Inferno. After two years of "treatment" I was "stable" but I knew something was very wrong, it took me 6 months to figure out what it was, an attempt to convey that wrongness would make an already long post, ludicrously long. What however that perception caused was for me to do something I didn't want to ever do, i.e. pick up the tools of my first best destiny that I'd been training in and apply them to the model of BP I was being treated by. What I found horrified me, what I did, according to it, is impossible. Over a six month period I renewed my interupted investigation into the nature of consciousness, and after advising two trusted friends, and writing them each a letter of authority to have me evaluated, involuntarily if necessary, as a safegaurd, I abandoned treatment by the professionals in favor of a self experiment with an alternative model. It worked, partially, but that is another story, my intent here is to offer you, and your husband reason to hope, by no means am I advising that he abandon treatment, that would be utter folly, but know this, it is not a life sentence, the knowledge is existant that is necessary to bring about a proper model of bp, one that offers recovery from the pathological mind/brain states that are the hallmark of this disorder. Well then that is all very much more than I initially intended to convey, but then I am a maniac, and I can get carried away a wee bit now and then. One more thing, hate, is a dangerous emotion be very careful with it, I know, I have two things I hate, the system and bipolar disorder. Strength and peace sister, for you and your husband sine cera
vcr, much appreciation for the empatetic reply. I hope that your explorations in the alternate realms go without too much serious trouble. It is definately a rocky path to follow, and a scary and uncharted land. I hate hate, if you will, and it angers me that there are such low things in this world which can cause this emotion in someone who otherwise does not tread there regularly... Thank you, Earthmother
I don't like hate personally and have no use for it, but if its part of someones self expression, well, freedom of speech.
