Little Miss Carey woke up today looking around for her mother Miriam. A child welfare worker told her that she would never see her mommy again. She was killed by the cops.
The media consensus of the events leading to Miriam Carey’s death I found in the New York Post:
“Carey’s rampage began just after 2 p.m., when she ran her black Infiniti over several low barricades onto a driveway leading to the White House. When she was stopped by a larger barricade, she reversed and struck a Secret Service officer, who flipped over the hood, said witness B.J. Campbell, a tourist.”
Another witness had a different view. He said Secret Service officers were shouting: “Whoa! Whoa!,” . . . at the car, “It looked liked [the driver was] scared or lost. I thought they might have been a tourist.” But then, witnesses said, officers tried to place a barrier in front of the car. The driver swerved. The officers moved the barrier. She hit it, and a Secret Service officer was thrown up on the hood and then off the car.”
The New York Post story continued: “Carey then sped off away from the White House, down Pennsylvania Avenue, at least 20 Secret Service and US Capitol Police cars in pursuit. After a chase of more than a mile, she got hemmed in by officers and was staring down the barrels of at least five guns.
A video on Fox News shows the car stopped as part of the encounter that took place outside the Garfield Monument near the Capitol. She was stopped there as is shown in an earlier part of that video after being cut off by the police cars. We see five cops gun drawn pointing them at the car. A witness Ryan Christiansen, of Idaho Falls, Idaho, said, when the car “was pulling away, and somewhere between six and eight shots were fired, . . . ”
The New York Post continues: “But even that couldn’t stop her. She quickly backed away, drove twice around monuments in front of the Capitol and headed to the west side of the building. A cruiser blocked her path, but she reversed, jumped a curb and struck another police car as she sped off again. Finally, at Second Street and Maryland Avenue, between the Supreme Court and the Hart Senate Office Building, her car was surrounded by cops and Secret Service vehicles.
At least a dozen gunshots rang out, killing the unarmed woman in the driver’s seat, . . . Amid the mayhem, Capitol Police issued a lockdown order to the entire area.”
The Washington Post also reported: “Around the vast complex, heavily armed Capitol Police officers began banging on doors, instructing staffers . . . to shelter in place and lock their doors. “Shelter in place. Just get to your office,” an officer said when reporters asked . . . .” An e-mail went out: “Gunshots have been reported on Capitol Hill. . . . Close, lock and stay away from external doors and windows.” Sharpshooters took positions outside the iconic building. The House adjourned. The Senate adjourned.”
When the dust settled and the “shelter in place” order was lifted the House of Representatives went back into session. It gave the Capitol Police at lengthy standing ovation expressing its gratitude for the actions it took that resulted in the killing of Miriam Carey.
NY Times reported Miriam was killed “after turning her vehicle into a weapon . . . ramming her way through barriers outside the White House and on Capitol Hill.” CBS news reported: it wasn’t known “if she deliberately rammed the barrier or simply sideswiped it.” USA Today reported she rammed a security barrier near the White House. The DC police chief said she attempted to ram the barrier. The pictures of her vehicle show no front end damage.
This is truly a tragic situation not only because Miriam Carey is dead when she need not be; but also because of the panic that captured our nation’s capital as a result of this incident. One witness did describe it as “mass panic.” It seems about right.
Aside from capitol police taking up positions as snipers:
and FBI agents patrolling in heavy gear in the back of pickup trucks
and armed ATF agents with bullet proof vests patrolling the areas
there are many images on the videos of heavily armed police patrolling the area and the heavily armored police tactical vehicles coming upon the scene.
It all points to an out of control police situation. None of this extreme over the top response was necessary. Don’t police have an idea what is happening? Where is the proper assessment of an ongoing situation. This was a simple matter. It carried out under the full view of the police. This massive confusion should not be occurring. Giving a standing ovation just allows this ineptness to continue.
I’m not Monday morning quarterbacking this. This woman never rammed any barrier. If she did anything she may had sideswiped a barrier put in front of her because she went down the wrong street. She panicked and tried to flee. She was stopped twice. No attempt was made to shoot out her tires or otherwise disable her car. Being unarmed she presented no threat to anyone once her car was properly trapped; in effect, the weapon, which the NY Times cavalierly described her car as being, was immobilized. Why then is she killed?
Aside from what I suggest is the police overreaction in her wrongful killing, the reaction of the police both federal and city was outrageous. All the shots fired in this case were by the cops. Why are people being told to “shelter in place,” a term which I find odious since it speaks to me of police state tactics. Where are the police procedures that keep things under control. This is nothing more than a questionable police chase of a vehicle that refused to stop for the Secret Service and the national capital panics.
Now add this to this. The residents in 50 apartment in the Connecticut condominium complex where Miriam lived have been ordered out of their homes while the police get a search warrant to search her apartment. They were kept our over night. There are no facts showing a connection between Ms Carey’s condo to whatever vehicular crime she committed. Under our Constitution, there is no basis for such a search. Nor is there any emergency the police can articulate which allowed them to order people out of their homes.
This is all part of the ever-increasing encroaching of police state tactics on our lives. The “shelter in place” which first gained prominence during the Marathon Terrorist Attack is an action that has no basis in law and encroaches on our freedom. The searches for evidence unrelated to a crime broadens the trampling upon our rights.
Miriam Carey may now be dead. Her death demonstrates our rights as citizens are slowly dying.
Matt and fellow bloggers: I don’t agree with all of Glen Beck’s views, but here are his prescient words on us becoming an AUTHORITARIAN country.
“They are teaching you a lesson,” Glen Beck said, adding that the government preventing veterans from accessing their World War II memorial – paid for by taxpayers and private citizens – also reflects a “you didn’t build that” mentality. He pointed to a handful of other locations that are not paid for by the federal government that the Feds still tried to shut down as part of the “government shutdown” this week. “This is beyond not wise. You don’t do that unless you’re building a thugocracy,” Beck said. “You come in with your stormtroopers and you say ‘shut it down,’ and you have to. They don’t care if they bully vets, shut down parks that don’t need to be shut down — they are showing you they’re in control.” Beck went further: “They didn’t care if they left people in Benghazi. They don’t care the IRS was targeting individuals based on their political beliefs. This week they became in charge of your health care. They don’t care that the IRS is now the one you have to answer to. They didn’t care if the NSA monitors every aspect of your life, and stores statistical history on you. Why? Because they’re building a thugocracy, and you’ve just passed an important milestone, and you need to know it. The thugs are in control, and they want you to know. That’s why they’re bullying the 90-year-olds. [It] goes way beyond politics,” Beck said.
And I say that’s why the Thugocracy, the Police State, tells us nothing, issues “shut-in” orders, “stay-at-home” orders, invades our homes and privacy, spies on us, and harasses and kills innocent persons (some mentally ill). We’ve become an Authoritarian-Imperialistic-Militaristic-Money-Grubbing-Power-Mad Police State (ala 1930s Germany) and we better dismantle the Foreboding Imperial City (the FEDs) fast and un-elect our Imperious Congress which cares zilch about the American people and our Constitutional rights, and put some idealistic young people in office. Wake up, America! The black-booted secret police state, the Thugocracy, exists and is on the rise. And the Thugocracy’s sycophantic propagandists in the Media will conspire with government fat cats to impale our freedoms on the altar of “national security.” The Police State sees all of us as suspects and all of our freedoms as malleable, it sees our constitutional rights as state-made gifts, rather than as God-given rights. God help us fight and defeat these demons: The Enemy Within: The FEDs, the Police State. No hyperbole is intended by me or Beck. En garde!
William- Glenn beck is a racist, conspiracy filled garbage pale. Money is his president and God .
Doubting: Even a “racist” like Thomas Jefferson who owned slaves can have brilliant insights. Listen to the ideas, and stop throwing stones at the idea-makers. They used to dismiss everything JFK said as Irish-Catholic Papist pablum. Discount who said it, and focus on the concepts. Beck’s conception of Thugocracy is right on!!! Also, the real racists and race baiters try to dismiss the Tea Party with the canard “racists” and “extremists” when in fact 99% of Tea Party members are just conservative Americans, ordinary folk like you and I. On a personal note, I’d take Glen Beck over the egomaniacs Bill O’Reilly, s highschool teacher, or Chris Matthews, a race-baiting buffoon, any day!
William Connolly, excellent response!
William:
Glenn Beck is not one I feel comfortable being associated with. I didn’t know he is still around. The last I heard he was preaching that the United States was one of the lost tribes of Israel. http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/glenn-beck-u-s-is-lost-tribe-of-israel/
As far as his talk about Thugocracy what I fault in it is his use of it to attack the administration, that is he is not approaching the issue as an American issue where we are letting the police involve themselves in actions for which they are not accountable but saying that somehow the Democrats are instituting this. This is false. The problem is across the board, Democrat as well as Republican. When Congress cheered the killing of Miriam Carey both sides of the aisle cheered. There is no Republican clamor to have the FBI tell us why it killed Todashev or involved itself with Tsarnaev prior to the Marathor Terrorist Attack.
Beck is a demogogue using his platform to attack one side over the other when both sides are equally to blame for the state of affairs in America. He – and many like him – is pushing an agenda rather than looking to better the lives of all of us. I can’t say he is wrong in everything he says but he’s not a messenger I choose to follow or listen to.
Thank you for having the courage to put in print what many people are thinking. Why were the tires not shot out? usa today, yahoo.com.boston herald, honolulustar advertizer all but waved the flag over this shooting. I would hope anyone who looks back at the protest movements of the civil rights and vietnam war era would see that goverment is not always right. Nowadays if you question something like an unarmed woman being shot to death with her child in the car you could be branded unamerican.
Norwood:
Back in the days of the civil rights movement and Vietnam War era there was a skeptical media who tended to question the government. Today there seems to be little of that. No one should be killed by the police without having an independent review of that killing afterwards which is held in public. Across the board that is not being done and as you note the media has no trouble with it. You and I know that the true Americans are those who speak their minds and questions when warranted the actions of the government. The Founding Fathers didn’t give us the right to free speech and free assembly and hope we would not use them. Today too many people are silent – most because they’re all right in their own little worlds. But as you know, if you don’t watch your valuables someone will take them. I’m afraid the Americans are not looking out for their freedoms as well as they should.
The blue terrorists are in every state.
This is a very sad story of a US hero shot down in Las Vegas
http://www.erikbscott.com/
Scott disclosed how Eric, a West Point graduate with an MBA from Duke University, was shot and killed ‘High Noon’ style outside of a Las Vegas Costco after he got into an argument with a store employee. Eric had legally carried a concealed weapon into Costco (in violation of an un-posted store policy), undercover security notified the police about it and they arrived thinking a crazed person with a weapon was inside the building, he explained. The store was quietly evacuated and as Eric was exiting an anxious and visibly shaking officer issued a series of contradictory orders to him, Scott reported, noting that his son was holding a Blackberry at the time. They mistook Eric’s phone for a gun and fired several rounds into him, he said.
Scott revealed the epidemic of police brutality against civilians and how the system protects the bad guys in official positions. According to Scott, an American citizen is eight times more likely to be killed by a cop than an Al-Qaeda terrorist. In addition, a police officer is 130 times more likely to be involved in an act of misconduct than to be killed in the line of duty, he noted. Scott blamed the spread of police brutality to the emergence of a generation called the Thirteeners (born between 1961-1980), who were raised on video games which may have wired their brains to shoot first rather than using non-lethal methods to diffuse a situation. Scott estimated that around 2 to 4 percent of police officers in a typical precinct qualify as rogues or bad cops. The good officers in Las Vegas, where his son was killed, estimate the percentage of rogues there at 25 to 30 percent, he said. Scott suggested the system can pollute even the good ones as it “doesn’t matter what a cop does… he knows he’s going to get off.”
Henry:
Thanks for that information. It fits into the pattern we are seeing more and more over here with the cops carrying these guns they are anxious to use on someone. Sadly, after a cop killing there is no independent investigation of it. Even worse, there is no one you can trust to investigate it. The more I see of it the more I think the F in FBI has something to do with fraud. How are things in Tipperary?
I wouldn’t be surprised to find that this woman and the homeless man executed in 1994 had serious mental health issues.
Police everywhere need to step up and allow for that possibility more and more. Mental illness is all around us, and few suffering from it are getting proper treatment.
This issue hits close to home with my neighbor’s siblings and a local teen we know. If it doesn’t hit close to home for you, then it’s just a matter of time.
GOK:
I agree with you totally that the mentally ill have been seriously neglected. There are many in society who cannot properly care for themselves and have no place to go but the street. At one time the state could take care of them but because it did such a poor job, those facilities were closed. I’d like to see more services, more places they could be kept, and generally more responsible people attending to them.
That said, I don’t think Marian Carey was mentally ill. I am interested in finding out why she was in DC. She wasn’t there to crash into any barriers because she never did such a thing. There is not showing that her depression, if she was, had anything to do with what happened. We must learn what she was doing in DC. That will give us a great clue into her mental health. She has enough of a family in Brooklyn that if she is not too far separated from them we may be able to get that answer.
I’m worried that this will be passed of wrongly as a mentally ill woman trying to break into the White House who was killed by the police trying to protect the president. The cops went wild in this one; we should not overlook it because it’d be nice to see they were better disciplined.
” Her death demonstrates our rights as citizens are slowly dying. ” Mr. MATT, not to be nit-picky but, the ONLY word I strongly disagree with is your use of the word “slowly”. My sense is that our rights as citizens are disappearing at breakneck speed !
Gus:
I rightly stand corrected. Thank you for picking up on my error.
If the trunk of that car was fitted with a fertilizer bomb, both of our houses could fit in the crater.
That said, this was as you have described. Unorganized mayhem. Just shoot out the tires. You would think that 100 well armed officers could pull that off. If I still lived in Grove Hall I wouldn’t feel the effect of this incident as much as I do. Now that I live inside the Capital Beltway I can say that it is closer to home. And since several of my neighbors were among those cops standing there, in stance with guns drawn, it is right on my street.
About 12-14 years ago there was a homeless man standing in front of the White House holding, I believe, a fork. Maybe it was a steak knife. The police surrounded him and tried to talk him into giving up his space and his weapon. These cops were within a few yards of the guy. He refused to comply and they killed him. They could have just walked up to him and ripped his arm out of its socket. These guys do get a lot of hand-to-hand training. But instead they blew him away. I always wondered if anyone asked him what the problem was.
I found the article. It was a bit longer ago than I thought.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/22/us/homeless-man-shot-near-the-white-house-dies.html
Honest:
Thanks for the information. I guess it isn’t a recent happenstance where they shoot first and investigate later.
Honest:
If cops are always thinking a trunk is full of fertilizer explosive and that is the threshold of any inquiry, we’re in deeper trouble than I thought. If as appears to be the case the woman did nothing more than panic and flee the scene (I’m a little confused at what was going on where one witness says they cops were putting up barriers behind her to block her in) then taking her plate and getting her later should have been no problems. There seems to be excessive force from the beginning that seems to be attributed to untrained police probably coming out with a radio broadcast: “Officer down, shots fired.”
I’m still reading reports that two officers were wounded which implies being shot. The case pointed out the worst of today, cops panicking, media hyping, and people dying because of lack of training or discipline. That’s not even going into the diminishing of our rights such as being kicked out of one’s home for the night.
“If cops are always thinking a trunk is full of fertilizer explosive and that is the threshold of any inquiry, we’re in deeper trouble than I thought.”
I agree. It is what I have heard from some of the people around here. Some people think all situations should be handled as if that were the case.
10-20, even 50 years ago use to talk about future fear. The fear of what this country might turn into. We are now well into that society. I do not like the expression ‘founding fathers’ but if they were here today and did an audit, they would probably start a revolution. This place is turning into what they loathed and used all of their powers and lives to reform.
Honest:
One thing for sure no one in the early days of our country would recognize what we have become. I think their greatest surprise would be the way we increased the police presence in our lives. We fought to be free from Britain because we didn’t want the government intruding on our affairs and now we have a greater intrusion than ever. We started with the idea that it is best to avoid foreign entanglements and now we have our fingers in the pie of every nation. We had a a nation of brave people who set out on their own to settle the vast territories that were only lived on by the Native Americans. No one went West with the idea they were entitled to anything or deserved anything; no one traveled dependent upon police forces to protect them. As late as the time of Harry Truman, the president would walk the streets of Washington, DC without anyone guarding him. Things have slowly but inexorably moved in the direction of a police state to the point we have too many people wearing badges and carrying guns who are not qualified to do this. Pulling a trigger should be the last act of a cop, now it seems to be the first. It used to be used in extremis when no other choice was available, now it’s done for convenience. No one is bothered by this. Once the freedoms we have are given up are gone, the chances of getting them back are remote since the loss of them has become accepted. That’s why wars are so easy to enter into because they are almost commonplace. There’s so much to do at home with helping each others and fixing our infrastructure that is ignored and that is even aside from the diminished freedoms.
You are right when you say most people approve of handling the situation as if a trunk is full of dynamite. The next step after that is the assumption everyone’s trunk has dynamite so everyone with an automobile can have her home searched at the whim of the police. That’s where we are at in Miriam Carey’s case.
Here in Boston, we are quite accustomed to living in a police state. its like a warm, comfortable blanket thats actually smothering us, unbeknownst to the majority of citizens. City, state and Feds are our “benefactors.”
GOK:
When the Taxi Company that ran afoul of a Globe Spotlight series was invaded in mid afternoon by special agents from several acronymic agencies some of which I never heard off waving guns I knew we were in trouble. When IRS agents and courthouse police are armed, we are in a dangerous world.