… when it’s in the “wrong” hands, of course:
“The Salem Police Department is investigating the takeover of a coin shop where the owner was tased, then handcuffed as the suspects ransacked the business,” reports Portland, Oregon’s ABC affiliate KATU.
After using the state’s favorite instrument of electro-shock torture to disable Art Van Weerdhuizen, the proprietor of Capital Coin, the robbers covered up the store windows and plundered the shop at leisure, taking a half-hour to scoop up hundreds of pounds of rare coins and bullion. The police, as is usually the case, materialized just minutes after the criminals had fled.
At the end of the televised report, the anchordude comments that “We cannot even imagine how frightening [the tasing] must have been” for the victim. While that’s certainly true, it’s a sentiment almost never expressed by media figures when the victim is on the receiving end of a criminal electro-shock assault dealt out by the state’s armed enforcers.
4:04 pm on May 14, 2009
