“I fart in your general direction!”

OK, that’s a quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and not from Jose Cruz, the star of this particular story, but that’s pretty much what happened.

According to a local news article, Mr. Cruz was stopped by police in West Virginia for driving at night without headlights, and then subsequently arrested for driving while intoxicated. While being processed in the police station, Cruz became argumentative and passed gas directly onto one of the patrolmen, fanning the odorous mixture directly at him (if you read the actual complaint). That’s apparently when they added the battery charge.

Personally, I want to hear the other side of the story, because I think the police version stinks

But seriously…he’s very lucky he didn’t just get beaten to within an inch of his life.

This may be one of the most disgusting and egregious misuses of police force I’ve ever heard of.

According to this story in the Detroit News, police repeatedly beat Ernest Griglen, 59, so hard that he required emergency brain surgery and is still in a coma and on a ventilator more than three months later.

Even though his car had state-issued handicap plates, police admit to striking Griglen repeatedly in the upper chest after pulling him over, apparently after seeing his car weaving in the lane while Griglen was going into insulin shock and mistaking that for intoxication. And the reason they struck him in the chest? To get him to drop his hands, apparently. And their story as to why they took such harsh measures? Because they saw him fiddling with “a black object on his waistband” and they thought it was a weapon.

Unfortunately, it was his insulin pump, which it sounds like he was frantically trying to get to work before he passed out entirely.

But this story from the police doesn’t quite make sense. Who “strikes” (presumably with a police baton) anyone in the chest deliberately, especially an older person, unless they are attempting to cause severe injury, possibly even a heart attack? And if they had struck him in the chest as they say, how did he suffer brain damage? And is this standard police procedure, even for intoxicated subjects?

Perhaps it is in this case, because as it happens, Griglen is black.

As reported this morning on WNBC.com, a New Jersey woman was being evicted from her home after a foreclosure when her son, who is 60, threatened police with a pistol. He quickly surrendered when the SWAT team showed up, so they didn’t get to shoot him, but now his mother has no home and he won’t be around to take care of her, what with heading to prison and all.

We’re going to see a lot more of this kind of thing — all avoidable pathetic human drama — as more of this foreclosure mess starts trickling down to the foreseeable end.

To slightly rewrite a cautionary message from the Sixties: Greed Kills.

How badly does England suck?

So bad that I’ve started an entire new blog just to write about it!

You’ll be amazed…

OK, I’m as much in favor of reforming drug laws as the next 60’s guy, but really…

The last paragraph quoted (my italics) is what ticked me off.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Dozens of San Diego State University students were arrested after a sweeping drug investigation found that some fraternity members openly dealt drugs and one even sent a mass text message advertising cocaine, authorities said Tuesday.

Two kilograms of cocaine were seized, along with 350 Ecstasy pills, marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms, hash oil, methamphetamine, illicit prescription drugs, several guns and at least $60,000 in cash, authorities said.

Of the 96 people arrested, 75 were students. Eighteen of the students were arrested Tuesday when nine search warrants were executed at various locations including fraternities, said Jesse Rodriguez, San Diego County assistant district attorney.

The undercover probe, dubbed Operation Sudden Fall, was sparked by the cocaine overdose death of a student in May 2007, authorities said. As the investigation continued, another student, from Mesa College, died Feb. 26 of a cocaine overdose at an SDSU fraternity house, the DEA said.

Those arrested included a student who was about to receive a criminal justice degree and another who was to receive a master’s degree in homeland security.