I hate that I have to teach my children to be vigilant when it comes to the police. My overall message is that they should be respectful, but to never trust them.

Imagine a group of people surrounding someone who isn’t doing anything violent or disruptive. All this person wants is to be left alone and mind his own business. The gang surrounding him, instead of minding its own business, jumps on him, chokes him, and then proceeds to smother him against the concrete until he dies. If you haven’t already figured it out, this really did happen. To Eric Garner. On July 17th, 2014 he was choked to death while attempting to have a conversation with the police.

The police officers themselves allege that Eric Garner was selling individual cigarettes tax-free, a non-violent act between consenting adults. This right here is exactly why you can never trust a police officer; because even when doing his job, he may in fact be enforcing unjust laws. Police officers also use violence with government immunity. It should come as no surprise that the officer who murdered Eric Garner isn’t going to be charged. Look at the organization he works for. Statists regularly steal money, threaten violence to anyone who doesn’t comply with their demands, and memorialize leaders who bring about death and destruction to the human race.

Hesitant at first, I ultimately showed the Eric Garner video to my oldest child. The intent was not to scare him or make him dislike the police, but to let him see the state for what it can be. I didn’t tell him who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. I just let him watch the video and waited for a dialog to begin.

My son kept asking: “Why are the police doing that? Why are they doing that to that man? What did he do? I told him we don’t know if he did anything, but it appears that the man just wants to be left alone.

After the takedown of Mr. Garner, my son, an innocent child, asked the most common sense question anyone should have after watching this encounter: “Daddy, are the police going to get in trouble?” Without any input from myself, my 5-year-old son was able to recognize who the aggressor was and who was in the wrong.

Yet, apparently a grand jury and a prosecutor cannot.

I simply left it at, “We don’t know, but I think they should get in trouble.” As a follow-up question, I asked him how he felt about people who attacked others without being attacked first. He said: “Dad, we don’t hit people.”

A thinking mind left to think is typically non-violent, not biased, and doesn’t try and justify wrongdoing.

However, a statist conditioned brain is biased. Some are in favor of the police, some see blacks in a negative light, violence is seen as the norm, and the death of an innocent man can be justified because, well, the extra dose of violence on that day was an accident.

It’s incidents like these that re-energize me to teach my children to think for themselves and to not give a blank check to anyone, including myself. I have to wonder about the people sitting on the grand jury. How much police bias was embedded within them to let this group of thugs off?

– Daniel Ameduri aka The Dissident Dad

For more info see this author’s bio.