{"id":140813,"date":"2014-10-15T13:58:12","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T13:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=140813"},"modified":"2014-10-15T14:01:33","modified_gmt":"2014-10-15T14:01:33","slug":"high-cost-living-police-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/high-cost-living-police-state\/","title":{"rendered":"The High Cost of Living in a Police State"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>John W. Whitehead<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIt\u2019s been over five months since the night a SWAT team broke into the house in which we were staying\u2026We were staying with relatives and my whole family was sleeping in one room. My husband and I, our three daughters and our baby (nicknamed \u201cBaby Bou Bou\u201d) in his crib. Dressed like soldiers, they broke down the door. The SWAT officers tossed a flashbang grenade into the room. It landed in Baby Bou Bou\u2019s crib, blowing a hole in his face and chest that took months to heal and covering his entire body with scars\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cDoctors tell us that my son will have to have double reconstructive surgeries twice a year, every year for the next 20 years\u2026 [I]n five short months our family has taken on nearly $900,000 in medical bills, some of which have now gone into collections\u2026 After initially offering to cover the medical expenses, the county has since refused to cover any of our medical costs, all of which would never have happened if the SWAT team hadn\u2019t broken into the home.\u201d\u2013Alecia Phonesavanh<\/p>\n<p>Who pays the price for the police shootings that leave unarmed citizens dead or injured, for the SWAT team raids that leave doors splintered, homes trashed, pets murdered, and family members traumatized and injured, if not dead?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not just talking about the price that must be paid in hard-earned dollars, whether by taxpayers or the victims, in attempting to restore what was vandalized and broken by police. It\u2019s also the things that can\u2019t be so easily calculated to a decimal point: the broken bones that will never quite heal right, the children\u2019s nightmares at night, the uneasy sleep, the broken family heirlooms, the loss of faith in a system that was supposed to serve and protect you, the grief for loved ones whose lives were cut short.<\/p>\n<p>Baby Bou Bou may have survived the misdirected SWAT team raid that left him with a hole in his face and extensive scars on his body, but he will be the one to pay the price for the rest of his life for the SWAT team\u2019s blunder in launching a flashbang grenade into his crib.<\/p>\n<p>And even though the SWAT team was wrong about the person they were after, even though they failed to find any drugs in the home they\u2019d raided, and even though they may have regretted the fact that Baby Bou Bou got hurt, it will still be the Phonesavanh family who will pay and pay and pay for the endless surgeries every year to reconstruct their son\u2019s face as he grows from toddler to boy to teenager to man. Already, they have racked up more than $900,000 in medical bills. Incredibly, government officials refused to cover the family\u2019s medical expenses.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rutherford.org\/publications_resources\/john_whiteheads_commentary\/shielded_from_justice_the_high_cost_of_living_in_a_police_state\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John W. Whitehead \u201cIt\u2019s been over five months since the night a SWAT team broke into the house in which we were staying\u2026We were staying with relatives and my whole family was sleeping in one room. My husband and I, our three daughters and our baby (nicknamed \u201cBaby Bou Bou\u201d) in his crib. Dressed like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":138270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1616],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-140813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}