This year Americans have been inundated with photos and videos of police brutality since Occupy Wall Street announced one of its purposes was to expose the increasingly militarized police force. Despite the failures of the movement in many ways it did succeed in its mission to show the abuse of authority that is seemingly rampant in American police forces. Now that people are more aware and demanding information about these unconstitutional actions the media is responding with more incidents from days past that make the infamous "pepper spray cop" look tame. In the above video a local Fox news station out of Tampa, Florida shows a horrendous event where one man is pepper sprayed to death. 62-year-old and native Ohioan Nick Christie's death was ruled a homicide yet to this day there has been no form of disciplinary action at the Florida police station that is clearly guilty of excessive force.Nick Christie died of heart failure after being stripped naked, gagged, tied up, and pepper sprayed over 10 times by officers, but he is not the only one to die at the hands of police officers using excessive force and coincidentally pepper spray. Earlier this year Jennifer Fox was accosted by police at an Occupy Seattle protest. Fox claims to have been kicked in the stomach, had a bike rammed into her stomach, and pepper sprayed by police as she tried to leave the protest area while yelling "I'm Pregnant! I'm Pregnant!" She later miscarried. There has been no further action due to apparent inconsistencies in her story. If her allegations are proven to be true then an innocent and young life was ended unnecessarily. The young and the elderly alike have been on the wrong side of a cop with pepper spray finger. 84-year-old Dorli Rainey was pepper sprayed while at a protest as were young students by the infamous "pepper spray cop" that inspired a slew of popular memes.
Years of police abuse have been recorded but they hardly make a blip on the international or national media outlets. Now more people are looking into past events and wondering how they let all of these slip by unprotested. What could these revelations mean to an American already on the edge of a cultural and political civil war? Certainly fear of authority figures does nothing to further trust and peace in a land rife with suspicion of the government and its representatives.
