In the Name of All That's Holy -- Don't Call The Police!

by William Grigg, LRC Blog
Nov. 07, 2010

Whenever police murder an innocent human being, the official stenographers in the government-aligned media resort to dissimulation of the kind one would expect from a North Korean propagandist. Thus the entirely unnecessary death of 61-year-old Pennsylvania resident Robert Neill, who was lethally electrocuted at about 4:00 a.m. November 6, is described as a result of his own “aggressive” behavior to the mob of armed strangers who repeatedly electrocuted him in his own home.

There is a sense in which Mr. Neill bears a measure of responsibility for his death: He made the mistake of calling the police to complain that he was being harassed by neighbors. The harassment he could have endured, but the “help” he received from the police proved fatal.

Dutifully reciting the version offered by Mr. Neill’s killers, Fox affiliate WPMT reports: “As the police tried to investigate the harassment claims Neil became very aggressive and combative. Neill continued to struggle with the officers after several attempts to calm him down and the officers used a taser on him which did calm him down.”

After officers from the Mount Joy Borough Police Department had tranquilized Neill through a mild dose of electro-shock torture, officers from two other agencies — the Susquehanna Regional Police Department and the Pennsylvania State Police — arrived on the scene to “assist” the assailants. Thus fortified in their confrontation with the “aggressive,” “combative” man, the heroes once again deployed the taser against Neill. This succeeded in “subduing” the frantic man, who was collected by EMTs and died en route to the hospital.

Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman informed the local press that the county medical examiner will perform an autopsy on Neill, which will inevitably find that something other than the repeated taser assaults — perhaps coronary artery disease, a drug overdose, or “excited delirium” – was the chief cause of the 61-year-old’s death. It’s not that the police killed him, you see: He just happened to die while being electrocuted by the scrum of armed tax-feeders who were, after all, only there to help.