Your Government Sent an Armed Coward to Kill a Baby Donkey for Saying Hello

Around 12:45 a.m. on August 30, 2026, a Cedartown, Georgia police officer assisting Polk County police in a search for a missing 12-year-old entered the pasture at Elsberry Riding and Farm in Rockmart without the owner's permission or warning. There, the officer encountered HeeHaw, a one-year-old miniature donkey — the smallest of the farm's minis — who had been bottle-raised from birth by owner Hannah Israel and regularly worked petting zoos and birthday parties with children, as well as nursing home visits, as part of the farm's advertised business. According to Israel, officers said HeeHaw ran toward them braying — ordinary donkey behavior for an animal specifically socialized his entire life to approach strangers rather than flee them — and that they "feared for their safety." Officers attempted to Tase him, and when that failed, an officer shot and killed him in his own enclosed pasture. The missing child was found safe nearby minutes later. Cedartown Police Chief Jamie Newsome confirmed he has personally reviewed the bodycam footage but has declined to describe what it shows, citing the ongoing investigation, which the department handed to the Georgia Department of Agriculture's law enforcement division rather than investigate in-house. The officer remains on paid administrative leave. Israel has hired an attorney and is pursuing a civil lawsuit; a GoFundMe for legal fees, originally set at $30,000, has raised over $115,000 from more than 1,700 donors.

Commentary: A grown adult carrying a firearm stood in an open pasture facing a miniature donkey — an animal bred to be small enough for children to pet — fully capable of just stepping back, and instead chose to Tase and then shoot a baby that had spent its entire life being trained to greet people. That's not fear for your safety, that's cowardice with a badge, and the fact that his own chief won't describe the bodycam footage tells you everything about how it actually looks.

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/georgia-police-officer-placed-on-leave-shooting-donkey-12386186

GoFundMe Link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/-heehaws-tragic-death

AI disclosure: ⚠️ This content was researched and written with AI assistance and may be fully AI-generated. All facts are sourced from the linked article and corroborating sources.

Your Government Says It's Fine to Break a Man's Teeth With a Baton While He's Facedown and Unarmed

In November 2022, 62-year-old James Driscoll Smith led Elko, Nevada police on a six-minute vehicle chase before crashing his truck into police vehicles and a tree. Smith was pulled from the wreckage and ended up lying facedown on the ground in the dark. Officer Brian Olvera struck him four times in the head with a baton, breaking one of Smith's arms and several of his teeth. Smith says his hands were stretched out at his sides at the time; Olvera claims one of Smith's hands was near his waist. Smith sued for excessive force, but on July 15, 2026, a divided three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that Olvera is protected by qualified immunity, reasoning that no prior court case with nearly identical facts had "clearly established" that clubbing a facedown suspect in the head was unconstitutional. Judge Sidney Thomas dissented, writing that the court has repeatedly held police may only use head strikes when a suspect can reasonably be perceived as taking furtive or threatening action — and that whether Smith was doing so, or was simply incapacitated on the ground, is a factual dispute a jury should decide, not judges. Smith is now serving a prison sentence stemming from the chase itself; his attorneys have not said whether they'll seek a rehearing before the full appeals court.

Image by ChatGPT

Commentary: The legal standard here is apparently that police can break your teeth with a club while you're facedown on the ground, and you can't even get in front of a jury unless you can produce a court ruling from the past declaring that exact scenario illegal — heads, batons, and all.

Source: https://www.officer.com/command-hq/news/55391365/9th-circuit-grants-qualified-immunity-to-nevada-officer-in-excessive-force-lawsuit

AI disclosure: ⚠️ This content was researched and written with AI assistance and may be fully AI-generated. All facts are sourced from the linked article and corroborating sources.

Your Government Killed an Innocent Man at the Wrong House and a Judge Called It Reasonable

 On a Wednesday night in April 2023, Robert Dotson — a 52-year-old father of two — heard knocking at his front door in Farmington, New Mexico just before midnight. He put on a robe, walked downstairs, picked up his legally owned handgun, and answered the door on his own property. Three police officers were standing outside, shining a flashlight in his face. They shot and killed him. The officers had been dispatched to a domestic violence call at 5308 Valley View Avenue. They went to 5305 — the house directly across the street. One officer had used his patrol car's GPS and placed the address on the wrong side of the street. A second officer had searched Google Maps, which correctly showed the house on the opposite side — and that officer verbally questioned whether they were at the right address before the knock anyway. They proceeded. When Dotson appeared at his door holding a firearm, blinded by flashlights, with no reason to believe the people outside were police, he raised the gun. The officers opened fire. He did not shoot. His wife then emerged, fired at the unknown figures outside, and only stopped when she realized they were officers. She was not told her husband was dead for eight hours. The officers did not immediately disclose to investigators that they had been at the wrong address — that detail was discovered by other officers who arrived on scene. No criminal charges were filed against the officers. When Dotson's family sued for civil rights violations, a federal judge dismissed the case in May 2025, ruling that the officers had acted reasonably given the circumstances — circumstances entirely of their own creation.

Tony Webster / tony@tonywebster.com

Commentary: A man answered his own front door with a legal firearm, got killed by police who had been told they were at the wrong address and went anyway, and a federal judge decided that's just how the Constitution works. The legal term for this is "qualified immunity." The plain English term is getting away with it.

📰 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-finds-police-acted-reasonably-shooting-new-mexico-man-wrong-addr-rcna208157

⚠️ This content was researched and written with AI assistance and may be fully AI-generated. All facts are sourced from the linked NBC News article and corroborating reporting from ABC News, CBS News, and Reason.

Your Government Will Beat You

It's sad that this post is so boring and common as to require nothing but the link:

http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/22/doj-charges-in-cops-civil-rights