Works for me.  So we'll hear no more from you about how vital they are to
the economy, right?

Lee

Wait a minute.  I'm still trying to figure out what "it depends on what you
mean by 'is' means."

So total doesn't mean total.  Got it.

These are examples of the guys that Greg thinks should be the only one with
guns.  It took less than a minute to come up with these and many more.  The
list is long, very long.  These are the people that Greg things should be
trusted to protect the life and property of the people of the United States,
equipped with deadly weapons denied to all other citizens.

Lee

London: A 'suspected suicide bomber' was shot dead at a London train station
police.  He was pursued, tripped, pushed to the ground and then shot five
times at point blank range, before it was discovered that he was not who he
was unarmed and was not who he was suspected of being.

----------------------------------------------------------

New Orleans: During her short life, Kim Marie Groves was one of just 485,000
other citizens of New Orleans, known only to her family and a few close
friends. In death, she became a martyr. The violent end she met came to
symbolize police brutality at its worst case scenario. She was a cause
celebré for police reform. Her murder was one of the major catalysts that
shook the New Orleans Police Department to its core and helped lead to a
much-needed shakedown that would weed out the bad apples from one of the
most corrupt law enforcement agencies in the nation.  "What happened on
October 13, 1994, should not have happened in the United States of America,"
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike McMahon began in his closing remarks to the
jury in Federal District Court for Eastern Louisiana. "We proved the
existence of a death squad, A police death squad in New Orleans, Louisiana,
in the United States of America." A decorated but thoroughly corrupt police
officer in an American city had ordered a "hit" on an ordinary citizen; one
who had reported him for police brutality only a day or two before she met
her tragic end. The man hired to do the killing was a notorious drug kingpin
with a long rap sheet that included other murder accusations. The third man
standing accused of the murder took charge of dispensing with the murder
weapon. Two other accomplices avoided murder charges in exchange for their
testimony.

----------------------------------------------------------

New Orleans: While the feds were detaining the suspects in the Groves murder
and building their case against them, another major police atrocity occurred
in the early morning hours of March 4, 1995. Accompanied by a younger male
accomplice, Patrolman Antoinette Frank, 23, with only two years on the
force, held up a Vietnamese restaurant in eastern New Orleans. When 25 year
old Patrolman Ronald Williams II, working an off-duty detail at the
restaurant, responded to the crisis, Frank shot him to death. Then she shot
two of the Vietnamese owner's family members as they knelt in prayer.

----------------------------------------------------------

New Orleans: For many years, the Fifth District had been known as a "dumping
ground" for some of NOPD's most troublesome officers. In 1985, an officer
named Lloyd Dickerson was arrested for a string of armed robberies he was
accused of pulling off while in uniform patrolling the district. He
confessed to freebasing cocaine and apparently needed the money to feed his
habit. In his confession, he implicated ten other officers, nine of whom
were also assigned to the Fifth. However, instead of trying to clean up the
problems within the department, the top brass merely shifted personnel
around. As quoted in the Times-Picayune, the director of the city's police
watchdog agency, the Metropolitan Crime Commission, accused them of
"sweeping the problems under the rug."

---------------------------------------------------------------

Sichuan Province: Xu Zhillian, female, 31, an outstanding teacher at the
Fuqin Elementary School of Chengdu City, Sichuan Province Ms. Xu Zhilian had
appealed to the government to stop the persecution of Falun Gong
practitioners. For doing so, she was arrested and fined. In February 2001,
she was arrested and handcuffed in front of her students in the classroom
while she was teaching. She was detained and tortured at the Fuqin Police
Station. Later, she managed to escape and went into hiding. On June 28,
2001, Ms. Xu returned home for a brief visit with her husband and child.
Around 11 p.m., six policemen broke into Ms. Xu's house. Ms. Xu jumped from
a window to escape and landed in her neighbor's yard. The police then broke
into the home of Ms. Xu's neighbor, and cornered Ms. Xu together with the
neighbor's dog. One policeman fired several shots at Ms. Xu, killing the dog
and wounding Ms. Xu. They then proceeded to beat her savagely with the butt
of the gun until Ms. Xu lapsed into a coma.  The four policemen then threw
Ms. Xu into their van and drove away. They stopped the van at an
intersection when Ms. Xu had regained consciousness. The policemen pulled
her out of the van and beat her again. Ms. Xu died at the scene.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

In Los Angeles today, federal prosecutors introduced this videotape. It is
evidence, they say, of cops stealing drug money. Seven sheriffs deputies are
now on trial in Los Angeles, charged with stealing $1.4 million in drug
money. More than 30 narcotics officers here have been implicated in the
largest current police corruption scandal in the country.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The case of the Miami River cops would quickly become one of the biggest and
most violent cases in the annals of police corruption. Fifteen officers were
initially arrested, convicted and sentenced to prison for up to 35 years.
The FBI entered the case. The investigation of corruption widened and
eventually 80 police officers would be arrested, convicted or disciplined.
At least 10 percent of the Miami police department was corrupt and one of
the original Miami River cops, Armando Garcia, is still at large today, one
of the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives.