A gang of cops kicked down my door, booted me in my face and ribs, trashed my small, craft marijuana garden, ransacked my home, stole cash, threatened to rape my girlfriend, and threw me in the back of a police car for transport to jail.

I started a conversation with the burly cops in the front seats about why they were involved in the war on those of us who love cannabis.

Turns out they were more than happy to talk to me. They were looking at each other and laughing at me as an officer said, “You’re just another stupid stoner.”

“You hippie dopeheads are perfect prey,” the other guffawed, then turning dead serious to emphasize that he was a skilled firearm and bow hunter. “You don’t fight back. Most of y’all don’t even have guns. Busting you people makes this job real fun.”

The cops explained that police see themselves as “the gun and badge gang” founded on loyalty, self-preservation, viewing the populace as would a soldier in a war zone.

They are an “occupying army” that cleans up the messes of industrial society.

Let me note that we do need police and I am not “anti-police.”

I just want police to act ethically and intelligently, with years of professional training and monitoring, only the best people with proven integrity, no tolerance for citizen abuse, that’s what American policing should be.

They have those kinds of police officers in Finland, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands and many other countries.

But American police are not held to high standards…

The officer bragged to me that it’s it useless to fight back in court or elsewhere, because police are proudly more brutal than so-called street gangs.

After all, police officers have governmental authority to do pretty much whatever they want to you, protected by immunity from prosecution and lawsuits in all but the worst cases of misconduct.

Indeed, police agencies operate as mini-kingdoms with overlapping powers and jurisdictions, making citizens reflexively afraid of police encounters.

A police officer is the hunter who captures prey and brings it to a butcher for processing. The predator who grabs you from your house for the crime of growing plants, delivering you into the fear apparatus, where judges and prosecutors casually mention how people like you get raped or beaten in prison.

The officer gleefully continued his hunting analogy, noting police often travel in packs, looking for easiest prey, such as hippies, pot growers, young women alone, minorities, or people likely to roll, turn informant, plead out.

“Did you know in many places in American right now today you don’t need much more than a high school diploma or community college degree to become a police officer?” he asked, proudly.

Even though I got them to admit marijuana was nowhere near as harmful to individuals or society as alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and many other legal things, they hoped the drug war would never end.

It provided wonderful recreation for them: chasing prey, seizing cash, cars, houses, and other property, terrifying “lefties” and other “alternative culture” folks.

Let me tell you, they succeeded big time in terrifying me–even years later, I still have PTSD from the raid and its aftermath, which can be best described as a beat-snatch-and grab kidnapping followed by years trapped in the court system, blowing money on attorneys.

Being a marijuana “criminal” gave me a frightening glimpse, like The Lord of the Flies, of the horrors that powerful, dangerous people and organizations eagerly create for others.

One officer went so far as to admit that favorite targets were AIDS patients using marijuana as medicine, because “them fags deserve to die and if they die in jail, it’s faster.”

At least half the arrests they made each month were for marijuana. It looked great on their tally sheets and in the media.

It may seem crazy now, but there was a time when the majority of Americans was marijuana as a killer, a gateway drug, addictive, un-American.

The war on drugs was enthusiastically supported by most Americans. Drug cops were called heroes.

For decades, police arrested nearly a million Americans every year for marijuana “crimes.”

Due to marijuana legalization, that number has dropped to about 350,000 per year.

Personal marijuana growing is still illegal in most states, and even where it is legal, home growers are often rousted by police.

And when you watch the videos embedded in this article, you see police are still targeting marijuana growers, even when growers are totally legal, in Mendocino County, California, the heart of the famed Emerald Triangle.

So what does this have to do with the fact that Uvalde Police Department officers armed with military protective gear and weaponry exhibited extreme cowardice by standing outside an unlocked school classroom while little kids called their parents and 911, begging police to kill the murderous bastard who was shooting their teachers and friends.

While Uvalde police and officers from other police agencies stood around peeing down their legs in fear, parents of hostage children vehemently demanded officers to do their jobs.

Officers arrested parents who were demanding police give over their protective gear so the parents themselves could storm the school and rescue their kids.

At least one mother, Rose Gomez, escaped police detention, jumped a fence, entered the school, rescued her children unarmed, while “well-trained police officers” were scared to go in.

She’s become an activist (see video below) demanding police be held accountable for their many failures that sad day.

News reports say police have responded to her criticism by stalking and threatening her, and that Uvalde police officers and violent biker gangs who support the officers have been threatening journalists.

Of course there’s a big cover-up of Uvalde police actions that led to the deaths of so many innocent children, a cover-up likely involving the corrupt, arrogant, right-wing governor of Texas and many other highly-placed officials.

Americans who never experienced a brutal marijuana arrest like I did, who were personally unaware of how deranged many police officers are, were shocked and disgusted by what happened in Uvalde.

They’ve been led to believe that police are heroes, risking their lives for us.

Problem is, the Supreme Court of the United States, the same court making The Handmaid’s Tale into non-fiction by forcing women to give birth to babies created by rape and incest, has ruled that police have no obligation to risk their lives to protect citizens.

What a surprise! Who would have suspected that police officers aren’t obligated to protect us?

I’ve had the misfortune of living near police officers.

When you run a healthy cannabis garden putting out lovely cannabis scents, and a police officer moves into your neighborhood, you desperately waste a lot of money on deodorizing gel and carbon filters.

Then you stop growing any marijuana strain that puts out a lot of scent.

Then you move.

Before I moved, I talked to my police officer neighbor a few times.

He said most police officers are bummed out marijuana legalization is moving forward and soon may happen at the federal level.

“Pot busts were the most convenient bust, back in the day,” he explained. “You go all day doing nothing, sitting around, then catch a whiff, pull someone over, find a little bit, take ‘em to jail. It justifies your paycheck.”

The officer hoped hoping that “somehow, some way, legalization will be reversed,” just like the Supreme Court is reversing women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and other progressive legal change that’s happened in the past 50 years.

I told him I doubt that will happen, because many conservatives love marijuana, and marijuana is big business generating massive tax revenues for multiple states.

He looked at me funny,  and asked, “You aren’t a weedhead, are you? I’d hate to think I was living near one.”

That’s when I decided to move.

Yeah, sure, we “need” cops. Some do a good job and aren’t corrupt.

But it’s weird that although there’s been a multi-billion dollar 70-year war on weed in America, with millions of citizens arrested and hundreds of thousands imprisoned for marijuana, there’s never been a war on rape, incest, serial killers, school shooters, white collar gangsters, political violence, environmental crimes, etc.

Listen to “true crime” podcasts like True Crime All the Time, and hear over and over how police didn’t do their job properly or at all, allowing serial killers like Ted Bundy, BTK, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy to get away with their crimes for years.

What’s worse, some of these bloodthirsty monsters were cops, or friends with cops. The blood-crazed killer hung out with police at bars, strip clubs, gun shows, and donut shops, laughing and boozing, while cops sat there like dumb-asses.

Listening to true crime podcasts, it’s astounding and depressing how many times police stupidity allowed killers to keep on killing, or to be let off easy by the criminal justice system.

People who defend police ask: what would happen if you dialed 911 and nobody did anything to help?

Oh wait…that question has already been answered by the Uvalde school massacre, when desperate little kids dialed 911, pleading for rescue.

Uvalde cops, state police, and even federal law enforcement officers, who allegedly received high-tech training for school shootings and lots of money, military weapons, and gear to prevent or stop school massacres, stood outside and let them die.

But I guarantee you if somebody called 911 in Uvalde, Texas and to report a marijuana grow op, especially if they said it was run by “illegal immigrants,” those same cops would have kicked down the door in a heartbeat, no hesitation.

Some people have bumper stickers saying “Police Lives Matter.”

To those Texas police officers who were afraid of to the crazy young murderer armed with a weapon of war legally purchased, police lives mattered more than lives of little kids and valiant school teachers.

Watch the embedded videos, see for yourself.

Never trust police. Not with your kids. Not with your marijuana. Not with your life.