"Last September, [Jonathan] Ayers, a 28-year-old Baptist pastor from Lavonia, Georgia, was gunned down by a North Georgia narcotics task force in the parking lot of a gas station. Ayers had not been a suspect in any drug investigation. And even today, police acknowledge he was not using or trafficking in illicit drugs. Instead, Ayers had either been ministering to or having an affair with (depending on whom you believe) Johanna Kayla Jones Barrett, the actual target of the investigation."-- Radley Balko, with a story he (and Glenn "I don't have to be right" Reynolds) blame on the drug war - and absolutely, positively, nothing else - defying all Reason.
I should add that, growing up in South Central, Los Angeles, an area notorious for preachers who sleep with their flock - and that was only cleared of drugs by a harsh police intervention - I don't think Balko or Reynolds knows dick about the subject.
But then, as I said, Reynolds is so smart he doesn't have to be right.
It seems that Libertarians think that a Pastor is free to mislead his flock.
ReplyDeleteGood catch.
Crack...With all due respect, just what is your point in accusing this executed citizen of being a Baptist Pastor? What did his showing charity to a friend have to do with these undercover narcs later claiming a justification for murdering him? The only religious acting out in this story was a police hit squad acting like the Catholic inquisitors of the 1550s to 1650s empowered to rid the earth of Protestants by murdering the translators, publishers and possessors of Bibles to better protect the Pope's power. Police in narcotics all believe that like those inquisitors they can attack and screw over any drug user or dealer at will, and that the Law Enforcement community will excuse and cover it over for them because "Drugs" is all they need to say. Their slander job now being done to a good man who was unfortunately picked as their target here, and that the "Drugs" accusation does not stick to is just doubling down on the evil they did to him. I would not easily join into their post mortem slandering of his name. They have already stolen his life at age 28, and stolen his wife and his kids chance at a normal life too. (You might look up the experiences of French Huguenots, which were ancestors of many Charleston families).
ReplyDeleteTg,
ReplyDeleteThis comedy of errors - on everyone's part - is no more about The War On Drugs than Althouse's recent Alinsky post is "bizarrely racial". In both cases, I'm criticizing the agendas being advanced through spin. (Though I still read her, because she's an aggregator, I'm done with Althouse's clueless racial obsession. I also don't hang with people, offline, who are always harping on it. Joke about it? Sure. Point out it's absurdity? Fine. But a yuppie white woman constantly sticking it in where it has no role? Well - "as a black man" - I don't need that shit.)
Race is but one way that Althouse and Reynolds are major disappointments, but that's another post.
Big love, man. And, if you think I didn't answer you fully (with my take on the real-world dynamics of this topic, regarding the mixture of religion, the cops, TWOD, etc.) write back and I will.