The link keeps breaking, so here it is in it's entirety...
Allan Hall is the author BTW

"Social mood" may seem like a broad and diffuse concept, but its effects can enter your life -- sometimes even enter by force. This happened close to where I live, just this week. The story is disturbing on its face, but it's also a symptom of a trend we wrote about in the July issue of The Socionomist. It could easily happen to me… or to you.

Imagine that you've gone to a local convenience store and withdrawn money from an ATM. You walk back out, get in your car and begin backing up... when a black Cadillac SUV pulls next to you. A man jumps out and stands in front of your car. He's pointing a gun. He's yelling. You're frightened. You want to escape. So you keep backing up. Distracted by the gunman in front of you, you bump a second gunman who is behind you. You shift into forward and steer away from them. They run alongside and fire into the vehicle and shoot you. Moments later, as you lay dying, you ask the EMTs: “Do you know who shot me?” They reply, “The police.”

This nightmare became real. Unlike the blue-suited Officer Friendly of the 1950s, today’s drug cops could look like anyone and be driving anything.

Undercover drug enforcement officers shot and killed a 29-year-old pastor on Tuesday, September 1 in Toccoa, Georgia. I know people who knew and loved him and his pregnant wife. Here are excerpts from the September 3 Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Before he died Wednesday, with bullet wounds to his liver, pastor Jonathan Ayers asked paramedics who shot him….Ayers’ brother-in-law Matt Carpenter believes these words mean one thing -- that the Lavonia minister did not know he was being approached by law enforcement and that he inadvertently stepped into the middle of their drug investigation.
“I think it scared him,” when the black Cadillac Escalade pulled next to Ayers’ car and two men got out with guns drawn, said Carpenter.
Carpenter said that’s why he tried to speed away.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation is examining the fatal shooting. The two plain-clothes officers -- both members of a northeast Georgia tri-county drug task force -- are on administrative leave.
“I’ve rerun it in my mind,” Carpenter said. “He had used an ATM inside, got into his car and then a black Escalade pulled up and [they] jumped out ... If they ID’d themselves, he couldn’t hear them because his windows were up.”
GBI spokesman John Bankhead said witnesses heard the two men identify themselves as law enforcement officers.
The sheriff also told reporters the agents “yelled, ‘Police. Stop.’ ”
Stephens County Sheriff Randy Shirley said the shooting came after Ayers hit one of the agents with his car as he backed up. The second one shot Ayers because the 29-year-old minister had maneuvered his car toward him in a “threatening manner,” Shirley said.
Ayers was able to drive away from the Shell station but crashed into a utility pole a short distance away. It was there that Ayers, according to Carpenter, asked paramedics “Who shot me?”
Ayers died later, soon after surgery.
The sheriff said Ayers was not a target of the drug investigation.
The store owner, Joe Joseph, said he didn’t know the agents were law enforcement officers and it looked like they were firing at each other.
While the agents were shooting, a man was pumping gas just a few feet away and there were other people in the parking lot, Joseph said. Another five or six people were inside the store.
“I’m surprised nobody got hurt,” Joseph said.
The agents were assigned to a task force that investigates drug cases in Stephens, Habersham and Rabun Counties. Ayers caught their attention because he was with a woman who twice sold drugs to the officers, said Bankhead.
“What they saw was indicative of drug transaction,” Bankhead said. “They didn’t know the guy. They followed him to the convenience store and tried to arrest him.”
The woman’s name has not been released because she is still being questioned about the shooting. She is being held in the Stephens County Jail on drug charges.
Ayers family believes he was not involved in drugs and they don’t know his connection to the woman.
Carpenter said people often called the Shoal Creek Baptist Church for help.
“She was asking for cash and he brought her some cash to help her out,” Carpenter said. “Jonathan sought to do exactly what God wanted him to do.”
Before going into surgery, Carpenter said Ayers reassured his wife, 16-weeks pregnant with their first child, that he had done nothing wrong.
“He told Abby ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. I love you. Take care of yourself,’” Carpenter said. “I think he knew he was going to die. But I think he knows where he was going.”

The video of the shooting is online. You can judge for yourself whether police needlessly frightened an innocent citizen and then used lethal force against him for acting frightened. If they had not shot him, he probably would have gone to a safe place and reported the incident. Now he is dead, and the rest of us are more angry and fearful, and less respectful of law enforcement. People who learn about this story will hesitate to help a person like the woman mentioned above.
We are past the 48-hour news cycle, so this story may recede like many others in the growing trend of unnecessary police shootings and taser deaths. But fear and a sense of vulnerability grow. Even as we slowly adapt to the bear market and try to protect ourselves from it and the actions of our government, the threats to our safety become harder to identify.



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