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Last Oct. 20, cops at an elementary school used a stun gun to subdue a six-year-old boy who was using a shard of glass to cut himself and hold a security officer at bay. A month later they used TASERs to shock a first-year high-schooler. On Nov. 20, police in Lincoln Park, Mich., TASERed a 14-year-old boy who wouldn't stop playing his Nintendo Game Boy during class. On Dec. 29, 2004, Christopher Hernan dez, 19, was killed after being TASERed and doused with a substance similar to pepper spray by the Collier County, Fla., sheriff's deputies. According to the Associated Press, Hernandez was the third person to die in Florida that month after being zapped with a TASER gun. The national press virtually ignored these cases of police brutality and the outrage of the communities victimized. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration's propaganda has whipped up not only a phony patriotism but a hero worship of law enforcement. Along with the media whiteout on police brutality cases, the post 9/11 political climate has also served to desensitize the general public to the rampant police brutality and racial profiling of communities of color. In the name of national security, the war against the people of Iraq has been used to justify racial profiling of Arab, Muslim and South Asian communities in the U.S. In the late 1990s, when national movements against police brutality were more visible, terms like "racial profiling" and "police brutality" were part of mass consciousness. In this current period of war and political repression, it is more hotly debated what constitutes actual brutality at hands of the cops. [more]