With police harassing 7 year olds for not licensing their lemonade stand. To unconstitutional seatbelt and drunk driving checkpoints to everything covered here at Cop Block, it’s hard to say this isn’t a police state.
August 6, 2010 posted by Michael Leon
"Gratuitous brutality by police invariably ends with an arrest, often based on bogus charges. Even when they are videoed committing their crimes, few police officers are fired, or even disciplined, as we lead the world by far in jailing our citizens"
By Name withheld
“I’LL BEAT THE SH-T OUTTA ANY TWO SWABBIES IN THIS JOINT,” screamed my Gator teammate and ex-paratrooper, Tony, to about 300 sailors in the all-night restaurant called Salty’s.
Tony was a well-muscled offensive guard, who was always offensive and always guarded his ego with his life.
“You stupid sh-t,” I muttered to Tony. “The Shore Patrol and cops will be here in less than 60 seconds. I’ve had it with your cheap ass.”
And as I busted out of Salty’s, leaving a drunken Tony behind, two US Navy Shore Patrolmen brushed past me on their way inside.
“That stupid sh-t” I thought, over and over, while I tried to clear my head in Salty’s parking lot.
I had not parked my old 1957 Ford Fairlane at Salty’s; that much I knew. But where? Where had I parked my car?
Salty’s was a huge Denny’s-type restaurant that was across the street from Smitty’s, the most infamous night spot in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, which was notorious for accepting any kind of ID.
On Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, Smitty’s drew a houseful of sailors – in their white uniforms – who always outnumbered the ladies in residence by at least 10 to 1. Another reason Tony hated sailors.
And once Smitty’s had closed, at 2:00 AM, on this particular Monday morning, it seemed that almost all the sailors had trooped across the street to have breakfast at Salty’s.
Got the picture? Well even if you do, you don’t yet know half of this incredible story.
Standing in Salty’s parking lot, I was getting drunker by the minute. Having little or no money, we used to throw down the various drinks left by the ladies who were away from their tables dancing with the swabbies, especially near closing time.
And illogically, my worries about the whereabouts of my old Fairlane soon gave way to the crazy thought that I had to go back into Salty’s and help Tony. But as soon as I turned back to Salty’s front door, I heard someone yell, “I GOT THE OTHER ONE.”
I turned just in time to see the fiercest face I had seen since our fraternity housemother, Mother Shiver, was last screaming at me.
Bearing down on me was the largest German shepherd I had ever seen. I swear that dog looked like a pony. And behind that horse-of-a-dog was a cop, running flat out toward me.
Obviously, the sneaky restaurant hostess in Salty’s had identified me as the semi-good-looking blond guy in white shorts, wearing a dark blue Izod shirt (the one with the little alligator), complete with Bass Weejun loafers, with no socks.
Then out of the Twilight Zone appeared a police squad car with Tony slumped in the back seat, behind a wire screen separating the front of the car from the rear.
Without a word of introduction, the cop on foot rudely shoved me into the squad car next to Tony, who appeared to have passed out.
The cop driving gunned the engine, while the cop riding shotgun got on his radio.
I started talking.
“Officers, we’re just a couple of football players from the University of Florida. If you’ll let us go, I’ll drive straight outta town and back to Gainesville. I’m sober as a judge and we’ve got to be at practice this afternoon …”
On and on I went. I needed all the chutzpah I could muster.
I never stopped talking about football, hoping the cops were Gator rather than FSU Seminole fans.
The car slowed and I kept talking. Then, the driver looked toward his partner, who shrugged; I kept talking.
“You guys gonna beat Georgia?” asked the driver.
“Yes sir. Absolutely. And iffing you all let us go, you both will have played a great part in that victory.”
Slower went the cop car, until it finally veered toward the side of the road. They were gonna let us go, something unheard of today. Instead of shooting us each with 50,000 volts (11 times) from a Taser, they were going to let us go.
“AAHHHA!” screamed the driver. He was having a heart attack. Damn, damn, damn the luck.
BUT NO, THE DRIVER WAS BEING CHOKED BY TONY, who had bolted awake and shot his hands underneath the wire screen, and around the neck of the cop driving.
I karate-chopped Tony’s hands free of the cop’s neck, yelling, “YOU STUPID SH-T!”
The driver rubbed his neck while catching his breath. Then he stomped the pedal to the metal, while the other cop started yelling on his radio.
Somebody turned on the siren, and probably the red overhead bubble light, as we sped to the police station; all I could do was to mutter, “You stupid sh-t,” over and over. Then the realization hit me: Tony was not a stupid sh-t; Tony was certifiably insane.
“Screeech” screamed the squad car as it came to an abrupt halt behind the police station.
Immediately the two cops, both bigger than Tony, jumped out and opened his door. They pulled Tony to his feet and then hustled him toward the open door at the rear of the station.
Once inside the door, it looked like five or six cops began throwing punches at Tony. Then someone kicked the door shut.
“That’s bull-sh-t,” I thought, suddenly determined to get inside and help Tony.
First, I tried to open the door next to me, but it was locked. So I twisted the door handle until it came off in my hand.
Not to be deterred, I positioned my feet on the backrest of the front seat and pushed until I popped it forward. I then crawled underneath the wire screen toward the right front door, which was unlocked.
Continuing my crawl out the door, I suddenly met resistance in the form of a couple of flat-footed coppers, who immediately began raining blows to my head and upper body. The more I was hit, the more my bravado proved to be no more than a false show of defiance. I regret to say I put up no fight at all.
The next thing I knew, Tony and I were standing– battered and bruised–before the booking officer, a Sergeant Poole.
After Sergeant Poole’s spiel, Tony and I were given the bum’s rush into separate cells. My cell was bare with no bed, simply a toilet. Unfortunately, the concrete floor seemed to be covered with about an inch or two of water, which I hoped was not from the toilet.
My head and upper body felt a little sore, but otherwise I felt fine. The cops could have really hurt me, but I don’t believe they even hit me in the face. In today’s world, Tony and I would have likely been Tasered, or shot to death, for trying to choke a cop.
As I stood in my cell, I considered myself lucky. As I now write these words, I thank God, I sowed my young and wild oats before my beloved country began turning into a police state. But still, back then, I wanted to complain.
“Oh law enforcement officer Poole, are you aware that THERE’S A FOOT OF WATER IN MY CELL?” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
For some reason, I thought my question to Sergeant Poole was so hilarious I could hardly stop laughing. But as soon as I could stop laughing, I’d yell out the question again and again, laughing the whole time.
The cops never said a word to me, but the other prisoners in the block began yelling with threats of death, unless I shut up. This really threw me into fits of laughter, followed by more yells to Sergeant Poole.
In time, I curled up on my concrete bed of dirty water and fell fast asleep.
It was a dreamless and short sleep I spent at taxpayer’s expense at the Jacksonville Beach jail, as I was all too quickly awakened by a jocular cop. In fact, all of the cops at the station that morning seemed to be jolly fellows.
“You guys smell like a couple of sewer rats,” joked one cop. “I’m sure you’ll both make quite an impression in the courtroom this morning.”
It was on a front bench, in the courtroom, that Tony and I soon found ourselves, without breakfast or any chance to clean up, I may add.
We must have looked like convicts: Tony, with his 2” forehead, buzz-cut, and tattoos covering one of his arms, (that looked for all the world like he must have inflicted them on himself), sat stoically and sullenly; while I sat nervously and looked around the courtroom, my hair uncombed and face badly in need of a shave.
I had never been in a courtroom and was surprised by how many people were in attendance. Were most of the people officials or merely retirees seeking foreboding entertainment, laden with evil portent?
At any rate, I was impressed with the majesty of the room and the seriousness that filled the air. Then HE appeared, the man above other men, who would decide the fate of a couple of second-rate college football players … The Judge.
The judge had a solemn demeanor. He walked with a proud bearing that seemed to say he’d countenance no foolishness.
I had never felt threatened by the judges in black robes I’d seen in TV courtroom dramas, but this was my life, and this judge was not an actor in a pretended story. This was a real life drama; and, I would have preferred to see the judge robed in white.
After all, Tony and I could possibly be charged with the attempted murder of a police officer by strangulation, and I had destroyed government property. Would they also charge me with resisting arrest?
Questions flooded my mind, and the upcoming answers would determine my future. But first, someone had some official business to tell the judge. What were they talking about anyway? Then the charges against me and Tony were read.
The charges were brief, accurate, and damning. I don’t think, however, there was any mention of the police car I damaged. In today’s world, similar offenses would take three minutes to read and would include violations, crimes, infractions, and breaches I had never before heard.
Today, it’s a felony – with a long prison sentence – to assault a police officer. To even defend one’s self against a psycho-cop is to risk a long stay in a federal prison.
During the reading, I watched the judge. His eyes were closed and his hands formed a steeple he placed against his lips.
After the reading, a hush had overtaken the courtroom, and I held my breath.
Slowly, the judge’s eyes opened, and they looked deep and straight into mine.
“Young man,” the judge said to me, “if you were in my shoes and I were in yours … what judgment would you render?”
“Sir, I’d render a decision of extreme leniency.”
The courtroom broke into laughter, and I froze. Had I just made the biggest mistake of my young life? Had I just made a laughing stock of the judge?
But, my judge was a big man, far bigger than most judges today. My judge smiled and asked another question.
“Do you boys belong to a fraternity?”
“Yes Sir,” I answered. “We’re ATOs.”
“ATOs? Who’s your housemother?”
Oh my God … our housemother was Mother Shiver, who disliked me and absolutely detested Tony. Did the judge plan on getting character references from Mother Shiver? If so, Tony and I were in big trouble.
“Mother Shiver,“ I timidly answered.
“Who?” asked the judge.
“Mother Shiver,” I said a bit louder.
“Ah,” said the judge with a dreamy tone to his voice. “Your Mother Shiver and I go back a long way, young man, a long way.”
Then the judge fell silent, with the courtroom following suit. I held my breath, wondering what it all meant.
“I want you boys to bring your Student I.D. cards to the Court Clerk, some time this week, proving you’re both students. Case Dismissed!”
A murmur rippled through the courtroom, while I smiled, in awe of a big man, perhaps the biggest I had ever encountered. It’s the big, brave men who are big and brave enough to show compassion.
The halcyon days of relative freedom and tranquility of the fabulous ‘50s and early 1960s were abruptly ended with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, on the 22nd of November, 1963, by intelligence agents.
Then, the coup de grace was leveled on the American people with the mislabeled “Patriot Acts,” after the 9/11 false flag. Ever since then, a police state has been engulfing the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”
The military tactics, weapons, and mind-set of US combat troops now occupies the streets of our homeland, with the militarization of our local police departments; and, the American people are their enemy.
Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has told us much about our forming police state, in his great monograph entitled, “America’s Police Brutality Pandemic.”
The endless US “war on terrorism” quickly turned into widespread campaigns of bombing and torturing innocents in the Middle East, which torn families apart, rendered millions homeless, all amid universal ruin and disease, while overrunning America with terrorists, wearing police uniforms, sporting their tin badges and carrying automatic weapons.
Dr. Roberts wrote, “Ironically, Bush’s ‘war on terror’ has made Americans less safe at home by diminishing US civil liberty and turning an epidemic of US police brutality into a pandemic. Today, Americans are not safe anywhere from police.”
Gratuitous brutality by police invariably ends with an arrest, often based on bogus charges. Even when they are videoed committing their crimes, few police officers are fired, or even disciplined.
Dr. Roberts wrote, “Cops cover up their own crimes by arresting their victims on false charges that are invented to justify the unprovoked police violence against citizens.”
From our local city fathers to the US Congress to the White House, no one has stepped forward to stop, or even slow, the increasing savagery of police officers across the country.
Even more disturbing is the fact that many Americans still justify police cruelty, no matter how unjustified: a phenomenon that’s likely to continue until such poor, uninformed, and rationalizing souls are themselves so senselessly beaten by mindless cops, that they at last understand that what happens to others could happen to them.
Bullies and those with various inferiority complexes have long been attracted to police, or other kinds of governmental work. Today, however, it seems that cruelty – as a personality trait – is a requirement for police work.
Exacerbating the growing specter of police inhumanity has been the militarization of practically every one of the 17,000 police organizations in the country; it’s a very troubling development that has gotten worse yearly, since the assassination of President Kennedy.
To have civilian police departments now using heavy military equipment, automatic weapons, and the tactics, training, and even uniforms of the military, means but one thing: our governmental establishments are setting themselves against us – the people.
SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams were virtually unknown in the ‘50s and early ‘60s; but today, SWAT teams have become so prevalent, they’re even used in routine warrant service in drug cases, and other nonviolent crimes, in spite of the fact that para-military actions often trigger violence instead of defusing it.
University of Eastern Kentucky criminologist Peter Kraska estimates there’s a frightening 1,500 percent increase in the use of SWAT teams in America, from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. The use of SWAT teams have reached such proportions today, that the America of 2000 has become all but unrecognizable.
The corporate media reports few of the over 800 times a week SWAT teams break into American homes, trash them, shoot any dogs and cats they see, and under the asset forfeiture and seizure laws steal what they want under the pretense of gathering evidence.
Less than one-half of these home invasions result in felony charges. In fact, many of these SWAT assaults are at wrong addresses, with no redress for stolen property, killed pets or even the human lives these SWAT raids cause.
To “serve and protect” no longer seems to be the role of our peace officers; indeed, today such officers are even labeled as “law enforcers,” an enforcement that will be needed to force unpopular laws on the public, laws that do not have the consent of the governed. Police units in America have become an occupying military force.
Before the militarization of local police departments came the federalization of them, with congressional appropriations, which have not only undermined our Constitution, but have, in effect, nationalized our local police, since federal money always comes with strings attached.
Under our 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, it became illegal to militarize our civilian police, much less to all but nationalize them. Our Constitution, and its attendant laws, however, have never curbed the agenda of the International Monetary/Banking Cartel, nor the quick implementation of the plan by our American Congress to nationalize and militarize all of our local police departments.
In 1981, Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act, which allowed the US Department of Defense to begin supplying city police departments with heavy military equipment and training, as if the American people were the enemy.
And as if that was not damaging enough, Congress again turned against the American people by passing the 1994 Ominibus Crime Act. Consequently, the federal government took over the complete direction, financing, training, and militarization of our once-independent, local police departments, all under the control of “our” intelligence agencies.4
In a September 7, 1999, San Francisco Examiner article entitled, “Paramilitary Cops Serve Themselves Not Us,” writer Harley Sorensen told us that the Pentagon [under the direction of intelligence agents] routinely sends armored personnel carriers, grenade launchers, and M-16 rifles to city police stations.
Then, President Obama joined the betrayal of the American people with his highly touted and so-called Stimulus Bill (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act-ARRA) that allocated $4 billion to buy yet larger gun arsenals of assault rifles and shotguns, and to hire more police, sharpshooters and bomb squads. The American people paid for ARRA, but little of that money will be used to defend them.
Leo Tolstoi wrote, “Governments need armies to protect them against their enslaved and oppressed subjects.”
And pain compliance has become the preferred method of their army/police constabulary, that has been heavily indoctrinated by our intelligence services to believe the general public to be their enemies.
Savage police brutality is not new. Even a score or so years ago Human Rights Watch published a report entitled, “Shield from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States.”
The report stated: “Police abuse remains one of the most serious and divisive human rights violations in the United States. The excessive use of force by police officers, including unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persists because overwhelming barriers to accountability make it possible for officers who commit human rights violations to escape due punishment and often repeat their offenses. Police or public officials greet each new report of brutality with denials or explain the act was an aberration, while the administration and criminal systems that should deter these abuses by holding officers accountable instead virtually guarantee them impunity.”
The extent of rampant and savage police behavior has, to date, been largely hidden by the Cartel’s corporate media, but no more. Now that the Cartel’s intelligence services has its Praetorian Guard (bodyguards used by Roman emperors) in place, we’ll be hearing more and more about what criminal many cops have become. After all, a harsh and tyrannical government is subject to creating great dissension in the general public, and there must be criminal police forces to control them.
The Monetary/Banking Cartel cannot steal trillions of dollars from the American people, and then take it for themselves, leaving us impoverished, without creating hard feelings in the public sector. But, widespread knowledge about how brutal cops have become will convince most people to keep their hard feelings to themselves.
And those who get too vocal about their feelings will be deemed terrorists and dealt with by militarized cops anxious to brutalize, if not kill, anyone, as long as they think they can get away with it. And they have been getting away with it, as has been assured them by intelligence agents, who have been inserted into local police departments.
These agents have directed our police along the “police versus the people” lines with secret training videos, manuals, and directives – all part of the federal funding unknowing Americans pay for, resulting in the obvious alienation of their local police, who should be serving and protecting them.
So brainwashed have become many of our police personnel that they actually believe there are many large, heavily armed militia groups throughout the US, even in the super-surveillance state that America has become.
Someone, please ask these diluted deluded cops how could a group of hotheads secretly meet and train with rifles, automatic weapons, or much less train with bombs, hand grenades, tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, and the like and get away with it. Would not such training make a bit of noise that somebody would report?
Please understand, when you hear of the FBI busting up a “militia” group, it was probably a low-keyed outfit run by federal black-ops intelligence units, put together to make the police and public believe such militias actually exist.
Another important issue that has been largely kept out of the media, has been the pressure brought to bear on local police departments by the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to abandon “cognitive” entrance exams for police applicants. Cities that do not drop cognitive exams are often sued by the US Justice Department, under the pretense of “racial diversity.”
Cognitive entrance exams were once based on intelligence and reasoning abilities, which tested one’s reading and writing skills. Today, many police applicants only have to score about as well as the bottom one percent of what police applicants had to score 20 years ago to pass.
Now you’ll know why that policeman who gave you a ticket seemed as dense as a box of rocks.
Once the Monetary Cartel had enough stupid cops, they needed something to keep them agitated; and, pickling them in testosterone, caused by anabolic steroids, would do the trick. After all, don’t their cops need to be bigger, badder, and brawnier than the “bad” guys who object to federal government criminality?
So by adding the bête noire (black beast) of steroids to the mix, producing legions of cops in fits of ‘roid rage, the Establishment got what they needed to control an outraged American public.
Dr. Harrison Pope, Harvard’s steroid specialist and author of “The Adonis Complex” has said, “An intense ‘roid rush can impair your judgment and inspire all manner of reckless behavior. You could have someone who’s not particularly aggressive, who has no history of psychiatric disorders, and he goes on steroids and has a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality change. And, of course a police officer in that situation would be quite dangerous.”
How many cops are on the juice?
“I’ve heard of many, many accounts of officers taking steroids,” said Dr. Pope. “But, it’s impossible to put a number on it. Even if I got a federal grant to study this, I wouldn’t be able to get that number, because of the veil of secrecy.”
Dr. Larry Gaines, chairman of the criminal justice department at California State University said, “We don’t have a sense of the scope of the problem [cops on ‘roids]. And it is a problem, because of the potential for violence.”
Also, there’s strong correlation between police officers on steroids and those cops who deal in other drugs on the street. What starts out with the illegal gateway drug of steroids can easily move on to dealing in pot, coke, Ecstasy and other drugs.
These juicers in blue are an open secret within the secretive subculture of the intelligence world – the operatives who are making many steroids available to many cops. Otherwise, the growing problem of cops on ‘roids is being kept quiet.
Few police departments test officers for steroid use, and of course our national leaders are too busy investigating steroid use among baseball players to mandate steroid tests for all – or any – of our 17,000 law enforcement departments and organizations.
Little George Bush II announced in a State of the Union address in January of 2004 that the use of steroids in sports is dangerous, “So tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches, and players to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now.”
Bush’s ridiculous distraction from our real problems was followed by thunderous applause from senators and congresspersons, none of whom dared to mention that intelligence operatives play a significant role in ensuring many police officers use ‘roids and rage against us, the American people.
Little Bush was a international embarrassment, but our US Congress is an utter disgrace to America, with bogus, titular leaders like Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman leading us on the path to oblivion, with their pretended concern over performance-enhancing drugs in sports.
Jay Leno said, “Congress is investigating steroid use in baseball. Apparently we’ve cured cancer and all other problems of the world so now we’re starting on this one.”
Give a cop on steroids a stun gun or Taser and you have a potentially dangerous combination.
Today, a totally innocent American can be Tasered with 50,000 to 150,000 volts of electricity by simply verbally disagreeing with a police officer.
Tasers, known as “electronic immobilization devices,” deliver a long-lasting electrical shock up to 450 times stronger than the current of a household’s electrical socket. It’s been reported that being hit with a Taser is much like being hit full force on the head with a baseball bat.
Tasers disrupt one’s central nervous system, causing severe, involuntary muscle contractions that immobilize and can stop one’s heart unto death. Already there have been about 400 people killed by Tasers.
Killing unarmed civilians has become, with some cops, a macho thing to do, especially with some congenitally disadvantaged policemen, who seem to have special immunity to murder.
The Internet used to be loaded with videos of cops Tasering old ladies, children, and people who offered no resistance to arrest. Police across the country are now, however, prohibiting video taping of their thuggery, while they video us with impunity.
It seems evident that some people want us to fear government. The great Thomas Jefferson wrote, “When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny.”
But still, there are those who fear our government and police, but insist they live in a protected democracy. And in the immortal words of Pogo, “We’ve met the enemy and he is us.”
Federal and state governments carefully avoid keeping accurate statistics on police brutality or even officer involved sexual misconduct; but fortunately, the brave National Police Misconduct Statistics and Report Project (NPMSRP) does its best to keep abreast of the constant and burgeoning outbreaks of gross police misconduct.
There is, however, an indeterminate amount of under-reporting that exists within NPMSRP’s statistics, since the Cartel’s corporate media does not report on every complaint of police misconduct, nor on every lawsuit filed. Moreover, it can be assumed that many victims of police brutality have chosen to remain silent.
Still the statistics reported by NPMSRP should prove to anyone America has, indeed, become a police state; and, only with more Americans becoming aware of our precarious situation do we have a chance of reversing what we have allowed to happen.
It would be foolish to expect any facet of our federal government to alert us to the extent of police brutality. The one and only such report that I’m aware of is about a decade old, and was based on the data voluntarily given by only five percent of US police departments.
During the first three-months of 2010, alone, NPMSRP cites 1,160 unique reports of police brutality or other misconducts, which includes 1,410 separate police officers, and 1,446 victims, with 52 civilian deaths.
During the same three month period, 77 police chiefs and sheriffs were named in misconduct reports.
From the thousands of police brutality and misconduct reports from 2009, listed below are some of those crimes.
Until we get a president and congress that will do their jobs and take back control of “our” intelligence services from the foreign and private International Monetary/ Banking Cartel, the US government will continue to force on us a police state as tyrannical as was those of communistic Russia or Nazi Germany.
- Choking children,
- Child molestation,
- Shooting chained-up dogs and scared cats,
- Beating people in wheelchairs,
- Tasering children and old people,
- Sexual assaults on women,
- Breaking into private homes and stealing,
- Fleeing hit and run accidents,
- Getting DUIs.
- Destroying private home with tear gas shells,
- Perjury and tampering with evidence,
- Causing unnecessary brain damage,
- Ignoring 911 calls,
- Driving on suspended licenses,
- Sodomy and corruption of minors,
- Stealing money, drugs, and guns,
- Drug addictions,
- Illegal steroid use,
- Having sex in patrol cars,
- Extortion of cash at traffic stops,
- Wife beatings,
- Beating hand-cuffed teenagers,
- Stealing drugs held as evidence,
- Running into pedestrians with patrol cars,
- Stalking women,
- Tasering unconscious diabetic 11 times.
Instead, “our leaders” consider every American to be a potential terrorist, while these very same leaders terrorize us with warrantless spying of our emails, postal mail, and telephone calls. They beat us, Taser us, and falsely arrest us, while pretending the very terrorists they’ve created are there to protect us.
Most of the kindly cops of the 1950s have come and gone; but, may God bless those officers who still serve and protect, while their associates serve the dark forces.
And, unless more of us wake up to the tyranny afoot in this 21st century, we – the American people – are, indeed, the problem.
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