Georgia Cop Kills Woman He Met Online, Sets Body on Fire

In a gruesome story out of Atlanta where lax screening procedures and psychopathic personalities intersected, a local police officer was arrested last week on murder charges. Tahreem Zeus Rana is currently being held for the murder of Vernicia Woodard who was shot multiple times and her body then set on fire. Rana was apprehended at the Atlanta airport while in the process of fleeing the country to India via Mexico. According to news reports, Rana had met Woodward online likely for the purpose of having sex with her.  Something must have gone badly wrong because he then took the victim to a secluded area, pumped her full of slugs, possibly from his service revolver and then lit her on fire.

According to a story from the website of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution entitled “Atlanta cop linked to homicide waives first court appearance”:

An Atlanta police officer arrested Thursday on charges that he killed a woman a week ago in Hapeville and set her body on fire will remain behind bars after he waived his first court appearance Friday afternoon.

Rana will remain jailed without bond until his preliminary hearing, which is scheduled for Sept. 12 in Fulton Superior Court.

Investigators linked the gruesome homicide to APD Officer Tahreem Zeus Rana through the woman’s phone records, Hapeville Police Chief Richard Glavosek said Thursday.

Glavosek told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Vernicia Woodard’s phone records led to Rana. Detectives then located Woodard’s posting on Backpage.com, a classified and hook-up website, where investigators believe the couple met, Glavosek said.

The fact that it was the 23-year-old Rana shocked officers, not only because he was a lawman but because some officers remember him as a kid growing up in Hapeville, Glavosek said.

“They remember him walking to school with his mother,” the chief said.

Officers arrested Rana around 8:30 a.m. Thursday at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, according to Channel 2 Action News. They say he was headed to Monterrey, Mexico, which may have been a stop on the way to India. Rana was on the no-fly list.

Hapeville police booked Rana into the Fulton County jail Thursday on charges of murder, arson, kidnapping and tampering with evidence in the killing of 26-year-old Woodard. He is accused of shooting her multiple times last Friday.

A city worker found Woodard’s body burning along Elm Street in the south Fulton town. GBI was brought in to assist and investigators believe the body was set on fire to destroy evidence.

The lead Hapeville detective on the case, Stephen Cushing, told Channel 2 Action News that investigating Rana was almost surreal because of the young man’s long ambition to become a cop.

“I’ve been a police officer in the city of Hapeville for 15 years and actually saw this young man grow up and heard him say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a police officer,” Cushing said.

Additional details are provided in a story on the website of Atlanta TV station WGCL which cites a statement on the sordid affair from Atlanta Police Department officials:

"We are shocked and saddened by these developments. The officer has been relieved from duty, and is in a non-enforcement status. Chief Turner will schedule an emergency hearing immediately today to determine the next course of action. We must allow the justice system to run its course. But these clearly are very disturbing allegations that are not in line with the expectations we have for our officers, and will be immediately dealt with," said APD Public Affairs Director Carlos Campos.

This is yet another warning of the personality types that are drawn to the law-enforcement profession in an ever more aggressive American police state. A guy like Rana could have been weeded out if there were better screening and psychological evaluation procedures utilized that could have spotted the red flags. It it obvious that leadership within the Atlanta Police Department needs to closely review their recruiting and hiring processes and tweak them accordingly.

The majority of police officers are decent people tasked with doing a thankless job and having murderers and thugs in their ranks only creates a negative perception of them as a whole. Good cops should always be on the lookout for the bad apples and aggressively work to police their own ranks. With a lack of accountability that the federal government encourages with their military surplus giveaways it does not bode well for citizens if local law enforcement agencies are riddled with psychopaths.

Cops Execute Yet Another Dog in Front of Owner

One of the more disturbing elements of the rise of the locked and loaded American police state is the ongoing killing of pets in front of their owners. With the militarizing of law enforcement and the impunity with which police now are allowed to operate, the death toll of dogs continues to mount. Family pets are being gunned down by government goons coated in black Kevlar so frequently that the practice has actually been given a formal name: "puppycide".

Hulking cops adorned with heavy body armor are more frequently turning their firepower on hapless four-legged targets. It is quite the force multiplier when a beloved small animal is blown into chunks of fur and bloody red meat in front of a terrified owner when only moments before the paramilitary goons arrived had considered the little critter to be a family member. Given the number of children who bear witness to "puppycide" there may even be bonus points awarded if a youngster is present. The execution of pets  is right up there with the actions of Nazi stormtroopers when it comes to sadistic cruelty and is indicative of a very dangerous individual who has been armed and empowered by the state. Often they are military veterans whose initial training was conducted for service in a foreign war zone.

Watchdog website Police State USA reports in a story entitled  "Family pet shot in the head by plainclothes cops searching at wrong address" details of the latest "puppycide" [warning:graphic image included].  I excerpt the following from the story:

Megan Shimburski, 25, was spending a quiet afternoon with her children at her parents’ countryside East Concord residence on July 25, 2014. It was a normal day, she said, which involved watching her 5-year-old daughter play behind the house with their dog, as her infant son lied in a playpen inside the house.

Ms. Shimburski’s parents, John Shimburski and Martha Spaulding, were not at home when the day turned to chaos.

At around 2:00 p.m., Ms. Shimburski recalled that she ducked inside the house for a moment to use the restroom. She became alerted to something occurring when the family’s two dogs began barking; one was inside and one was outside the house.

Ms. Shimburski said that she looked out the window and saw two vehicles parked outside — a car and an SUV — along with unidentified men, one of whom had a gun drawn.

Panicked, she rushed outside toward danger to attend to her daughter, Makenna, who was accompanied by “Lady,” a 2-year-old Brindle Pit Bull.

“I heard 2 shots fired, and Lady yelp, and my daughter scream,” Ms. Shimburski told Police State USA.

AND

Meanwhile Lady, described as a “67-pound big baby,” was hiding under the deck, covered in blood. A bullet had traveled through the tissue on her head, neck, and shoulder. A large, open gash allowed blood to pour down her face into her eyes and nose. It was a shocking sight for the family.

“The officer stated that he had just ‘grazed’ her, and that she would be fine,” Ms. Shimburski recalled. “I looked at him and said, ‘You did not graze her!!’ His words were, ‘I didn’t mean to GRAZE her.’”

The shooter — [later identified as Erie County Sheriff's Detective Greg McCarthy] — claimed he shot in self-defense because the dog was “charging and barking.” Ms. Shimburski says that he exaggerated the dog’s actions and the distance he was standing from her when he fired.  No one was bitten or in danger, she said, and the dog was coming from the back to the front of the house to investigate the strange visitors.

“My child could have been shot,” Ms. Shimburski said to Police State USA. “She now has the idea that these people who were there to protect people are bad people,” and added that she may need counseling. “I stated that not all cops are bad but at this point I don’t think she’s going to trust them.”

The kicker is that the cops were not even at the right address. As far as Ms. Shimburski's comments on the child not trusting the cops that really is not the objective behind "puppycide", it is to make it clear to the citizenry that cops are to be feared. Nothing quite sends that message like busting a cap or two into the family dog. This time it was the plain clothes dicks but often it is a SWAT team kicking down the door and using military style flash grenades. This is a very sick period in American history that we currently live in. This is particularly so with the societal worship of uniforms and authority, one can correctly say that it is nothing short of fascist.

This is by no means an attempt to denigrate or smear all police officers.  I would like to believe that the majority of cops  are decent folks tasked with doing an often violent, messy and thankless job. Typical police officers often encounter people during their worst moments and for the most part are dedicated professionals. The paramilitary types are the problem as well as the sanctioning of the state placed upon search and destroy style tactics of law enforcement better suited for battlefields than American cities.
When the federal government ensures that there is a constant flow of money and military grade equipment into tactical units of police departments it also ensures that a very specific type of police officer is attracted to these units. The violence and the contempt for the law, the sheer ability to dominate the helpless with impunity is what leads to the cruelty and the shoot first and ask questions later or better yet, a dead men tell no tales mentality.

There is really no way to stop this either, it has become embedded into our national DNA, our very own form of apple pie authoritarianism and it is only going to continue to get worse.