My Way News - Taser, pepper spray used as Texas pastor arrested
AP reports: "Moran's son Miguel said 30 witnesses saw the officer turn aggressive and repeatedly kick the church door. Several members were hit with pepper spray and children were present, Miguel Moran said. 'They treated him as if he were a drug dealer or murderer, but he is a pastor that tries to help the community,' Moran said. 'The police always want to be right but they are not.'"

Comment: There is a growing problem with the police in America, they no longer know how to deal with common citizens. Of course, we can say that the real cause of the problem is that the police tend to deal with criminals, so when they have to deal with a law abiding citizen (in this case, the pastor of a church), they no longer know how to do it, they treat a citizen as a criminal and end up abusive in word and deed. The police will no longer be respected as guarantors of the peace if the average person fears them instead of respects them. There is a difference between respect and fear, and respect is eroded when we no longer trust that the police will act in a rational manner. And because the police are conditioned to interact with criminals they interpret any action that is not meek submission as defiance and turn hostile. There was a time when the pastor of a church would have automatically been seen as a respected authority figure, whose presence and questions would be welcome in diffusing a volatile situation. In today's world, asking a question of an officer is considered an act of defiance, no matter who is doing it, because questions are not compliance. This attitude is not one that a free people can easily accept. In this case, we can only assume that the officer was not a Christian, and we can only speculate about the state of his spiritual life that caused him to see the pastor as a threat and respond with violence. Was it persecution? Probably not in the traditional sense of the word, but it's certainly a sign of the times when a pastor is seen as a threat rather than an ally of law enforcement.