Welcome to the United Police State of America

Title too alarmist?

Well, you probably all heard about the tasering of a student being a bit too pointed in his questions to Kerry, who said he'd answer the questions just before the campus police went all LAPD RAMPART Division on his ass.

Over at the Marmot's Hole, I express disbelief at anyone who could even think someone "deserves" treatment like this, even if you think the guy to be a pompous dick. Last I checked, being a pompous dick wasn't a crime, and when I was in college, there were ALWAYS one or two people like that at a campus forum. But back then, we didn't taser students for grandstanding on our sophomore-year, idealistic view of the world. What kind of message does that send?

Now, this video of a city council member who calmly packed up his stuff after being shouted down and bullied out of the room and as soon as he has left the room (and the cops think, the view of the camera), he is pushed hard and beaten.

Some say he "fought back." How did he do that when if you look at the reflection in the glass case as he's pushed CLEARLY shows his face going through the door as he goes to the ground, at which point, we immediately see him face down and the officer going to town on his face. Watch the video. He was pushed, went face-first through the glass, and was headed for the ground. Seconds later, he's face-down and getting wailed on.

Yeah, he said something on the way out the door that the pig probably didn't like, and it looked like there was some personal stuff going on there, but cops aren't given a badge and a gun to settle personal grudges.

Oh, and you don't remember the guy – an Air Force officer and Iraq war vet, from the descriptions coming in so far – just got shot (3 times!) for complying with an officer's orders. Watch the video. Even the news station warns you that it's shocking – and it is. Just before he got shot, she said "I'm on your side" and when the cop told him to stand up, which he did without making any hint of threatening motions, BAM, BAM, BAM! Guess he "deserved" that too. Does it even matter what he said? Well, what's even better is the verdict that came out late last July:

Carrion said he is mystified by the verdict. "I don’t know how the jury found that it was justified. Clear as day, he said twice, ‘Get up, get up.’ And then I repeated, ‘I’m going to get up now.’ I did not even get up fully. I pushed my upper body up and then I got shot three times and fell back."

And finally, there's the great-grandmother just arrested for not watering her lawn and taken down to the station bloodied:

Betty Perry is charged with resisting arrest and failing to maintain her landscaping, both misdemeanors.

She was arrested July 6 after failing to give her name to a police officer who visited her home.

During a struggle, Perry fell and injured her nose. She spent more than an hour in a holding cell before police released her.

To all the fair-weather "conservatives" who are like "they deserved it" whenever some whiny liberal gets beat over the head, how about separating one's personal feelings of cruelty towards those you dislike on a personal level from the rational ability to see that police seem to be going overboard in a culture that is condoning a "by any means necessary" way of thinking about state control, our rights our being eroded daily for the sake of "national security" and cops have even more instruments in their arsenal – of both the legal and physical kinds – to restrain us, arrest us, and take us down to the station with, for far smaller offenses than were considered warranted in the past.

The problem is that we're becoming inured to it.

Now, Rodney King couldn't really shock us. Police brutality? What would it take to actually convince a good majority of the populace that something was unequivocally wrong? Videotape isn't enough anymore, and if you want to make accusations without it, forget it. People are all of a sudden crack media critics and masters of digital video forensics when it comes to cops beating down people. The burden of proof should be on them, not the civvies they're supposed to be protecting – us.

Here's another one from my hometown, of all places. (HT to Seouldout)

Or how about THIS guy – a 60-year-old man who was lucky enough to be filmed by both an Associated Press camera and a photojournalist looking out his hotel window who happened to be at just the right angle to film the scene?

May we all be so "lucky."

Does it actually require something ridiculous as police showing up in white sci-fi battle armor before the majority of people start becoming alarmed?

Comments

[Alex]

I don't don't believe the guy deserved tazing for being a pompus dick, I do however think he deserved to be removed for being a pompous dick. Physically resisting removal was a terrible idea on his part, and I don't feel all that bad for him. All that being said, eff the police.

[Scott S.]

I believe the cop was overly brutal and completely out of line. If a person says something to you that could be considered disrespect, the cop is OBLIGATED to take the higher ground and prove he is more of a gentleman than the person, prove he is a better man. Police are not allowed to solve grudges or attack a person because of disrespect. It is understandable he may have felt so, but he cannot do that; fortunately, there is a phrase for that: police brutality. Obviously, David Snyder was face down on the ground getting his head hit from the right side multiple times (about four, I believe). To judge the anatomy of a body, being on the ground is one of the most defenseless positions, but being on the ground face down is even worse. There is no shielding from attack in that position, thus David Snyder could not have, in any way, fought back. Protecting himself would have been the only possible maneuver at that angle. I cannot believe people were supporting the cop on that one (notice I did not say "pig" because that cop is so much worse than I am, that I am already the bigger man). And who was that lady griping about her dad? If anyone should have goten decked, it should have been her. She was jsut adding insult to injury. I'd like to see David Snyder and her in a fight.
Besides all that, it is the small percent of the police that ruin it for the whole--well, maybe more than a small percent...more like ALMOST ALL police.

[ecorn]

Well, as I commented over at the Marmot's Hole, police are street level bureaucrats who enforce laws on which they are not full experts. It is up to the judicial system to decide whether or not their actions were justified. In the case of the student at the Kerry speech, the police obviously went too far. He wasn't endangering anyone that I could see.

The compus police department made the right move by putting them on administrative leave, and hopefully they will be required to either undergo LOTS of additional training or be dismissed from the force, depending on the outcome of the investigation.

That being said, has anyone consider that maybe this guy showed up to make a scene?

[Brian]

In the Myers incident, the security guards obviously could have taken a different approach rather than tasing him. But I untimately think that is the risk he took for being not leaving as directed.

[Mark]

Cops in the US should just let perpetrators slap them around like I've seen here in Korea. Take away their guns and give them a cartoon Podori mascot.

Perhaps then the respect for law in the US would become more akin to the Korean respect for the law as well.

[slim]

Not alarmist, but hyperbolic and inaccurate to anyone who's actually lived in a real police state.

"Police are street level bureaucrats who enforce laws on which they are not full experts" is correct, but charitable in too many cases.

Without any intention to demean well-trained, well-educated and professional law enforcement officials, my minor brushes with authority lead me to doubt the intelligence and ability of reason of too many who wear uniforms, be they officious TSA officials at airports, Tennessee traffic cops, government building rent-a-cops or these campus police. Sadly, these are low-paid, entry-level, service sector jobs and society often gets exactly what they paid for.

[seouldout]

I recall when tasers were first fielded they were sold to the public as a cop's non-lethal alternative to a firearm. That five or six cops couldn't (or perhaps wouldn't) exert the physical effort to subdue one demonstrative yet hardly dangerous knucklehead speaks volumes

That the knucklehead asked too many questions, or too pointed questions, should not require the action of the police. They're there to protect public safety. And I didn't see the guy threatening anyone whilst at the microphone.

[Richard]

Evidently there is quite a problem in cities like LA and New York to recruit and retain police officers.
Tasing LOOKS terrible and on occassion it has lead to death but according to a recent show on "less than
lethal weaponary" I saw ,the pain is not long lasting. Like any other law enforcement tool its under what
circumstances that tool is implemented. And that depends on the police to make the appropriate
judgement.
Police do misbehave..some are inept, incompetent, racist, bullies...It can also be very dangerous.
A police offcier is killed every 48 hours,,would any critic here of the police want to be a cop?
While " contempt of cop" is not a crime there is something that happens to a police officer
when his/her command (rightly or wrongly) is disobeyed. Their brain is overhwelmed by
adrenalin and they become enraged...thats why, for instance, when the CHP is on a high speed
pursuit, the officers in the lead vehicle are not permitted to make the arrest once the vehicle is
stopped. They do train to avoid this condition but its very hard to NOT be angry..

[Scott S.]

In response to Richard, however hard it make be to "NOT be angry", the fact of the matter is they are not ALLOWED to have emotion in the sense that they cannot act on their own actions and intentions without putting the authoritative law above and beyond their own feelings. A cop is in service to the community, not to himself as regular citizens can choose. Of course, it is difficult to not act on impulse, but that is what a cop must learn to control in order to acheive his/her job successfully and accurately. A cop attacking someone for a small incident when the incident only happened to be disrespect is something that happens all too often and should not EVER happen. They are trained to put the law first, and that is how their training should be executed on the streets. To me, there is NO excuse for a cop to act on impulse or use personal judgement as the "end-all" of his/her problems. They are not put into service to take power and control over people; they are, in fact, put into service (as all their vehicles and prperty states) to "protect and serve" the people. If protecting citizens means personal vengeance, then I must be looking in the wrong dictionary.

[seouldout]

Here's a good one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaHyuWgir8U. The city had to pay her $60k to settle the suit.

I'm not interested in paying higher real estate taxes to cover the increased insurance premiums due to abuse of authority. Cops like this guy do a disservice to the many good ones, and they severely damage relations with the community. Cops need to know that excessive force can incite greater violence, as seen here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKK9EjEEG_Q.

Had I been the city manager/mayor the cop would have been fired.

[Korea Beat]

The 65-year old was arrested for public intoxication? On Bourbon Street? That's rich.

I wish I knew why it is that small-government conservatives, who argue for gun rights on the grounds that they protect the citizenry against government tyranny, rarely speak up about police abuses and argue for deference to authority. It seems like a paradox to me.

[Mark]

Wow...that New Orleans dude reminds me of myself getting thrown out of NB in Hongdae last year, only I didn't bleed so much after the Coreans bashed my head....

[The Metropolitician]

Word, Korea Beat.

Seriously, if all the so-called conservatives would re-read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they'd be up in arms as any so-called "liberal."

The politics of Bush and the Republicans, Democrats and whomever is picked for the next election, gay rights, abortion, or whatever is so much the fleeting politics of the present. If people had a bigger sense of history and weren't trying to just win their petty battles, they'd see that what's being done to the Constitution and our democracy in the name of a whole bunch of things is going to leave a much deeper scar on Americanness than any of the things that seem so important to win at all costs now.

So-called "Christians" whine about supposed "murder" of blastocysts the size of a pinhead, as we bomb the shit out of civilians and kill ACTUAL human beings for decades, or fellow Americans go without health care or proper nutrition and are also ACTUALLy dying.

So-called Conservatives watch the Bill of Rights being ripped up to use as paper wadding for the President's ass just because we're angry and panicked in the moment, as we betray our own values by torturing prisoners and conduct the war at the same morally decrepit levels as the enemies we're supposed to be better than.

Agh. I could go on.

You know what I've said on this subject.

[iheartblueballs]

You're missing several important parts of the picture Michael.

While it may have been the case that there were "one or two" of the obnoxious, pompous dicks when you were in college, it has now gotten to the point where there are often several dozen of that nature from both sides of the aisle, all competing to either shout down an opposing view, or doing their best to disrupt and make a spectacle of whatever forum or whomever they disagree with.

And the proliferation of that kind of bullshit has led most campuses to increase security for public forums and take disruptions and disturbances more seriously, particularly after a string of actual and attempted assaults (minor pie-throwing and water balloon shit, but assaults nonetheless), primarily aimed at conservative speakers.

If there are no campus security or local police on site to deter the disruptions and pie-throwing bullshit, these events cannot take place. Period. Campus groups spend thousands (often tens of thousands) of dollars to bring speakers in, and all it takes is one pompous dick to ruin the entire event and make it a complete loss for the group, the speaker, and all the people that make the effort to attend and participate. If you think that pompous dicks have a constitutional right to that kind of power, then you’ve been in Korea (where protesters rule society without fear) too long.

Further, with the advent of youtube, blogs, and instant internet celebrity, the current crop of pompous dicks aren't just interested in having their opinions heard as they were in your day. They are usually intent on making themselves famous and garnering as much media attention as possible. That involves bringing their own cameras (as Meyer did) and causing disruption to the point of cop involvement, which is exactly what this guy wanted, and got.

Add Kerry, and the extra layer of security that his presence involves, and you get what happened in Florida. Yes, the cops may have overreacted with the tazer (although I personally think they were justified given his continued resistance and struggling even after he was forced down on the ground), but the situation clearly doesn’t escalate to that point if the guy leaves the forum as he was first asked to do.

I can see it already…”But what about his freedom of speech!” Well, look, the cops were requested to be there and they were in fact the legal authority in the venue. If they made the decision that he was a public nuisance and was disrupting the event, they can legally remove him and he is legally obligated to leave at their request. If Meyer truly believed his rights were being violated, he could have filed a report with the university, the cops, or whoever else he felt like implicating after peacefully leaving the venue. Or he could have filed a lawsuit if it struck his fancy. But he was not interested in a form of protest that did not get him media attention. Filing a report doesn’t get 3 million hits on youtube or interview requests from newspapers. The simple fact is, Meyer himself escalated the situation from a non-violent one, to a violent one. He had dozens of choices of how to handle it, and he chose to hand a camera to a stranger and say “Hey, watch this,” and then forced the cops to attempt to physically detain him.

Look at the police report and read some of the guy's quotes, asking the cops if cameras will be at the jail, being completely cordial to the cops in private, and then continuing his screaming routine the second cameras are back in view, and plenty more. Not to mention his blog documenting previous attempts at public disturbances, and his triumphant list of media coverage (We made number one on Digg! Front page of Fox News!). Bottom line: When you make it your stated goal to become a public spectacle and disrupt a public event, goad the police while refusing to follow their PEACEFUL request for you to leave the premises, and then force them to physically restrain you while actively fighting back against them, BE PREPARED TO ACCEPT THE CONSEQUENCES OF ESCALATION AND RESISTANCE! It’s a very simple formula that should surprise no one, and judging from Meyer’s comments afterward to the cops, it did not surprise him either. Public nuisance and disturbing the peace laws exist precisely for people like Mr. Meyer, and if you somehow think his freedom of speech exempts him from those laws, you’re dead wrong.

To be absolutely clear, I'm not in any way implying that there aren't plenty of other cases of police brutality (I don't need to see the vids linked in this post, because I've seen them all before) that deserve attention and concern. But by lumping this guy and his cop-baiting, toe-the-resisting-arrest-line, self-promotional routine in with others that were truly victims of undeserved and unprovoked brutality, you are doing the latter group of people a grave disservice, and elevating this attention-whore to a level that he obviously does not deserve.

Do yourself a favor and quit lumping all the examples together as if they're the same. You're smart enough to make the distinction, and you really need to avoid the overboard police-state hysteria that you're trying to sell in a situation where it does not apply.

[Mark]

It was definitely a publicity stunt, and that's why it's funny. Andy Warhol would be proud.

[gary]

the US is going down
and it deserves it
happy Chuseok

[seouldout]

@ Korea Beat. I'm one of them conservatives (more of a Barry Goldwater sort), and I cherish civil liberties--an American without freedom (even to act the fool) isn't an American. And I'm quite pragmatic. I don't want a city to pay higher insurance premiums (it tends to either reduce city services and/or increase taxes), I don't approve of people getting slapped around unless they are a real threat, and I think some of this "pro-active" policing infringes on civil liberties. Furthermore I'm pretty darned concerned about the adversarial relationship that certain communities have with the police and by extrapolation the rest of society. "Don't snitch" comes to mind, and the inevitable outcome is greater lawlessness--of the really scary type.

IHBB brings up some valid points, but I see the cops physically moving him from the microphone as needless, and it shouldn't be part of a cop's job description. I do agree that the guy was looking for attention and likely provoked a response. And now he's got it.

Does ignore no longer exist in the national conscientiousness?

[Sonagi]

Clear and logical rebuttal, IHBB.

Seoulout wrote:

"IHBB brings up some valid points, but I see the cops physically moving him from the microphone as needless, and it shouldn't be part of a cop's job description."

Who, then, should have removed him after the mike was turned off and he refused to move? The organizers? Wouldn't they be violating the law if they put their hands on Meyers? Law enforcement, who are versed in the law and trained in restraining techniques (even if they don't always follow the law or use proper techniques), are the most appropriate people to carry out the organizers' wish to have him removed.

[jag]

Follow the money.Who profits from the two extremes being preoccupied with this shit? Moderation/libertarianism will kill this crap.

[jag]

I think there should be mandatory gun ownership and voting.Perhaps a lottery for president.Your number comes up, you're it,like it or not.

[Roland Dodds]

I recently spoke with an acquaintance who had spent the last year in Syria studying Arabic. The things he told me…now that is a Police State. At worst, this is an example of security guards going overboard. But if you truly believe this represents a Police State, I would advise taking a trip through a real one. Even comparing this to the Rodney King beating is a ridiculous stretch.

Having said that, there are plenty of reasons to fear to way the government is encroaching on our rights. I hope I don’t even have to mention all that good ol wiretapping…

A Police State it is not, but good citizens must roll back these legal injunctions.

[mcnut]

or if liberal left wing loons liks yourself would not act like dicks then the police would not have to do such atrocious acts upon you!

a police state???? come on man you are really really stretching

you want to go to a police state and see what they are really like

i can name a few and even purchase the ticket if you want

[Mark]

Police state of....Canada?