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?
