OMG!!!!
September 19th, 2007 by Sonja

This pissed me off so much I almost cried!

That was the e-mail I received from LightGirl just now.

So … um … what the hell is going on in our country? Just why did that young man get arrested and tasered for asking a question? There was nothing wrong with the question he asked. If he was over time … big deal. The police were way out of line. Way. If they needed to arrest him, they needed to … um … charge him with something. Anything. That’s the way it works in this country. That’s why we have a …

… remember this?

Bill.

of.

Rights.

Supposedly that’s why we’re fighting two wars right now. At least that’s what we’re told. Truth. Justice. And the American Way. But only if we don’t want to use those rights.

THE CLASH LYRICS

“Know Your Rights”

This is a public service announcement
With guitar
Know your rights all three of them

Number 1
You have the right not to be killed
Murder is a CRIME!
Unless it was done by a
Policeman or aristocrat
Know your rights

And Number 2
You have the right to food money
Providing of course you
Don’t mind a little
Investigation, humiliation
And if you cross your fingers
Rehabilitation

Know your rights
These are your rights
Wang

Know these rights

Number 3
You have the right to free
Speech as long as you’re not
Dumb enough to actually try it.

Know your rights
These are your rights
All three of ’em
It has been suggested
In some quarters that this is not enough!
Well…………………………

Get off the streets
Get off the streets
Run
You don’t have a home to go to
Smush

Finally then I will read you your rights

You have the right to remain silent
You are warned that anything you say
Can and will be taken down
And used as evidence against you

Listen to this
Run

Now I must return to painting …


13 Responses  
  • Mike writes:
    September 19th, 20077:55 pmat

    I see a serious issue with trying to analyze the actions of the police based on a video placed on You Tube by a citizen. We don’t know how of the video has been cut and edited, we don’t know all of the surrounding circumstances and we don’t know the rules of engagement that the police had to use for an engagement where a Senator was speaking.

    This man, although clearly within his rights to voice his opinion was antagonistic. I am quite sure that the police did not just go in on their own accord but were summoned by Kerry’s staffers.

    Yes, we have rights. But our rights do not extend to resisting the police. It was pretty apparant to me that the man was only being escorted away until the time when he decided to become an absolute jerk.

    It is absolutely correct to say that we have rights. We have the right to a defense and we have a right to face our accusers. That’s why the judicial system is set up the way it is. It is not perfect but it is better than most. That man made that situation what it turned into. Of course, unless one thinks it was ok for him to put the safety of the five officers and everyone else within reach in danger, simply to “showboat” for the camera.

           
  • kay writes:
    September 20th, 20079:36 amat

    Couple of random thoughts:

    The man should have been allowed to ask his questions (though he seemed more interested in preaching than in asking). He was annoying as hell, but that isn’t against the law.

    If the police hadn’t stepped up just then, he might have finished being an attention seeking twit and might have sat down to await the answers. That seems to be what he wanted.

    Kerry has to expect and allow for these types of questions from time to time. It’s the nature of the business. Allow them to annoyingly do their thing. Allow for disruptions. Take it in stride and then go on.

    The police should be there to protect from threat. As annoying as that guy was, I don’t think he was a threat. Things were made worse by their actions (ordered or not).

    The tazering seemed completely inappropriate. He was down.

    Note:

    I’m basing all this on the video alone. As was said, we don’t know what might have been edited for sensationalist effect.

           
  • Sonja writes:
    September 20th, 200710:08 amat

    Mike,

    I’ll grant you that the video is at the moment of “unknown origin” and as such is of limited value in it’s evidentiary value.

    However … the last time I checked (mere moments ago) our First Amendment rights to free speech are based upon our citizenship in this country and not upon our value in terms of whether or not we have been determined to be a “jerk” by a set of rules that will change at will. You may check the wording of that Amendment here.

    If you listen carefully to the tape, you will hear Senator Kerry attempting (belatedly) to answer the questions and bring some stability to the situation. This indicates to me that even he felt the police were over-reacting to the questioner.

    And I don’t care what the situation is, 5 police officers taking one man out of a room for taking too long at microphone should NEVER need to use a taser. EVER. That is abuse. For heaven’s sake, with 5 officers, that’s one officer per limb and one extra to help with control.

    We are pushing the envelope to a police state in this country, if we haven’t fallen over the edge already. I find your comment blindly following the police and allowing them full operations no matter what they need to be deeply disturbing. It’s not what our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and Declaration of Independence for. Perhaps you need to re-read those documents and do some thinking of your own.

           
  • Mike writes:
    September 20th, 20073:44 pmat

    Sonja ~ Thanks for your reply. I don’t disagree with your viewpoint. I must be honest and say that I don’t appreciate your assertion that I need to read the constitution. I am a police officer and I not only know the constitution, I highly value the constitutional rights that are guaranteed our citizens. As such, people’s rights are primary in my mind when I take action. I want to re-emphasize that it’s not likely that the police went in on their own accord and if they did, they were wrong. I think that if the man would have been allowed to rant, he would have sat down (and very likely eventually embarrassed himself).

    The point I’m trying to make is that once the person did not follow the instructions of the police, a crime was in fact being committed. Based on his actions, the safety of everyone around him (including other citizens)was in jeopardy.

    I will say this, the issue that I saw with the police action is that they took too long to deal with this guy and it became a specatacle. Had it been me and the people I work with, it would have lasted about two seconds and been over.

           
  • Erin writes:
    September 20th, 20079:26 pmat

    I have been thinking about this for a day or so wondering how to respond. I do believe that the video is disturbing if taken at face value, when I first watched it I was disgusted. I would say this man should never have been manhandled in that way, especially because he really didn’t do anything that I saw as wrong…people get passionate about politics and that is to be expected, and I do think John Kerry has probably run into this before.

    However, based on additional information that is becoming available about this individual, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he has had serious run-ins with the campus police before and if they deemed him as some kind of threat in this situation based on previous experience with him. Or, possibly John Kerry had received some kind of threat that day and so security was particularly alert. I will allow for the possibility that they police had reason (unknown to us) to handle the situation in the way they did. I do expect that these officers will have to explain to their superiors why they handled this situation this way, and I expect the public to eventually be informed about any extenuating circumstances there may be.

    We have stuff like this happen in Portland all the time…and it almost always comes out that there was more to the story than the news initially reported.

           
  • Ken writes:
    September 23rd, 20074:22 pmat

    Wow, not impressed by Mike and Erin’s comments. Clearly both are interested in finding a way to justify the attrocities committed by the police in this scene. I don’t know either of you, but I am dissapointed to see your callousness. This man was passionate and he has a right to be, this country is out of control and human rights are being violated all over the place. To try and justify the police’s action in this scene is just terrible. It doesn’t matter if he was an activist, he certainly isn’t a twit and his comments were right on. The only twits are the uninformed individuals posting comments above. God help our country as we stand by, didn’t we learn anything from Germany!

           
  • Mike writes:
    September 23rd, 20078:14 pmat

    “The only twits are the uninformed individuals posting comments above”

    Good Ken. Sling a few more accusations around and make some more assumptions about what’s going through our mind while we write. Your comments were nullified the minute you used to word “twit” to speak about another person involved in an open discussion. Let me ask this, when you use terms such as callousness, twit, uninformed, how does that make you any better than the cops who took action here when someone was using their voice?

    You are right about one thing though. I just read the entire Declaration of Independence again and it seems as though we have become the type of government that we escaped from 231 years ago.

           
  • Sonja writes:
    September 23rd, 20078:29 pmat

    Hi Mike …

    I took some time responding because as you may have noticed from my latest post … I’ve been crabby 😉 and I did not want to be crabby in my response to you. I’ve also been busy this weekend trucking my daughter around to early morning hockey game … which has not been conducive to constructive thought.

    First, please accept my apologies for making that assumption about you and your relationship to the Constitution. That was wrong of me. I allowed my temper to run off at the mouth (so to speak) and I do apologize.

    I agree that once the police stepped in and the young man resisted, there was a crime that took place. However, here’s where I think we part ways. I don’t believe they should have stepped in in the first place. Granted, we don’t have all the facts based upon this video. BUT … let’s just imagine the scene for a moment. It’s a college auditorium (we know this much). There is a US Senator speaking and then he asks for questions. A self-aggrandizing (jerky) student steps up to the microphone and hogs it.

    Up to that point, what laws have been broken?

    Has the guy been annoying? Yes. Has he embarassed himself quoting questionable evidence? Certainly. But I didn’t see anything remotely needing intervention by officers. His microphone was turned off and he got a little belligerent. Okay. So … he looked stupid. Big deal. But even at that point, you can hear Sen. Kerry offering to answer his questions in the background.

    However, there are no laws against being annoying or taking too much time at the microphone or even being self-aggrandizing. The limits on free speech (to the best of my knowledge) fall under the umbrella of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. Did he do that? Did his speech endanger anyone in that auditorium that afternoon, either directly or indirectly? I just cannot see that it did. Based upon that standard (set by the Supreme Court), I believe that the police acted prematurely and overzealously. Does that make sense?

    I can’t apologize for Ken … although I’d like to. I don’t like name calling or conversation of that sort on my blog. But it’s the nature of public space that it sometimes happens. It’s also the nature of free speech.

    I’m glad you took the time to read the Declaration of Independence. It’s quite a shocking document when read in full. I’ve been reading it with my children lately (we homeschool).

           
  • Mike writes:
    September 23rd, 200711:28 pmat

    Sonja ~ Thank you for your heartfelt apology and I accept it. When I look at the pictures you have been posting, I understand your frustration. I just got done completely remodeling my house last year so I understand completely.

    I think that we are actually in agreement on this. Initially you spoke of before and I spoke of after, which I see as the only difference. I agree (as you probably saw in my last post) that they should have let the guy stand up there and make a fool of himself. I don’t know what their ground rules were so it’s hard to make a determination of whether or not they (the police) went in to early. It does look that way though.

    However, I want to re-emphasize that when they did go in, they took way too much time taking the guy out. That’s what made it look worse than it was. What looks worse? Five cops and a taser shot over a three minute time period or one or two cops taking him down and out in about ten seconds. The amount of time made it look sensational.

           
  • kay writes:
    September 24th, 20076:15 pmat

    Good Ken. Sling a few more accusations around and make some more assumptions about what’s going through our mind while we write. Your comments were nullified the minute you used to word “twit” to speak about another person involved in an open discussion.

    Actually that is my bad. I’m the one that used the word “twit” first. I should have said he was “an attention seeking man” rather than an “attention seeking twit.”

    I apologize.

           
  • Ken writes:
    September 25th, 20072:50 pmat

    I certainly overstepped and do apologize for the ad hominem argument, I rarely go there and it was out of character. I am still surprised at how little compassion is shown in these posts for this student. I would be upset if my worst enemy was violated in such a manner, much less someone I have never met…

           
  • Sonja writes:
    September 25th, 20072:59 pmat

    Yeah, Ken … I was kinda surprised by that. You’re usually a little more laid back.

    But as I said … all of it is welcome, and accepted as it must be if we’re to celebrate freedom of speech.

    What I’m even more unhappy about is how this whole thing has gotten dropped in the press.

    Has anyone been able to find out how it’s been disposed of? No. Can we find out what happened to him since his arraignment? No. It’s just dead. Like it never happened and that is what is wrong with the press in this country.

           
  • Erin writes:
    September 25th, 20073:11 pmat

    I just wanted to clarify. I said “based entirely on the content of the video” this was inhumane, uncalled for and disturbing, like a horror movie. I am not advocating or endorsing the way this unfolded. I am not blindly stating that the authorities are automatically correct. It does seem that he was unreasonably cut off and manhandled.

    I would simply like to consider the benefit of the doubt; that the evidence at hand may or may not be the entire story. I don’t accept that what I see in video or hear in the media is the absolute truth. I don’t know what other factors may have come into play in their decision to remove him or how he was treated when he resisted.

    However, I’m sorry if it seemed that I was supportive of this situation.

           


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