Salt Lake Police Arrest Nurse And Drag Her From Hospital

I'm not a lawyer. And I don't keep up with all of the ways in which the Federal government and various states and municipalities, often with winks and nods from the current Supreme Court, attempt to get around the limitations placed on government actions by the Fourth Amendment. But one thing which still seems to be in force, in law if not respected on the street, is that the police cannot absent your consent, your arrest, a warrant or some sort of probable cause take samples of your blood, your flesh, your DNA. A nurse named Alex Wubbels attempted to politely explain this to a police officer named Jeff Payne. Payne wanted to draw blood from a man who had been involved in an accident. Payne admitted to another officer that he did not have probable cause but wanted the blood drawn anyway. Wubbels refused and explained that the hospital policy, based on the law was that the hospital would not assist unless certain conditions were met. Payne apparently lost his temper and since he had been given previous authorization from his supervisor, arrested the nurse. Watch video below. Arrest starts at roughly 6 minute mark.

Texas Cop Kills Black Child

You might ask yourself why some white cops are so quick to use deadly force against unarmed Black men and boys. You then might ask yourself how long it would take the cops to arrest a non-police officer who fired shots into a police car that was moving away from him. And after you pondered those questions you might wonder if the system would indict a cop who killed a child for no reason at all or if the jury would convict such a cop or if the judge would give such a cop the same punishment that he or she would grant to any other similarly situated criminal. But this is 2017 America so if you're honest with yourself you probably already know the answer to those questions. But hope springs eternal. We shall see what happens to Balch Springs Police Officer Roy Oliver who, upon responding to reports of a disturbance at a house party, shot dead an unarmed 15 year old black boy, honor student Jordan Edwards, who was a passenger in a car that was leaving the location. Oliver and/or his police department initially *misspoke* (lied) and claimed that the car was backing up aggressively towards the officer. But apparently the video shows otherwise. The police department has since fired Oliver, who of course is trying to get his job back. At the time of this writing there hasn't been any arrest of Oliver. It's important to point out that Jordan Edwards was killed in front of his brothers who were also jailed for absolutely no reason. Imagine, as a child, watching your sibling die in front of your eyes, killed by the very people who are sworn to "protect" you. What sort of issues are you going to have throughout life?

Black Woman in Texas Brutalized By Police

I don't really know what to say about this story which recently took place in Forth Worth Texas. A white police officer insulted and arrested a black mother who was trying to make a complaint that a white man had assaulted her seven year old child. This story is a poignant example of white supremacy. This is really no different than what would have taken place in 1925. The only difference is that in 1925 no black person in Texas would have been under the slightest illusion that the police were obligated to respond to their calls for assistance and/or possibly arrest a white assailant. We've talked incessantly about retraining police or protesting or making police live in the areas they serve or hiring more black police or demilitarizing the police or having civilian review boards or so forth and so on. Those are all good ideas as far as they go but as we saw with the Michael Slager mistrial in South Carolina none of things mean a goddamn thing if the jury pool refuses to convict. And while convicting a truly guilty cop for abusing or killing a citizen is of course a good thing, it's infinitely better for the citizen not to be abused or killed by cops in the first place. As cops justifiably have no fear of sanctions for bad behavior from the justice system or their departments or their unions the only thing that will give bad police pause from committing wrongs upon citizens is if citizens start shooting them in the head. It is not normal for anyone to expect that American citizens should tolerate this sort of thing.This country was born in violent revolution from outrage over much lighter offenses.Other revolutions have started from anger over police brutality. The system has failed. 

Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby Kills Terence Crutcher

On September 16, 2016 Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby shot and killed one U.S. citizen named Terence Crutcher. Mr. Crutcher was unarmed. He had no gun on his person or in his vehicle. His vehicle had stalled or broken down. There were no warrants for Mr. Crutcher's arrest. Police did not apparently render any assistance to Mr. Crutcher. They evidently did not put out any hazard lights, offer him a jump, help move the vehicle off the road, try to determine the problem with the vehicle, or call for a tow truck or roadside assistance. These are the things that most citizens who are having car trouble would expect the police to do. After all police are supposed to serve and protect. Unfortunately Mr. Crutcher was a black man. The police immediately saw him as a threat. In no short time after their arrival the police are yelling things at Mr. Crutcher and have him surrounded. Mr. Crutcher has his hands up. A police officer in a helicopter says that Mr. Crutcher "looks like a bad dude". And shortly after that two police officers almost simultaneously tase and shoot Mr. Crutcher. The police don't even bother to tend to the dying man's wounds but instead let him bleed out. They appeared to be more concerned with making sure that Officer Shelby was emotionally okay. Shelby has not been arrested or charged yet. I'm not being fashionably cynical when I write that I will be surprised if she does goes to trial. Her attorney is of course reaching for the tried and true tactic of claiming fear of the "big black man". Quite often this is a literal get out of jail card for white police officers. As many people on twitter have pointed out at this point if someone doesn't understand that there is a problem with police use of force against black people, disproportionately black men and boys, then they don't want to know. Most people will have car trouble at some point in our lives. Imagine running into someone who is so consumed with fear and hatred of you that there is literally nothing you can say or do that will not be interpreted as a threat. Well Mr. Crutcher didn't have to imagine that scenario. He was a Black man in America. He knew the deal. He kept his hands up even though he'd committed no crime. And he still died.


The usual suspects are already lining up to defend the police and claim that if only Crutcher had done x, y, and z then he'd still be alive. Whatever. This is the pure essence of racism-the ignorant unreasoning and unconstrained loathing of blackness. Shelby and company constructed a threat in their minds that did not exist and then acted on it. If you are so racist that blackness itself is a deadly threat then you shouldn't have the authority of the state or be able to carry weapons. This is not a training problem. This is a consequences problem. For the record you can watch the videos below. So far the people who were blasting Colin Kaepernick for his protest about police killings and brutality haven't had too much to say. Mr. Crutcher's family and their attorney speak in the last video.

Attorneys and Family Press Conference Video

South Carolina Cops Strip Search and Sexually Assault Black Couple

Usually I defer, however reluctantly or conditionally, to the received wisdom that the best way to proceed with police officers who are behaving unlawfully or unfairly towards you or yours is to comply with directions, keep your mouth shut and live to fight another day. They have weapons and you likely don't. Your goal should be to stay alive. But as the saying goes, a nation of sheep begets a government of wolves. So there must be limits to the tolerance we grant police. Police are not gods. They are not above the law. They only deserve deference or respect to the extent that they follow the law. When police obliterate the line between criminal and cop, they're just another thug. If someone who wasn't a police officer came up to you and demanded that you remove your clothing and underwear so that they could stick something inside of you or ordered you to strip in front of their leering sarcastic friends, I'm betting that you would reject that order. You would likely immediately remove yourself from the location, were you able to do so. And if push came to shove you would defend yourself from this pervert's demented desires. You have a right to defend yourself from illegal behavior. You have a right to self-defense. The only reason that we don't normally behave that way with police is because we have agreed to give some extreme powers to police in order to detect and apprehend criminals while keeping the rest of society safe. But when police become evil for lack of a better word that consent can and should be revoked. A horrifying example of how evil some police officers can be recently came to light in Aiken, South Carolina.  A white police officer unlawfully stopped a car driven by a black woman with a black man passenger. He and his cohorts then proceeded to unlawfully search the car and to strip search the man and woman, including the man's rectum. Most of this was on video. 
Lakeya Hicks and Elijah Pontoon were in Hicks’s car just a couple of blocks from downtown Aiken when they were pulled over by Officer Chris Medlin of the Aiken Department of Public Safety. Hicks was driving. She had recently purchased the car, so it still had temporary tags.
In the video, Medlin asks Hicks to get out, then tells her that he stopped her because of the “paper tag” on her car. This already is a problem. There’s no law against temporary tags in South Carolina, so long as they haven’t expired.
Medlin then asks Pontoon for identification. Since he was in the passenger seat, Pontoon wouldn’t have been required to provide ID even if the stop had been legitimate. Still, he provides his driver’s license to Medlin. A couple of minutes later, Medlin tells Hicks that her license and tags check out. (You can see the time stamp in the lower left corner of the video.) This should be the end of the stop — which, again, should never have happened in the first place.
Instead, Medlin orders Pontoon out of the vehicle and handcuffs him. He also orders Hicks out of the car. Pontoon then asks Medlin what’s happening. Medlin ignores him. Pontoon asks again. Medlin responds that he’ll “explain it all in a minute.” Several minutes later, a female officers appears. Medlin then tells Pontoon, “Because of your history, I’ve got a dog coming in here. Gonna walk a dog around the car.” About 30 seconds later, he adds, “You gonna pay for this one, boy.”

LINK
This abuse won't change until someone (i.e. a bullying cop) gets put six feet under. I just don't see other ways. Marching and protesting and boycotting and avoidance and pleading and appealing to morality haven't worked. Cops who use their badge to insult, intimidate, harass and in this case sexually assault people just aren't bothered by the threat of legal consequences because everyone knows such consequences are very rare. Federal prosecutors just don't bring charges against local law enforcement personnel. In most cases like this there won't be a state criminal trial either. And if there is, usually prosecutors and judges do their absolute bare minimum. Juries are often reluctant to convict. This is especially the case since the system will do everything in its power to prevent people like Hicks or Pontoon from sitting on juries. Even when a police officer is charged and a diverse jury could be selected the cop can always just opt for a judge to decide the case. Many judges are former prosecutors. So legal penalties don't deter these cops. There's only a slim chance that they will lose their job. Apparently the endless diversity classes, Officer Friendly school visits and internal legal training haven't made a dent in the behavior depicted. From what I can tell, as far as the average police officer is concerned, the law on the street is whatever he or she says it is. Other people more qualified than I can argue all the legal whys and wherefores but according to the legal experts quoted in the Post story, everything that happened was illegal. The police had no reason other than bias and personal dislike (and sexual sadism?) to pull over the black couple. This policing is descended directly from slave patrols of antebellum America. Poor whites, who often didn't own kidnapped Africans, were able to vent their class and racial hatred and jealousy on slaves travelling between plantations or free blacks travelling to their home or business. It's also part of the War on Drugs and the resulting normalization of prison procedures (extreme immediate compliance, strip searches, aggressive interrogations) that have spread throughout society.

This sort of government overreach should be something that conservatives and liberals agree needs to be stopped. Unfortunately, with a few noted and honorable exceptions, the sort of conservatives who love to wave their Gasden flag, cite Thomas Jefferson quotes about the tree of liberty requiring blood, and yell about oppressive big government, don't seem to get that infuriated about examples of oppressive government physically violating citizens like Hicks and Pontoon. I wonder why that might be. This is the duality of America. A black man can be elected President twice. And yet a black man and woman can be treated by their own government as if it's 1816 and not 2016. How do we resolve that? I really don't know. Violence is a bad thing. I try to avoid it. But I can't let another man violate me or mine in such a manner. Somebody would have to go.

What a Friend we have in Dog

On the weekends I run many different errands. Over the past weekend I stopped at the vet to retrieve some medicine and specialty food for my German Shepherd. While I sat in the reception room waiting for my order to be fulfilled, I noticed that there was another gentleman there with his dog. His dog was a male 14 year-old Beagle. That is positively ancient for just about any dog. This Beagle was completely blind. He had suffered some sort of disease that required his eyes to be removed. The medicine (or maybe it was just the age and stress of surgery) had also caused his fur to turn completely white. Nevertheless despite his advanced age and blindness the beagle was still lively, running around to sniff everything. Obviously this was a bit problematic because he would often bump into things or me. This is probably why his owner had the Beagle wrapped in a thick doggy-sweater in order to minimize bruising. Talking to the owner I could see that he had a lot of love for his dog. He described changes that he and his family had made to their daily routine, two story house and yard in order to ensure that their dog could go about his daily affairs with a minimum of discomfort. The man's face shone with love for his pet. I thought this was interesting because in the old days for many people dogs were more utilitarian than they are today. Down south my grandfather had Beagles which he used to assist him in hunting. I don't think people forty or fifty years ago would have been willing to spend thousands or even hundreds of dollars on extreme health measures for an old dog. People probably would have done a quick cost-benefit analysis which placed high emphasis on the costs and not so much on the benefit to the dog. Obviously veterinary science has improved since the sixties but even so we view our pets differently than we used to do. This man was willing to spend no small amount of money on surgeries and medicine to save his dog's life and ensure that his dog would be as comfortable as possible in the short time that remained to it. I think that is a good thing.

Although we may view our pets more favorably than we used to it seems as if police officers are more frequently looking for reasons to shoot and kill our pets. There is a continuous stream of stories about police officers shooting dogs on private property regardless of whether the officer is in danger of being bitten or not. I think too many police officers get off not just on killing animals but from the pure power rush of messing with people. Society needs to do a better job of screening people who apply for any job where the worker can exercise legal or physical power over other citizens. The Hupp family called the police to their property to deal with a dispute with a neighbor. Apparently the police officer doesn't like dogs. Tiffanie Hupp ran to stand in front of a police officer who was on the verge of casually shooting her family's chained dog, after the dog ran towards the police officer. The police officer attacked and arrested Mrs. Hupp. She was charged with obstruction of justice. She went to trial after refusing a plea deal. The officer lied and claimed that Mrs. Hupp menaced him with a crossbow, something which the video clearly shows was not the case. Fortunately Mrs. Hupp was acquitted of the false charges. Even more fortuitously she wasn't shot. It should be clear to most rational people by this time that there is a culture of bullying and sadism that occurs in too many police departments. I suppose what you think of Mrs. Hupp's actions depend at least in part on what you think of dogs. I don't think that volunteering to sacrifice your life for that of your dog is a particularly smart move but neither could I stand by and watch some preening thug with a badge kill my dog just because he felt like it. Something would have to be done right then and there. The fact that the officer was going to shoot Mrs Hupp's dog and tried to confiscate anything which could have been used to record his actions shows once again that too many cops use their badge not to serve the public but to bully it. The fact that Mrs. Hupp was willing to risk her life to save her dog and prevent her children from seeing the dog killed shows once again how much people love their dogs.

A West Virginia woman who stood between her dog and a cop who was about to shoot it was acquitted by a jury of obstruction charges on February, 29th, 2016. West Virginia state trooper Seth Cook testified that he was not afraid of the dog, but was following training that required him to kill all dogs that approach him, even if it was chained and wagging its tail as Buddy was doing in this case. 

And because Tiffanie Hupp tried to stop him from doing so, she was arrested...
Cook had just talked to her neighbor’s and had stepped onto her family’s property when Buddy began barking and approaching the officer, reaching the end of its chain.That’s when Hupp’s husband, Ryan Hupp, 25, began recording.
“If it wasn’t for him recording, there’d be nothing,” Hupp said.“He knew about police brutaty before I did. But that’s why the camera is shaking, because of the adrenaline. When they read those words ‘not guilty’, we were relieved. It’s hard to describe the feeling unless it’s actually happening to you. Justice is good, though.”

As Buddy approached and began barking at Cook, he pulled out his gun on the dog. And that’s when Hupp stood between the two.

The Professor and The Police

As I've made clear on many occasions in this space I'm not overly fond of the police. Just as a general rule if police are talking to you for any length of time something has probably gone wrong in your day. All else equal police are usually quicker to initiate and escalate aggressive action against Black citizens than they are against Caucasian ones whether it it be shooting people only armed with wallets or toy guns, choking people accused of selling loose cigarettes, arresting professors who are entering their own home or writing people tickets for incredibly obscure and vague traffic violations which only ever seem to be enforced against Black people. There is a problem with policing in this country. After saying that though police do have a job to do. They are necessary. I don't want police not to arrest anyone. Humans aren't saints. We never will be. I just want police to stop being needlessly violent, racist, brutal or bullying. When I first saw this story headline I was primed to find fault with the police officers' action. But after reading the story I couldn't see what the police did wrong. And believe me I looked.  A black Princeton professor is protesting her arrest during a traffic stop last week, saying she was mistreated because of her race by two white police officers who searched her and handcuffed her to a table. The police chief in Princeton, N.J., however, said the officers had followed department policy in arresting the professor, Imani Perry. The arrest of Dr. Perry, a professor of African-American studies, and the divergent views of how it was handled have reignited a debate on social media over police tactics and racial profiling. The arrest came after officers stopped Dr. Perry around 9:30 a.m. on Saturday for driving 67 miles per hour in a 45 m.p.h. zone, Capt. Nicholas K. Sutter, the department chief, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
While Dr. Perry said in a message posted online that she was arrested over “a single parking ticket,” Captain Sutter said that the officers who stopped her — a man and a woman — learned during a routine check that her driving privileges had been suspended and a warrant had been issued for her arrest over two unpaid parking violations from 2013. “The warrant commands the officer to take the person into custody,” Captain Sutter said. The officers searched, handcuffed and placed Dr. Perry into a squad car, the captain said. At the police station, she was handcuffed to a workstation and booked. After paying outstanding fines totaling $130, he said, she was released. Dr. Perry, who declined to comment via email on Tuesday, wrote about the episode on Twitter and Facebook on Monday, saying it had left her humiliated and frightened.
LINK

So I'm not sure what the good professor expected the police to do in this situation. If you are really doing 67 mph in a 45 mph zone chances are good that the police will notice that and stop you. If you're doing 22 mph above the speed limit, no matter what your race there is a good probability that you will receive a ticket. Once the police have stopped and identified you, if they discover that you're driving on a suspended license and have an outstanding arrest warrant, your travel plans are going to change. It's virtually a sure bet that they will ask you to (and by ask I mean make) accompany them to the nearest local police station or jail to get things sorted out. And being police they will likely use the imperative mood and imperious tones of voice that are guaranteed to rub you the wrong way. 
Now the original underlying parking tickets may well have been issued by racist cops looking to mess with black people for their own amusement or to meet revenue quotas. I wouldn't have been surprised at all. We've seen that sort of thing all over the US, most infamously in Ferguson. The tickets may have been ridiculous. But if you are a victim of such an occurrence your choice is to fight them in court or pay them. Doing neither will simply make matters worse as we saw in this situation. Maybe I'm missing something but from the article it appears that the police did what they were supposed to do. It is a fact that police routinely mistreat black people or other non-black people whom they perceive as being powerless. It is also a fact that in any given individual case you have to show some form of mistreatment. And I just didn't see that in this case, even predisposed as I am to expecting it. Of course maybe the police are lying. Maybe they were already profiling the professor. But if so it's not apparent from anything the professor says. There are very real cases of bias in the world. Mentioning this incident in relation to them trivializes more dangerous police encounters.  Again I understand that the professor did not like her run-in with the police. Most people don't. I certainly haven't.  But in this individual case I think some perspective is of use.

Illegal Search or Unreasonable Citizen: California Family

Below the break you will see a video of a family declining a vehicle search by some sort of California Agriculture inspector. They are later pulled over by California State Police and arrested. The proximate cause of the arrest was the driver's (Brad Feinman) refusal to accept a ticket or provide identification. Of course once the police broke the vehicle window and hauled the family out, they searched the vehicle anyway. This video was hard to believe. Not because of the escalation of force by police officers. That part was easy to believe, especially the part where the Caucasian-American police officers did not immediately shoot or beat or tase the Caucasian-American citizens. No what I didn't know is that apparently the State of California has taken the power upon itself to search, excuse me, inspect vehicles entering the state. This appears to me to be an end run around the Fourth Amendment. It's being done under the bailiwick of the Agricultural Inspection station but to me it doesn't really matter why it's being done or under what supposed authority it's being done. I think it's wrong and should not be tolerated. What sort of country are we living in if government authorities can just search your vehicle without warrant or probable cause anytime they want to do so. Now there are smarter people than I and people who know the law much better than I who read this blog. I would be interested in knowing what they thought of this. But ultimately it doesn't matter does it. If someone is asserting authority to search your vehicle merely because you're entering the state and/or look suspicious it seems to me that California is giving a huge middle finger to the Fourth Amendment and associated civil liberties. This, among other reasons, is why I think the security apparatus that has grown up around airline travel post 9-11 is so pernicious. There really is no reason why such (VIPER) procedures can't be put into place for travel by train, bus or as we saw here, automobile. 

The idea that the search is "voluntary" because you don't have to enter into California seems to me nonsensical. Why not just get rid of the Fourth Amendment entirely? After all, imagine how much crime the state could deter or prosecute if police officers could enter your house any time they wanted to search it. Would I have done what this man did?  Would you have? I don't like needless confrontation, but I hope that I would have the stones to stand up. But is it my right to endanger a wife and child? I'm positive that a higher level of state violence would have been used against me and mine MUCH earlier in the process. I'm as sure of that as I am that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. So who can say what I would have done. As the song says you have to know when to hold them AND know when to fold them. I think that the citizen decided not to comply with any of the requests because consent at any point would seem to reduce his chances of fighting it later in court. But again I am not a lawyer. Maybe my fears and irritation are unwarranted and these "inspections" are just fine legally and constitutionally. If so then we need to change the laws and the constitution. Anyway, check out the long video below and share your thoughts. You may think that the man is a jerk or a zealot. You may think that he's playing with fire. I don't say no to that. But something is wrong if any state or federal agent is asserting a right to search your car without some sort of probable cause. And it seems to me that's what's happening. The video starts in real time roughly at 1:32.

NYPD Assaults James Blake

As you may have heard former tennis star James Blake was wrongly detained by the NYPD when he was mistaken for a suspect in an identity theft ring. That in and of itself is not a big issue. Police and witnesses make mistakes all the time. No the big problem was that rather than being questioned first and THEN detained or arrested by a uniformed or otherwise identifiable NYPD police officer (which could have cleared up any misunderstanding immediately) James Blake was rushed by undercover police officer James Frascatore, grabbed by the neck, assaulted and forced to the ground. The officer did not identify himself. I'm not aware of the exact particulars of self-defense laws in NYC but presumably if strange men assault you in public you do have the right to defend yourself. If Blake had tried to defend himself of course the officer would have shot him and felt piously justified in doing so. Plenty of people, some with good intentions, many more with bad ones, give advice to black men on how to avoid unnecessary confrontations with police. Some of that advice is worthwhile. Most of it is utterly worthless. Here we have Blake literally minding his own business in Gotham before being assaulted by a public servant (who apparently has a track record of violent and abusive policing). There is nothing that Blake should or could have done differently to minimize his chances of being attacked. He was a black man and that was sufficient. Of course it's not just race. It's also class. Can you imagine anyone accusing a Caucasian American business owner or lawyer or other perceived/actual paid up member of the 1% of a non-violent crime and having the police execute a violent takedown? Of course not. Heck, even Mafia bosses with platoons of killers on call don't get treated like James Blake was treated. To add insult to injury the person who police thought was the initial suspect wasn't involved in the alleged crime of identity theft. The NYPD commissioner issued a mush mouthed apology but the union is defending Officer Frascatore. Just another day in the US. It is surreal. Once again, I must admit that Cliven Bundy and his supporters weren't wrong about everything. If the people tasked to enforce the law routinely brutalize people under protection of the law, what recourse does a citizen have?








James Blake Statement:

Just before noon on Wednesday, September 9, 2015, while I was standing on a sidewalk outside my hotel in midtown Manhattan waiting for a car to take me to the U.S. Open, a plainclothes New York City Police officer tackled me to the ground, handcuffed me, paraded me down a crowded sidewalk, and detained me for ten minutes before he and his four colleagues realized they had the wrong man.

The officer, who was apparently investigating a case of credit card fraud, did not identify himself as a member of law enforcement, ask my name, read me my rights, or in any way afford me the dignity and respect due every person who walks the streets of this country. And while I continue to believe the vast majority of our police officers are dedicated public servants who conduct themselves appropriately, I know that what happened to me is not uncommon. 

When this incident was reported in the news media, Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Bratton both called me to extend their personal apologies, and I greatly appreciate those gestures. But extending courtesy to a public figure mistreated by the police is not enough.As I told the Commissioner, I am determined to use my voice to turn this unfortunate incident into a catalyst for change in the relationship between the police and the public they serve. For that reason, I am calling upon the City of New York to make a significant financial commitment to improving that relationship, particularly in those neighborhoods where incidents of the type I experienced occur all too frequently. The Commissioner has agreed to meet with my representatives and me to discuss our ideas in that regard, and we very much look forward to that meeting.
Frascatore's History

Cop Assaults Teen Girl in McKinney Texas

All of the facts leading up to this incident are still up for debate. What's not up for debate are the apparently unprofessional, thuggish and dangerous actions of one of the police officers who responded. Knowing how police generally behave and their differing perceptions of threat based on race I'm not really too surprised by anything in the video, though I am angered. I really don't have a whole lot to add about this other than incidents such as these are precisely the reason that police officers ought to be better trained. But if someone is racist and hateful the level of training is meaningless. This is in many ways the historical and apparently current black experience in America in a nutshell. Blackness is considered criminal by definition when it's outside of its "place". In our (not so) post-racial America, black children, white children and hispanic children are apparently having a good time at a pool party. Apparently some white adults are put off by the numbers of black invitees or question whether they are all invitees.  A security guard (white?) starts to evict the black children who were apparently invited. One white woman, who evidently feels that black children should not be at that particular pool party, starts hurling racist insults. When she is called out on this by another black woman, she apparently initiates a physical assault. The police are called. Like most black people, young or old, would do, many of the black children decide that now would be a good time to depart the premises. After all the police are quite comfortable beating or shooting black people. Everyone knows that. What the video seems to show is that one police officer, upset at having fallen down chasing someone, decides to unload his bile on any black teen in the vicinity. He curses and insults them and then takes down a young teen girl, grinding her face in the ground and sitting on her. He also pulls his gun and points it at the children when they protest. These children were treated as if they had just slaughtered nine people. Oh wait, no they weren't. The bikers who actually killed people and exchanged gunshots with the police were treated better than unarmed children committing the felony crime of being black in an area where being black is illegal. The officer has been placed on administrative leave...

WASHINGTON -- When Miles Jai Thomas arrived at a party at the Craig Ranch North Community Pool in McKinney, Texas, on Friday night, the pool was open to everyone -- until a security guard showed up and removed black partygoers from the area. “Then he started making up rules to keep us out,” Thomas, 15, told The Huffington Post.

A white woman at the pool started making racist comments, Thomas said, such as telling black teens at the party to get used to the bars outside the pool because that’s all they were going to see. Grace Stone, 14, who is white, told BuzzFeed News that she and friends objected to an adult woman making racist comments to other teens at the party and that the woman turned violent. This is when, according to Thomas, a 19-year-old black woman told the belligerent white woman to stop fighting with the teenagers. The white woman called the black woman a “young b***h,” then walked up to her. After the young woman said her age out loud, the older woman punched her in the face. Another unidentified white woman jumped in as well before Thomas, who was recording the incident, and his friends went to break it up.

It was after this incident that the cops showed up and “started cursing and yelling at us,” Thomas said. He described an officer manhandling a young girl, as shown in this video embedded above. “So a cop grabbed her arm and flipped her to the ground after she and him were arguing about him cursing at us,” Thomas said. When two teens went toward the cop to help the girl, they were accused of sneaking up on the cop to attack. “So a cop yelled 'get those motherf*****s' and they chased [us] with guns out. That's why in the video I started running,” Thomas said. "I was scared because all I could think was, 'Don't shoot me,'" he said.

LINK

There are a few takeaways here, besides the obvious one that white police officers are often very quick to resort to force or the threat of force with black citizens of any age. If you haven't been living in a cave your whole life you already knew that. The really sad infuriating thing on display here is what the black children learned. They learned that just being in a "white" area when someone thinks you shouldn't be there can be hazardous to your health. They learned that the police really don't care about their constitutional right to assemble or use free speech. Being polite and respectable won't prevent you from being detained or arrested. And the children also learned that no adult will come to their aid. That last thing is a horrible lesson to learn. I don't see where the young woman committed any crime. And I certainly don't see where it was necessary for the cop to body slam her and sit on her. What would you do if that was your daughter, your sister, your wife, your mother, your girlfriend? 
Could you live with yourself if you did nothing? Or if you were the young woman being so treated could you ever look the same way again at the men in your life if they didn't do something? Of course the police would be very happy to shoot anyone they believed was even thinking about "interfering".  It's comforting to imagine that your loved ones would never be in that situation but that is not only foolish, but downright delusional. It's also tempting to believe that this is only a Texas problem but it's not. It's nationwide. But maybe I'm all wrong. Maybe the police were all in fear of their lives from the black kids (and apparently only the black kids), who after all may have had rifles and hand grenades stuffed in their swimwear. Of course, once again I look at the Cliven Bundy situation where police, faced with numerous men who had their own guns and weren't afraid to shoot back, somehow managed to show some restraint. There's probably a lesson to be learned there. 

Religious exceptionalism and the law

I am not religious but many people I deeply care about are. Even if everyone I loved, admired or respected were an atheist I would still think that common courtesy means that generally I am not going to go out of my way to insult someone's religious beliefs. For other personal and political reasons I even occasionally have some sympathy for religious people who feel that they are set upon by a government which is determined to drive all religion out of the public square or force religious business owners or individuals between a rock and a hard place where they must choose to violate religious beliefs or pay exorbitant fines. But I said some sympathy not a lot. As religious people, usually on the right, have fought back against what they see as government overreach by claiming religious exceptions to generally applicable laws, they have generally done so by citing Christian or occasionally Jewish doctrines. That's all well and good but this is a big country with lots of different religious traditions. What may be profoundly silly to someone of a Christian faith tradition may be a matter of serious import to someone of a non-Christian faith tradition. Many of the right-wing Christians who are seeking or have won religious exemptions to such things as birth control provisions or wish to allow government judges, magistrates and mayors to opt out of issuing marriage licenses to gay couples or who have the bright idea to limit marriage to religious people alone should remember that they aren't the only people to have religious objections to something that seems pretty cut and dry otherwise.

Case in point: in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn Heights, a woman named Malak Kazan was caught driving on a suspended license and then subsequently arrested. But when she was taken to booking things got interesting.
Before reading further you should know that the tri-country area of SE Michigan has the United States' largest grouping of people of Middle Eastern and Southwest Asian descent. It is not all odd to see women wearing hijab or to drive down the streets of certain neighborhoods and see Arabic script on billboards or storefronts. The population of Dearborn and Dearborn Heights is at least 1/3 or more of Middle Eastern descent, something that has caused some right-wing bigots commentators to refer to the general area as "Dearbornistan". It's also important to know that not every local person of Middle Eastern descent is Muslim. There are a lot of Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Maronites and so on. Anyhow Kazan was of the opinion that to remove her hair covering in the presence of an unrelated man was not only demeaning and degrading but unconstitutional. When she was forced to remove her hair covering she filed a federal lawsuit.

A Muslim woman filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing Dearborn Heights police of violating her constitutional rights by making her remove her Islamic head scarf after they arrested her for driving on a suspended license. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Detroit, asks for Dearborn Heights to "modify its current policy" so that Muslim women can wear Islamic head scarves during booking procedures. Malak Kazan of Dearborn Heights was pulled over by police in July on a traffic violation and then taken into custody on a traffic misdemeanor because of her suspended license, according to the lawsuit.

The male police officer then asked Kazan to remove her head scarf to take her booking photo, which usually requires no head coverings or hats. Kazan objected, saying her Islamic faith required her to cover her hair and neck in the presence of men who are not part of her immediate family, the lawsuit said.

LINK
Initially I was a little torn on this. There are people in prison who have successfully won the right to kosher or halal food or access to the religious books of their choice. There are Orthodox mohels who use their mouth to draw blood from newly circumcised baby boys. There are a handful of religious exemptions to PPACA. And so on. So what was the big deal right?

Now there are lawyers around this blog who could quote you all the relevant case history and Supreme Court decisions. Perhaps they will drop by and leave some more knowledge. But my interest was less with the legal specifics and more with common sense. After some more thought I don't see it as a horrible violation to have to remove a hair covering for a booking photo. The point of the booking photo is identification. It's not to humiliate you. It's something that anyone who is arrested will have to do. So, if everyone who's arrested has to remove head/hair coverings that could interfere with their identification I would not be in support of Kazan's lawsuit. There are however some people who see situations like these and look jealously at existing exemptions or special treatment given to other religions and ask, why should we assimilate. This case reminded me a little bit of another Muslim woman, one Sultana Freeman, who wanted to have her driver's license photo show her in a veil with only her eyes showing. Some things just won't work. I don't think we can chase all religion out of the public square. I doubt we can come up with bright line rules that automatically make the answers obvious whenever someone raises a religious objection to secular law. But I also think that there are some generally applicable laws and rules that must apply to everyone regardless of their religious beliefs. You get arrested; you take off your hair covering. You want a driver's license; you show your face. And if you're a state justice of the peace or magistrate and a same sex couple wants to get married, you marry them.

How do you see all of this?

Detroit Arrest: Police Brutality or Street Justice?

I am not overly fond of police. Usually when they are talking to you something has gone wrong with your day. But I must admit that they are necessary for society. Although I can honestly say they've never directly helped me much, we are all made safer when alleged or actual criminals are removed from the street. That's a police department's primary job responsibility: to apprehend such people. A local police task force apprehended and arrested a carjacker and felon named Andrew Jackson. The police may or may not have used excessive force in arresting the man. This story is attracting attention locally. I briefly read about it in the Detroit papers. But I didn't really start paying attention until driving home a few days ago when I listened to a rather heated discussion on the Mitch Albom radio show. Albom and his co-host Ken Brown (who is black) were mostly supporting the police, pointing out that the alleged criminal was armed and wasn't completely restrained during most of the use of force. Brown, who is a comedian with a penchant for hyperbole, exclaimed that he "wasn't marching for no criminal!". Numerous people called in to state that Albom and especially Brown were missing the point. The story discussion also lit up my Facebook feed and email accounts. Various friends and relatives, few of whom would ever be caught dead donating to policeman charity funds, took different sides on this issue. We don't and can't expect perfection from police. However, if you let things slide eventually you may wind up with infamous jails or prisons like LA County or Riker's Island where police and prison guards have felt free to abuse, beat, rape and even kill inmates, some of whom haven't even been found guilty yet. It's not the police officer's job to punish someone accused of a crime. Attacking someone after they are restrained is cowardly and evil. No good. 

But the accused apparently did have a gun on him before he was taken into custody. And police are most definitely trained and allowed to use appropriate force to protect themselves and complete the arrest. Force during the arrest can be ok; force after the arrest generally isn't. Unlike other cases we've discussed this situation apparently does not involve mistaken identity. A police officer did not decide to bully, harass or insult someone just because s/he can. Some people found karmic justice in watching a grown man who was a big bad wolf while allegedly terrorizing an unarmed grandmother, turn into a little sheep crying for Jesus when the police catch him. But everyone, even vicious criminals, deserves legal protection. Otherwise all we have is might makes right. Below the fold watch what happened during part of the arrest and read the thoughts of Mr. Jackson's (alleged) victim.

Grosse Pointe Park — Protesters Wednesday outside the headquarters of the Department of Public Safety questioned "whether excessive force was used" by area police officers videotaped hitting and kicking a carjacking suspect in Detroit.

"We are on a peace mission ... this is the kind of thing that can incite something," said Ron Scott, director of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, who was joined by a dozen other protesters.

The coalition called for criminal and civil charges plus the suspension of the officers from a multi-jurisdictional task force involved in the incident, which occurred Monday morning on Plainview, near McNichols and Evergreen.

The video of the arrest, which was recorded by Detroit resident Emma Craig on Monday on the city's northwest side and posted on Facebook, shows two officers beating the suspect identified as Andrew Jackson Jr. while apparently trying to handcuff him, and administering more blows after his hands were secured behind his back. According to Hiller, task force officers were tracking a vehicle that had been carjacked two hours earlier.

"This subject was a parole absconder wanted for an armed robbery in Detroit. He was armed with a handgun," Hiller said.

"The subject resisted arrest and in an attempt to restrain him an officer deployed a Taser," according to a police statement. "However, it failed to take effect due to the subject's heavy clothing. The subject continue(d) to reach for the area of his waist band and refused all orders to show his hands.

"He curled up in a ball and his right hand again went under his clothing. Fearing for their safety and those in the immediate area, an officer delivered a kick to the thigh area of the subject thus allowing the other officers the ability to arrest the subject. Located in his waist band was a loaded semi-automatic handgun."

LINK1

The victim in Monday's carjacking is telling what happened before any camera started rolling - and any cops started hitting and kicking an armed and dangerous man. The 55-year-old woman says her grand kids were in the car. She was standing just outside around 7:40 Monday morning near Greenfield and Fenkell.

"This is a dangerous felon who had a semi-automatic gun which was loaded, that he had put in my face and my children's face," the woman said. 
The victim had a broom to brush the heavy snow off her car, that's when she said a man came up to her with a gun and pointed it at her.
"He puts the gun in my face and says '(blank) give me your car and your purse, I'm robbing you,'" she said.

She told him she had no money and her grandsons were in the car.
"I'm screaming and yelling, 'Help help I'm being robbed,'" she said. "And he's telling me to shut the hell up and then he pointed the gun at my two grand kids." Boys, just 9 and 12 years old with the older child having special needs, were inside the car. "'Get your ass out of the car,' he just kept yelling and screaming," she said. Jackson fled in her car and GPS tracking led the police's Auto Theft Task Force to the suspect. 

But Jackson wasn't ready to give up. Armed and dangerous, he ran and police gave chase for a quarter mile before catching their suspect. Their officers' actions - kicking, hitting, the victim believes were totally justified based on what Jackson had just done to her family.

"I think they did a good job, maybe the officer's emotion got the best of him," she said. During the arrest as he was being struck, the suspect called out "Jesus." One of the officers said "Don't you dare" as he hit him.
The victim referred to the suspect's apparent cry for help from above.
"I'm like the officer," she said. "How dare you call on Jesus when you robbed somebody by gunpoint. Was he thinking of Jesus when he put a gun to my face and my grand kids' faces?"

LINK2

What's your take on this incident?

Disturbed Man Kills Two NYPD Officers: Blame Game Ensues

As you might have noticed (and I was planning on writing a separate post touching on this and still may later this week or next) there have been recent nationwide protests about the level of (often deadly) violence which US local police forces use against Black Americans, especially Black males, especially young and/or unarmed Black males. In the cases of the deaths of Michael Brown, John Crawford and Eric Garner, mostly white grand juries and/or prosecutors refused to charge the police with any crime at all. Some white supporters of police not only applaud and celebrate these no indictment outcomes but take to the media to lecture black people on their actual or perceived shortcomings and point out that in the big picture, police killings of citizens are relatively rare events. So quit crying and be happy you're living in America. Or something. The same people taking a phlegmatic view about police on citizen violence started singing a different tune when a disturbed and violent young man shot and killed two NYPD police officers, after shooting his girlfriend and before killing himself.

Two police officers sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn were shot at point-blank range and killed on Saturday afternoon by a man who, officials said, had traveled to the city from Baltimore vowing to kill officers. The suspect then committed suicide with the same gun, the authorities said. The officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were in the car near Myrtle and Tompkins Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant in the shadow of a tall housing project when the gunman, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, walked up to the passenger-side window and assumed a firing stance, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said. Mr. Brinsley shot several rounds into the heads and upper bodies of the officers, who never drew their weapons, the authorities said.

Suddenly the relatively rare incident of a citizen shooting and killing two police officers became the foreseeable outcome of "anti-police rhetoric" and "incendiary comments" made by various anti-police brutality protesters and such persons as President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and professional gadfly/MSNBC host Al Sharpton and probably any other black person to the left of Ben Carson. At least that is what former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Union leader Pat Lynch said.

To paraphrase and expand on what a friend on facebook pointed out recently, remember the meltdown the right-wing media and police unions had over the (alleged) murder of a Pennsylvania state trooper by right-winger Eric Frein? Remember how mad Giuliani and Sean Hannity got at their right wing drinking buddies for all the murderous anti-government and anti-police sentiment that presaged the murders of police officers by Cliven Bundy supporters Jerad and Amanda Miller? Remember how right-wing Congressman Steve King of Iowa harshly criticized the anti-tax/militia members of the right for setting the stage for the murderous actions of Joseph Stack?  Remember how conservatives were horrified about the murders committed by Fox News viewer Jim David Adkisson who felt compelled to murder Unitarians because they were liberal? Conservatives felt so despondent about this that they forced Fox News to reduce or eliminate its demonization of liberals. Right. Of course you don't remember any of that because none of it ever took place. Rather than condemn Stack, Congressman Steve King did all but say he sympathized with him and blamed the IRS for existing. By the standard which people like Giuliani or Congressman Peter King seek to apply to others they themselves have "blood on their hands". They would disagree with this. Their argument is of course weak. They seek to delegitimize all protest against police brutality and police misconduct. It's the same media playbook that conservatives used against MLK and others in the sixties. Giuliani is incapable of perceiving that such a thing as police misconduct exists. It's a blind spot that both he and several police officers seem to share. I remain amazed that such a bitterly malevolent person was ever elected to any office but that's an essay for another day.

It apparently has to be written out in bold letters but it is possible to protest against police brutality and murder of citizens without also cheering for the murder of police officers. And I think most decent Americans realize this. If I protest against racist police that doesn't automatically mean that I hate all white people or all police. That said, much as Malcolm X once got in hot water for saying that chickens coming home to roost was a certainty, it's important to realize that a system that does not provide a sense of justice will see more and more confrontations and killings between officers and citizens. If we don't want this (and who does?), all of us must work to weed out and punish the bad officers. If the man who murdered those officers hadn't killed himself it's a certainty that unlike police officers who have killed citizens, he would have been arrested, indicted and convicted. Giuliani is not going to dig up irrelevant dirt on the deceased officers as he did with unarmed Black men shot by police. No one is going to claim, as Donald Trump did with the vindicated Central Park Five, that these police weren't angels. No one is going to wonder if the police did anything to cause Mr. Brinsley to fear for his life and use justified force. So just as I don't think that the actions of Darren Wilson or Daniel Pantaleo mean that all officers are murderous goons, I don't think that protesting their brutality means you cheer Brinsley. I don't want cops shooting innocent people. I also don't want crazy people shooting cops. It's not an either/or situation. And whether Giuliani or Lynch or anyone else like protests or not they are lawful. I am sure that were a person like Giuliani to obtain greater power than he had he would eliminate protests altogether but fortunately this little amendment is still in effect. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What are your thoughts?

Highland Park Police Love Triangle

The town of Highland Park, Michigan is not really a suburb of Detroit as the entire town is within Detroit. It is almost smack dab center in Detroit. Although it is an independent municipality, it has more or less the same class and racial demographics as Detroit and many of the same financial and tax issues. Center Line is a suburb of Detroit though, it, like Highland Park is surrounded by a larger city, in this case Warren. Warren and Center Line have (changing) demographics which still remain quite different from those of Detroit and Highland Park although neither Warren nor Center Line is a rich area. Thus concludes the SE Michigan geography lesson. I mention that only to point out that no place has a monopoly on stupidity. Although nationally you might have heard of this story as "Detroit area" or "Detroit cops" apparently none of this took place in the City of Detroit proper. So thank goodness for small favors.

I won't judge anyone else's private proclivities. You put a camera in anyone's bedroom you might be surprised at what you find. All I will say is that when your private behavior causes you to have to pull guns on people with whom you were previously doing the do, perhaps you might want ask yourself if you are really making good decisions. Because I'm thinking you're not. Fortunately nobody in this story was shot though but that was mostly through dumb luck. Situations like this while possibly humorous because of the exposed private affairs are also important reminders that police are not necessarily any more worthy of respect than other people. Though as they are usually armed they can be more dangerous than other people. But police or not some things are just dumb. Stupid is as stupid does. Domestic violence knows no boundaries. Watch the video below the jump.

CENTER LINE, Mich. (WJBK) -

A love triangle involving two Highland Park police officers ended with an armed standoff, and one of the officers has been charged with trying to kill his wife and another woman.

The domestic drama began when former Highland Park Police Reserve Officer James Johnson's wife says she found a used condom in the trash last month. 

After the discovery, Vivian called Highland Park Officer Varee Roberson over to their Center Line house. She was angry James had been with yet another woman after the three of them had engaged in sexual activity together back in June. 

Fox 2 News Headlines

St. Paul Police Use Taser On Black Man For Minding His Own Business

Although this blog has discussed the issue quite often, over the past few weeks thanks to the events in Ferguson and elsewhere, there has been a great deal of media spotlight on the negative attention police give to black people, particularly black men. Whether it's a black man choked to death for allegedly selling unlicensed cigarettes or a black man shot and killed in Wal-Mart for considering purchasing a BB gun or a black woman brutally beaten for walking close to traffic it appears that police generally have a very low threshold for initiating and escalating violence against black people. Now we learn that in St. Paul, Minnesota back in January 2014 (the video was just released) the police tased and arrested a black man who refused to show them id. It is not necessarily a crime to refuse to show police id. Police can't demand id without some sort of "reasonable suspicion" that you're involved in criminal activity. Minnesota has declined to enact a "stop and identify" law. The police were originally called because the black man, one Chris Lollie, was sitting in a chair in a downtown skyway. A security guard claimed the chair was on private property and ordered Lollie away. Lollie left but apparently not as quickly as the security guard desired. When the video starts Lollie has already left the chair and is having a tense conversation with an officious female police officer. Lollie was waiting in the skyway (as he thought wrongly as it turned out) to pick up his children from daycare. Video below the jump.

When her male partner gets near the "conversation" becomes extremely threatening on the part of the police officers. Shortly afterwards Lollie is tased and arrested. Near the end you can hear the female police officer taunting him. The officer who tased Lollie told him that he wasn't his brother. He certainly got that right. When Lollie wants to know why he is being arrested the police tell him he'll find out. Lollie was charged with misdemeanor trespassing, disorderly conduct and obstructing legal process. The charges were thrown out because of the video. So once again we have a black man being abused and arrested not for anything he did (at least from what we can tell from the video) but because he did not give white police officers what they considered to be the proper level of shuffling deference. Too many police think that their job is to intimidate, subdue and assault. I think the job simply attracts too many authoritarian types. This sort of thing is exactly why there were groups like the African Blood Brotherhood or Deacons of Defense or Black Panthers. Police harassment of Black people is a serious problem. Unfortunately local municipalities, police unions and the courts have made it increasingly difficult to get bad police officers off the force let alone put them in prison. Lollie says that he is going to file an internal affairs complaint and is considering a lawsuit. Good luck with that. This is not something that can be fixed with retraining. This is something that needs to have a very clear "You can't DO that" tattooed into police officers' heads.  I am starting to think that Cliven Bundy had the right idea of how to deal with cops. Of course Huey P. Newton already showed us that. 

Story Link