Take a look at this video. The news of theses young fellers dancing inside the Jefferson Memorial and their subsequent arrest is cause for a boatload of commentaries in the Youtube page about the police state and lack of freedoms.
Now I ask you, instead of them young fellers, you had Westboro Baptist Church pulling their crap inside the Jefferson Monument, how many of the same commenters would be demanding their heads to be cut and placed on spikes around the memorial?
And my opinion, the kids were just plain assholes interrupting everybody else enjoyment and time spent in there.
All the good folks should have rushed the rent a cops and handcuffed them all together.
Except Park Police is Fed LEO, not rent-a-cops.
I’m inclined to agree with the arrestees. Looks like abuse of LEO power to me. Violation of the 4th amendment and, given the way the officers were behaving, I’m inclined to call violation of the 6th as well.
We’ve also got a body throw and a chokehold at 2:00. Given the officer was actively giving the man in the white shirt a request and the man was being belligerent, the throw is probably acceptable, but grabbing somebody by the throat is potentially lethal and should be reserved for when they’re actively trying to harm someone.
The only thing that really puzzles me is the fact that none of the officers tried to confiscate anybody’s cameras. That’s like… the first thing police usually do when they decide to overstep their bounds, meaning there’s probably more going on than the video shows.
Seriously? Geez. As for Westboro..I don’t advocate for their arrest for anything anymore. just their extermination
More info here:
http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2011/06/national-park-service-responds-dancing-thomas-jefferson-memorial8251
The dancers were looking for a “showdown” and found one…… š
Yeah. That Rosa Parks chick shoulda been choked out, too. She was just asking for trouble.
Divemedic, setting aside from the fact that Rosa Parks wasn’t here and that this had nothing to do with race or civil rights, please tell us how you would handle these people if you were a police officer tasked with removing them from this place and they refused to just leave because you told them to. Sometimes force has to be used. This was one of those instances (because it was what Code Pink and Kokesh wanted) and the bare minimum was used here. No one got hurt and the judges in a very anti-police city sided with the police in this particular case.
Not sure which faction I am the most displeased with.
To be fair the guy’s girlfriend wasn’t black and didn’t belong to him.
OK, light-hearted dig at President Jefferson aside:
Jefferson would have agreed with NONE of this, and probably would have drawn his flintlock pistol at this bullshit.
Jefferson was known for jailing Federalists who criticized him and his administration in print, and he tried–and failed–to have Samuel Chase, a federalist and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, impeached and removed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for nothing more than disagreeing with Jefferson on a few issues too many. He was a big fan of free speech academically, but in actual practice…not so much.
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Like I just said over at Weer’d Beard’s place, I know this case very well indeed.
Every one of the people arrested there were agitators from Code Pink who went to the memorial as a group specifically to violate the regulations and provoke a law enforcement response. None of them went peacefully or cooperated because they wanted force to be used against them for the purposes of a lawsuit
The first woman that you see there is Medea Benjamin herself, just back from Gaza, where she was arrested for protesting the Israeli military. The first guy who got taken to the floor was taken down because his pal ran up and tried to pull him away from the police officer. The third one who got taken down (white shirt and sunglasses) was Adam Kokesh himself, dishonorably discharged ex-Marine turned professional protestor.
Every one of these people showed up there on this day three or four years ago with the express intent of causing trouble and getting arrested. They advertised it in advance as such and dared the Park Service to try to stop them. As it was, knowing the context behind this short video, I think that they were handled with commendable restraint. The courts felt the same way as their lawsuits against the Park Service and the officers involved were all tossed right out of one of the most liberal courts in America.
Screw Code Pink and screw Adam Kokesh. This was good and proper police work and people need to know the whole story, not just the inflammatory bits that Kokesh is peddling.
Purely as a vet that has dealt with Code Pink…
Not enough night stick.
Yes, I know that would be wrong……..