Loss of Privacy

Not sure I like the inclusion of Nazi references in the video, but, overall, it’s a good video.

When tasers and pepper spray were first introduced into the American police arsenal, everyone was reassured that they would cut down on police shootings. Instead, they are being used as a bullying tactic for cuffing a suspect. The use of tasers and pepper spray has risen in the last decade as police officers are either too lazy or no longer trained in subduing suspects. The result is a police force that is free to exact extra judicial punishment against American citizens exercising their constitutional rights. Though this is the job of the courts, the police have continued to act almost with impunity.

We have seen this attitude in action in the deplorable acts of the police at UC-Davis. We also saw the same abuse by the police in Seattle, which is currently under federal investigation for charges of violence and racial profiling. Dorli Rainey, an 84-year old protester was pepper sprayed by the police.

Rainey said she was on a downtown bus when she heard helicopters and thought, “Oh boy, I’d better go show solidarity with New York.” Occupy Seattle protesters had gathered Tuesday evening following police actions in New York City that cleared a Manhattan park of people there.

The Seattle activists were blocking downtown streets. Rainey said police told the group they had to move.

“They picked up their bicycles and started shoving them at us and confining us in a very small place and they started to pepper spray,” she said.

The police, however, didn’t even attempt to arrest anyone, nor did they really try to push back the protesters. Their first thought was to pepper spray everyone.

The police here are acting as nothing more than thugs. The police tell people to move and then give them no time to move before they start corralling the people into a small area. Once that’s done, the police feel free to start pepper spraying people. This is not how law enforcement is supposed to work. This is how thugs and bullies behave.

Dorli, however, took the pepper spraying incident in stride.

“It’s a gruesome picture, I’m really not that bad looking,” Rainey said in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press.

“I’m pretty tough, I guess.”

It is becoming abundantly clear that the police are out of control in the United States and far too many people in positions of power continue to allow the police to act as bullies instead of upholding the law. If the police can justify pepper spraying an 84-year old because they feared for their lives, then Americans can look forward to even more egregious acts of violence from the police. The police will continue to hide behind their arsenal of weapons while those in power who could stop it, will allow the 99% to continue to be mistreated and abused.

61-year-old Roger Anthony was riding his bicycle when he was shot with a stun gun.

Scotland Neck Police Chief Joe Williams said they received a call Monday night about a man who fell off of his bicycle and injured himself in the parking lot of the BB&T bank, 1001 Main St. The caller was concerned that the man was drunk.

When Officer John Turner arrived, he saw Roger Anthony pedaling away along 10th Street. He followed Anthony in his patrol car, briefly put on his sirens and lights and yelled out of the window for him to stop, but Anthony continued to ride away, police said.

Williams said Turner then saw Anthony take something out his pocket and put it into his mouth. At that time, Turner got out of the car and yelled for Anthony to stop. When Anthony didn’t stop, the officer used a stun gun on him, causing him to fall off of his bike.

Anthony was transported to Pitt County Memorial Hospital, where he was declared brain dead, his sister Gladys Freeman said. He was taken off of life support on Tuesday.

Freeman said her brother was disabled, suffered from seizures and had trouble hearing. She said he was riding his bike home from her house on Sunday night. Anthony lived alone in an independent living community.

Roger Anthony posed no threat, yet the police felt that using a taser was the best course of action.

From Albuquerque:

A parking garage surveillance video shows a former Albuquerque police officer kicking a suspected car thief several times while another officer holds him down.

After the beating, the video taken Feb. 13 appears to shows the officers giving each other belly bumps.

This incident comes after the Albuquerque Police Department faces heat for 20 officer-involved shootings and amid calls for a Justice Department probe.

Bob O’Grady being arrested in the San Diego Civic Center Plaza for laying inside of his sleeping bag to stay warm while a group of non-violent occupiers from San Diego, Los Angeles, Irvine, Encinitas, and other transplants from various locations across the US pow-wow under an erected U.S. flag in the heart of the plaza; in celebration of Veteran’s Day. SDPD uses excessive force to apprehend Bob, a SDPD officer uses a choking technique I never knew was legal in the continuum of force ladder. That must come after using a closed fist to assault the suspect in the face.

From OccupyCal, the police tell the protesters that the grass is closed.

At about 11:30 a.m. yesterday, a police officer told me and about eight other students that, and I quote, “the grass is closed.” We were going to sit under a tree and discuss things, and two police officers were watching us vigilantly to make sure we didn’t suddenly do something violent like try to put up tents. As we moved towards the tree, the first police officer stepped up and informed us that we could not walk from the broad concrete steps of Sproul Hall, where about a hundred people were sitting and talking, and sit on the grassy area just to the north of it. “The grass is closed,” she said.

Students often eat lunch on this stretch of grass, yet, at this particular moment, the police decided that it was now off limits to the students, simply because they had the power to say so.

To make things more interesting, it immediately transpired that the other police officer had, in fact, already given them permission to sit on the grass. And in an instant, the arbitrariness of the rule was made evident and undeniable.

I said to her, in as level and direct a tone as I could manage, “This is why we don’t trust you.” And she again elected to say nothing. She didn’t have to. The truth of power, in this situation, is that the policy is what the police will use their force to enforce. They don’t have to have a legitimate reason, nor are they embarrassed when it is shown that the “grass is closed” only because someone with authority said so. And the grass only became open because someone with more authority said so. Such people are not to be trusted.

These are not abstractions or “power” as a theoretical concept. This was power made frighteningly manifest, on the bodies of human beings who did not obey a police order to get off the grass, the very exact same grass I was talking about earlier.

At UC Berkeley, the police physically assaulted several protesters.

Celeste Langan, a campus associate professor of English and one of the protesters arrested Wednesday afternoon, said in an email that she knew that what she was doing by participating in the human chain was a form of nonviolent resistance, knew that she was disobeying the police order to disperse and knew that her participation made her subject to arrest. But, she said, she expected the police would arrest the protesters “in a similarly non-violent manner.”

“Rather than take my wrist or arm, the police grabbed me by my hair and yanked me forward to the ground, where I was told to lie on my stomach and was handcuffed,” Langan said in the email. “They could have taken the time to arrest us for refusal to disperse without violence, but instead seem to have been instructed to get to the tents as quickly as possible. Since the tents posed no immediate threat to public safety, their haste and level of force were unwarranted.”

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau later sent out an email stating that, because the protesters were linked together, it was not considered a non-violent protest and the police were justified by their actions.

The protesters knew there was a good chance they would be arrested and, since they were non-violent, they felt they would be arrested in a non-violent way as well. Things, however, turned out much differently than they had expected.

For UC Berkeley graduate student Alex Barnard, the most disempowering moment of Wednesday night was not when he was repeatedly hit with a police baton, cracking one of his ribs. Instead, the most disturbing moment of his experience came afterward, when he says an officer told him he had “no rights.”

According to Barnard, who was arrested along 31 others as part of Wednesday night’s Occupy Cal demonstration, after he was handcuffed with a zip tie and taken into Sproul Hall, a police officer asked him for identifying information. Rather than immediately answering, Barnard said he asked the officer about his rights and when he would be allowed to speak to a lawyer. It was then that the officer told him he had no rights and, after Barnard disputed the statement, said he would be recorded as “uncooperative” on his police forms, according to Barnard.

“You didn’t have a voice,” Barnard said.

According to UCPD Capt. Margo Bennett, the identification process Barnard described is completely different from any kind of interview or interrogation process and is not involved with the right to have an attorney present. She said she was not aware of the exchange described by Barnard but said it is not the kind of exchange the department wants officers and arrestees to have.

You don’t have any rights. You aren’t supposed to talk with the police. Just do whatever they tell you. The important thing to remember is that, even though the police tell you that you have no rights, you do. You need to know what they are before you get into a situation like this and do not let the police intimidate you. If you are arrested, there are rights that go with it, despite the power abuse from the police who say otherwise. The 1% doesn’t want you there and they are more than happy to allow the police to behave in this manner so long as the police are protecting them.