A few days ago, I wrote about the leader of the Hip-Hop Caucus getting his leg broken by Capitol Police while he was stopped in his attempt to attend the House Committee hearing with Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker. I put the blame squarely on Pres. Bush. A couple commenters pointed out to me what I already knew - the Capitol Police are controlled by the Speaker's Office, therefore if anyone should be blamed, it should be Nancy Pelosi.
Today, at an event at the University of Florida featuring Sen. John Kerry, a young man was tasered by police. In eight days, we have had two serious incidents involving police in different jurisdiction employing violent tactics wholly unrelated either to the alleged offense or the arrested individual's supposed refusal to co-operate. Despite Marshall Art's views expressed in the comment section to the first linked post above, no one is under any legal compunction to obey any order from a police officer - which is why deadly force rules are so stringent. When an individual is standing in line to attend a Congressional hearing, or asking a question of a politician who refuses to answer it, it seems to me that being tackled by five police officers resulting in a broken leg, or being tasered are just a bit excessive.
I do believe laying this at the feet of George Bush is also excessive. I think that we are in a period where our officials of either party are growing intolerant of dissent; the forces of the state, therefore, are called in to silence those who have the temerity to demand answers to questions that make those officials uncomfortable (in Kerry's defense, he has demanded the release of the young man and that all charges be dropped). This is a very scary time; these are the reactions of an authoritarian regime, not a Republic in which all people enjoy the freedom not just of speech, but to petition their representatives for a redress of grievances, and the freedom of assembly. The unleashed police, no longer tethered by the strong cord of the Constitution to consideration of the rights and privileges of citizens (a generation of court rulings whittling away our Constitutional rights seems to be working . . .), are reacting in the best traditions of thugs everywhere, from the Iranian SAVAK to the former Soviet Union.
Of course, none of this is exactly new. In the late 1960's, Hoover's FBI executed an illegal warrant on the home of several Black Panther's killing one outright. No one was charged with a crime. In South Dakota, the FBI set up Leonard Peltier on charges of murdering a pair of undercover agents, and even after all the evidence showed he could not have committed the crime, he still languishes in jail. A former student of my father's, who spent fifteen years as a New York State Police Detective, while applying to the Central Intelligence Agency, admitted on his application that he had lied under oath, planted evidence, and committed other outrages against criminal defendants over the course of his career. He is now in prison, and multiple innocent individuals have been freed. These outrages are the tip of a huge iceberg of the abuse of citizens on the part of various police agencies. With the fear and loathing of the citizens now evident by the political class, these have now spread to silencing dissent.
It is Giuliani time in the whole country, it seems. At least for the police.
Virtual Tin Cup
