Thursday, September 20, 2007
Kerry and dickheads and Tasers, oh my!
Some readers are none too pleased with my professed lack of sympathy with carefully-choreographed Taser victim Andrew Meyer, so let me clarify my position.
Did Meyer really deserve to get Tasered for what he did? Probably not. Did the cops over-react? Probably. Am I shedding any tears over Meyer's beatdown at the hands of some of UF's finest? I slept just fine last night, thanks.
See, there's a difference between accepting that someone is "technically" in the right, while still being willing to suggest that they really, really had it coming to them.
If you walk into your neighbourhood biker bar with a t-shirt that reads, "Harley riders suck dick," well, that is your right, of course. Free speech, free expression, that sort of thing. And when they find you out in the parking lot later with a exhaust pipe inserted where it wouldn't do you the least bit of good, you can argue all you want about how that was your "right" and, hey, I'd be the first one to technically agree with you while pointing out that what you did was seriously boneheaded and I just can't feel a whole lot sorry.
Similarly, I couldn't possibly argue that Meyer had every constitutional right to yap his face off the way he did. But when you're being escorted out by four burly law enforcement officials, at least one of whom has 50,000 volts strapped to his holster, then it's a really bad idea to be physically fighting back in support of those constitutional rights. At times like that, you go quietly and argue your case later at a safe distance from big guys with blunt objects that they can whap you or electrocute you with.
There's being "right," and there's being "stupid." And, sometimes, being right just isn't enough of a defense for being stupid.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
There's also the matter of law enforcement officers being charged with keeping the peace. It's possible ( though based on what I've seen in the videos, witness statements and police reports ) that the organizers of the event overreacted to Meyer's lack of civility.
Regardless it was a private event that you had to buy tickets for. It wasn't some rally in the park that anybody's allowed to show up. The rules are basically set by the organizers of the event. In Meyer's case it's no different than you or I inviting someone over to our house to have a party and then having him shove your guests around and act obnoxious. As the person who owns the house (or in this case organizes the event) you are well within your rights to have someone removed for ANY reason - let alone when he's being an obnoxious asshole.
But Meyer's wasn't tasered for being an obnoxious asshole. He was tasered because despite having 5-6 cops escorting him out and later holding him on the ground ... he was punching and kicking at the cops. I don't know Canadian law or legal precedent but down here you are not allowed to assault police officers. It's part of the dues you have to pay in order to live in a society where a cop doesn't have to check with the locals before coming in to rescue you from the guy that's beating the shit out of you. Police are obligated to protect not only the citizenry but themselves so when they tell you to stop struggling and you try to punch one of them they are well within their rights to taser your ass into submission.
Six different police officers have bruises and cuts because of Meyers struggling and kicking. At least one was punched. Then he was warned twice that if he didn't cooperate he'd be tasered and STILL tried to struggle. If you want to fight against injustice that's fine but you don't do it when a two hundred pound officer has you in a join lock with a taser to your chest.
I think in cutting off his mic and ordering him removed from the event the organizers may have overreacted a little. But the tasering was entirely the fault of Meyers.
Meyers was a belligerent, bullying, impatient asshole who set the whole thing up as a publicity stunt to draw attention to himself. That much is pretty reasonably clear. That in an of itself doesn't merit a tasering. Punching a police officer or kicking them in the process of an arrest does.
Meyers deserved what he got as far as I can tell and if I was the cop arresting him and he punched me or kicked me I would have tasered him too.
Six different police officers have bruises and cuts because of Meyers struggling and kicking.
Nonsense. The charges against him don't bear this out in the slightest. In fact, one of the dumb cops stated that he was to be charged with "inciting a riot."
Nope, a guy got mouthy at a public meeting on a university campus. He ran over his time at the mic. Horrors! I've never seen that happen before! And so six Gestapo-types drag him away and then torture him with the latest little torture-toy that cops both here in Canada and the US like to use--so much more sophisticated than the ol' cattle-prod.
The guy was asking questions of a politician, fercrissake, and the uniforms jumped on him. And the anesthetized students for the most part just sat there and let this goonery happen, or even applauded. Reminds me of Germany in the 1930s.
I'm amazed CC would say the guy was only technically in the right. He was entirely in the right, unless university campuses down in Jeb Bush's Flawrida are now to be regarded as correctional facilities.
So yesterday, it was OK that officers tazered Meyers.
Today it isn't?
See, from the way you and your cohorts are trying to rationalize this whole thing, you'd almost think he told the mother of a dead soldier to fuck off, or something.
You mean like when they dragged Cindy Sheehan out of the capitol during the State of the Union Address a couple of years ago because they didn't like her T-Shirt? I'm sure in the course of violating her rights no one around the Senate told her to fuck off or anything rude like that. I guess Dick Cheney was busy. They just dragged her out in handcuffs...she's probably lucky she didn't "fall down the stairs" a few times.
Post a Comment