--by Sebastian
Yesterday we were treated to yet another video of an armed officer using what appears to be excessive force against someone the officer is arresting. (10 News )This case is murkier than some, because from the video it is still possible that the man is actually resisting arrest in some ways. The man is still face first on the ground and definitely not kicking or punching, so the beating initially strikes me as execessive force.
This particular instance contains a number of elements which are even more troubling for society as a whole than a typical excessive force case.
The person who took the video is a parolee, meaning that the police can search his house for evidence of illegal activity without a warrant, which they did one day after he shot the video. But initial reports strongly suggest that police seized the cell phone in an attempt to keep the video from getting out. Searching a parolee's house for evidence of police wrongdoing, and then seizing it to keep it from getting out is an inversion of the purpose of being able to search a parolee's house without a warrant. The police are supposed to have that power to protect the public from the parolee's illegal behavior, not their own.
Within two days, the police had arrested Jose Guzman, the person who shot the video, for violating his parole. He reports that they set him up for aiding and abetting an unrelated illegal immigrant co-worker by not participating in an investigation by calling the worker and asking him where he was. Parolees are required to cooperate with ongoing investigations, but they are not required to participate in investigations in that manner.
This story is still in the early stages of development. Facts may come to light which make the police response look better. But at the moment it looks like they are using excessive force against the crime of keeping them accountable. That wouldn't be good for any of us.
Could you first describe what kind of parolee the man is? It makes some difference whether he is an immigrant in the country on parole or whether he is a convict on parole, although the law enforcement is clearly doing wrongly in any case. As far as I see from the news, it seems the man is a paroled convict.
Posted by: Lurker | January 16, 2014 at 12:08 PM
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130923
There is a widening strain of, vindictive, macho (cowardly) beat-the-sh*t-out-of-just-about-anyone running through the American Psycho, among officialdom, specially outfitted by Homeland Thugurity, and among the citizenry, which is gaining momentum and will lead to no "good for any of us".
It's at the borders in various guises, not just outright savagery, as in Sebastian's example:
/11543424624/border-patrols-horrific-treatment-medias-producer-family-friends-highlights-lack-accountability-dhs.shtml
It's this:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-war-on-mentally-ill-escalates.html
It's the Stalinist, Nazi, Pol Potian treatment of the mentally ill in South Carolina prisons I cited in a recent thread.
It's shooting a guy dead in a movie theater for flinging popcorn in your direction, because ... concealed carry, stand your ground NRA tough guy original intent horsesh*t.
It's the Governor of New Jersey's, whatchamacallit, modus operandi.
It's blue-eyed killer Paul Ryan's suave cheerfulness about cutting your foodstamps.
It's the Texas right-wing wag who went on at length the other day about shooting (the mortar is his preferred weapon) Californians who enter Texas and make like they plan to stay, hardi-har-har-har.
It has saturated the discourse from, it seems to me, a certain political class. I wonder who?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/13/chris-christie-feminized-fox-news-masculine-bully_n_4589119.html
Roger Ailes' has some juicy quotes about what he suggests doing to other people he doesn't like cited in a new biography of his life, which started out at the hands of a violent predator of a father.
But, don't you know, it's we pansy, politically correct liberals who are causing all the trouble.
"What we oughta do is ...." is how every sentence starts with these bullies. It's got to be tough love.
No.
My sentences start with "what I'm gonna do back at ya".
No love.
Posted by: Countme-In | January 16, 2014 at 12:50 PM
Disregard that first link. Who knows where that came from.
Posted by: Countme-In | January 16, 2014 at 12:53 PM
Lurker, it appears that he is a convict on parole. I suspect if he were an immigrant on parole he would have been deported
Posted by: Sebastian H | January 16, 2014 at 04:09 PM
If he were here legally, anyway...
Cops beating people up for no good reason is just a symptom of our ongoing transformation into a police state, along with panopticon style surveillance, and the conversion of civilian police into a branch of the military.
But, what can you expect of a state which is losing it's legitimacy? As legitimacy ebbs, it has to be replaced with something, and fear is the easiest thing to replace it with.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | January 16, 2014 at 08:21 PM
Caveat, the 'loss of legitimacy' is at least in part engineered and not JUST a result of federal misbehaviour (and there is lots of misbehaviour on the state level too). No excuse for the abuse though, you have my agreement there.
Posted by: Hartmut | January 17, 2014 at 01:46 AM
It's only "engineered" in the sense that people who held political viewpoints from which government actions were illegitimate did not volunteer to STFU and let the opposing view prevail without a fight. Instead, they argued their case, and are proving increasingly persuasive.
Not without the government's own help, of course.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | January 17, 2014 at 05:47 AM
I see a lot of deliberate deligitimizing that is purely partisan and selfish in nature and I expect the ususal 180° turn once the branches change hands again.
And if I had to choose between the evil of state and federal overreach, my vote would go to federal since at the moment I see more direct abuse from some state governments that require federal remedies. Could easily change in the future again though.
But, as you are aware of, I am not a US citizen nor resident nor do I desire to become one. I still prefer my side of the big pond (without being blind to the very real problems we have over here too, some of them imported from the US, some homegrown).
Posted by: Hartmut | January 17, 2014 at 07:17 AM
I see a lot of deliberate deligitimizing that is purely partisan and selfish in nature
ditto.
"Freedom ™" is, today, a marketing slogan of the GOP. it's slapped on whatever it is the GOP wants the base to feel upset about that day.
there's a reason everybody fell out of their chair in astonishment over the sheer irony inherent in the name of the company who generated that WV chemical spill.
Posted by: cleek | January 17, 2014 at 08:03 AM
I've got this picture of you holding the Bill of Rights gingerly by one corner. "Eww! It's got freedom all over it!"
The government is hoovering everyone's metadata, and if you think it's just metadata, you're in the market for a bridge.
The government is treating everywhere within 100 miles of the border, (I spend most of my life within 100 miles of the border.) as "the border", and a search without suspicion zone.
Cops are beating people up, and using eavesdropping laws to prosecute anyone who documents it.
Trillion dollar bills are passed in a hurry without time for anybody to learn what's in them.
You don't need a deliberate effort to deligitimize this government, you need an affirmative effort to not notice that it's delegitimizing itself.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | January 18, 2014 at 04:26 PM
being the wu li master of cognitive skill that i am, i find myself in agreement both with cleek and brett.
except for the part about falling out of my chair in astonishment over the irony of 'freedom industries'. i would have been shocked had they been named anything other than that.
'freedom' is a branding label now. once a word has been used to turn fried potatoes into a 'whose side are you on' issue, it's pretty much point and laugh time.
Posted by: russell | January 18, 2014 at 06:05 PM
will trade freedom for a bridge.....
Posted by: bobbyp | January 18, 2014 at 07:38 PM
Brett, you say the government is delegitimizing itself, but it's not clear whether you mean federal government only, or state as well.
For example, you conflate the federal and state governments when you refer to "cops ... beating people up" and to "the government ... treating everywhere within 100 miles of the border ... as 'the border', and a search without suspicion zone." Though there are no doubt some federal police somewhere guilty of brutality, most cops are state or local law enforcement, and I suspect a good number of border checkpoints are run by state law enforcement as well (or at least run by ICE/CBP in conjunction with them).
Secondly, the government (federal, state, whatever) is delegitimizing itself compared to what? Compared to the good old days? Pick a time period in history you consider the good old days, and you know damn well there was some heinous stuff going on at the hands of government or with its blessing. Slavery, Jim Crow segregation, Trail of Tears, women denied the right to vote, black people denied the right to vote, Japanese internment, McCarthy hearings, blacklisting, COINTELPRO, MKULTRA, etc.
I just wonder what halcyon era of civil liberties protection it is you yearn for. It may never have existed.
Posted by: Julian | January 18, 2014 at 10:59 PM
The government is treating everywhere within 100 miles of the border, (I spend most of my life within 100 miles of the border.) as "the border", and a search without suspicion zone.
This is a complete lie. What the law actually says is that in places within 100 miles of the border, where there is no secured border crossing, the border patrol can stop and investigate you if they have strong reason to believe that you've just crossed the border. For anyone who's ever been near long stretches of the border where people constantly cross back and forth with no official border crossing, this is just common sense and perfectly reasonable. If the BP observe you crossing a border without an official border crossing station, they can stop you and give you the equivalent of a border crossing inspection. What's the alternative? Build a giant wall across the 5,000 mile border with Canada and limit crossings to a handful of manned border stations and cripple our economy?
See this for more details.
Posted by: Turbulence | January 18, 2014 at 11:23 PM
OK, first off, I don't think anybody is proposing to build a wall down the middle of the great lakes, so we can save a bit there.
Secondly, given our population and economy, having each citizen pay for one and a half INCHS of border wall would appear to be economical. Heck, I'll kick in for three inches, just to take the burden off you. (Israel's border wall, sufficient for a country with neighbors at war with them, cost about $45 an inch. So the cost wouldn't exactly cripple the economy.)
Third, there's no reason to think border enforcement becomes less expensive if you stretch it out over 100 miles from the border, instead of concentrating it at an adequate number of actual border crossings. Why would the latter take more resources? It should be more efficient, not less.
Fourth, it would have the advantage of NOT subjecting everyone within some arbitrarily large distance of the border to a reduction in their right to be free of unreasonable searches.
And finally, it's not "have strong reason", it's, "are willing to claim strong reason". Based on accounts I've seen, all the reason they actually need is your being within that 100 miles, and a "hunch".
Maybe next year they'll decide they need 200 miles...
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | January 19, 2014 at 07:52 AM
Gotta go with Brett on this one. Not least because I live in a state where there are lots of folks who "look like they might have just come across the border." But whose ancestors were here before ever the first Anglo got to California. In short, they are even less immigrants than most of the other citizens here . . . but still can get hassled for essentially no reason at all.
Posted by: wj | January 19, 2014 at 09:34 AM
at $45 an inch, a wall across the almost 2,000 miles of US - Mexico border comes in at a little more than $5.5 billion, with a B.
so, it will not cripple the economy, but it's also not cheap.
about a half million people cross the border illegally, per annum. that number is way down from a few years ago, and declines each year. how many fewer illegal crossings would there be if we built such a fence? how many fewer border agents would be we need?
there are already a few hundred miles of physical barrier in place at the border. they slow illegal crossings down at those places, and to some degree shift illegal crossings to other places, but they don't prevent illegal crossings, even in places where there are physical barriers.
what are the possible downsides of running a physical barrier for almost 2,000 miles, across a variety of desert and mountain terrains, and also through the middle of a lot of cities and towns?
what effect would such a barrier have on the 350 million legal crossings that occur each year, and on the revenue created (on both sides of the border) from the tourism and trade that that represents?
there's an ROI analysis to be done here that I'm not seeing in your comment.
Posted by: russell | January 19, 2014 at 10:02 AM
"at $45 an inch, a wall across the almost 2,000 miles of US - Mexico border comes in at a little more than $5.5 billion, with a B."
IOW, less than we spend each year on potato chips? This is a big country, all the numbers are going to be big, which is why I broke it down on a per capita basis.
The "ROI" is not having much of the country in a 4th amendment free zone. I'd pay a lot more than $45 for that.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | January 19, 2014 at 10:12 AM
at $45 an inch, a wall across the almost 2,000 miles of US - Mexico border comes in at a little more than $5.5 billion, with a B.
Personally, I would prefer black helicopters.
Posted by: bobbyp | January 19, 2014 at 10:17 AM
I think we can probably do it for a *little* less than Israel has to spend, as, while Mexico is pretty bad, it's not the Gaza strip.
So, everybody, how much would you be willing to pay to make that 100 miles into 100 feet? Bobby? Russell?
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | January 19, 2014 at 10:30 AM
Did you really mean "make that 100 miles into 100 feet"?? Because if you did mean, get rid of a lot of fence, I'd be willing to pay for that. But to build more fence? Not so much.
Posted by: wj | January 19, 2014 at 10:34 AM
IOW, less than we spend each year on potato chips? This is a big country, all the numbers are going to be big, which is why I broke it down on a per capita basis.
Conversely, it's almost half of the entire annual US Customs and Border Protection budget (around $12B).
And I suspect your comment about "it's a big country, all the numbers are going to be big" will come back to haunt you here on ObWi.
Interesting point about potato chips, however, I leave it to you to draw whatever conclusions you want to draw from that.
So, everybody, how much would you be willing to pay to make that 100 miles into 100 feet?
Restoring respect for the 4th Amendment is not something you're going to be able to buy. Not for the price of a fence, anyway.
Illegal border crossings have dropped significantly in the last few years. If that's your concern, you might want to consider why that is, and what physical barriers had to do with it.
If your concern is restoring a respect for the 4th Amendment, there is no fence that is going to do anything about that.
If you - as many do - think there's some kind of magic wand you are going to be able to wave to make illegal immigration stop - whether it's a fence, or drones, or another 20,000 agents roaming the desert, or whatever - you're living in cloud cuckoo land.
The reason people come here illegally is because they want to work, and they can (or think they can) do better here than at home. It's basic economic pressure, and there is no fence, or drone, or border security army, that is going to be an effective counter to that over 2,000 miles of border.
If you build a fence, they'll climb over it.
My question is, if we built the fence, how much of the labor force would be illegals.
Posted by: russell | January 19, 2014 at 11:26 AM
Howsa bout we wall in Texas too, except to allow McTX, Charles WT and a few others unlimited passage to and fro.
A cage thrown over the whole of South Carolina would be worth its weight on potato chips, or kale chips, for the health-conscious.
Did Israel spend its own money on the wall around Gaza or did we pay for it?
It would funny if we built this wall on the Mexican border and the private construction firms who built it had to be sanctioned and fined for hiring illegal immigrants to build it.
I'm willing to pay $0 to stop random searches 100 miles from the border, which is exactly what I paid before 9/11, when they didn't occur so much.
Repeal that part, and other parts, for that matter, of the Homeland Security legislation.
What do we do about these small municipalities in the "heartland, far from any international border, which conduct illegal search and seizures of folks who get nabbed for speeding or a broken brake light?
Build little walls around their police departments?
Folks want law and order. Well, you've got it.
Posted by: Countme-In | January 19, 2014 at 11:48 AM
Hey, I'll put up my $45 for an inch, but only on the condition that I get to have it painted whatever color I want
Posted by: Snarki, child of Loki | January 19, 2014 at 01:53 PM
"Illegal border crossings have dropped significantly in the last few years. If that's your concern, you might want to consider why that is, and what physical barriers had to do with it."
Nothing, but I don't consider a sucky economy an acceptable way of reducing illegal immigration.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | January 19, 2014 at 01:59 PM
Nothing
Thank you.
Posted by: russell | January 19, 2014 at 02:08 PM
Think nothing of it, I'd be pretty stupid to claim that barriers that didn't get built had anything to do with it. As I said, a sucky economy may suppress illegal immigration, but it's a lousy way to do it.
Of course, securing the borders wouldn't guarantee that the government would stop violating the 4th amendment, but it would take away one excuse, and is worth doing on it's own.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | January 19, 2014 at 03:17 PM
Even if the border got secured with Berlin Wall 3.1 or the equivalent of the North Korea/South Korea border it would imo make no difference as far as political demagogues are concerned. They would start to claim that there are thousands of tunnels hundreds of miles long, that the border guards are totally infiltrated by secret brownie lovers that let the illegals through, that there is a mass transit by submarine along the coasts etc. etc.
Apart from that, a lot (maybe even a majority) of the 'illegals' enter the country legally in the open and just do not return when their visa run out. Wait for the calls to tag everyone with a device a la Escape from N.Y. that will kill at that date unless removed South of the border by authorities.
Posted by: Hartmut | January 20, 2014 at 01:36 AM