Trouble in the twin cities - police have arrested, detained, and harassed many independent journalists covering the protest on the RNC, including Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!You can read more about what happened here and here.
Free Press has just put out an action alert urging people to take action:
Stop the Arrests of Journalists. Sign the Letter. Police in St. Paul arrested several journalists during protests of the Republican National Convention, including Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and an AP photographer as they were covering the demonstrations. Police also raided a meeting of the video journalists' group I-Witness with firearms drawn to arrest independent media, bloggers and videomakers. Arresting and detaining journalists for doing their jobs is a gross violation of free speech and freedom of the press. Journalists must be free to do their jobs without intimidation. Please click here to demand that press intimidation in the twin cities ceases immediately, and that charges against the arrested journalists are dropped.
Mayor of the Berwyn Heights community in Maryland, Cheye Calvo, found himself Tuesday evening on the floor of his house with his hands behind his back, wearing nothing but boxers and socks, with his two beloved dogs’ bloody carcasses lying lifeless next to him for hours. The first question that pops into my mind after hearing a description like this is what kind of an evil criminally minded lunatic would go to such disgustingly brutal lengths to torture someone? And what could have Mayor Calvo possibly done that inspired such an attack?
The answer, surprisingly enough, is that it was no criminal at all, at least not according to the government. In fact, it was the Prince George's County Police Department who broke into Mayor Calvo’s house during a no-knock drug raid, shot his two Labrador Retrievers, and interrogated Mayor Calvo and his mother-in-law for hours about a package that had been intercepted in Arizona addressed to the mayor’s wife containing 32 pounds of marijuana. After raiding the house with a SWAT team, and finding absolutely nothing, police released the Calvos, coming out with no arrests. The Calvo family did nothing wrong, and denies knowing anything about the drugs.
The “War on Drugs” has killed yet another two innocent victims. Every day, people’s lives are wrongfully lost to this unnecessary and counterproductive battle.
University of Maryland’s Students for Sensible Drug Policy chapter will be holding a memorial service for the dogs, Chase and Payton, on Saturday at 5pm at Lake Artemesia. We will be inviting the community and surrounding areas to bring their dogs to the event, where we will be giving out ribbons to the dogs and owners to show our solidarity with the Calvos, have a moment of silence for the dogs, and take some time to speak about other incidents in which innocent dogs’ lives have been lost to the “War on Drugs”. More information about the event can be found here.
UMD-SSDP sends our most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the Calvo family for their loss, and pledges to do their part in preventing such violent police tactics in the future.
Last night, students at Wesleyan University in Connecticut celebrated the end of finals as students usually do --with a big party. But this time 10 or more police cars showed up to try to disperse the crowd. The students didn't leave and what ensued involved pepper spray bullets, attack dogs, taser guns, and rubber bullets. Five students were arrested. Some students had to be hospitalized.
Full disclosure, I graduated from Wesleyan last year and have first-hand experience with some of the tactics the police use to break-up parties. There is certainly enough blame to go around. Students definitely become stubborn and don't want to give into authority. Some are disrespectful (and outright dangerous) to law enforcement officers and have an unjust sense of entitlement. Others have been racially targeted by police officers and attacked unfairly by overzealous cops with pepper spray, dogs, and taser guns. The police often seem intent on confrontation. I'm not sure why it was necessary to call in the police when the students were not bothering anyone prior to the arrival of the police officers. (The party in question was on a side street with houses only occupied by students).
Many questions come out of this incident that fit into a larger context:
I went down to City Hall and filed a complaint against the Olympia Police Department for their inciting the crowd to riot on Valentine's Day at Evergreen State College.
A new video posted by the Geoduck Student Union shows the Olympia Police ignoring both chain of command and rules of engagement policies. These policies are there to prevent riots from forming out of peaceful demonstrations. Their negligence and stupid bravado caused the event to escalate needlessly putting officers and students in danger.
I stated that the Thurston County officers at the car who never felt threatened enough to use crowd control actions were engaged in the process of a peaceful resolution. The Evergreen policewoman had announced to the crowd that she would let him go, after being advised that that would be the best solution, and was in the process of getting his name and contact information.
The police on the scene first, and therefore in command of the situation, gave no indication that they approved or condoned the other officers coming in and using force. The police on the outside of the circle did not have a strategically limited position like the cops inside the circle making their use of force seem unwarranted and dangerous to the officers surrounded.
You get what you give. What goes around comes around. As the call, so is the echo. All these sayings come from traditional wisdom. That wisdom guides us in how we treat the people in our community. If we look at our own lives history often we can see this is true. Unfortunately the police are determined to seek retribution beyond what is fair. Unless we stop them, rationality and wisdom will be defeated by vengeance and abuse of power.
The Olympian states, “Physically damaging or disabling an emergency vehicle constitutes first-degree malicious mischief, a Class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine.”
Historically, challenges to power have been met with fury and retribution in orders of magnitude larger than what could be considered fair and just. One destroyed cop car is not equal to ten years in jail served by people used as scapegoats. The police officers will receive no punishment for beating and dousing the public, yet again, with pepper spray, sending one student to the hospital with bruised ribs. Instead they will receive over time pay, which will continue to increase the costs of the incident.
A police car remains flipped over and destroyed behind the Evergreen State College gym this morning. It is a silent reminder of an infamous Valentine's night. It is important that we try and make some sense of what happened and why. What made hundreds of students surrounding a cop car start chanting for the release of a black man in the back of the vehicle? What made the chanting and blockading become pepper-spray and broken bottles?
The majority won’t look very far for the answers to these questions. Most administrators, faculty, staff, students, media and police will take certain stances that are predictable and simple. Their reactions will be based in stereotypes. Unless we reject these answers as insufficient, valuable understanding will be lost.
A better understanding of why students sat covering their swollen eyes unable to breath and cops were forced into retreating away from a myriad of thrown projectiles can be discovered in a historical context. Olympia passed a law that effectively banishes the homeless from downtown. Police downtown increase their arrests and harassment for frivolous crimes like jay walking. Evergreeners were maliciously brutalized at the Port of Olympia protests by cops earlier this winter. All these are local issues that make this campus upset.
On a larger level students are fed up with a war in Iraq led by a president they hate. This causes a legitimate sense of powerlessness over their government. Issues like global warming and a rapidly recessing economy portend towards hopelessness about their future. These, along with mounting school loans, are common worries of college students everywhere in America. Here at Evergreen these troubles have started to lead towards action.
The Iraqi government ordered the country’s policewomen to turn in their guns so they can be distributed to male officers—a move that undermines U.S. efforts to increase women’s participation in civil service in Iraq.
In addition to, you know, depriving gainfully employed women of meaningful jobs and being generally discriminatory, the elimination of female officers poses serious security and procedural problems.
Without policewomen, [Brig. Gen. David] Phillips said, there will be no officers to search female suspects, even though women have joined the ranks of suicide bombers in Iraq. Last week, a female bomber killed at least 16 people north of Baghdad, at least the fifth such attack in Iraq this year.
Another U.S. adviser said that forcing out female officers will hamper investigation of crimes such as rape, which stigmatizes women in Iraq, because few victims feel comfortable reporting it to men.
When questioned about the plan, an Iraqi ministry official responded, “Females are taken care of by men in this country. They are not out there being police officers.” Not anymore, anyway.
Yesterday, a student was tasered at a John Kerry speech in Gainesville, FL. Like the tasering at a UCLA library last year, it was also caught on camera:
The other day, I went to the city to get my Burritoville fix. As I was walking along 2nd Avenue, I noticed something; in the wake of rising gas prices, why the hell are the cab companies STILL using the blocky leviathan Ford Crown Victoria.
The Ford CV is ranked at a very paltry 17 city/25 highway. However, since EPA estimates are not reliable, these cabs tend to get about 10 mpg. Here's the solution, USE THE TOYOTA PRIUS!!!!
The Prius utilizes Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive system, in which a gas engine assists an electric motor and battery system in cruising and accelerating, and the electric motor acts alone in coasting and low speeds, the battery is charged via a combination of the kinetic energy of the turning of the wheels, braking, and maybe even a little bit of the gas engine. The result, a car that actually gets better mileage on the highway then the city.
One of the major arguments for using the Crown Vic as a city taxi cab is that it is large, roomy, and can handle the constant acceleration, deceleration, and strain that is part of taxi driving. However, the Prius has almost as much legroom, headroom, and interior space as the Crown Vic, has only a one second gap in 0-60, and the Prius has 335 ft-lbs of torque compared to the Crown Vic's 275.
Not only would the cabs be able to go further on a tank of gas, but it would also cut down emissions, an important issue in a very population dense area, and would actually cost the companies less in initial investment as well as maintenance (the Prius actually costs LESS than the Crown Victoria).
But why not stop there!!!! Several jurisdictions in Florida and Ontario are actually using the Prius for POLICE USE. The Toyota Prius would be perfect as a regular patrol vehicle for the NYPD, since speeds are much lower and a big engine is not necessary to simply patrol town. Its also much safer too, with snow on the ground, the rear-wheel drivetrain of the FCV lends itself to skids, something the driver couldn't afford in an area with a lot of foot and car traffic. With front-wheel drive, the cabbies and police would be much safer!!!!!!
So, I believe it is time for our cities and towns to switch their fleets to hybrids whenever it is possible and pick the right car for the job, because not only does it cut down on emissions and resource use, it also can save the taxpayers money.
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