Heil Hitler! Errr, I mean Obama! (damn, I’m getting my terminology ALL mixed up today.

Signed
Very concerned European citizen

Did the title grabs your attention? Get you to thinking? What ever your race please just think about how a 92 year old black woman must of thought as 39 bullets ended her life! In the safty of her home ……SO SHE THOUGHT HOME!…Young and old blacks are murder and arrested by cops over and over in American. The treatment of blacks in America is one of the highest disrespect and Ms. Johnson murder is prove of that.Of course, in this day and age, we all know that there are children who need to be handcuffed, children who commit horrific crimes, children with no idea of right and wrong, no concern for the welfare of others. Even children who murder others in cold blood, like the white kids in the Columbine killings or Kip Kinkel . So when we read that police handcuffed a child, the natural reaction is to wonder what the kid was doing. Maybe there was a weapon involved, or perhaps other students or bystanders were at risk.
There is a subset of cases involving police handcuffing black children that does not fit the greatest country on earth theme. A black kindergarten student arrested for a temper tantrum. A little black boy fingerprinted for being on a dirt bike. A black girl handcuffed and detained because she had a pair of scissors in her backpack. Is this just unavoidable backlash as the terrible crimes committed by a few children naturally alter our evaluation of the danger posed by any child? Or is something else going on? Is this setting the stage to murder a 92 year old black woman?

You can always hook up with Richard Friedman better Known as Kinky and The Texas Jew Boys. He is taking a run for Governor against Perry and Hutchinson.

It was good to see you today.

GWLSM,
That’s what you were doing, that’s what I was doing and that’s what most of us were doing. I believe today in the idealistic nobility we had. Unfortunately, at the time I was prominent in arguably most radical union in the US. I got to see close up that while most of us saw this as an exercise in idealism, there were those who were using it for their own ego driven purposes. Dave Dellinger, for instance was a good man, Abby Hofman not as much and Jerry Rubin in it for himself, as a for instance. I personally knew Marxists of all stripes, from Communist Party, to Maoists on to Trotskyites. There were also Young People’s Socialist League types, Fabian Socialists and Progressive Socialists. Many of these types lived for confrontation, which they saw as a recruiting tool and they pushed the rest of us hippies and yippies with Machiavellian plans to assist in our radicalization. While they had the look and the lingo, they were less idealists, than they were political animals on the make. In that sense they bore little difference, except in
dogma, from the people we opposed.

Certainly Johnson screwed up and was wrong in prosecuting the War, but his administration was by no means fascist as we were pushed to believe. Then came Nixon and with it a mild fascist patina, that would have gotten worse were it not for the man’s own paranoia.

I remember those days. quite clearly. we were not inciting riots we wee engaged in peaceful protest, demonstrations to end an unjust war. we thought our activities were justified by the senseless loss of American and Vietnamese lives. I can’t see how any of that created the police response in Chicago or the murders at Kent State. our words should not have resulted in that kind of response and if you remember the police in Chicago were not isolated in their hatred and fear of the youth movement. we were harassed everywhere we went. we were refused service in restaurants, harassed by police for blowing bubbles in the park and flying kites on the beach for playing music on the streets. okay so we might have danced topless in Golden Gate park but hell we did look good
and then one day, it all ended. we realized that getting in out VW busses to go to peace marches was no different than getting in mustangs to go to pep rallies. kitty genovese was murdered while people stood and watched. phil ochs was right.

Chris,
what you say is true and I think we agree that it all must be put into perspective. My confreres in the Anti-War Movement kept talking about the Johnson Administration being fascist and then came the Chicago Police riot, Nixon and the killings at Kent State. Sometimes you bring on what you’re trying to prevent by intemperate words. Today we are seeing that with President Obama, by some who are calling him both socialist and fascist without really knowing what those words mean. We see others trying to de-legitimize his Presidency and I fear that this will really bring out the crazies who will want to kill him..

Despite all that and still believing that 95% of the LEO’s are people trying to do good jobs, I think it is important to speak out against incidents like these to ensure that the wrong message isn’t being sent to the other 95%.

morte,
Accepting for argument’s sake the truth of your version, don’t you understand that a taser can kill a person? Would her death have been worth the satisfaction of having her sign the ticket? Is that what you want our laws to be? He could have arrested her, without the taser and without breaking bones. He tasered her to show her a lesson and that’s why he should be fired. Police are Public Servants, not the public’s bosses.
95% of America’s LEO’s would not have tasered her. The other 5% should find new occupations.

The US is becoming a police state – “land of the free” is a joke.

In Texas, don’t tempt em. They might just oblige you. I think that they have had a run in before and this time it got out of hand. I tell ya, we have some tamer Mustangs in Texas than some women. Oh yeah.

I believe that in Texas, it is not illegal to refuse to sign a traffic ticket, but at that point, the officer has the option of arresting the person and booking them into the local jail for the offense. This way, the defendant can not say they never recieved the ticket.

I have lived in Texas for many years, and have had encounters with cops from local constables to State Troopers. The local guys are all pretty predictably unsophisticated, to put it diplomatically, but the State Troopers are some of the best cops in the country. Stand-up guys, every last one of them.

That will be quite difficult with the Neanderthals that are deemed officers.

Funny pun, if it wasn’t the millionth typo on the blawg of one of the most respected law professors.

I’m telling you JT, let me be your spelling checker/windowdresser. You don’t have to pay me much, damnit

You wrote: this is about power and control. The Officer was pissed that she wouldn’t sign the ticket, probably tried to bully her into doing so and then decided to arbitrarily punish her. He should be fired because unless she reached for a gun, there were no extenuating circumstances.

This is exactly the kind of think I’d expect to happen in Texas where there are probably people still doing time for a joint they had in their pocket in 1968 and said something like “F the Pigs”

Men who do stuff like this are simply neanderthals who run out of ideas fast. They have no repertoire after “sign this” and reaching for the weapon of choice. They probably had parents who had no repertoire between “put than down right now” and beating their kids.

Parents who beat their kids breed children who become cops with tasers that they use on seniors and who then go home, kick their dogs and beat their children. They may be bigger and stronger but they are not smarter than the people that they bully

and at the end of the day, there is no legal requirement that says a person has to sign a traffic ticket.

is there?

today I called 911 when I saw 2 small kids apparently abandoned in a parked car. They were alone in the car when I went into the grocery store and were still alone in the car when I came out 30 minutes later. The police were very nice about sending a patrol car. I hope no one was tasered.

The Taser was originally designed as a non lethal way of knocking down a dangerous suspect without having to kill him with a sidearm. In theory, it is a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, many police officers have decided that the Taser is really a compliance tool, and have been using it as such. It is a new technology that will require a higher level of sophistication from the officers who are given Tasers to take out on the beat.

How different is the abuse and torture of citizens with a taser from the tactics of mutaween religious police who punish violators of Sharia law in places like Afghanistan? While Americans may not need to cower in front of religious vice squads, they increasingly must bow and submit to the whims of the State and its Agents.

Neither are free people.

Taser da bastids!

Somehow it seems to be a microcosm for armed-to-the-teeth nations who destroy smaller nations who do not exactly conform.

http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-house-prophylactics-for-muslims.html

See I told JT. That’s riotous.

I have a couple in my family, too.

Humor aside, McCain had better be glad it wasn’t my grandmother he decided was so dangerous she needed to be shocked into submission for a signature. He’d be seeking medical extraction for his taser. He’d need medical help for the “inserted sideways” problem.