San Bernadino police are under criticism today after the release of this video from a cellphone appears to show officers beating a suspect with a baton without cause. The man, Darren Johnson, 43, is a barber shop owner who was allegedly held without charge for two days and was never booked in the jail system. He says that he was also denied a telephone call to counsel. The department has been previously sued for keeping suspects “on ice” but holding them without booking or access to counsel.
An officer appears to strike Johnson while another officer holds him. Johnson was on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle when he stopped at a 7-11 convenience store. Police say that he was stopped for running a stop sign and a traffic signal.
They also say that he was in possession of cocaine.
The failure to book or charge Johnson magnify the problems on this video. Even if he assaulted an officer, the level of force appears excessive and the denial of constitutional rights are likely to trigger a civil lawsuit. Given the prior “ice” cases, the department hardly needs additional litigation over these practices.
For the story, click here.
You honestly have a point there, I have never thought about it like it like that before.
You make it sound so intriguing. I am going to have to inquire about this more!
Lottakatz,
Ultimately the problem with Communists (all factions) was they were as people rigid and humorless. It was all politics, all the time. Truth be told the regular Communist Party People (CP) were the ones who could loosen up a bit, but they were far too Machievelian to be fully trusted. The pathetic part of this was they had two answers to everything: Organize! and/or Strike!
They weren’t successful in the former and they would urge the latter at the most inauspicious times. To us hippies at the time they seemd silly, pains in the ass, who tried to hijack the cultural revolution that was occuring, without understanding the nature of it. My Union incidentally held two of the first strikes by a municipal lablor union in the U.S. They first was a great success because it was based on solid worker’s principles.
the second a failure because it was for esoteric principles and pushed by the Marxist element of the Union.
As for AFScME in general I can’t speak. The AFSCME District Council 37 in New York, which my union joined, was run by a man named Victor Gotbaum. Who became a power in NYC and after awhile was more interested in being a part of the power establishment, than operating on true Union principals. He was not elected by a membership vote and so stayed in power for far too long.
Mike S, too left for the Marxists; ROFLOL.
That’s the entire problem with the Communists, navel-gazing political pointillism. I have an opinion of Communists that is not learned and that is the fault of Communists. Communism is the Baptists or Baskin-Robbins, too many darn flavors all demanding your attention and allegiance.
I could never get through a book on Communist political theory for two reasons: they put me to sleep with boredom and they never had a plan beyond ‘first we have a revolution and replace the Tsarists with a new central government that acts like the Tzar’s and then we kill a bazillion of our own people. Oh, we also give them all 2 pair of shoes because that was the buy-in price for the revolution, two pair of shoes foe everyone.
No detail in the platform and no good working models. All form and philosophy and endless refinement of the theory into competing and deadly ‘sects’ depending on what day it was and who was in power.
Don’t get me wrong, my heart bleeds for a nation that can be lured into revolution with the promise of shoes- my ghod, what kind of life must the common Russian must have lived when most working people and farmers couldn’t afford shoes? It’s easy to love the people, they are as ghod made them:
http://www.anapsid.org/schedrin/plotkin.html
I recall reading about AFSCME in the early 70’s and they talked a great game, I had a favorable opinion of them from what I read about them. Obviously, anybody can write anything and fail in the execution but I’m sorry to hear from an insider that your union was degraded by its affiliation with AFSCME and the Marxists/Trotskyite/navel-gazing crowed. My union also fell into disrepair and we worked very hard to turn it around so I know you had to have invested a lot of your person into your attempt to gain some control of the situation and rehabilitate it. All you can do is fight the good fight.
Capitalism and Socialism are not mutually exclusive, that’s Communism and Capitalism. At its most basic it’s just a matter of broadening the definition of who can be part of the ownership class. Ideally, if I recall my political theory/definitions correctly the wealth-ownership class that has wealthy owners that do not work is the Bourgeoisie. There’s nothing wrong with a political or economic system that turns the majority of the working class into the Bourgeoisie or the Petite Bourgeoisie, the people on the rung of the ladder just below the Bourgeoisie that are shop owners, small business and industry owners and that do work.
lottakatz:
if the workers own the company, they become the “capitalists”
Byron
Lottakatz: “It would have been a Socialist move but so what?”
I must be missing something or I am not the capitalist I thought I was.
* LOL, you’re not.
I think that would have been a great thing to do. If that is your idea of socialism bring it on.
* For the workers to own the means and methods of production is the bedrock of Socialist philosophy. The people that do the work get to control the means and methods and reap the rewards and determine how those rewards and any enhanced capital will be distributed. The fly in the ointment of course is how do you get the means and methods of production? If you lived in a Socialist Democracy the government could be mandated to provide the initial capital through loans or straight up investments.
Socialism has a lot going for it. Theoretically, in a Democratic Socialist political system there are many political parties, each representing many citizen driven points of view and they function in a Parliamentary fashion, like most of Europe does. I think that’s just dandy.
Your politicians are your citizen’s lobbyists in a direct way. It cuts out the middle man and keeps one or two parties from having to choose among competing needs within its own structure. Access to policy making power at the highest levels is more direct, diffused among many groups and more consensus driven. The likelihood of a ‘party of “No”‘ is diminished. It sounds pretty good about now.
Lottakatz,
SSEU in NYC. Things started to go downhill when we joined AFSCME in 1972. Every faction of communist had a cadre in the Union, as did the whole range of socialists. I was a Hippy/Yippy back then but they all tried to recruit me. I never found Marx interesting but beyond that they weren’t people that I’d want to party with. Everthing was too serious to ever let one’s hair down.
When I ran for President it was against the then President, his Ist Vice President and the Trotskyite faction. I was 25 years old, a great speaker, good looking and a “stono hippy to boot.”
We had many debates and I bore the brunt of the Trotskyite attacks “Running dog of Imperialism” and stuff like that. They knew they couldn’t win, but also couldn’t afford to be beaten for 3rd place by me. I did fairly well with more than 10% of the votes, the Trotskyite who were better funded and organised finished fourth and forever hated me. The other Marxist factions too thought I wqas too liberal. Good times.
Mike S,
NAGE perchance or …? (Rhetorical, you needn’t answer, I know where my money is bet based the work history you have disclosed.)
There were some good unions representing Federal and other public sector employees during those days. AFSCME, NTEU, the postal unions and PATCO (such cajones THEY had!) and I spent almost my entire Federal career- a long, ugly slog that, as a union officer. A Charter member of the NFFE Local we founded too. NFEE was the first Federal union and agitated the Civil Service Retirement System into existence. I was honored to be a NFFE member but they ran into an extended bad patch and it virtually destroyed them at the National level.
NFFE became over run by bureaucrats and self dealing parasites so our local engineered a change of affiliation. We took a look at our options, community of interest etc. and it came down to NAGE- a ‘new’ union, and AFGE. AFGE was attractive for its size, longevity and experience but I liked NAGE because it was new and had the reputation of being a totally radical/militant union. (Back then ‘militant’ was code for ‘black’ and NAGE had as I recall, a majorly black officer corps. Not a problem for me.
My arguing points to affiliate with NAGE were basic: how can a union be TOO radical, it’s a unions JOB to be radical and the more militant the Better. Well, AFGE won the vote. The had the failings of all big unions (Or any large organization more to the point.) but I enjoyed most of my association with them.
🙂 LOL. Srsly, if you were a PATCO activist you would go (in my mind) from a good writer, solid critical thinker and pleasure to share a blog with to a minor ghod but that’s not where my money is bet. 🙂
Odd, sad, tangential note: I recall reading very recently that Crystal Sutton (“Norma Rae”) died of cancer and had to go for months without chemo and other critically needed health care because her insurance company wouldn’t pay for it. WOULD. NOT. PAY. FOR. IT. Unions took up collections for her treatment.
I got to Ms. Sutton by thinking fondly that my union days were good days and I got to develop a good, intermittent association with one of my personal labor heroes, Joe Cannavo, the union organizer portrayed in that movie trying to organize the JP Stevens textile plant Ms. Sutton worked at.
My mother worked briefly in a textile plant in Georgia and her brother, a Pastor, helped in an organizing attempt. The organizers and a small group of workers were met at the plant gates with State police, hired thugs, machine guns on the roof of the plant and a beat down that took weeks in a cell (after being loaded unconscious into a truck and driven 200 miles away) to recover from. Being kept ‘on ice’ is a law enforcement tactic I was made aware of while very young listening to family history.
*WoW, a comment fragment that has relevance to the professor’s actual posting, how’d that happen?
*MrPlow: “How is keeping suspects “on ice” different from kidnapping?”
*It’s not.
Short break while I find that obit. It was heartbreaking, enraging and worthy of a link.
In salient part:
“We should be thankful that Crystal Lee Sutton’s struggle to help the working poor has been immortalized in a film as great as Norma Rae for generations to enjoy and be inspired by. Though the struggle to unionize America’s workers (and pass the Employee Free Choice Act) is still being fought, maybe now we need a film dedicated to the working sick, who are forced to endure needless suffering because an insurance company won’t cover their treatment, and the working scared, who are one accident or illness away from financial collapse. Or we could pass real health care reform. That would be the best tribute of all.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-kim/rethinking-emnorma-raeem_b_287552.html
—-
And long overdue.
Lottakatz:
“It would have been a Socialist move but so what?”
I must be missing something or I am not the capitalist I thought I was. IMHO it would have been better for the employees to take over Chrysler and would have been the plan that I would have backed had I been able to be involved.
I think that would have been a great thing to do. If that is your idea of socialism bring it on. Sounds more like good old fashioned capitalism the way it ought to be done.
Had they done that in 1979 my guess is that Chrysler would be one of the biggest, if not the biggest car manufacturer in the world and there would be a lot of union guys living in Grosse Point and many more shareholders very happy in their retirement.