A Look at Our Growing Police State from Four Angles

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Image courtesy HuffPo

I grew up in a time when you respected authorities but didn’t place blind trust in them. The government was still reeling from Watergate and Vietnam, which instantly led many to question anything said by those in power. The downside was that soldiers returning from Vietnam who were themselves victims of a draft were lumped in and treated poorly (my kids have a hard time connecting with Rambo’s treatment, but I remember it all too well from people in my town growing up). When Ronald Reagan took office, a new wave of pride and positivity in being an American replaced the so-called ‘malaise’ of the ’70s. During that decade, more positive feelings became associated with soldiers and police – at least among young people.

Over the last decade, there has been a bizarre change in the wake of the September 11th attacks – an attitude that questioning authority is un-American. There have been successful campaigns to demonize those who question wars or wiretapping or torture policies or imprisonment rather than do anything to stop the actions themselves.

In the last month or so, we have seen a groundswell of protest against the growing institutionalization of disparity in our country, the so-called ‘Occupy’ movement. What started as ‘Occupy Wall Street’ – and unfortunately became a place where anyone dressed well was harassed. Local businesses were forced to lay off workers and even shut down – it has become a global force of non-violent protests in cities on campuses.

While many have no idea exactly what these protestors want (as opposed to the ‘lucid’ tea party protests calling for the government to ‘get out of their lives’ while simultaneously legislating a certain religion and morality), one thing is clear – they have shown what has happened over the last decade of increased authoritarian power.

We have seen a great disparity in news coverage – particularly with Fox News, whose viewers are statistically less informed than those who don’t watch the news and who recently called pepper spray a ‘food product.’ We have ‘citizen journalism’ and smartphones and YouTube to thank for that. The same people showed the ‘massive Iraqi protests’ as only having hundreds of attendees have now debunked much of the corporate propaganda spread about the Occupy protests.

Sadly we have also seen the dark side of spreading power – brutal treatment of non-violent protests. The script has repeated itself repeatedly in recent weeks – protestors line up and stand arm-in-arm on a walkway or around a university common area and perhaps chant slogans. Police show up, ask them to disperse, and upon their refusal, stating a right to peaceful assembly (which doesn’t trump the university rights to regulate such assembly on campus, by the way), the police almost immediately resort to batons and pepper spray.

There is video after video of these incidents, but perhaps none as brazen as the one this weekend from the University of California at Davis. Students had a ‘sit-in,’ and when the chancellor ordered campus police to disperse, the police came in force in full riot gear, immediately started pepper spraying, and then forcibly dispersed the crowd. These kids violated a campus order, but there is clearly traffic around the area, indicating that they were not ‘blocking’ anything – in other words, the response was out of line with the offense.

A similar event is depicted above, where we see a young woman pepper-sprayed in the face after already having a baton turned on her while standing in peaceful protest.

Nichols said a policewoman jabbed her in the ribs with a baton and pressed it against her throat. That made her angry.

She yelled at the officer, saying she was being mistreated. That’s when another officer shot her with pepper spray. A photo by The Oregonian’s Randy L. Rasmussen, which flashed across social media websites, shows Nichols was sprayed from a few feet away.

“It felt like my face, ears and hands were on fire,” she said.

Over at Waxy.org, they took what they considered the four best views of the event and time-synchronized them, and put them in a four-panel video. Here is what they said:

I was stunned and appalled by the UC Davis Police spraying protestors, but struck by how many brave, curious people recorded the events. I took the four clearest videos and synchronized them. Citizen journalism FTW. Sources below.

Now watch the video itself:

Here are the sources:
briocloud
jamiehall1615

OperationLeakS
asucd

Over the last several years, we have seen the growth of authoritarian rule – warrantless wiretaps, relaxation of search & seizure rules, unconstitutional treatment at airports, and on and on. Now we have police being given cart blanche to brutalize non-violent protestors, and they are seemingly using force with gusto, which has been demonstrated again and again.

There has to be a happy medium somewhere – the right to protest and assemble was put in place due to EXACTLY this type of situation, but protestors also have to recognize others’ rights to get on with their lives. We have already seen laws changed so that you can be arrested ONLY for ‘resisting arrest’ (which is nonsensical on its face) and can only wonder what comes next. But the decision of how much power goes to our government, exactly what level of violence we will tolerate, how far into our lives they can go if we choose to support a cause – lies with each of us.

And as we have seen, silence means compliance, which in turn brings us back to the ‘never again’ days of the late 60’s police brutality where too many people allowed police to turn batons, firehose, and even bullets on college students and excused it because ‘they need a bath’ or ‘look at their hair’ or ‘why didn’t they move when told.’ And do we REALLY want to go back there?

Source: Waxy.org via Buzzfeed

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About the Author

Michael Anderson
I have loved technology for as long as I can remember - and have been a computer gamer since the PDP-10! Mobile Technology has played a major role in my life - I have used an electronic companion since the HP95LX more than 20 years ago, and have been a 'Laptop First' person since my Compaq LTE Lite 3/20 and Powerbook 170 back in 1991! As an avid gamer and gadget-junkie I was constantly asked for my opinions on new technology, which led to writing small blurbs ... and eventually becoming a reviewer many years ago. My family is my biggest priority in life, and they alternate between loving and tolerating my gaming and gadget hobbies ... but ultimately benefits from the addition of technology to our lives!

4 Comments on "A Look at Our Growing Police State from Four Angles"

  1. If watching that video doesn’t bring tears to your eyes and make you completely nauseous. “Shame on you”, indeed. =/

  2. I find it appalling that police can now Taser or pepper spray or mace you for the “crime” of “non-compliance”.  If you are out there exercising your right to peaceable assembly, or free speech, a policeman can order you to move and, if you don’t immediately comply, Taser, pepper spray, mace, or otherwise torture you into compliance.  If that isn’t the textbook definition of “police state”, I honestly don’t know what is.  An author once wrote:

    “I felt that I now understood the new regime:  absolute freedom . . . except that any official from dogcatcher to supreme potentate could give any orders whatever to any private citizen at any time.

    “So it was ‘freedom’ as defined by Orwell and Kafka, ‘freedom’ as granted by Stalin and Hitler, ‘freedom’ to pace back and forth in your cage.”

    • “Freedom” isn’t “Freedom” if, while trying to exercise your rights, the police can demand “compliance” and then torture you if you don’t immediately provide it.  That ain’t freedom.

  3. For the People | December 30, 2011 at 2:22 pm |

    Over the span of a year, I have had my identification demanded of me over 13 times and have had my tags ran over 20 times.  I have been arrested 3 times for refusing to identify even though I have a constitutional right not to do so.  I am currently facing a pc 69 charge (trial date 1/4/2012) for grabbing the back of an officer’s neck when he tackled me to the ground, choked me, punched me in the face several times and  banged my head on the concrete several more times just because I refused to identify.  His reasoning?  He “thought [I] may have had warrants or have been on probation or parole” because I refused to identify. 
     
    I have never been involved in any types of criminal activity nor have I had a criminal record prior to coming to California.  Welcome to the new America…

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