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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFlorida Crowd Forms Human Shield to Protect Man (from) Police
They formed this shield and started to get aggressive, one of the officers said. The next thing they know, there's 70 to 75 people out there, another officer who was on the scene reportedly said. The officers had to use pepper spray to get the people back.
The crowd grew rowdy, and at some point an object was hurled at the windshield of a police cruiser. By the end of the night police had detained four people, on charges including inciting a riot.
The incident could foretell greater citizen intervention against what they perceive to be abusive and unnecessary policing and shows the urgency of reining in the over-criminalization of American life.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fed-florida-crowd-forms-human-shield-protect-man-police-try-arrest-smoking?akid=12639.187861.kJkdLQ&rd=1&src=newsletter1029578&t=2
uppityperson
(115,678 posts)I know it was civilians, but can always hope.
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)Arresting someone for smoking MJ, in this day and age, is unnecessary.
I foresee this also as citizens grow more and more tired of the over militarization and aggressiveness of the police, sooner or later, and I think it's going to be sooner, the lid is going to come off of the boiling pot.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)we ought to make legalization a veterans issue.
Personally, I've never joined any of the vets orbs except for DAV, mostly because of the politics. But if a bunch of us went out & joined the local chapters & actually went to the business meetings, I bet we could effectively take them over to the point of passing resolutions and putting out position papers.
How many VN vets have been sentenced for weed? How many of us actually smoked it? (I knew few who didn't.) In addition to maybe accomplishing the thoroughly worthwhile goal of legalization, we could start opening the discussion about other things, like who is supporting and who is opposing vets benefits. I think the answers would come as something of a surprise to many of the local VFW members. Maybe we could split a fair number of them off from the Republican rolls.
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)For the longest times, the Vet. orgs. were dominated by WWII and Korean Vets, those of us who fought in Vietnam were looked down upon because of the perception that we lost the war, well, now it's our time, along with the other vets who follow us, and I'll bet that we could implement your suggestion and change the dogma of the orgs.
Just for the record, I never did drugs while in the military because of my MOS, but I didn't begrudge or rat out those that did, especially the ground pounders.
Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)PumpkinAle
(1,210 posts)more than three...... OMG call in the air force for a strike.
BillZBubb
(10,650 posts)hatrack
(59,592 posts)During the trial, the prosecutor claimed that the accused had been seen talking with an Anarchist behind a lamppost.
To which the defendant responded "Where is 'behind a lamppost'?"
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)KG
(28,752 posts)Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)DallasNE
(7,403 posts)workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)It a big tool in law enforcements tool box to harass people with for no reason!
marym625
(17,997 posts)Thanks Jack!
Happy New Year!
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)it's not a good idea to try to prevent the police arresting someone, even if you don't approve of the law that the person is being arrested for breaking. And throwing things at police cars is also generally not a good idea.
BillZBubb
(10,650 posts)That hasn't been proven. That was the COPS' story.
Rex
(65,616 posts)Average people pay attention. When they see that it pushes some of them over the line, as we see in this article. If only cops would be more responsible about rooting out criminals in their own profession, things like this wouldn't happen.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Try going after actual criminals committing actual crimes instead of some random shmoe smoking a joint, and maybe this won't happen.
randys1
(16,286 posts)uponit7771
(90,359 posts)n2doc
(47,953 posts)They've got it. How long until people start to push for defunding and reducing the power of Police departments?
brewens
(13,617 posts)police no longer wasting time and resources on pot. I'd like to see them going after meth with all that money. It looked to me like the cops would still be spending a lot of time trying to catch people smoking illegally and driving while stoned.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)Politicians in Washington and around the country refused to act as the stock market crash took an increasing toll on the livelihood of average workers. Instead of using the United States vast treasury to feed, clothe and house the millions of unemployed, the capitalist politicians resorted to vain tokenism and extolled upright citizens to donate to local charities and show sympathy toward the poor.
The Communist Party USA, whose program then included struggling for a socialist revolution, spearheaded an effort to organize the unemployed and fight back against the injustices incurred during the depression. Communists organized Unemployed Councils and led a vigorous struggle for a moratorium on evictions and direct aid to the dispossessed. The councils called marches and rallies and frequently occupied the offices of government agencies.
Two of the most effective tactics employed by the councils were eviction resistance and rent strikes. Rent strikes required a high degree of organization among tenants to secure widespread participation and to form committees to articulate demands and negotiate with landlords. Seven rent strikes were successfully organized in New York City during the last nine months of 1931 and many more occurred in New York and around the country throughout the decade.
Eviction resistance involved council militants physically moving the furniture of evicted tenants back into their apartments. Crowds would often gather and, under the direction of the Communist-led Unemployed Councils, workers would battle the police dispatched to enforce the eviction. Thousands of organized incidents of eviction resistance occurred throughout the Great Depression.
The Great Rent Strike War of 1932
One such incident to gain notoriety was the Battle of the Bronx and is detailed in Mark Naisons From eviction resistance to rent control: tenant activism in the Great Depression (in The Tenant Movement in New York City, 1904-1984).
Naison points to a quiet section of the Bronx as the starting point for the Great Rent Strike War of 1932. There the Unemployed Councils led rent strikes at three different large apartment buildings in the early part of January.
The majority of tenants in each building withheld their rent and demanded a moratorium on evictions, reductions in rent prices and recognition of the tenants committee for bargaining purposes. Landlords responded with widespread evictions, especially targeted toward those leading the strike. Judges quickly approved the eviction notices.
The evictions were met with strong resistance when police and marshals attempted to force tenants from the buildings. Hundreds of protestors fought the police hand-to-hand and with sticks and stones when the officers would attempt to remove furniture from the buildings.
The outnumbered police barely held their line while waiting for reinforcements as the crowds battled them under the direction of Communist Party organizers. Reports from the New York Times indicate the women, who outnumbered the men, were the most militant, were more likely to battle the police and took the most arrests. In each case, huge numbers of foot and mounted police, marshals and moving men had to be dispatched. The capitalist court system assisted the landlords in attempting to break the strike by approving mass evictions and ordering injunctions against picketing.
The landlords counteroffensive won them a temporary reprieve, but by the winter of 1932-1933 the communists had strengthened the Unemployed Councils and a new firestorm of rent strikes spread across New York City and around the country. Organizers called hunger marches and sit-ins at state capitols, town halls, relief bureaus and on Washington.
The strikes, eviction battles and hunger marches proved a stunning success for unemployed workers. Landlords often agreed to significant reductions in rent and to slow the pace of evictions. Agencies such as the Home Relief Bureau were forced by the sit-ins and hunger strikes to dispense funds to the protestors for rent payment.
Rent control and public housing: a lasting legacy...
The unemployed workers movement had a lasting impact beyond the temporary victories obtained from landlords and relief agencies. The Unemployed Councils militancy forced the national and state governments to enact serious housing reforms, the twin pillars of which were rent control and public housing...
After almost a decade of rent strikes and eviction resistance, Congress passed the United States Housing Act of 1937. The act established a public housing program under the direction of the U.S. Housing Authority to provide loans to local agencies for the construction of low-rent housing. The USHA was the predecessor of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is supposed to ensure affordable housing today.
Rent controls were another response forced on the government by the militant demands for affordable housing...Right-wing attacks on these programs have been consistent throughout the decades. In the 1980s a vociferous conservative assault on progressive welfare programs ensued in the U.S. under the Reagan regime. As a result, many of the progressive elements of the housing legislation were watered down or removed...
However, there are signs that it is not just the crisis in capitalism that is repeating itself, but also the struggle against its inhumane tendency to force millions of families into homelessness during economic downturns.
In Massachusetts, a movement to stop evictions began in earnest at the start of the new year. Tenant activists, trade unionists, anti-war organizers and progressive local politicians joined together and successfully faced down a constable sent to enforce the eviction of a mother and children from their home.
In Detroit, the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice, Detroit City Task Force and the United Community Housing Coalition have embarked on a campaign for a moratorium on new home foreclosures. Protestors rallied on Jan. 29 to pressure Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm during her annual State of the State Address.
As the mortgage crisis spreads, so will the movement for a moratorium. If this movement gains the sense of urgency, militancy and mass support that the Unemployed Councils of the 1930s did, then peoples history can repeat itself too.
http://www.workers.org/2008/us/anti-eviction_struggles_0221/
me b zola
(19,053 posts)Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)whether this "smoker" was a white man. Why do I doubt that the police would bother if he was.
Maineman
(854 posts)Very bad idea.
Trained to be aggressive, taught that is them against the world, too many police departments have developed a sick culture. Serious need for reform!!!!!
BillZBubb
(10,650 posts)The military is trained for a purpose far more aggressive than policing should ever be.
Javaman
(62,532 posts)this is how it starts.
people are fed up.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)that says "The French aristocracy never saw it coming either."
joeglow3
(6,228 posts)Sounds like police were just enforcing the laws on the books.
BillZBubb
(10,650 posts)They have discretion.
joeglow3
(6,228 posts)BillZBubb
(10,650 posts)Cops don't stop people for every minor infraction of the law. My guess is they wanted to use the "I thought I smelled MJ" routine to allow them to stop and search the guy. They were being authoritarian assholes. There is nothing in the law that says they have to be. They didn't have to try to stop that guy. They could have let it be. They had, at most, only a suspicion the guy was even smoking weed.
That has nothing to do with politicians.
hatrack
(59,592 posts)"Smelled marijuana" that we weren't smoking (and didn't possess), from upwind, 100 yards away, outdoors, on a river in the middle of fucking nowhere in the Missouri Ozarks.
And this was 20 years ago - same bullshit today, just with heavier weapons and body armor.
ZX86
(1,428 posts)and said, "Hey put that out", and drove off. Which would have been an appropriate approach. This crime is equal to kids playing ball in the street IMHO and should bring the same kind of enforcement. Little to none.
joeglow3
(6,228 posts)As such, politicians need to take a more active approach.
Rex
(65,616 posts)with no oversight on law enforcement. Who could have imagined ordinary citizens would think such horrible things about cops? It's as if they watched TVEE and saw cops getting away with murdering people or something.
I guess the 'good cops' are going to have to grow up and take responsibility over their immoral peers that gladly break the law. Otherwise, expect more of this.
StevePaulson
(174 posts)If so many law abiding citizens didn't hate their guts.
Watching cops mace people for "protesting", like the students in CA
makes my "want a better future for my country" ass all pissed off.
The police are not protecting me as much as trying to extract money
from me though traffic tickets to pay for the stuff billionaires don't
pay for.
Sure they "protect" me from criminals, but if there was a little more
opportunity in this country, there wouldn't be hardly any criminals
to protect me from.
Jobs not prison.
tularetom
(23,664 posts)Pass a lot of chickenshit little laws making everything in the world an infraction punishable by a fine just large enough to be annoying but too small to hire a lawyer and fight (all sorts of traffic violations, plus picky little crap like having a weedy lawn, an inoperable beater car in your driveway, or painting your house pink). And make sure these ordinances are aimed primarily at middle, working and lower class citizens.
Task the police department with the enforcement of these laws and make it clear that their budget depends on how much money they bring in.
In many smaller communities the revenue generated by this kind of stuff rivals or exceeds traditional sources like property or sales taxes. And of course the cops, as the collectors of the fines, come in for a lot of scorn and resentment from those who get targeted. Not to excuse the cops, many of them seem to take pleasure in being assholes in the performance of their duties.
It's actually pretty clever, the politicians can raise taxes (which voters hate) under the guise of fighting crime (which they love).