That’s King County deputy Paul Schene beating up a fifteen year old girl. Mind you, she assaulted him first,
by kicking off her shoe at him:
(Found at the Huffington Post of all places, amidst all the stories about Sleevegate (don’t ask). they’re not completey useless then.)
British police is warning about a Summer of Discontent:
Police are preparing for a “summer of rage” as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned.
Britain’s most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming “footsoldiers” in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.
Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police’s public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.
He said that banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, had become “viable targets”. So too had the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis.
Hartshorn, who receives regular intelligence briefings on potential causes of civil unrest, said the mood at some demonstrations had changed recently, with activists increasingly “intent on coming on to the streets to create public disorder”.
If you look back through the archives you’ll see Palau has warned time and again that New Labour and its cronies in the police forces have been preparing for the economic downturn for a long time, exactly by giving the police far ranging powers to nip any social unrest in the bud. Deliberately or not, they’ve created a body of legislation that can make any form of protest, no matter how peaceful, illegal.
Hartshorn is indeed issuing a warning, but it’s aimed at us. Best not be thinking about protesting and accept your lot like good boys and girls…
Chief Gary Gee said he, too, had seen video images of the shooting of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old supermarket worker from Hayward. But Gee said he found the footage to be inconclusive, and he said his investigators still needed to interview a key witness – the officer himself.
That officer, a two-year veteran, has not been publicly identified and has been placed on routine administrative leave. BART officials have said only that his handgun discharged at about 2:15 a.m. Thursday at the Fruitvale Station in Oakland and that the bullet struck the unarmed Grant, who had been detained with several others.
Officials have not said whether the officer intended to shoot Grant. One source familiar with the investigation said BART is looking into a number of issues, including whether the officer had meant to fire his Taser stun gun rather than his gun. Alameda County prosecutors are conducting their own investigation, as is standard in officer-involved shootings.
Does it matter whether this was a mistake, that the officer “only” meant to tase him? Oscar Grant was unarmed, lying face down on the floor with two or even three officers on top of him: there was no need to do anything to him. Tasers have not only killed more people than you’d expect from a “non-lethal” weapon, but they also make it so much more easier for police officers to release their inner sadists. Sending 20,000 volt through a uncooperative arrestee is so much easier than beating him with your baton and since it’s supposed to be debilitating but harmless, what does it matter if you indulge a bit too much in it?
What worries me is that Dutch police want to use tasers as well. At the moment it’s only the arrest teams that get to use it, as part of a trial, but with the current lawnorder climate in the country, how long will it be before every copper on the street will have one?
As police turn out to have stopped and questioned some 150,,000 or so trainspotters under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000, the Daily Telegraph warns against the dangers of Britain turning into a police state:
The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000 has been used to stop 62,584 people at railway stations and another 87,000 were questioned under “stop and search” and “stop and account” legislation.
Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Norman Baker, who uncovered the figures, warned that Britain was heading towards a “police state”.
He said: “Law-abiding passengers get enough hassle on overcrowded trains as it is without the added inconvenience of over-zealous policing.
“The anti-terror laws allow officers to stop people for taking photographs and I know this has led to innocent trainspotters being stopped.
“This is an abuse of anti-terrorism powers and a worrying sign that we are sliding towards a police state.
Even if we still want to believe the police have our best interests at heart and are genuinely doing a difficult job protecting “the public” (excluding Brazilian plumbers), there’s a perverse incentive in giving them far ranging powers to stop terrorism. Because the cost of not stopping a terrorist because you’re hesitant about using your powers is so high, both for your career and in general, it’s far better to harass a 1,000 random people just because they may be doing something that might just be something that could be used by terrorists…
I keep asking that.
But I think finally we are undoubtedly on the cusp of it (or in that annoying phrase that seems to have become hip recently, on the flex), when a squad of not just any old plods, but armed antiterrorist police is sent to arrest legitimately elected member of parliament and shadow immigration minister Damien Green, search his home and office, take his DNA, impound all his personal or business data and hold him incommunicado for 9 hours while the ruling party briefs assiduously against him in the media, on a spurious suspicion of ‘conspiracy to commit public malfeasance in office’ (ie receiving leaks of how incompetent Jacqui Smith, Phil Woolas and other Home office ministers are).
I’m amazed they didn’t taser him for good measure, pour encourager les autres.
But why? What could have posessed them to do such a disgusting, antidemocratic thing? Why would a New Labour prime minister rip up the constitution (such as it still is) and begin arresting the opposition, for all the world like some nascent Mugabe?
It appears that Green was treated like a terrorist simply for doing his job and exposing government wrongdoing and incompetence in the public interest. Since when has that been an offence? Exposing government wrongdoing is what an opposition MP does. That’s why the communications of MP’s are privileged; so that political police pressure like this can’t be brought to bear on the people’s representatives when they are doing their duty.
Privileged communication is the bedrock of the parliamentary system Parliament is said to be jealous of its privileges and ready to fight to the death to protect them; an MP cannot be arrested while in the precincts of the House, for instance.
Why, then, did the parliamentary authorities, the sergeants-at-arms, allow the Metropolitan Police into Green’s parliamentary offices to leaf through privileged communications at will, unless they had political clearance at a very high level – say from a Home Secreteary or PM – to do so?
Labour ministers like that lying little ratfaced sycophant, immigration minister Phil Woolas, are all over the papers, radio and tv this morning, disclaiming any political motivation for this unprecedentedly shocking act. “Ooh no, wasn’t us guv, nothing to do with us. Dictatorial, authoritarian, Stalinesque? Oh no, we don’t accept that. Blame the Met and Ian Blair, he’s retiring, he’s a a handy scapegoat. Jacqui Smith? Who she?”
Bollocks. They can deny it till they’re blue in the face but I’m in no doubt that the order to arrest an opposition MP came right from our very own Rosa Klebb the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, angry at having her own and her colleagues’ mendacity exposed.
Smith has shown herself quite happy to use the law to pursue her political priorities. Smith is perfectly prepared to use the power of the state against the individual for partisan purposes too, and freely admits it. Here she is speaking of manipulating the law and the police against the populace for purely partisan political ends:
I now want the Action Squad to co-ordinate a new drive against the hard core of ‘hard nut’ cases.
That car of theirs – is the tax up to date? Is it insured? Let’s find out
And have they a TV licence for their plasma screen? As the advert says, “it’s all on the database.”
As for their council tax, it shouldn’t be difficult to see if that’s been paid
And what about benefit fraud? Can we run a check?
No stranger to dictatorship she; it comes as absolutely no surprise that Smith concentrated her political studies at Uni on East Germany.
Here she is on the BBC yet again, within the past 5 minutes, still asserting that no minister had anything to do with it and it was all David Normingtonof the Cabinet Office.
In a statement, the Metropolitan police said:
‘The investigation into the alleged leak of confidential government material followed the receipt by the MPS (Metropolitan Police Service) of a complaint from the Cabinet Office.’
Yes, from Normington the highest ranking Home Office civil servant, who of course didn’t even speak to the PM or Home Secretary about something so momentous as the arrest of an MP.
Oh, sure.
But the order for Green’s arrest has to have come from Gordon Brown, if not at his instigation, then at least with his entire approval. They can deny it till doomsday; the order for Green’s arrest came direct from New Labour, no matter how much they dissemble; not only that, it came direct from the Cabinet Office and therefore direct from no 10; and most of all it came direct from our unelected prime minister, Gordon Brown, unless, of course, the police are lying. And I wouldn’t put it past Mandelson to allege that either.