Category Archives: Civil Liberties

Please take a minute or two to read this column by the Miami Herald’s Leonard Pitts Jr., Bennett’s quip touches on tacit race, crime tie before it goes behind the Miami Herald’s pay archive wall.

Please.

via Informed Comment:

September 27, 2005

Office of the Chief
United States Park Police
Dwight E. Pettiford
1100 Ohio Drive S.W.
Washington, D. C. 20242

Dear Chief Pettiford:

I am writing to request information regarding the treatment of individuals arrested on September 26, 2005 in front of the White House and processed at the United States Park Police Anacostia Station.

Yesterday 384 protestors, including peace activist Cindy Sheehan, were arrested outside the White House and were brought to United States Park Police Anacostia Station. I was very surprised to learn that many of those arrested were kept handcuffed in vans and buses for up to 12 hours before they were charged and released. Some of those were released at 4:30 in the morning after being arrested at 4:00 the previous afternoon. Many of those held captive the longest were grandmothers and senior citizens. Those released after midnight were unfamiliar with Washington, DC and had no means to travel back to their hotels once the metro had closed. Anacostia is not frequented by taxicabs after midnight.

I have the following questions regarding the treatment of those arrested yesterday:

1. Why was the Anacostia Station chosen as the sole location to process all 384 arrestees when there were several other Park Police stations in the greater Washington, DC area?

2. In what other circumstances have arrestees been detained by U.S. Park Police for periods exceeding twelve hours before being charged with a crime?

3. In what other circumstances have arrestees been detained by U.S. Park Police, and kept handcuffed on buses for periods exceeding ten hours?

4. What is the established U.S. Park Police procedure for processing large numbers of arrestees in the Washington, DC area?

Please respond to the Judiciary Committee Minority Office at 2142 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, telephone number 202-225-6504, fax number 202-225-4423.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.

Ranking Member

House Committee on the Judiciary

In despotic countries protesters get a one-way trip to the cells. Even in most democracies, you don’t expect cops arresting protesters to treat you with kid gloves. In our country, even though there’s not a shadow of a reason to think you are dangerous, we handcuff you for hours then release you after midnight in a ghetto with no transport.

Once again, a “what he said” reference to Eric Muller at IsThatLegal.org for Is That Legal?: I Propose The Government Maintain a List of Everyone Who Eats Baba Ghanouj

Massachusetts governor (and 2008 Republican presidential candidate) Mitt Romney seeks the wiretapping of mosques.

Naturally, the Boston Globe article reporting on this charming proposal casts those alarmed by the proposal as “civil libertarians” and “immigrants’ rights advocates.”

Have we really reached the point where it’s just “civil libertarians” who get nervous when powerful politicians propose the suspicionless wiretapping of houses of worship?

Remember this?

In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me…By that time there was no one to speak up for anyone.

–Reverend Martin Niemoller

In totalitarian countries, when they want to have a march and make good TV pictures, or pack a street for an address by the Dear Leader or the Chairman or whomever, they just tell all the cadre and the bureaucrats that they will be required to march.

We don’t do that here, because we have a professional and non-political civil service.

Oops. Well we didn’t used to to do that sort of thing. But now we do.

And what’s a “freedom march” without tight control, coerced participation, and roughing up dissidents while the police look on,

One protester, Rik Silverman, 27, of Arlington said he was holding a sign that said, “Shame on You” when a marcher leaned over the railing and punched him in the stomach. A U.S. Park Police officer wrote a report but no arrests were made.

UPDATE: Carpetbagger Report has more on the unFreedom at the ‘Freedom’ March: protestors had signs confiscated, and this disappearance jem from the NYT:

One man who registered for the walk was detained by a Pentagon police officer after he slipped a black hood over his head and produced a sign that read, “Freedom?”

The man was removed from the Pentagon registration area, handcuffed and taken away in a police car. It was not clear whether he was charged or simply detained and the police did not respond to messages requesting more information.

Interesting debate at the Volokh conspiracy between David Kopel, New Orleans Gun Confiscation is Blatantly Illegal, and Orin Kerr, Response to David Kopel. Kopel’s original post has an update to respond to Kerr, who has a further post of his own.

I claim no relevant expertise, but in the past I have found Prof. Kerr’s work on statutory interpretation to be of the highest quality (we part company sometimes on constitutional interpretation). As for Kopel, well, Kopel’s approval of shooting New Orleans ‘looters’ is a view that justly revolts reasonable people. Of course the demerits of a speaker don’t necessarily reflect on his cause.

Personally, I do not think private ownership of guns has on balance proved to be a social good, espeicially in urban areas, but I recognize that the Second Amendment protects them (up to a point, whose exact extent I remain uncertain about) whatever I may think. More generally, if we’re going to argue for expansive constructions of other parts of the Bill of Rights — and I sure am — I think the Second Amendment gets to come along for the ride. Thus, although my knee jerks that the confiscations are suspect, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a court would side with Prof. Kerr.

It seems that if you curse at the acting President who is doing a media circus near your destroyed Louisiana home, you get this treatment:

As they were salvaging a few things from Marble’s home, two military police waving M-16’s showed up and said they were looking for someone who fit Marble’s description who had cursed at Cheney.

“I told them I was probably the person they were looking for, and so they put me in handcuffs and ‘detained’ me for about 20 minutes or so,” Marble wrote. “My right thumb went numb because the cuffs were on so tight, but they were fairly courteous and eventually released me after getting all my contact info. They said I had NOT broken any laws so I was free to go.”

So let’s get this straight: A physician with a newborn baby loses most everything he owns in the hurricane, does what most of us WANT to do and “echoes” Cheney’s words he spoke on the Senate floor last year, walks away harmlessly, mission accomplished, and then once the media cameras leave, he is treated like a foreign terrorist as Cheney’s goons waving M-16s handcuff him in front of his destroyed home?

Bottom line: in a really totalitarian country, they lock you up in an asylum for this, drug you, throw away the key. We just handcuff you and try to intimidate you a little. So we’ve still got a way to go. But it’s another little tiny step towards authoritarianism, at least. (“It is
seldom that any freedom is lost all at once.” – Hume)

I can see why the secret service might want to interview anyone who shouts obscenities at someone they have to protect; who knows, maybe the next step is a brick, or worse. That part doesn’t bother me at all. But I don’t get the handcuffs for exercising your First Amendment rights. Not at all.

Related post, sadly prescient: America Needs You, Harry Truman.