My Errant Mind

Well a judge dismissed charges against a cop in New Orleans who beat 66 year old Robert Davis for no reason. Davis was arrested and booked for being drunk but was not formally charged—because he was never drunk.

The police just needed to justify losing their temper and beating an innocent man who voiced his view that they had acted unprofessionally. Heaven forbid citizens should be allowed to be critical of those our tax dollars hire to protect and serve us or their rude and unprofessional conduct!

Davis had simply asked an officer what time a curfew took effect, but another officer interrupted him. Walking away, Davis called them unprofessional and rude—which led to one of them grabbing him from behind. A struggle then ensued which took several minutes.

District Judge Frank Marullo dismissed charges against officer Robert Evangelist on the basis that Davis could simply ended the confrontation:

“This event could have ended at any time if the man had put his hands behind his back,” the judge said.

(Source: CNN.com)

Since when did it become a crime to resist unlawful arrest? Citizens have a right to resist unlawful attacks by anyone, even if they are members of the law enforcement or military. If someone suggests that we don’t (and here we have a judge doing just that), perhaps it is time we do something to change the government?

It is little incidents like this that continue to chip away at our freedoms. Such dangerous decisions by judges and the prevalent view in the law enforcement community that citizens have to act like compliant citizen-slaves with no right to talk back or defend oneself is a dangerous thing.

Personally, I think all citizens have a duty and responsibility to resist such unlawful attacks—not to mention that they have the legal right to do so. I mean come on, there were three officers and it took them minutes to subdue a single 66 year old man. There’s something wrong with that in the first place.

As a result of all of this, one officer hung himself. Now, I find myself asking why a police officer would do something like that if it were not out of guilt and shame? If it was simply because of a weak mind and an inability to take the pressure of public scrutiny of what has become an increasingly common tactic—that of police brutality—across the nation, then perhaps there needs to be higher standards and more scrutiny of police officers?

I don’t know why one of the officers involved took his own life—which is tragic in itself—but, if we are forced to choose between being a free people and officers who beat innocent people on a whim or simply because they have no more personal discipline than the common thugs they are hired to protect us from, I won’t lose any sleep over their choice to hold themselves accountable in such a manner.

Still, once again, the police state takes care of its own first, letting an officer off and suggesting the citizen was at fault for not going limp and taking an illegal and completely unjustified beating like a good unquestioning citizen-slave ought to. This is the same sort of crap the ATF has done in the past…things like raiding homes and tearing houses apart and killing pets of homeowners for no reason and in service of warrants that turned up nothing illegal.

I remember seeing this video replayed over and over on the news when it happened. I don’t know what video the judge saw, and I don’t know where the judge learned his ethics (if such a thing is a requirement for judges or police, it seems many have not been informed about it), but it doesn’t sit well with the founding principles of this nation, nor with its laws in my opinion. I’m sure there are those out there who will decry my opinion as unfounded. I can only hope they are never so unfortunate as to find themselves being brutally beaten as senior citizens.

For my part, I wonder how it is that citizens are brutally beaten without cause and cops get away with it, while rapists, drug dealers, murderers and sex offenders of all sorts are allowed to wander into our country as they please…and then you have city, county and state law enforcement agencies who refuse to arrest and prosecute them because they don’t think it is their responsibility, or because the officers live in areas with large Hispanic populations or are Hispanic themselves.

No, they have more important things to do like shoot innocent people 30, 40 or 50 times (such as the Amadou Diallo case in NYC, where an innocent 23 year old was shot at 41 times and hit 19) and beat senior citizens who question their rude and thug-like behavior. This is simply more of the pathetic shame that the New Orleans Police Department has brought to that city, the state of Louisiana and the USA. It was bad enough that so many of them cut and run in the face of Katrina like cowards, but now some are getting away with abusing the very people they failed.

What a disgrace.