I think Michael Mineo is a liar. I’ve said it before here and here and I’ll say it again. The latest is this, “[A police baton] could not have possibly made the hole in this underwear,” said [a defense witness], “This is a square hole.”
Seems like pretty damning evidence. At the end of an expandable baton is a round little metal ball (which hurts like hell if you get hit by it). It can’t punch out a square hole. (I’d accept a rip, by the way.)
I suppose your opinion comes down to this: which do you think is more likely? That a cop would stick his own baton up a guy’s ass or that a two-bit idiot would make up a story to win big in a lawsuit against the police. To me, it’s no contest.
Seemed to me it was a good day in court for these officers. It’ll feel better when the officers get off.
Here’s the news story. Abbotsford, by the way, has been labeled “the Murder Capital of Canada” [insert scary music here]. Abbotford, the Murder Captial of Canada,” has a homicide rate of 4.7 per 100,000.
Abbotford, the Murder Captial of Canada, has a homicide rate lower than the U.S. homicide rate.
I have no problem with the force used in this video. In fact, I think it’s a very good use of force (and I’m not saying that just to provoke anonymous insults). Every bit of force is justified, in response to actions the suspect takes, and stops when the suspect complies.
That guy on the ground had two things to do: 1) keep his head down, and 2) not move, especially his hands. Those are very fair requests. Mr. Brown Jacket complies and has no problem. Mr. Slow Learner keeps looking up and trying to move his hands to a place where 1) he could reach for a weapon or 2) get up. Neither is acceptable. The officer responds appropriately.
To me, the greater issue (outside the war on drugs) is the limitations of the gun. Once you’re pointing a gun at somebody who doesn’t do want you want, you kind of lose your power. I mean, if you can’t shoot the guy, what can you do? So the gun, if you call its bluff, only serves to take the officer’s hands out of the equations. That’s not good. But as long as the gun is out (and yes, I’m assuming that officer has a good reasons to suspect the suspects may be armed), all you’ve got are your feet.
There was one time I got out of my car and drew down on two people fighting in the middle of the Monument Street (I had reason to believe, falsely it turned out, that one had a gun). I ordered them to stop fighting. I will never forget as they both, in unison, turned to look down the barrel of my gun, then turned back to each other and re-starting slugging each other again. All I could do was put my gun away. By this time I could see they were not armed.
I did end up macing one of them when the other, unilaterally, listened to my commands to stop fighting. At the request of their father, they both went to jail. Turned out they were brothers.
Everyone would have been happier had I never been there.
40 Years after Stonewall police are still raiding gay bars? Really?!
And looking for… er… drunk people? If you can’t be drunk in bar, my God, where can you be drunk? Apparently some police were looking for gay men to beat up.
The Fort Worth police chief said, “You’re touched and advanced in certain ways by people inside the bar, that’s offensive…. I’m happy with the restraint used when they were contacted like that.” Can you imagine if women started using that excuse? Meanwhile one guy was put in intensive care with a serious brain injury.
Dan Savage makes a good point related to the “Gay Panic Defense”: “Gay men don’t grope police officers when they enter gay bars.”
I’ll go a step further and say that gay men don’t grope non-police officers when they enter gay bars.
I have a close gay friend I know from being a boat captain in Amsterdam. Zora and I have have made a little tradition of spending Thanksgiving with him and his boyfriend in Savannah. And then maybe once every other year Bob comes up to New York to visit me.
When Bob and I see each other we often end up in gay bars because 1) he likes gay bars, 2) I like bars, and 3) we both like pinball. Many gay bars still have pinball. So we end up at some place called Ramrod or Rawhide and drink cheap drinks. We talk and play pinball. I’ve never been groped.
I’m sure a lot of women wished straightmen behaved so well.
So says Ramon “Mike” Vargas (Charlton Heston) in Orson Well’s 1958 “Touch of Evil” (thanks, Dave H.).
Two Peoria, Illinois, police officers were arrested in relation to a police stomping. Here’s the story in the Peoria Journal Star.
I worry about publicizing such things because they make people think such behavior is normal for police. It’s not. Such beat downs are not common. I didn’t see them and it’s not just because police weren’t thumping people when I was around. And even if that were the case, great! Then all it takes it one decent cop to stop such things. And you know what, there are a lot of decent cops.
I just wish there more videos of cops doing good. Day-in-and-day-out, police put themselves at risk to keep the streets safe. Where are those videos? The problem is that when cops do everything right, the videos tends to be pretty boring.
In this video, I assume the cop wasn’t moving his leg up and down because he had a twitch. It looks pretty bad. Do I have sympathy for the stomped guy? Not really. He’s a drug-dealing, cop-running, and perhaps girlfriend-beating prick. But that still doesn’t make it right to stomp the SOB. Besides, now he’s going to win a lawsuit and get paid. Thanks a lot. Boy, you sure showed him.
I like to think that had that happened in front of me, I would have moved in to stop it. I’m pretty certain I would have. As soon as the stomping starts, you push the officer away and say, “What the fuck are you doing?!” End of story. But it’s not.
Then when the video comes out I stillget in trouble for not doing more. Even though comparatively I was the good guy.
Had I been there and seen everything, would I have turned in the cop? I doubt it. That same stomping cop may have saved the life of me or a friend some other time. That’s what makes it so tricky. When you have a job where you need people to cover your back and save your life, you’re going to cut them a lot of slack. How can you not? Hell, we all make mistakes.
Doing the right thing is never easy when you can’t figure out what the right thing is. And even when you try to do the right thing you can get in trouble. So best not to see anything. Best to remain ignorant. It leads to what I call the Blue Wall of Ignorance. It’s not the Blue Wall of Silence. That’s overrated.
Let’s say there was no video of this incident. Then nothing happens.
But the next time the officer who stomped the guy needs backup, maybe I’m a little slow to respond. I don’t want to be around for whatever he does because I don’t want to get in trouble for his actions. I don’t want to get in trouble simply for being present. Best to get there after everything is done. But that attitude doesn’t stop a beat down. Nor does it make anybody safer. Nobody wins.
Police that do bad things need to be socialized into good behavior by the vast majority of officers who do the right thing. But the system doesn’t let it work that way. That’s the real shame.
A friend of mine has claimed that there’s “more to the story” and that the officer was specifically trying to stop thisbicyclist. I don’t buy it. If that had been the case, he would have said something about it in his arrest report.
Here’s the officer’s lie-filled arrest report, from The Smoking Gun.
I’m quick to give police the benefit of the doubt. I rarely feel good when an officer gets criminally charged. But an unprovokedassault on someone that could have been me? F**k ‘im.
The big offense, interestingly, isn’t for assaulting the guy. Early reports are that he’s just going to get a misdemeanor bang on that. Officer Pogan is going to get fired for creative writing in the felonious degree.
Officer Pogan arrested Mr. Long and charged him with attempted assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. In his police report, Officer Pogan wrote that Mr. Long was obstructing vehicular traffic as he rode southbound on Seventh Avenue. After instructing Mr. Long to stop, Officer Pogan wrote, Mr. Long rammed him with his bicycle, causing the officer to fall to the ground and receive cuts on his forearms. Mr. Long then resisted arrest, Officer Pogan wrote.
Who would have ever thought that there might be somebody with a camera? It’s not like it was Times Square…. Oh, wait.
You know, for some reason I can’t figure out, I kind of like Al Sharpton. Not for what he does or stands for. Not for the lies he has said. I just like listening to him. He amuses me. Think of him running for President in 2004. He kept the debates interesting, that’s for sure. And I think he fills a predictable role that perhaps somebody should fill.
That being said–and I can say it because I’ve never been the target of his libel–many people have told me over the years, “Sharpton doesn’t care about black-on-black crime.” Or, “Sharpton would never do this if that victim was white!”
And it was true. Back in the days, he was only there for a white-on-black crime (or, in the Tawana case, non-crime). Then with Sean Bell he was there for a mixed-race-on-black crime. Now, sweet Jesus, he’s there for a (supposed) mixed-race-on-whitecrime.
Who would have thunk it? I suppose that really is progress of sorts.
I have a dream that one day a black man will rise to become the leader of this great nation and Al Sharpton will pray with a lying white man and say, “I don’t care if the cops were blacks and he was white or vice versa.”
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God almighty, we are free at last!
There’s a story in many New York City papers today about accusations that 5 members of the NYPD stuck something up a guy’s ass ala Louima. Google any NY paper for the details. I’d just like to go on record as saying, “Bullshit. It ain’t true.” Do I know? No. You’ll just have to trust me on this one. Complete B.S. It doesn’t ring true.
Michael Mineo is lying. I’ve said it