Four friends – young men – walking home, cross a street that is blocked off (i.e., there was no chance of traffic on the street). Austin Police decided this was a situation that demanded their attention:
“We were walking across the street, the sign said ‘do not walk,’ but lights were already turning yellow and streets were blocked off, so we kept walking,” Ramiro says.
“[Police] flashed their flashlights at us, asked us to show them our IDs. Matt and Jeremy said to f— off,” noting that the street was barricaded so the ‘crime’ of Jaywalking was a moot point when cars are unable to drive down the street.
Guess Matt and Jeremy said the “wrong thing” to the “authorities” because the next thing you know this happened:
By the way, this is the same police department where four officers assaulted a female jogger for “jogging against against the light” last year. Video of that assault went viral. At the time, this was the response of the Austin Police Chief to that arrest:
“This person absolutely took something that was as simple as ‘Austin Police – Stop!’ and decided to do everything you see on that video,” Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said at a press conference Friday, according to Austin NPR station 90.5 KUT. “And quite frankly she wasn’t charged with resisting. She’s lucky I wasn’t the arresting officer, because I wouldn’t have been as generous. … In other cities there’s cops who are actually committing sexual assaults on duty, so I thank God that this is what passes for a controversy in Austin, Texas,” Acevedo said.
Yeah, she could have been raped by other police, so she should consider herself lucky. That’s the ticket.
So, a bunch of public servants decided to teach these jaywalking fools a lesson they would never forget. Comply or – well, who knows how far it could go these days?
After all, a Pennsylvania cop was just found not guilty on murder charges after shooting a 57 year old man to death while he lay face down on the ground after she had tasered him numerous times. By the way, that video of the man being shot to death is fairly graphic, so a trigger warning to anyone who has been a past victim of violence by police or anyone else.
And then there is this incident of a female student being assaulted and arrested for trespass while in class, even though she showed the police her student id, because she smoked a cigarette outside the building beforehand:
The events leading to her Dec. 7 arrest began when Pazera was smoking a cigarette outside the building during a break. According to the lawsuit, she was given a verbal warning regarding the college’s smoke-free policy and asked to show her campus identification. Pazera told the officer she accepted the warning and returned to class.
According to the suit, two officers followed Pazera into the classroom. When asked if Pazera was his student, Pazera’s teacher cited federal law and refused to give her name.
Pazera then showed her ID to the officers with her thumb covering everything but her picture, the ID’s expiration date and the COD logo, the lawsuit says. The officers then accosted Pazera, according to the lawsuit.
According to court records, Pazera eventually was charged with misdemeanor counts of obstructing a peace officer and resisting a peace officer. Those charges were dropped Oct. 27, the day her case was to go to trial in DuPage County.
Pazera said she sustained several “recurring injuries” to her wrist and shoulder during the altercation and the lawsuit alleges one of the officers used a stun gun to threaten a witness who recorded the scene to surrender his phone.
But at least the deputies who tasered Matthew Ajibade to death in a jail cell will be doing time. Thirty days in jail, served on the weekend, but hey, baby steps, right?
Former deputy Jason Kenny was sentenced to one month in jail, with time to be served at weekends, on a conviction of cruelty to an inmate, along with three years probation, court officials said.
Former deputy Maxine Evans was sentenced to six years probation on public records fraud and three counts of perjury for providing false grand jury testimony.
Both were found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter last month in the death of Matthew Ajibade, 21, who a coroner said died of blunt force trauma in what he ruled was a homicide. […]
Ajibade, an artist and a computer science student, was tasered multiple times while strapped in a restraint chair, according to court testimony.
Jail house security video of the event showed him screaming, clothed only in his underwear and tased in his groin area.
The lesson from all this folks? Avoid encounters with police at all times. And if you can’t? Pray you catch those cops on a good day, one where they aren’t on the prowl for a little “exercise of their authority” at your expense.
This how fascism looks, quite simply.
It would be interesting to check the background of these officers.I have a theory that a lot of these people have prior combat experience in the military. When in the military one is trained that those you are against are the “ENEMY”. That appears the way these so called officers are treating the people they are apprehending like the “ENEMY” and that is dangerous mindset for these officers to have when dealing with anyone.
It is not Protecting and Serving the people that pay their salary. This also demonstrates a huge failure in the proper training of police officers by numerous police academies.
The results of never-ending war, along with the militarization of local police by Clinton in the 90s.
RT:
Read that correctly, ABCNews
We continue to see TX LEO videos of what to the general public looks clearly like LEO excessive use of force (and the disposition of such LEO behavior is inconsistent and happens so long after the fact that it’s not transparent), but have we been ignoring the elephant in the room? — Ignorance of the law … — And the law in Texas is draconian (except for those that speed and have open containers of alcohol in their vehicles) and communities like Austin appear to have no shortage of funds to employ lots of LEOs.
Duh! A five year old knows better than say that.
Is saying “fuck off” to a cop an offense under TX law? My guess is that it’s not, but as it’s TX, it could be.
What these kids apparently don’t know is that jaywalking is an offense and cops, at their discretion, can arrest people for almost any offense in TX.
There’s no excuse for the cops pounding on these two kids. However, most, if not all, of these instances begin with people first not knowing the law and second challenging a cop that can choose to enforce the law.
In practical terms it is an offense everywhere. It’s just plain dumb!
I had quit reading at that point. So they did get taken to the “back room”. Every Grade School kid in Chicago knew about the back room.
You never say anything in response to a cop’s order other than “Yes Sir!” or “I’m sorry, Sir!”
He’s violating your rights? Tell your lawyer, not the cop! You don’t need the baton on your skull or between your legs as happened to one guy I knew who argued.
P.S. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m saying that’s the world. My wife steps into the intersection the moment the light turns green. I tell her to be more cautious. She says, “If they hit me, they’re in the wrong.” One of these days, a 4000 pound vehicle is going to be in the wrong but she’s going to be dead.
Also reminds me of an old Air Force saying, “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.”
DON’T ANNOY/INSULT ARMED MEN!
For me, “right of way” has never trumped the possibility of being run over. Too many I’ve known never consider that their right of way can be violated.