Protected Speech.

Have you seen the UF police-tasing video?

Again I ask: are we so reliant upon technology that it takes electric shock to remove unarmed protestors, a rather skinny one even?

The campus security police appeared to have adequate numbers and advance notice of this man: why the need to Tase here? The security officers don't look endangered or collectively lacking any beef -- haven't they been better trained to respond to potential threats, or is it a case of overreliance on the technology?

My materal grandfather was a Chicago police officer (retired well before 1968, I always add.) He was a beat cop, in the morning rustling the homeless off the merchants' stoops and in general, keeping the peace. We still have his wooden billy club, held in reserve in case he encountered a bigger man or danger on the job.

He was a mounted patrolman, even appeared in a national Newsday photo "The Last Roundup" that showed him in uniform, head down, leading his horse in when they were initially retired and the unit went to motorcycle policing*.

Early Chicago policemen walked their beats and after 1880 were reinforced by police-driven, horse-drawn patrol wagons. As the Loop area became more congested, a mounted patrol composed of forty men and horses was established in 1906. When the Traffic Division was reorganized in 1948, the mounted patrol was eliminated and the forty-one horses in the police stables at 262 East Illinois Street were auctioned off. Horses were reintroduced to the police department in July, 1974, when demand for increased police surveillance in the parks could be most easily satisfied by a mounted patrol.

He bought Charlie at the auction, and put him out to pasture in fields south of the city owned by a farming cousin. Amazingly enough, my grandfather got cards and letters from that national photo, sent to the precinct from around the country. One man out West even spent a good deal of time stitching my grandfather's profile leading the horse -- copied from the picture -- into a good-sized leather billfold, with a nicely commiserative note accompanying the gift. We still have that too. Americans!

Sometimes technology leads to the atrophying of other skills; you don't learn when it's necessary to use force, and when you can better avoid it, to accomplish your aims. Tasers are a great tool -- if they're used properly in dangerous situations. What was the physical danger here? Straining a muscle physically subduing and removing the smaller guy who was resisting? Doesn't matter whether you think he deserved it or not: you aren't trained to use Tasers punitively because somebody "had it coming".

Here's my take on a very similar incident that took place last fall at UCLA, not UF. Still, like with the Virginia Tech tragedy, you have to wonder at the passivity of our young people today and consider whether all this advanced technology helped lead us to that too**:

Monday, November 20
"Dudes, where are you?"

At first take, it appears to be UCLA police continually tasering a student on the ground. The student was disobeying orders to "get up", when he was shocked on the ground.

I cannot believe the number of fellow students in the library -- even if they have been trained as a generation to be submissive to authority -- that stood for so long and watched, and did nothing to surround the man on the ground to shield him, or lift him up to physically remove him from the situation.

Nevermind that the UCLA police -- 2 or 3 of them -- thought using their Tasers to subdue a man on the ground was necessary. "Get up, get up". Doesn't UCLA have any type of physical requirements for security; don't they carry handcuffs?

This is a shame for any university. I'm sure it will get spun so the authority comes out clean, but this did not appear to be a drug-addled man out-of-control. The only orders were to "get up! get up!"

Maybe the magnificent echoes, as they continued to taze the student through UCLA's grand library hallway, will wake up some young Americans. "Get up! Get up!"

Your country once stood for something more than making a buck.
Stand up. You have the numbers to make things work differently.

Added: I wish the student on the ground would have, at one point, yelled, "Help Me." I am curious to see if his fellow students then would have become more actively involved.

posted by Mary at 10:13 AM

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* Later, of course, police departments realized the benefit of using horses in crowd control, a benefit in some situations that couldn't be replicated by improved technology of the motorbike.

**Though often I lay equal blame on the liberal PC movement that has infected us in recent years. So many think their speech is "protected" in that they lay out their pet theories and supporting stories, yet try to silence anybody else who has a different take. Particularly if the take can be labeled as "anti-PC". Think of a bully spouting off. In years past, he'd have to take responsibility for his words, but nowadays he is more likely to passively cower behind PC protections. Without facing any real world consequences for his words or actions (ie/ drunk college boors), it takes something more powerful to stop them.

Better to start accepting more unkind words in dissent -- and fighting back with words -- than to try and silence them by force or other cowardly means? Sometimes it's best to experience a few verbal scraps in defending your ideas before you go pulling out all the stops to protect your speech by artificial means. Makes you stronger in the long run.