'First Amendment rights can be terminated': When cops, cameras don't mix

[robklurfield]

mayor emmanuel is a very interesting fellow. i think the obama administration went into a dither when he left, and has not recovered; i do not think it will recover.
tell us what kind of fellow the mayor was as a school boy. by the way, is he of lebanese maronite extraction or ancestrally similar? the "God-with-us" last name is very interesting to me ...

Paul, Rahm's Wikipedia listing is pretty accurate. Definitely NOT Lebanese Maronite. Rahm's dad was a member of the Irgun in Israel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel

He was funny; not the least bit shy; prone, as he is today, to using some "colorful" language (even when we were 14 years old). One always expected Rahm to say what he was thinking without much of a filter. He was bright, but I don't think most of us would have predicted all of the things he's done (Bill Clinton's Sr. White House Political Advisor, millionaire investment banker, Member of Congress, White House Chief of Staff, Hizzoner the Mayor). He has two equally accomplished brothers. The character Ari Gold from the HBO series Entourage is based loosely on the youngest brother, Ari. Zeke (Ezekiel) is an oncologist who was an adviser to President Obama (he has been appearing on TV a lot recently talking about ways to curb healthcare costs). Zeke always came across as off-the-charts brilliant (a few years older than Rahm and I). Ari and Rahm less so.

I played soccer with Rahm for a year. Then he moved into dance and became quite good.

The story in the Wikipedia article about Rahm slicing his finger while working at an Arby's is true. An infection resulted in an amputation of the last joint (or two) of his middle digit ... something that caused then president-elect or maybe it was pre-election Obama to say during a roast of Rahm "[the loss of that digit] rendered him nearly speechless." Quite true given Rahm's propensity for profanity.

 

[robklurfield]

Quite Jewish. I had lunch with a friend in Chicago last week who attended Hebrew school with Rahm when they were about 10 years old. My friend said that on the first day of school Rahm said, "you're not as Jewish as I am; I'm Israeli." My friend says he went home crying and asked he parents what that meant. I met Rahm in high school.

He's Jewish.

 

[jaredangle]

I think a few arrests were made at this protest, outside the Art Institute in Chicago at the height of the NATO protests. I was a credentialed photographer for the summit, this was at 9pm on the second day of the summit. After taking these photos, I ran out of film and retreated into a nearby Bennigans and had a glass or two of Maker's Mark.

Sorry for the poor quality, I don't have access to a film scanner or darkroom right now.

edit – looking at them on a loupe, they're sharp. The images were from holding my laptop screen behind the negative, and taking a pic with my iPhone, and inverting the image in Photoshop.

It's Neopan 400 pushed to 3200 in D-76 1+1, shot in a Nikon F100 w/ 50mm f/1.8D.

 

[Ranchu]

OK, a handful of really stupid police officers said and did some really stupid things in front of TV cameras. I wish we did not have any really stupid police officers but that is simply too much to ask for.

What happened afterwards was really good. The really stupid police officers effectively got called down, the TV crew was released, and the police department issued a half *ssed apology. But, most importantly the video footage was allowed to be shown to the general public and nothing was suppressed.

This is good. This is real freedom of expression and freedom of the press. This is the US constitution immediately coming into play. Let us not forget there are many countries in the world where this does not happen.

Do not get hung up on the fact that there still are really stupid police officers. That will always be the case. Appreciate the fact that the freedoms were granted by the constitution and were immediately acknowledged by law enforcement.

That's very amusing, Bob.

"The city government strategy was designed to defuse conflict while granting killer cops impunity. Even the corporate media described the court proceedings initiated by officials as empty gestures. The Firearm Review Board found the shooting unjustified; the official legal inquest into the shooting found that the shooting was unjustified; the Seattle Police Department Office of Professional Accountability made motions to fire Birk from the force. Police chief John Diaz called Williams' murder a “huge mistake” and admitted Birk should be “held accountable.”Later, the deputy chief called the shooting “egregious.” The effect was for those in power—city officials, the chief of police, and the rest of the Seattle Police Department—to publicly distance themselves from Birk, the “bad apple,” knowing that nothing worse than unemployment would befall him.

The long process provided a cooling period for the rage over Williams’ murder. While in Oakland the dates for killer cop Mesherle’s verdict and sentencing were long anticipated and contributed to the mounting tension, the decision to not charge Birk at all came suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of an otherwise ordinary week of political theatrics. City prosecutor Dan Satterberg, who made the decision to not charge Birk, brought a prop to his press conference—a blown-up excerpt from city law on a giant note card—to explain that, whatever one thought of the slaying, the law simply wasn't written in such a way that the city could prosecute. “A jury would be compelled to find Officer Birk not guilty. There is no evidence to show malice. There's no evidence to refute Officer Birk's claim that he acted in good faith.”

City Mayor Mike McGinn held a press conference the next day to sternly but sadly nod his head in agreement: “I know the public finds the lack of action frustrating. So do I.”27 Eventually, the city paid $1.5 million to the Williams family, with McGinn admitting that the point was to buy back “the trust of the community.”28 The only other state-sanctioned option was to undertake the hopeless task of trying to replace the politicians and laws. This is, after all, a democracy."


http://pugetsoundanarchists.org/node/944

 

[robklurfield]

If you want to see a good Chicago-style protest, rent Haskell Wexler's movie Medium Cool. Set at the 1968 Democratic Convention, Haskell filmed it on location during the convention and at one point gets caught up in the real live action (you can hear one of crew in the movie, which was a dramatic fiction, NOT a documentary, warn him to watch for the oncoming rampage).

I think things are better today than they were back then and certainly better than they were in1886 during Chicago's Haymarket Square Riot.

I was at an event maybe 30 or 35 years ago on Navy Pier when I saw a group of a perhaps 40 Chicago Police tackle a man. The police then circled around the guy, who was on the ground, while a few of them took turns kicking him in the head. The guy who was getting kicked had probably done something wrong, but, from I what I saw, the police were certainly behaving in a most lawless fashion themselves. The cops in the circle around this all had their batons at the ready as if to dare the crowd to do anything in challenge. I hope that this kind of behavior in Chicago is nearly extinct. I think the whole culture of policing there has slowly crept away from the dark ages, though probably not fast enough. Gang violence (forty shootings, 11 of them fatal) over Memorial Day is a frighteningly grim statistic that Rahm will need to address.

I hope and believe that most cops do extraordinarily good, brave, decent work. But, I'm not so naive as to believe that they are all saints. There are plenty of bad eggs in most parts of society and I guess the police are no better.

Interestingly, when that assault happened 30+ year ago, I saw absolutely zero reporting about it in the press.

Hopefully, most cops (and most of the rest of the population, too) don't need to have video cameras pointed at them to know the difference between right and wrong. Obviously, there's always a slice of the human race that puts on its best behavior ONLY when being watched and a smaller slice that puts on its worst behavior all the time.

I've had cops help me and show kindness and I've had cops scare me and piss me off. All in all, I'd rather have a few bad cops than none at all. Places with no police are a lot worse than here.

I don't think a few hundred or few thousand protesters at a NATO Summit justifies a martial law mentality. Anyway, cops are just like RFF members. They come in shapes, sizes, colors and with all manner attitudes and behaviors. (I understand that there are actually people on this site who use SLRs. Can you believe that???)😀

 

[robklurfield]

A great Wikipedia article on protests, riots, police, free speech, etc AND the Haymarket Square riots. Kind of the genesis of the modern labor movement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

I had forgotten how many times the statue commemorating the incident had been moved, destroyed by a streetcar, blown up by bombs, displaced by a superhighway etc. Some very interesting reading.

 

[starless]

Those cops should be sued for harassment and/or assault.

 

[RObert Budding]

OK, a handful of really stupid police officers said and did some really stupid things in front of TV cameras. I wish we did not have any really stupid police officers but that is simply too much to ask for. . .

And what of the actions that occur outside of public view? Are you comfortable with drones flying above US soil? Granted they aren't armed - yet.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Do not get hung up on the fact that there still are really stupid police officers. That will always be the case. Appreciate the fact that the freedoms were granted by the constitution and were immediately acknowledged by law enforcement.

The (current) Supreme Court seems to disagree and their recent rulings concerning searches and due process show they think that law enforcement is 100% without reproach and simply too burdened with checks and balances. Like someone famously said (and I paraphrase), things are much easier when you can rule as a dictator (and it's cost-effective!)

 

[robklurfield]

Chicago's finest patrolling the Loop on Memorial Day... It was 97 degrees that day.