Unusually Good Media Coverage of Police Response to Wall St. Protests
By Anthony Gregory • Wednesday September 28, 2011 12:16 PM PDT • 5 Comments
In the last decade or so, police reactions to political protests in this country, including completely peaceful protests, have become increasingly brutal and indefensible. MSNBC has unusually good coverage of the last such incidents, noting that there were some civilized officers who handled these protesters with respect, but also giving appropriate exposure to the police who went overboard, using pepper spray and slamming people’s heads into cars without provocation. As Lawrence O’Donnell points out, this has become the norm in America. “There’s a Rodney King every day in this country,” and most such incidents are never caught on camera.
Indeed, the law enforcement system in this country has increasingly become one of little or no accountability, where police and other officials are virtually never held liable for their wrongdoing. Of all the threats to liberty and the American dream, this problem is near the top of the list.
Tags: Civil Liberties, Civil Society, Criminal Justice, Law, Police 
Watched the video. If they are so intent on exposing police overstepping their bounds, why do they not reveal which police department was videotaped, and where this event took place?
Randall Holcombe | Sep 28, 2011 | Reply
He had to do this after he made a fool of himself.
Frank | Sep 28, 2011 | Reply
Let’s file this one under “Irony in Policecraft”.
You wrote that “in the last decade or so, police reactions to political protests in this country, including completely peaceful protests, have become increasingly brutal and indefensible.”
The Tea Parties have been peaceful, if not also a little muddleheaded. Have the Tea Partiers been brutally and indefensibly attacked by the police? Has there been a trend that suggests that they would be so attacked? Granted, Progressives would not mind making it much more dangerous to be a Tea Partier.
Still, when thinking about socialists who are being treated by cops with far more respect than they deserve, many problems can be solved by remembering that without police, there never could have been a socialistic tyranny such as those in the USSR or on the Korean peninsula. You of all people should not have to be reminded of this. So it’s not necessary to have an anxiety attack when you encounter a few red turds being stepped on by a few cops. The turds are being done no injustice whatsoever, and if there is an injustice here, it’s that people aren’t free to defend theirselves against this little socialistic uprising without having to bear a significant risk of being attacked by police officers, all of whom are basically socialists themselves.
Paul Trombley | Oct 4, 2011 | Reply
Paul, you write that “many problems can be solved by remembering that without police, there never could have been a socialistic tyranny such as those in the USSR or on the Korean peninsula.”
This is true, which is why we must always be very suspicious of police power—it contains the seeds of tyranny.
Anthony Gregory | Oct 4, 2011 | Reply