Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

There was a big Occupy bust last night in Oakland. Perhaps 500 were arrested. The tweets provided live coverage, better than anything that could be in a newspaper even if they were interested in covering the movement.

Check out Greg Mitchell’s live blog here. Mitchell deserves some kind of an award for this and other live blogging he has done. It’s hard, often boring work, and I’m glad someone is willing to do it. At least I think it must be boring—Mitchell stays near his keyboard to provide real-time reports on the heartbeat of America’s protest movement. Before Occupy, his blog was the place to go as Wikileaks information was released to the world. He live-blogs continuously. Hard to do.

Included on the page is a video documenting police tasing of a non-violent protester in DC. As Mitchell remarks, the lawsuit will follow. But no consequence for police who endanger lives with a weapon that can kill on occasion, and whatever the ultimate cash settlement is with the protester, it will just come out of taxpayer’s wallets. Governments these days just consider settlements to be part of the cost of doing business.

As to consequences for illegal police actions, there are virtually none. It’s unusual to hear of charges filed against police, and penalties are light. We’ve learned that an innocent person can be killed point-blank on a BART station and the cop won’t do time for murder. Lots of examples in New York State as well, where police violate the law every day.

It’s good that so many people with video cameras now document police misconduct, but that has not yet resulted in a decrease of the misconduct it seems.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/29/2012 01:43:00 PM