There are few things more American than celebrating a right of passage with a family party in the backyard. The sound of children laughing and playing in the backyard of a 55 year old church family counselor and bible study teacher whose grandchildren had just been baptized isn’t the sort of thing that should strike fear in the hearts of Manassas, Virginia police.
From Fox55 News :
From Fox55 News :
Edgar Rodriguez says the backyard celebration came to an abrupt halt. After some confusion, his 55-year-old father, Edgar Rodriguez, Sr. says he was asked for an ID and handed it over. Then, he was Tasered three times.
The elder Rodriguez explains how he pulls out his wallet. Interpreting for his father, Edgar says, “He took out his wallet. He had the license in his hand and gave his wallet to his wife. When he lifted up his hands with his license, he started feeling the electric shock in his back.”“All of a sudden he got Tasered in the back and then this side, and then officer in the front of him Tasered him from the front.
But the charge had yet to drain from the cops’ Taser, so
The pregnant mother of the baptized boys was Tasered, too. The family says the woman tried to help Rodriguez, who was on the ground. She was charged with assaulting a police officer.And since the tasing of pregnant women is generally frowned upon, the cops held her in jail overnight until immigration and customers enforcement could take her off their hands.
“They Tasered her in the back. She didn’t assault the officer. She was assaulted by officer,” said Edgar, Jr. who was just steps away from his father.
As it was a baptism party, this dangerous family had the video camera going, capturing the evil-doings of happy, raucous, tumultuous children at play.
The police claim that Rodriguez (note the ethnic name, which may or may not have played some role in the attitude of cops, Henry Gates’ myopia notwithstanding) was drunk and refused to comply with the officers’ demands for his identification.
A spokesperson says, “The officers contacted the homeowner, who was highly intoxicated. The officers explained the noise ordinance to the homeowner, who refused several requests to turn down the loud music. Rodriguez began to act disorderly and refused to identify himself to officers.”And so, while enjoying the baptism party for his two grandsons in his own backyard, Rodriguez was arrested for public intoxication.
The best thing anyone can say about this absurd incident is that no one died, especially the mother’s unborn child who may be one of the first fetus’ to feel the sensation of 50,000 volts in the womb. That the fine men and women charged with tasing pregnant women during backyard baptism parties thought it best to use force is but one issue. But the question lingers whether, had the officers not been armed with tasers, would they have just beaten Rodriquez and the pregnant mother senseless with clubs?
The confluence of tasers and police authority seems to be a constant source of stories for me. I’m sick of these stories. The solution isn’t to stop reading or writing about them, but to continue to do whatever is possible to make others aware of the dangers inherent in putting tasers in the hands of police officers, and putting police officers on a pedestal. I can think of no other “tool” in the hands of police that has given rise to such flagrant abuse and misuse.
I might quip, “when in doubt, tase,” but there was no doubt here at all. The worst that could be said of Rodriguez, assuming the cops are accurate and the family is lying through its teeth, is that he wasn’t sufficiently deferential and didn’t pull out his ID fast enough. In his own backyard. We can’t have that in America.
Or maybe the cops just don’t like Latinos, even if that includes pregnant mothers of two boys who were just baptized.
H/T Karl Mansoor
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Police always seem to be asking for ID when they talk to people. Why? Do some states have laws requiring that everyone carry ID? In Texas, there’s no statutory requirement to identify yourself to police unless you are arrested, and then you just have to give your name. No need to present a drivers license unless you are operating a motor vehicle. I don’t give police my ID unless I’m driving (granted, my interaction with them is minimal).
I was wondering about that myself. The guy’s in his own backyard and the cops want his ID? For what? To make sure the backyard wasn’t stolen?
But your point is well taken. Since when are Americans required to possess identification just in case some cops demands to see it?
Since the courts made a collective decision that upholding the authority of LEOs is more important than the rights of citizens, basically. If you refer to our country as a police state, people are offended–because it’s not yet as bad as, say, the Soviet Union; but we’re well on the path to that kind of system, perhaps irreversibly so.
A police state it is, just follow the news around the country about incidents like these. I believe since 911 and the “Patriot Act” we have become use to these abuses of authority. I wounder what the founding fathers would have to say today about our justice system. The courts continually favor the police even when they are clearly wrong or even committing perjury during testimony.
As soon as we resort to cliche, like using language like “police state,” people assume we’re just malcontents and stop listening. They don’t want to believe that it’s other than isolated incidents. We need to just keep pointing at each of the continual series of “isolated incidents” and let them draw their own conclusion,
On this, I’ll respectfully disagree. The center is defined by its relation to the edges. So long as nobody is willing to stand up and use the correct description, the mass of people will remain silently huddled together. Only if there are loud, strident, obnoxious voices on the edge do they have the perceived freedom to expand their notion of what is socially acceptable. Every change in the history of society has been effected by malcontents, and personally I’m proud to be one.
I think this is a matter of persuasiveness or approach rather than substance. I would have thought/hoped that 25,000 Youtube videos of cops would have had a more significant impact on the judiciary, for example, but I have yet to see it. They still default to the cops. The question, in my mind (thought obviously not yours) is how to bring this comprehension of the problem into the mainstream, the middle, so it’s no longer viewed as the fringe perspective, which increases the divide between the malcontents and the powerful rather than narrows it.
You assume to much if you think that the judiciary has enough computer savvy to find YouTube, much less play a particular video.
So how could they be affected by it?
While I have the terrible habit of thinking that people who are responsible for such things as interpreting and or crafting laws that have long and wide ranging impact on our society would actually attempt to understand the law they are passing, I am slowly giving up on the idea that informed voting is anything more than what some lobbyist or staffer told them.