Unlike the “discussion” on campus, where no disagreement is tolerated, Steve Woolfolk not only had no problem with pointed questions posed to former Obama administration diplomat Dennis Ross on the propriety of Israeli conduct toward Palestinians, but intervened to prevent the seizure of Jeremy Rothe-Kushel.  For his defense, he took a knee from a cop and is being prosecuted.

The arrests occurred after a provocative question was asked at the question-and-answer period of a May 9 talk by diplomat Dennis Ross. For months, library officials protested that the arrests and charges were a violation of the First Amendment.

Off-duty police were hired as security. Why, exactly, isn’t clear, but the library agreed to allow a sponsoring group to provide security in the event of “danger.” The danger, it turned out, was the security.

The audience member, Jeremy Rothe-Kushel of Lawrence, was standing still and speaking into a microphone when a private guard and off-duty police officers removed him.

Steve Woolfolk, director of public programming for the library, protested the police action and tried to intervene before the entire group left the room and both men were arrested.

Ironically, Rothe-Kushel was arrested for trespassing, notwithstanding the fact that the library, by Woolfolk, sought to tell the security that his presence, his questions, were entirely acceptable. So, they arrested Woolfolk after subduing him with the obligatory violence to teach the librarian who’s in charge, for resisting arrest.

“I was trying to be careful, with the hope of de-escalating. This isn’t how we handle things at the library,” [Woolfolk] said. “For anybody, a police officer or someone else, to take it upon themselves to silence a person they disagree with, it’s not appropriate.”

Not appropriate fails to capture the wrongfulness of the rogue decision to forcibly silence a questioner. But beyond the unlawfulness of the seizure in itself, the library was entirely fine with Rothe-Kushel asking unpleasant questions and, it being on library property, was the sole determiner of whether his presence constituted trespass. It didn’t, except to the security person and off-duty cop, who decided on their own that this was a good idea, despite the library telling them to stop.

And the Kansas City police immediately recognized the error of the encounter.

Capt. Stacey Graves, a Kansas City police spokeswoman, said the off-duty officers acted appropriately and with the full authority of the department, though they were on that night employed by the Jewish Community Foundation.

“If security wants the person out, and the officer saw a person being disruptive at the event, then we would remove the person,” Graves said. “We’re there to keep the peace.”

Somehow, Capt. Graves got the concepts twisted, ignoring that this wasn’t about what security wants, but about what the library wants. In the sort of simplistic reduction of purpose that permeates police excuses, keeping the peace becomes whatever their cop, regardless of purpose, decides it is.

“Anytime someone interferes with an arrest, they should be arrested. That’s a city ordinance,” Graves said.

For those inclined to chalk up bizarre and outrageous police actions, including the use of force, to “those people” who, in their twisted bias, “deserve it,” this was a library program inviting discussion, and the program’s coordinator telling the “muscle” in the room that this was entirely appropriate conduct.  There is no twisted rationale that explains why the “muscle” on its own decided who gets to speak, and why their decision to silence a questioner trumped the library’s decision to allow it.

And, as if to reduce it to a deeper level of absurdity, the police spokeswoman gave this flagrantly unlawful, and unjustifiable, conduct, her seal of approval.

But library officials said they had specified that no one was to be removed for asking uncomfortable questions and not without permission of library staff, unless there was an imminent threat.

Kemper, the library director, said the security guards and police officers violated that agreement, along with the library’s core reason for existence as a place to exchange ideas.

“We’re going to be living in a different kind of country” Kemper said, if people can be arrested for asking questions at a library. “If this kind of behavior is unacceptable to the police, then I guess we’re going to have to shut the library down.”

There has been no shortage of stories of police being called to help and, substituting their astounding bad judgment coupled with the First Rule of Policing, ending an encounter by killing the person they were called to protect.  The cynical contend that calling the cops may well be the worst choice possible to serve and protect, and what happened at this Kansas City library appears to prove the cynics right.

But the outrage here goes well beyond the monumental stupidity of the “muscle” or their police department apologists. Both Woolfolk and Rothe-Kushel are still being prosecuted for their “crimes”:

On Friday, R. Crosby Kemper III, the executive director of the city’s library system, said the private security guards were not acting on behalf of the library and had no right to remove a patron for asking a question. Kemper said he could not understand why the police believed they should arrest the patron or the library employee.

Kemper said he thought the charges would be dropped once the library explained the situation to police and prosecutors.

“At this stage, I’m actually outraged,” Kemper said. “This is a big violation of the very first amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

What does the prosecution have to say about its complicity in this insanity by perpetuating the prosecution? There is no word in the article, but the case goes on.

At a time when speech is under assault, when taking offense has become an excuse for criminalization, when police have gone rogue, this is the trend that’s becoming acceptable among the deeply passionate. Contrary to the expectations of the deeply passionate, the weapons of social justice, their abhorrence of speech (not to mention recognition of constitutional rights and just a touch of sanity) will be seized by the other side and used against them. And the rest of us as well.

If criminalization of speech becomes an acceptable norm, then it will be used to silence “hate speech” regardless of it’s what the children hate or the cops hate. If taking offense is reason enough to impose the will of the police, then it will be used when the officer takes offense as well as the teary-eyed, marginalized SJW.

This is the road being taken, and when librarians trying to de-escalate police violence and wrongful arrest are taken out with a knee, there is no longer any ridiculous excuse to justify its happening. Forget the angry protesters against racism in the Dartmouth library; this is how their ignorance plays out in the Kansas City library.