Kevin Carson of C4SS.org recently published an excellent piece indicting the authoritarians in our culture who make excuses for police who commit acts of brutality or break the law. As Carson reminded me, there are always authoritarian followers who will come to the defense of “authority figures” who abuse their power regardless of how egregious the abuse is.
To prove the point, I did a little experiment. I searched for “police brutality” on YouTube, picked a video I had never seen before, and scanned the comment section for comments defending the police.
The story I found is about a fourteen-year-old-girl who suffered a horrific injury to her head after a police officer tased her for not following an arbitrary command. Apparently, the girl had physically abused her mother after she was confronted for distributing nude photos of herself to older men. Her mother brought her to the police department and she attempted to walk away. A police officer then threatened to tase her if she did not stop and she ran out of fear. That’s when he tased her.
As I expected, I found a number of appalling comments making excuses for the police. Below, I’ve highlighted a dozen of them. Note that I didn’t make it past the first page of comments before finding my dozen and I didn’t even use all the pro-police comments on the page.
1.
No respect for her mother. No respect for the law. No respect for the police or anyone else. Well, I’ve no respect for your trouble. Actions should have consequences at ANY age
Shame on the police, firing someone for doing their job
2.
She physically abused her mother, is involved with and distributing child pornography, and she fled from the police. She’s a criminal and deserved getting tazed, unfortunately one prong hit her head. That was an accident. Given the type of behavior she’s engaging in this situation might be what turns her life around for the better.
3.
Oh, boo hoo. All you peckerheads making a fuss over her getting hit in the head have never tried to hit a moving target with a projectile weapon. Stupid little sh*t was warned what was going to happen and ran anyways. Accidents happen. Parents should teach their kids not to run from cops. And if they do that they will have to accept the consequences thereof. In this instance I’m backing the cop. We have way too many stupid kids out there already.
4.
its the bitches fault
5.
Next time you’ll learn not to fight with your mom. Because if you’re a bad enough kid that your mom has to call the cops on you. Maybe you do deserve an asswhiping of this magnitude. Don’t want to get your ass beat? Learn to behave and listen to your mother.
6.
Hey, it was a BAD SHOT, thats ALL, the lil bitch won’t attack her OWN MOTHER again thats for sure, for being a lil whore and sending explicit pics of herself to males, the bitch is 14! think about it! if shes doing those things, WHAT else could she be doing? i bet she resisted, and the cop said fuck it, imma tase you, NOT HIS FAULT she may have ducked her head and got hit that way, fucken idiots
7.
She’s just a cunt actually, lil bitch needs to learn to listen and some manners. OH yeah don’t forget she’s a 14 year old whore….
8.
First she could listen, WOW maybe this wouldn’t happen then
9.
to all the whiny little bitches, heres a peice of advice, you listen to authority and you wont get hurt. but when you chose to break the law dont whine about consequences.
10.
Hey i got an idea, maybe dont run from the police or assault your mother. Maybe then you dont get 10,000 volts through your skull.
11.
HAHHAHAHAA!! Watch the video. The bitch was running from the fucking cops. LMFAO. She deserved it .
12.
She got what she asked for. Control your fucking kids and law enforcement won’t have to deal with them. I’m sure she was a great kid, by beating on her mother and all.
It’s true that the girl was accused of a violent crime by her mother, but it still doesn’t seem like the police officer had any business stopping her in the first place. If the girl’s mother wanted to press charges, she could have done so without the girl being present and until those charges are pressed, I don’t really see why the police would think they had any right to detain her. Even if the police officer had a reason to stop the girl, it’s obvious that his ultra-violent response—which consisted of attacking her with a lethal weapon and inflicting an injury that will probably have permanent repercussions—was totally unwarranted.
But for the authoritarians posting comments on YouTube and other sites, none of this matters. They’re usually much too concerned with calling the victim of police brutality names to actually care about the facts. Considering all the sexist language and “slut shaming” in these comments, I suspect these commentators belong to the same class of people who blame women for “getting themselves raped.” Despicable.
Authoritarian Submissives possess the following traits:
(1) They are HIGHLY SUBMISSIVE to established authority
(2) AGGRESSIVE in the name of that authority
(3) CONVENTIONAL to the point of insisting *everyone should behave as their authorities decide.*
source:
The Authoritarians
by Bob Altemeyer
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Thanks for the link; that’s a great book. I read it several years ago (along with another of Altemeyer’s books) and I’ve actually been thinking about doing a post about it for a while now. Until then, I recommend that everyone checks it out.
These comments are indeed very appalling. I always find it really strange that the alleged point of child pornography laws is to protect the child… so in these types of situations, we protect the child by … tasing her and causing a head injury? Kind of like the war on drugs. The government doesn’t want you to ruin your life with drugs, so they ruin your life for you by sticking you in jail.
To be fair, youtube commenters are in my opinion, a particularly nasty bunch.
Boiling the experiment down to its basic elements and stripping away the chaff that can be used for appeal to emotion style arguments we have:
1) An assault on a private citizen by another private citizen.
2) The victim bringing their assailant to the police.
3) The police attempting to arrest the accused assailant.
4) The accused assailant fleeing the scene.
5) The accused assailant, now resisting arrest, being tazed by the police.
Not sure I see the “authoritarian” bits here, except in the emotional appeal. I don’t generally agree with the use of a tazer at all (I’m old-fashioned and prefer that the police use their hands as tools of capture because it’s much less risky to all parties), but that’s a different issue entirely IMO.
A police officer cannot attempt to actually detain a person for a crime that has not been officially reported yet. If the officer witnessed the assault he would have probable cause to detain and ultimately arrest the girl. He didnt yet know the entire circumstances surrounding the “alleged” assault. He saw a girl who he thought was going against his “power” by turning her back on him and attempted to leave a situation where she was bound by no law to be because he had no reason to detain her. I guess it hurt his ego so he retaliated and shot her with a tazer. Tazer guns actually do kill people more often than police would like to admit… Also, i beleive i read that he shot her in the head with the tazer? anyone who beleives that this is reasonable force is obviously an authoritarian submissive. This is a young girl, if that police officer was not strong enough to run down and detain a 14 year old girl, than he has absolutely no business being a police officer…. its police like this that fuel my anger towards the police and judicial system. And the people who support the unreasonable use of force, especially when directed at children, are just as cowardly and corrupt as the pathetic police officers who commit these crimes.
Ryan:
1) Obviously, the crime was in the process of being reported… both alleged victim and alleged assailant were at the police station… unless you think they mistook the police station for a Starbucks? As the report states, the alleged victim went there for help. Typically, that involves making some sort of report.
2) I, personally, agree that use of hands are far superior to tazers and agree that tazers are weapons just as surely as batons and guns are. But that’s not relevant; had he tackled the alleged assailant, I’m pretty sure he would still be getting demonized for manhandling her or beating her up.
3) It doesn’t matter if it’s a 14 year old, a female, or a WWF wrestler… the age and gender of the alleged assailant is only useful to the topic as an appeal to emotion, rather than any sort of rational discussion.
It turns out that the cop lied about his reason for using the taser.
Craig – so if a 3 year old assaulted his mother, and was tasered by the police, criticizing such actions as disproportionately harsh, or inappropriate would be a mere “appeal to emotion”?
I’m pretty sure it’s part of a legitimate rational discussion to point out that tasering small children is completely inappropriate unless they are sociopathic murderers or something. Age absolutely is relevant and is not merely an appeal to emotion. It is relevant in the rational discussion regarding proportionality of force and excessiveness of force. Using a taser is a lot less force for a grown adult, in comparison to a 5 year old child.
It is actually extremely irrational to say that use of a taser on anyone, regardless of age requires the same analysis. Do you really think a 3 or 5 year old suffers the exact same level of consequences from a tasering as a grown adult? Do you really think a 95 year old who is tasered will suffer the same consequences as a health 25 year old?
Craig, let’s put it this way –
If you think use of force on people (such as use of tasers) is all the same regardless of age, and that the emotional factor is not only irrelevant, but insignificant, why is it that when this country institutes a draft, we only draft adults, not children?
After all, who cares if a child gets shot at or beaten, versus an adult? Use of force should have roughly the same consequences, right? Talking about age is really just appeal to emotion, right?
Some would argue that the emotional factor is significant, and a part of rational discussion because children are not emotionally the same as adults. Even if you don’t accept this, you must accept that a certain level of force on a 7 year old is not the same as that same level of force on a 20 year old.
Jenn, did you miss the part where I specifically said that I disagree with the use of tazers in general? But this article isn’t about tazers… is it?
This article is about authoritarians, and the blind manner in which they condone or excuse use of excessive, disproportionate, and unjustified force. It doesn’t really matter whether we were talking about tasers or using hands or batons. Like you said, whether he used a baton or tackled her, he would be probably be getting demonized, as he should be. None of these are appropriate ways to deal with a rowdy fourteen year old, because I believe physical size and age are relevant. If she were a 10′ lumbering beast, I might see how the use of a bit more force might be seen as less brutal. Either way, your argument that discussion of age is irrelevant and is a mere appeal to emotion is incorrect, in my opinion.
Jenn – Actually, the article spells out what it’s about pretty clearly: “…there are always authoritarian followers who will come to the defense of “authority figures” who abuse their power regardless of how egregious the abuse is.”
My experiment here was to prove the opposite. There are those (including yourself, by your own words) who simply cannot admit any RIGHT doing by a police officer… in point of fact, you yourself set up a situation that simply isn’t even possible as a possible use of “a bit more force,” specifically a 10′ tall human being??
And you say that it’s not an appeal to emotion that’s involved, when you yourself suggest a tacitly impossible situation (10 feet tall indeed)…
Thank you for participating, and indeed proving my theory correct.
Just to clarify – are you saying your experiment was proven right because people like us think police are always wrong?
I used the example of a 10′ tall person as an exaggeration. Let me be more realistic. Tasering a 14 year old of this girl’s size is much worse than tasering say, an NBA basketball player. It is not merely an appeal to emotion to mention age. Clearly, an NBA athlete will not suffer as much physical damage from police beating, tasering, or other manhandling when compared with a 14 year old girl. They are both wrong, but one clearly is more likely to cause more physical damage than the other.
And no, I don’t have any problem admitting “Right doing” by a police officer. Sure, there have been instances where police saved a life, or solved a burglary. I don’t at all deny that these instances exist, and that police were correct in doing so. I just haven’t personally experienced any of those situations, but that’s a side point. I also don’t think that at all disproves the fact that police consistently, frequently, and egregiously use excessive force.
I mean, what are you saying, exactly – that because police do right things sometimes, we can’t criticize them on the many occasions when they abuse their power?
Jenn – Short answer to your question, yes. Your own words make it clear that not only should the police officer have no means whatsoever to contain and control an individual that is resisting arrest… hands, baton, or tazer. The difference between age, gender, or even race between the 14 year old and the NBA player are rendered irrelevant by your own words: “…much worse than…” indicating that it really doesn’t matter who the police officer is facing, it is all bad. There is no situation that exists (other than your impossible 10′ lumbering brute) that even warrants “a bit more force.”
And I dispute your comment that you believe that police have ever done right… if a police officer has no real time that is acceptable to use even “a bit more force,” then there is no way that they can stop a robber, or mugger, or rapist… because after all, their use of force is automatically an abuse of power to you.
And that, really, is the point I make here. The “experiment” in this page is equally valid when pointed at the other extreme… there are always those that defend the indefensible… and those who would see to it that only an impossible 10′ lumbering brute justifies the use of force. Both sides are just as rabidly driven to “prove” their point, and just as unreasonable in their approaches. One side thinks Tazers are a great tool for control… while others think that only when faced with a 10′ lumbering brute is “a bit more force” valid.
I submit, having shown the error in logic used by both sides… that each side needs to chill out and get all the facts before concluding in their own favor.
There is a difference between “bad” and “worse than,” actually, and that difference is not irrelevant, as you charge. For instance, manslaughter is bad, but murder is worse, right? This is an appreciable difference, I would argue. As such, my distinction of “bad” versus “much worse” police abuses too, is not negligible.
At any rate, I am a fair person. I look at facts carefully. I don’t believe use of force by police is always wrong. Of course, they can use force to reasonably and proportionally defend themselves or others, just like any other human being. If a police officer were being shot at, I’d very much expect him to shoot back. If he were assaulted, I’d expect him to take proportional action in that regard. These are all everyday situations where I would find that a cop was justified in using force. These are everyday, non-imaginary situations that don’t involve a 10′ lumbering brute, in which I believe certain force by police would be acceptable.
That being said, police frequently shoot when they are not shot at, and when they are assaulted, they respond with disproportionate force, which was precisely the case here. Most posts on this site involve instances when police abused their power; otherwise there would be no reason to post them. If you want to give me a concrete example of justified use of force by police, I will gladly acknowledge the example and acknowledge the use of force was acceptable, but that is not what this website is for. This website seeks to highlight offensive abuses by police, which we believe happen more often than is acceptable.
Manslaughter is bad, murder is worse? How so? In a strict logical sense, stripping away all appeals to emotion… in one case, a human has died because of another… in the other case, a human has died because of another. There is no real or concrete difference. But that is neither here nor there, as they are both “bad.”
Very well, I accept your claim that police can and should use proportional force. In this case, as it has been described, what “force” is acceptable in your mind to stop someone accused of assault from quite literally running away from the arrest? You’ve already eliminated hands, batons, and tazers… so what’s left? Harsh language? What’s proportional to the potential felon simply… running away?
And to answer your final paragraph… it is not my point to show that the force was disproportionate… nor, in point of fact, was this particular article doing that. And you have again shown my point to be valid, as this site itself highlights several instances of possible abuse (including the one on this page) as though it’s proven beyond any doubt.
I haven’t eliminated hands or batons and tazers, really. I said they must be used proportionally. And in this case, it was not proportional. How hard is it to grab a small girl’s arm instead of tasering her? I would also say that sometimes it’s ok if a felon runs away. Even the conservative institution that is the Supreme Court has acknowledged you cannot shoot a fleeing felon dead if he poses no deadly force.
I can appreciate your argument about extremism, on both sides. However, I do not believe we are being extreme. This was unjustified use of disproportionate force against a minor. The situation did not call for a tasering to the head, which worsened this girl’s epilepsy. We are about as extreme in our opposition to police abuses as most people are extreme in their opposition to murder. To not take a stand on matters of gross police abuses may be nicely described as being “moderate” or in my opinion, better described as amoral or ignorant.
There’s nothing wrong with criticizing abuse without proving beyond a reasonable doubt. We see what we see. It’s on video. If he has an explanation, let him tell it. If you saw someone beat someone else with a baseball bat in the middle of the street, would you go, “well it hasn’t been proven beyond a reasonable doubt yet… I mean, he could be just faking this… they might be filming a movie or something… better not to do anything about it,” ?
What I personally think this officer deserves is to be confined in a cell for assault and battery. If I was really extreme, I’d personally see to it that this happens. Instead, I’m sitting here writing articles and commenting on a blog. I consider myself rather reasonable, really.
It is not about tazers, but tasers.
I agree on the point that first the girl abused/assaulted her mom. but otherwise I’m with Jenn on this. She’s so effective with words, poignant and thorough. A similiar incident happened to a 10-year-old child about 40 miles from where I live. It’s a fact rather than just an emotional appeal that minor citizens are different, less developed and more vulnerable than adult citizens, just as the law perceives it. That girl is a teenager who needed an “attitude adjustment”/ correction/ discipline/ punishment, not to be called or considered an “assailant.” Tasers are “cruel and unusual punishment”, sometimes deadly or permanently harmful.
Often when law enforcement officials should use substantial force and/or weapons upon bona fide criminals, they are either absent, incompetent or negligent to do so. In other words, they don’t do a damn thing about it. Instead they often “scorch the earth” by treating innocent people as dangerous and/or guilty. More efficient, high-tech means of tracking felons, such as GPS, RFID and UAVs, are likely to be misused against innocent citizens. As for the critique of extremism, our justice system’s modus operandi, pattern, procedure and status quo are so desparatey detrimental and unjust to the American people that drastic measures are required. CPS/DCFS, judges and police are the awry, out-of-control “10-foot lumbering beast.”
Kids should be handled with “kid gloves”, not cattle prods! The basic problem is the extreme double standard between cops and citizens. Cops can and do “get away with murder” and many other, lesser and greater, crimes due to prosecutorial deference or immunity while us mere mortals aren’t allowed to dare think about challenging or questioning a cop or a judge (who believe themselves the law incarnate), defending ourselves, our family, property or asserting our rights. Many corrupt/criminal/evil gov’t officials should be incarcerated instead of many innocent people who are!
I’m reminded of Arthur Silber’s thesis in Kill that woman!.
my mom left for the same school as them…. shes an identical period for the reason that these products.:) this lady said this lady assumed them… she has the same yellow sweatshirt as that will guy