The back of 17-year-old Keith Smith-Tourville after the police were finished with him.
In spite my best intentions, I have wound up liking resident Vivir Latino Troll, EYE OF TEXAS. Don’t ask me why, maybe it’s the name. I always did like all caps in a name. Announcing your presence with authority! Anyway, Eye makes an interesting argument in VL’s post on Amy Goodman’s arrest. S/he says:
There were also protesters and incidents at the DNC, but the leftist media chose not to cover it because of the bad image it would have given the squeaky clean Demoncraps. Go figure.
Now, seeing as VL did cover incidents of police brutality at the DNC, and really complicated the very privileged space of the convention to begin with, I know that EYE is not talking about VL. But s/he does point to an intriguing idea. Republicans are positive that the media didn’t report on the violence at the DNC while reporting nonstop on violence at the RNC–and Democrats are fairly certain of the same thing.
My question, should it matter where this violence happens? Why does it matter? Shouldn’t the most important thing be that no citizen, no human being, should ever be treated like the young man above was by the people put in place to protect us? Should media report on the type of brutality that causes the the bruises and scrapes shown in the picture? Does it matter if members of the government are ‘being protected’ from 17-year-old kids by gun wielding cops that like to leave boot prints embedded on skin?
What do you think?
- Tags: police brutality, protest, RNC, violence
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3 Responses to Should Media Report on Police Brutality
libhomo
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Police brutality is a terribly important issue, and journalists have a responsibility to cover it. Unfortunately, “law enforcement” has been arresting journalists who are merely doing their jobs.
EYES OF TEXAS
September 4th, 2008 at 9:04 am
First of all, thanks for the creds. A lot of these protesters, at either one of the conventions, are there to cause violence and destruction to property. Since most of the coverage of the protests has been at the Republican convention, it is easy to see the media is biased, which to me indicates they are in strong support of Barak H. Obama.
No one should be subjected to police brutality, but from some of the footage I saw, a lot of the protesters were not complying to police orders. A peaceful protest is one thing, but when the well being of police officers is at stake, the police have no choise but to defend themselves. Does anyone really know what Keith may have done to provoke an officer of the law to do the damage to his back? It doesn’t take much to scrape a back if you are knocked to the concrete and dragged to a police car. I’m fairly sure Keith brought a lot of his misery on himself by either resisting arrest, failure to comply, causing property damage, endangering an officer or all of the above. Cops are not generally out to hurt anyone, but they will protect themselves if confronted.
polerin
September 4th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
(sorry about the video physical size in some of these links. fair warning ;P)
Most of the protectors are there because they care about the causes they are representing. They don’t need to travel all the way across the globe to smash windows. You can do that far more safely in your home town.
As far as complying with police orders, the police have been corralling people and ordering them to disperse, but not giving them a pathway to do so. Nor are the police solely acting in self defense. What threat was this woman presenting?
These people got no warning that weaponry was to about to be used
Any number of other videos out there will show you. There are indeed people that are going out there with violence in mind, but you can say the same thing about some of the police. Should we judge all policemen on the basis of those who pepper spray women proffering flowers to them?