Teen attack on park ranger makes top cop think of police brutality, for some reason

boing
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That park ranger was clearly in a fighting stance and therefore the young man was justified in defending himself.

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That’s what it looked like to me, too, and it also looked like the ranger attacked the kid first. Stomping the ranger in the head was not part of defending himself, though.

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If a cop was stomping a kid in the head they’d say it was. The “fighting stance” thing is something they use all the time too. It didn’t take me long to find an article with the term.

From August 20. http://www.cerescourier.com/section/34/article/4132/

When the officers tried to talk to him, he got out of his car and took a fighting stance with fists and said “What the f— are you going to do?” The officers grabbed Mark Schwitters, 56, by the arms and the fight was on. Schwitters was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed.

It might have been true in that case, but it seems to be something put in every police report to justify rough treatment in an arrest.

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Well maybe you know better than me, because i moved out of PA after living there my whole life 4 years ago. But it had always been a spot where if you see the cops you better duck, or go at night because the plaza ‘hours’ mean after 11 its not considered ‘policed’. Its never been a fully open spot (which is ridiculous). But like i said i’m not really there everyday so i wouldn’t truly know anymore, but with them trying once again for business development its going to back to being a total bust - and this kid’s behavior just gives them a reason to crack down.

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Agreed. Doesn’t mean a cop is right, though.

I suspect officers forced to wear body cameras refrain from instigation approximately 80% of the time.

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I dunno - park ranger took a fighting stance, but he was being defensive, he didn’t actively attack.

Rangers generally aren’t like cops. They are like parking meter attendants for squirrels and trees. Though the ones around here are armed since they encounter hunters and people shooting.

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Really?

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No. Not really. That’s just the phrase the cops would use if the situation was reversed.

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If you’d been quoting Fox, you’d have said, “The ranger, by the way, wasn’t badly hurt.” They said he was injured in the linked video.

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Would you settle for a video of park police body-slamming a guy for dancing?

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Please tell me how any video can show that someone was clearly abiding with the law before the video started.

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People who think it’s reasonable to attack anyone they are afraid of make me very afraid.

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It’s just not the same when someone sworn to uphold a law breaks that law, as it is when someone who merely agrees not to break it, breaks it. But you can see them as almost the same if you want to.

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a few things.

  1. the police -are- civilians. Law enforcement, yes, but they are not military, despite the costumes and smoke effects

  2. Breaking a law is not a provocation sufficient to justify an officer breaking a law in return. That is the job of the judiciary, to mete out punishment.

  3. There is no magical time and place where officers are allowed to attack people, no matter how badly they seem to be breaking the law. There is allowable force in stopping them, but only to the point of arrest. ‘Attack’ is not a law enforcement term.

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The powerful don’t just defend themselves!

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The guy dancing in the video is Adam Kokesh. He’s the same guy responsible for “Open Carry March on Washington” and Smoke Down Prohibition. In the video above, you only see the final moments of Kokesh’s arrest during a 2011 flash-mob protest at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. It was to protest a recent ruling against dancing at the monument (he knew he’d be arrested).

I recommend you watch and listen to the video closely. He’s being told “this is your last warning” right before he gets dropped. Kokesh was a marine and then a marine reservist. He’s deliberately holding rigid and resisting arrest by not allowing the police to cuff him. They dropped him to get his arms behind him. I agree they used a lot of force.

I also suggest you visit the link about him above.

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Found more info about the skateboarder/ranger incident in Philadelphia.

Relevant quotes:

REGULAR skaters at LOVE Park say they have a subtle truce with the rangers, a cat-and-mouse game of grinding along concrete steps when they’re gone and leaving peacefully with wheels up when they show up.

The skaters were OK with that, too, but now they fear that some “suburban kid who always acts hard” has ruined it for all of them by punching, kicking and spitting on a ranger who tried to get him and some other skaters to leave Friday afternoon.

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The filmer, Mariano Verrico, said in an interview yesterday that the man appeared to be waiting and almost eager for a confrontation with the ranger.
…
“We saw the ranger walking down the stairs, talking to the kids. He was real respectful, wasn’t raising his voice,” Verrico said. “The one kid who was the main attacker, he kind of stepped in and got really belligerent and loud with the ranger.”

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Myrick said he and fellow skaters know the ranger, and know when his shift starts so they can avoid trouble, and they wished him well.

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