TheAgitator.com
Nope.
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008The Washington Post has a pretty regretful write-up of last Saturday’s Jefferson Memorial arrest this morning.
The article flat-out gets one fact wrong:
A security guard soon appears, insisting that the group leave.
Oberwetter was among those ushered out and was arrested after she kept returning to the chamber.
The video pretty clearly shows that that’s not the way it happened. Oberwetter did not keep coming back. She was arrested after asking the officer to explain why she had to leave.
As for the quotes from the Jefferson scholar, well, far be it from me to argue with someone who’s spent his entire life studying Jefferson, but I think the guy’s a bit full of himself. Jefferson adamantly warned that liberty is lost incrementally. Government takes over gradually. Not to mention the fact that the dancers still weren’t actually breaking any laws. No one provoked the officers. The dance was meant to be a celebration of Jefferson. No one thought there would be a confrontation.
There a couple of other national media outlets looking at this story, now. Hopefully they’ll cover it a bit better.
“Hopefully they’ll cover it a bit better.”
It’s good to have hope!
I’d be surprised if they did, though.
Mike beat me to it… I was going to say, “I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
[...] Radley Balko notes that the Post article got the facts about Saturday night’s even completely wrong: The article flat-out gets one fact [...]
What I want to know is how they can publish something so patently false about an incident that was widely covered for days before they wrote this. Never mind the video showing the opposite.
My grandfather wrote for the WAPO (he retired in 1968) and he would be incensed to read such shabby journalism if he were alive today. So I guess I’ll just have to be incensed for him.
I’m going ad hominem and proposing the quoted scholar doesn’t sound very scholarly…
Reads: O-M-G, Jefferson, was, like, soooo, totally anal…
I’m not certain that someone who would associate one of our founding fathers with digestive track psychobabble has a favorable view of his alleged study.
Isn’t there that one-minute period on the video where Talley’s focusing on something else before Oberwetter gets arrested? Obviously, the cops are saying that she kept trying to re-enter the chamber — the story should say “according to police.” But can you *definitively* say that she wasn’t trying to?
Watch the first video from 2:00 to 2:10. Let’s recap:
1) We’re told it’s a quiet dance thing. The videos show they were actually quit loud.
2) We’re told everyone was being respectful and simply asked why they’re asked to leave. Actually, the only dancer we can hear (the cameraman) is being a complete jagoff.
3) We’re told there’s video evidence she didn’t leave and return. Actually, it’s so obvious that she did that I remembered her doing so from the one time I watched the videos early yesterday morning.
Alex — Give me the exact time in the video where there’s “obvious” evidence that Brooke left and returned.
There is none, because she didn’t. No one I’ve talked to who was there says anything other than that she was in the chamber from the time she first entered it until she was arrested.
Hear that everyone, if you’re a “complete jagoff”, then you deserve to get arrested. It’s a crime. Tell me, Alex, was this first or second degree jagoff-eree? I would view it was second since the tone in the voice only sounded obnoxious and not bitchy.
Remember people, Freedom means only asking authority figures why they are violating your rights in a completely respectful tone, you corss that line into obnoxiousness and you have no more rights.
Alex loves freedom.
Only, and Radley, don’t give us that “everyone there attests to it” crap. Didn’t you hear, bro. Alex SAW IT IN THE VIDEO. The arbiter of where (at worst) slightly antogonistic behavior forfeits your most fundamental right to not be physically restrained *frickin* saw it in a *frickin* video… and it was *OBVIOUS*. Holy christ, man!!? What don’t you get about this!? CASE CLOSED.
That girl better not even be allowed to have an attorney. Go Freedom!!
That Jefferson scholar is annoying. “What these folks were involved in was provoking authorities into having to enforce the law. Jefferson was very anal about obedience to the law.”
There’s no evidence that Brooke was “provoking authorities” into “having to enforce the law.” Apparently the cops weren’t even sure which law was being broken (disorderly conduct? interfering with an agency function?)
Surely Jefferson couldn’t have been “anal” about the enforcement of every law just because it has the title “law,” even if it reflected popular will. The Declaration of Independence says that “any form of government” can become destructive of individual rights. And the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions indicate that laws can be unconstitutional, and as such ignored by the states. Would Jefferson have been “anal” about obedience to the Alien and Sedition Acts?
The Jefferson scholar quoted in the Post piece makes it seem like Jefferson wouldn’t recognize any limits on the law, which seems a little ridiculous. Maybe he wasn’t a fan of civil disobedience generally, but even if that’s true, it’s totally irrelevant to this case.
Nick, where did I say she deserved to be arrested?
Where did I say the douchebag cameraman should be arrested?
Are you incapable of understanding that arresting her is wrong AND misrepresenting the facts is wrong?
Are you incapable or understanding that she could have been completely reasonable with the police AND have also left and returned?
Geez, Alex, I thought you pointed out your observations for a reason that was even slightly relevant to the discussion at hand. Your willingness to split hairs between a person being respectful and being a complete jagoff to make the point that…… um…. oh that misreporting the difference between these two things is BAD.
Notice how I didn’t mock you for pointing out that the video shows the woman to have returned - I only mocked you for whether or not it happened - because THAT would be relevant to the issue of whether she deserved to be arrested and thus further this conversation.
To put it another way, I don’t think Radley and people on here would complain if the WAPO got her hair color wrong, see? But seriously, please leave a comment correcting any grammar mistakes I’ve made here, cuz, ya know, that would be helpful
Hey Alex, hate to burst your bubble, but the girl seen leaving the chamber from 2:00 to 2:10 on the first video isn’t Brooke.
Is her name Brooke or Mary???
Nick, what do you see from 2:00 to 2:10? It seems pretty clear to me that she was escorted towards the entrance and walked right back in as soon as the cop turned around. If there’s another possible interpretation, I’m all ears.
I think knowing how avoidable the whole situation was is important. If you don’t care at all, that’s fine. But from the video, I can say with absolute certainty that my ass would have been in a bar talking about the asshole cops over a brew within ten minutes of the cops showing up. Instead, to quote Greg, it seemed is if they were more concerned about “raging against the machine.”
Also, if they’re going to make a federal case out of the damn thing, it might be important to critically think about what the video really shows. Like that they were being loud enough that most people would consider them a nuisance while visiting the Memorial. Or that the cameraman’s barrage of libertarian cliches would be construed as combative by most. And that the video appears to show her returning after being escorted out.
Oh really? I heard someone, and I’d guess it was only one person from the sound of it, clapping. What I heard that was way, WAY louder was the sound of the airflow in there over the microphone. Unless there was a hurricane or something going on in there, I’d say it was pretty quiet.
Hmm… they’re being very loud, yet you’re saying you can only hear one person? Get your story straight.
I can only pray that no one has ever, nor will ever give you any position of authority. You seem like the kind of guy that would beat the hell out of a 12 year old kid for calling you “dude”. Are you sure your name isn’t officer Rivieri?
I think you need to look again. In the first video right around 2:07 or 2:08 you can clearly see that she does not leave, and in fact stops dancing and appears to take her headphones out of her ears.
For all we know, one of the officers could have asked her to leave, and she asked if she could just quit dancing, then another one decided to arrest her. Since we don’t know her side (or officer dickhead’s), I guess all we can do is guess.
What is abundantly clear from the video is that she DID NOT leave and come back in, but moved over by the writing on the wall and stopped dancing. So even if dancing was somehow disorderly conduct, she stopped doing it when asked. In fact, in the second video, she clearly states that she just wanted to stand there quietly, NOT DANCE. Then officer dickhead starts to get all pissed off. Seems like your kind of guy.
Why don’t you go watch the video again, or more appropriately, why don’t you go watch your idol, officer Rivieri, beat up a 12 year old kid, that should get you your jollies.
[...] Original here. [...]
Radley, from 2:01 to 2:04 the cop is pointing outside the entrance with his hand either on her her back or close to it. He leaves her once she makes it to the corner at the entrance to the chamber. At 2:07, when the cop has turned around, she begins walking back into the chamber.
Bob, there’s another tall blonde with short hair, a black shirt, and jeans?
The media is another piece of the puzzle of problems that are destroying the world, not just the country. Gone are the days of relevant, accurate, and unbiased reporting. The media doesn’t keep getting important facts wrong because they’re incompetent over and over, as if I should believe in coincidences time and time again. The misreporting, a lot of times to make the innocent appear guilty, is very intentional. Incrementally get people used to certain ideas, people blather to their friends about “what they read” and the misinformation gets passed on as “fact” by the mass idiots.
She was nowhere close to having left the chamber. She was still a good thirty feet from the front steps. The article says she “kept returning to the chamber.” That’s incorrect.
The officer asked her to leave, she decided to stay until they could give her an adequate explanation.
That’s a long way from “kept returning.”
Lee (no relation) makes a good point. Are we really to believe that this consistent pattern of a) obfuscation of abuse by authority figures combined with b) the demonization of victims of that abuse even against obvious facts is really some vast coincidence? Frankly, after seeing this pattern (and others, such as the continual Friday doc dumps followed by deafening silence) I am forced to conclude that large sections of our media are, essentially, Pravda and Izvestia. And you know what those in the know used to say; “There is no news in Pravda and no truth in Izvestia.”
One can only assume that Alex isn’t familiar with the interior of the Memorial; for one thing, it’s round, so there aren’t any “corners” to speak of. For another thing, the large pillars define the boundary of the chamber, and she even get close to one until her face was pressed up against it as she was cuffed. The video shows that she moved (or was pushed) in that direction, but stopped to talk to two people standing against the wall who were still many yards away from the pillars. She then moved several feet back in the direction from which she had been pushed.
Or maybe we just aren’t watching the same video as Alex…
Er, DIDN’T even get close to one, that is.
Jefferson was completely “anal” about enforcement of the law? In his actions in the American revolution, Jefferson committed TREASON and other illegal acts, at least the perspective of the law at the time: British law. Jefferson and the other founding fathers were on a short track to hanging for their crime, but advocated breaking laws they saw as illegitimate, and challenging tyrannical authority.
In this case, there is no law being broken, but there is the tinge of tyrannical authority in the actions of law enforcement.
That is a really good point about the Jefferson scholar, his comments presuppose that a law was being broken. But i can’t imagine that one was. Also, the dancing is, at least partially, shielded by the first amendment as a form of expression in a public square, and as political speech.
I’m sure the officers quickly assessed the value of those rights, versus the disruption these people were causing before deciding to take the “least restrictive action” possible. What? They kciked them out without first asking them to stop dancing? What!? The thought of first amendment-protected actions never even entered into their thought calculus? They haven’t been properly trained on how to deal with these situations!? You don’t say.
Oh and how sad it is that most people (like Alex) will never analyze this situation anywhere beyond “don’t be combative in your tone with authority,” and “when you’re asked to leave you should listen.”
I guess my mistake was confusing “chamber” with “rotunda.” Admittedly I have no knowledge of architecture, but it seems to me that the front, uh, porch (?) area wouldn’t be considered part of the chamber.
Bob, I haven’t been to the Memorial in about 5 years. I think I remember it well though. First of all, where the diameter of a circle meets a tangent line, there is indeed a corner. Of course, the diameter is off by a few degrees here, but I think that is compensated by the square column protruding from the walls.
Look people, my point is that I’m not very afraid of the enemy I know. The Colomb case, Cory Maye, the poor kid in St. Louis, the Arizona story yesterday, etc. is the enemy I don’t know, and it scares the hell out me. The cop who arrests me when I turn right around after he escorts me towards the exit is an enemy I know well.
Surely the park police have surveillance cameras at the Jefferson Memorial, and surely they record what the cameras show. Someone — maybe a libertarian journalist with a history of reporting on police issues — should file a FOIA request for the tapes.
I wonder how many Jeffersonian scholars they had to call for a supporting quote before they got this guy?
1: Ummm…Jeffy was kinda big on all that peaceable assembly junk, as far as I can tell. Sorry.
2: What would Jefferson think? Did you miss the whole 4th grade, or something?
3: You want me to say what? Hahaha. No.
…
If a cop tells you to stop doing something or to leave, and you don’t know what law you’re breaking, then you have every right to insist on being told what law you’re breaking. Cops don’t know what the law is, nor do I believe that most of them really care. I believe most of them are concerned about asserting perceived authority, even if no law is being broken. Don’t you think that you SHOULDN’T be arrested when you’re NOT breaking the law? How much sense does it make to obey an order from an officer when you’re NOT breaking the law? Do you believe that officers always know the law, and are always telling the truth? Who do they protect and serve?
This is clearly a case of “do as I say or you’ll be arrested without me telling you what for”. That is WRONG, and everyone should be willing to be arrested for standing up for your natural rights. Government doesn’t give you rights, they are supposed to PROTECT them, even if other people don’t like it.
[...] esteemed Thomas Jefferson scholars have taken issue with Prof. Peter Onuf’s characterizations in the Washington Post of how Jefferson would have reacted to the arrest of Brooke Oberwetter last Saturday night at the [...]
“The cop who arrests me when I turn right around after he escorts me towards the exit is an enemy I know well.”
Well, Alex, what about the cop who escorts you towards the exit with no explanation? You seem to be saying that blindly following the instructions of authority simply for the sake of complying with authority should be the default; is that really what you want, to do everything you’re told and then complain about it over beers? Well played, sir; you’re an inspiration to conformists everywhere. Be sure to pop your collar while you’re in the bar with your friends.
“The cop who arrests me when I turn right around after he escorts me towards the exit is an enemy I know well.”
Fine, then. You go do your business with them as you see fit. But I’m here to tell you that words mean things, and that “enemy” thing is correct. And one thing that that means is that some people are going to be considerably more upright in dealing with them, and you’ve got nothing to say about it.
[...] The Washington Post goes and goofs the Jefferson Memorial Dance Bust story out to about three decimal places. Balko’s been all over [...]
Lee, Bob, Billy,
I don’t fundamentally disagree with anything you said. But this story was presented to us (by everyone, not just Radley) as “ZOMG, woman arrested for dancing at Memorial” then “ZOMG, woman arrested for asked why she can’t dance at the Memorial.”
No, the truth is that she was arrested for trying to have a Lincoln-Douglas debate while they were trying to clear the place out. If you think having a midnight dance party at a national monument is a right (I don’t in the least) worth risking jail for, by all means take a stand. But realize at that point you are engaging in civil disobediance and essentially asking to be sent to jail.
I should add that when I first saw this story Sunday (I think) on Fark, I was outraged at people saying what I am now. When I saw the videos, it would have been more surprising to me if someone didn’t get arrested.
Also, there’s the issue what Greg N. called “oh, no libertarianism.” Watch that video of the cameraman on local news. He says he hopes schoolchildren don’t get arrested for being too loud. Great, another hopped up libertarian making dumb-as-shit, histrionic arguements. Oh, no!
“No, the truth is that she was arrested for trying to have a Lincoln-Douglas debate while they were trying to clear the place out.”
The cops were ‘clearing the place out’, why, exactly? If there was no law being broken, and since the only charges leveled were unrelated to any laws being broken BEFORE the confrontation, the cops appear to be completely and utterly in the wrong.
If the cops were in the wrong, then the dancers were doing what they had a RIGHT to do, as, last I’d checked, a free country is one where “all which is not explicitly forbidden is allowed”.
THEN let’s have an eyeball at Ye Olde United States code title 18, section 241:
“If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same;…
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.” ( http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/crim/241fin.htm )
So, WHO exactly should be the ones being arrested in this scenario, again, Alex?
I’M NOT SAYING ANYONE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ARRESTED.
I’M SAYING THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS, RIGHT OR WRONG, WHEN YOU TREAT A COP LIKE A LAWYER WHEN HE, RIGHT OR WRONG, IS DOING WHAT HE BELIEVES IS HIS JOB, LEGITIMATELY OR NOT.
… and I’m saying that such a happenstance is inexcusable, abominable, and should subject the ignorant (at best) “I’m just doing my job” types to severe discipline over their total failure to understand their very purpose for being granted their very limited authority We the People deign to give them.
So Alex, what you’re saying is that we should just accept that Cops are poorly trained and therefore it’s ok for them to make up non-existent rules and laws and we should meekly just do what they say anyway?
Woog, I agree the cops should be disciplined for not recognizing the difference between angry protesters and arguementative sissies.
Kjell, a popular saying among conservatives is, “human nature has no history.” (I have no idea where it comes from.) I think in order for one to remain sane, one needs to recognize the difference between humans behaving humanly and exceptional humans being assholes. It is my personal opinion that the cops here are the former.
Also, remember these are Park Police. Their primary job is maintaining decorum at the Monuments. It’s not like they were hassled on a streetcorner for dancing.
BTW, this has absolutely been beaten to death. I don’t particularly feel like commenting until more develops, but . . .
Woog, Kjell, and Radley are the only ones to address anything I actually said, so I’m willing to entertain this as long as you guys would like.
Alex,
My simplified point is that whenever a private person restricts the freedom of another, swift punishment is in order - and sometimes quite severe, as with kidnapping.
How should this be much different when the aggressor is wearing a badge? Citizens are presumed to know the law, so how much more does this apply to those whose sole job and duty is to enforce said laws?
Punishment is usually seen as a deterrent. Have the involved aggressors been deterred? Any bets on what will happen to the next group of twenty folks inclined to dance on government property which is open to the public 24/7?
“Punishment is usually seen as a deterrent. Have the involved aggressors been deterred? Any bets on what will happen to the next group of twenty folks inclined to dance on government property which is open to the public 24/7?”
I bet the dancers will be deterred from ignoring cops trying to cool a situation in the future. I hope the cops are reprimanded also.
I think we have two primary differences: 1) whether dancing at a Memorial is a constitutionally protected freedom and 2) whether the dancing came close enough to breaking a park rule that the police could reasonably request for them to leave.
On the first, I adamently do no not think it is. It seems they were just acting goofy and having fun. I’m sure they don’t have 1st Amendment protections, and I don’t personally have a problem with that.
On the second, I think from the video that they were being loud enough that asking them to leave is reasonable. Maybe I’m just a crank, but I personally would have objected to the whole thing if I was visiting at the time.
I should add that I think Ms. Oberwetter was betrayed by her friends. From the video, it appears that several were provoking the cops but ultimately complying with them. She seemed to be asking serious questions, just ignoring their requests to leave. That’s one of the many reasons I have such disdain for the cameraman. His being a total dick likely led to his friend being arrested. If he believed so passionately that he was right, he should’ve had the balls to take a stand.
I’m off to Redneck Riviera for the weekend, so I won’t be on the internets much for a couple days. If you take the time to respond, I’ll make sure I read it at some point though.
“I think we have two primary differences: 1) whether dancing at a Memorial is a constitutionally protected freedom [...] I adamently do no not think it is.”
Is America under the rule of law? If so, then STATE THE LAW WHICH WAS BROKEN, ALEX!
You. Are. Wrong.
The very idea that cops can demand anything without the force of Constitutional law backing them up is disgusting.
Do us all a favor before reposting, Alex. Read the Declaration of Independence first, then read the Federalist Papers (to include the Antifederalist Papers).
Educate yourself, don’t just spout emotional opinions which are, in fact, based on a lie.