Stripped Safe

Once upon a time, in Stark County, Ohio, a woman was assaulted by a family member, and was injured badly enough that her cousin called 911 for help. Help arrived. The police officer mistook the victim for the perpetrator, slammed her around a bit, and hauled her away to jail. For some mysterious reason, the patrol car video camera was not turned on during this arrest. The injured assault victim was then taken to a jail cell, where she was held down, at one point, by no less than seven individuals, who forcibly removed every shred of her clothing. They then left her naked in a jail cell for the next six hours. She was not allowed to use the telephone. She was not treated for the injuries which had prompted her cousin to call for help on her behalf in the first place.

It's not a surprise that it is against policy for a male deputy to strip search a female in custody, and in this case, men were not only present, but clearly participated in the removal of the woman's clothing. That seven individuals were simultaneously involved in the stripping of this 125 pound woman seem to suggest a certain eagerness on the part of those engaged in forcibly separating the woman from her clothes. I believe the quote from the Sherrif's office characterizing the incident was: "by the book." They simply declared that what had occurred was not, in fact, a strip search. It was something else, and that made it A-OK.

Alright, I find myself horrified by the footage, which the victim and her husband released, and now resides on YouTube. (See the C&L post with video, and also this.) I keep asking myself why I'm so horrified, given that our government does things in the name of security that horrify me daily.

I might be horrified because this incident seems to trace back to a taser happy police force that has killed nearly 300 people, 5 people last month alone. And, I suppose the tasing tide can be described as a predictable outcome in a society that allows a powerful politician who had been consuming alcohol to shoot someone in the face at dusk, wait until the next day before allowing the police to question him, later having the victim who was shot in the face and subsequently had a heart attack apologize publicly.

Gunshot wound at dusk
Smell of beer and wife not his
Fresh blood spills to earth

This, I think, is what happens when a society allows a man who tortured animals as a child and delights in sentencing people to death as an adult, to control the world's largest standing army. I do see a link between the war and occupation in Iraq and the way in which the woman in this case was "handled" by the Sherrif's Department.

That could be the reason I am so horrified, but I don't think it is. I think I am horrified because this case is so highly symbolic to me. When I watch what occurred on video, I feel this woman has been violated. And I feel that I have been violated. In fact, I have been violated. We all have been. By the present administration. Our rights and protections have been stripped away from us as this woman's clothes have been stripped from her, though I will argue with much less complaint; we gave up our rights and protections rather a bit more quietly.

The very people whom we count on to protect us did this to us, after we had been assaulted and were vulnerable--after 9/11. They have been stripping away our Individual rights; our right to Due Process; our First Amendment freedoms: Speech, the Press, Religion, Assembly and Association; our Fourth Amendment right to protection from illegal Search and Seizure; and our Sixth Amendment right to Counsel. And they took away these rights and protections, and continue to do so, "to keep us safe."

Guess what? That's the same argument the Sherrif's Office used to explain why they forcibly stripped the assault victim held in custody. Unable to call it a "strip search" because of the man hands involved, they said it wasn't a strip search. They said it was, "for her own safety." They did it to "protect her."

So the people who were supposed to protect her when she was hurt, turned on her, stripped her bare, and left her naked in a jail cell for her own safety.

That may be the reason I am so horrified. Because here, in the twilight of Democracy, that is what I feel the Bush administration is doing to us all.

Torn Liberty, originally uploaded by Mr. Guybrarian.

TAGS: Strip Search, Police Brutality, Rights and Protections, Stark Ohio, Twilight of Democracy

The war at home, continued.

I can’t believe the news today…

I can’t close my eyes and make it go away…

Sunday, bloody Sunday:

ARVADA, Colo. (AP) Dec. 9 - A gunman killed two people at a training center dormitory for young Christian missionaries early Sunday after being told he couldn’t spend the night, and hours later four people were shot outside a church in Colorado Springs.

It was not immediately known whether the shootings, about 65 miles apart, were related. No arrests had been made in either attack by afternoon.

The conditions of the four people shot Sunday afternoon in Colorado Springs, in the parking lot of the New Life Church, was not immediately known, El Paso County Sheriff’s Lt. Lari Sevene said.

The first shooting happened at about 12:30 a.m. at the Youth With a Mission center in Arvada, a Denver suburb, police spokeswoman Susan Medina said.

A man and a woman were killed and two men were wounded, Medina said. All four were staff members with the center, said Paul Filidis, a Colorado Springs-based spokesman with Youth With a Mission.

The gunman came to the door of the Arvada dormitory seeking shelter, asking if he could spend the night, said Peter Warren, director of Youth With a Mission Denver.

When told he couldn’t stay, the man walked inside, opened fire, then left on foot, Warren said. Warren said he didn’t know if any of the students or staff knew the gunman. “We don’t know why” he came to the dormitory, Warren said.

Witnesses told police that the gunman was a 20-year-old white male, wearing a dark jacket and skull cap, who left on foot. He may have glasses or a beard...

The rest is here. So. Again. First at a shopping mall, now at a youth facility and then at a church. On a Sunday morning. In both cases, young white males with guns on a rampage. Not your stereotypical, media fall-guy “thugs.” If this description holds up, the shooter will look like the one from Omaha. He’ll look like my kid. Your kid maybe. Your nephew. Your neighbor. Your student. Your classmate. The kid who delivers your pizza, or who dates your daughter.And once again, he’ll be another disturbed individual with all-too-easy access to firearms.

We are so-rightly so outraged about a senseless war on the other side of the world.

WHERE is the outrage here?

How long must we sing this song?

AN UPDATE: The death toll is now FIVE.

Here's a question for you:

Where is the right place, and when is the right time, to be murdered?

Folks in our neck of the woods are reeling today from this story:

KUTZTOWN, Pa. - His favorite movie was Easy Rider, his favorite book was The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, his favorite musician was Bob Dylan.

Despite his counterculture bent, Kyle Quinn - the son of a Warminster Township supervisor - attended a very unradical college, Kutztown University, in the heart of Amish country. Here, early yesterday, he was found fatally beaten along quaint Main Street.

Police arrested three men who they say spent the night drinking in Shorty's bar, then chose their 19-year-old victim at random and left him unconscious. [Emphasis mine.]

A police officer happened to come by the scene shortly before 2:30 a.m. and made the arrests, Berks County District Attorney Mark Baldwin said.

Quinn "had been beaten and was lying in a pool of blood," Baldwin told reporters.

Quinn was pronounced dead at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown at 3:36 a.m. An autopsy was scheduled for today.

It was Kutztown's first homicide since 1982, officials said. This borough of 5,000 residents, nestled in farm country between Reading and Allentown, has had only three murders since 1968.

The rest of this sad story is here. The local TV news was all over this tragic tale yesterday, as they no doubt will be today. And in at least two of the stories I've seen so far, I have heard a reporter and a police official use the phrase "wrong place, wrong time," is in "This was a case where the victim was just in the wrong place at the wrong time." And you know what? That bothers me.

This young man belonged where he was. He was a student at Kutztown, which, by the way, is a very nice place to go to school. I've actually visited there. He sounds like he must have been a great kid. Heck, he could have been my kid. He was out having a good time in his college town. The people who picked him out at random in order to murder him did NOT necessarily belong there. They lived somewhere else. They drove to this college town (where none of them went to school) to, presumably, "party" with the college kids and then cause trouble. Which they did. Their victim did nothing wrong. But it drives me bats when I hear someone use that "wrong place, wrong time" line, because, to me, it's a way of saying the victim DID do something wrong, as if the victim of this horrific act of stupid, pointless, random insanity had no right to be where he was. Which is wrong.

I've heard this same line used to somehow try to explain the "execution style" slayings of three Delaware State University students in Newark last month. These three friends, along with a fourth young person who somehow survived this attack, were sitting in a neighborhood playground, minding their own business, when they were lined up, ordered to face a wall and drop to their knees, and were then systematically shot in the back of the head, one at a time. This for reasons still unknown. What had they done wrong? Nothing, apparently. As Newark police keep saying, they were simply "guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Well, no. In both of these cases, the pack of cowards who committed these killings were the ones who were in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing. This phrase was also used by at least a few of the commentators I heard who were expounding on their opinions regarding the Virginia Tech massacre earlier this year. Excuse me? The victims there were college students and professors - and a campus police officer - who were in class or in a college dorm, doing what they were supposed to do. That is, most of the victims were in class. To somehow imply in the slightest way that the victims of these random acts of violence are somehow responsible for their deaths is ludicrous at best, and disgustingly insulting at worst. And worst of all, it also says to me that, somehow, we're being told that we have to expect - and maybe accept - that things like this are "bound" to happen. That they are "just part of life."

Which is a lie. Unless, of course, we buy into it.

(Cross-posted at The Quaker Agitator.)

TAGS: Violence, Peace testimony, Guns, Media,