The Policeman Is Not Your Friend, Denver Edition
[UPDATE below.]
[Second UPDATE below.]
[Third UPDATE below.]
Ryan McMaken over at the LRC blog has another “good” one. To give this some context, apparently a guy got ejected from a bar for using the woman’s bathroom. (Presumably he was obnoxious on top of it.) So the cops are arresting this guy, while his buddy is right there at the scene of the arrest, talking to his father on his cell phone asking for advice.
We can grant the cops some leeway and assume that the guy on the cell phone swore at them; you can see he’s pretty animated while he’s talking.
Anyway, the one cop proceeds to beat the hell out of the guy. It’s all caught on camera. You can still see the commotion after the camera pans back to the street view, but this is the news article description:
The video of Officer Devin Sparks repeatedly hitting Michael DeHerrera of Denver with a department-issued piece of metal wrapped in leather, picking him up roughly and slamming a car door on his ankle has prompted Independent Monitor Richard Rosenthal to push for the firing of Sparks and Corporal Randy Murr.
As Ryan noted in his blog post, there was a police employee in charge of the camera. Notice how the camera zooms in on the arrest, but then once it’s clear that the cop is beating the hell out of a guy who was just standing there, the camera quickly goes back to its default position. Huh, what beating?
Also, in case I get the familiar, “Hey you can’t judge all cops based on one bad apple [this week, caught on video]!” What is so outrageous about this isn’t the fact that a cop flips out and beats somebody up, for no good reason. No, what’s outrageous is that the police officer in question clearly lied about the incident after the fact, and then when the video showed that he had been lying (he said he had acted in self-defense), here’s how his superiors dealt with the situation:
The incident was filmed by the police department’s own High Activity Location Observation video surveillance system. Video released to the news media by the department shows DeHerrera doing nothing but talking on his phone with his father, a sheriff’s deputy in Pueblo.
[Independent Monitor Richard] Rosenthal, in a report to be released on Monday, labels as “pure fiction” the police report from Sparks that describes his force as justified because DeHerrera “spun to his left attempting to strike me in the face with a closed right fist.”
Safety Manager Ron Perea, who oversees the police department and has final say on discipline, has rejected Rosenthal’s argument that the officers should be fired. He suspended Murr without pay for three days for submitting an “inaccurate report.” Sparks also lost three days pay.
Everyone got that? A police officer grabs a guy who is standing there talking on his cell, beats the hell out of him, and then lies about it in the write-up, saying the guy had attacked him. When the cop’s bosses have clear-cut evidence that the cop was lying, AND when they know the public knows this too, they still decide to punish him with a three-day suspension.
It’s actually depressing. One might have thought that capturing these incidents on video–and literally, there’s something like this that surfaces about once a week–would get people to say, “Huh, maybe a government monopoly on law enforcement isn’t such a hot idea.” But no, there are still comments like this:
What a great thread. I love all the people calling for the cop to be beaten.
A drunk punk hanging out with another drunk punk who had just assaulted a cop and who is not complying with an order from a cop should have his skull cracked. I have zero tolerance for punks who don’t comply with an order from a cops.
The kid should be have been arrested and convicted for resisting arrest and sentence to 12 months in jail.
UPDATE: Wow. I actually had stopped watching the video after it panned back, the first time. But let the footage roll. After the beating is over with, the camera zooms back in. It actually made the hair on the back of my neck stand up when I saw that portion. The person working the camera clearly pulls away to minimize the view of the beating.
Which is really ironic, because you’d think the person working the camera would really be concerned for the officer’s safety, what with a lunatic taking swings at him and all? Wouldn’t they want to get really up-close footage, to be able to ID the assailant if he injured the cop and took off down the street?
UPDATE Part Deux: Huh, go figure, now all of a sudden the video is unavailable. There must have been an IP violation from a slogan on the guy’s t-shirt or something. It’s the only thing I can think of.
UPDATE The Third: OK now the video is working again. I guess the server hosting it got slammed? Anyway, I’m quite relieved that the government didn’t just lean on somebody and have it pulled.
Elites to CNN: “We Have Analyzed Alvin Greene’s Attack Plan, And There Is A Danger”
(Yes there’s a geeky Star Wars reference in the post title…)
OK this whole thing is hilarious/repugnant. Somehow this guy Alvin Greene–an absolute nobody in terms of politics–wins the Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate race in South Carolina.
Now this makes the establishment elites–you know, the people who are trying to take over the world–go to Defcon 2. People are saying, “This guy is a Republican plant,” which is absurd. (I am tempted to say “which is dumb,” but that implies that the people leveling the charge actually believe it. On the contrary, the leaders of the Democratic Party don’t want this guy winning, either. So they have to convince enough of their voters to be suspicious, to make sure the Republican incumbent, Senator Jim DeMint, gets reelected.)
The reasons this charge is absurd, are: (1) Who in his right mind would have wasted $10,000 on this guy, thinking he might win the primary? Only if you tell me George Soros Rupert Murdoch handed out $10,000 to 1,000 different people–some military vets, some cancer survivors, others with extensive careers working in soup kitchens–would I believe it.
The other reason: (2) The Republicans don’t want this guy in the race, either, on the off chance that a bunch of apathetic voters turn out and vote for Greene. I could see a bunch of people actually turning out for this guy, NOT because they think he’d make a great senator, but because they are so disgusted with conventional politics. Call it the Ross Perot Phenomenon. There are a lot of Americans who would literally rather pick someone randomly from the phone book to be in charge, versus the people who come out the chute of our political process.
Anyway, both Republican and Democratic elites see the extreme danger: There is no way in the world this guy can become a senator. He wouldn’t play by the rules. He might actually believe in something, and he might not succumb to bribery. Worst of all, he appears to be so dull-witted that he might not “get” Washington, with its subtle carrots and sticks, and its most-of-all-you-have-to-hide-it-from-the-public ways.
Now look, I’m obviously not saying that I know this story about him approaching a student in a computer lab is fabricated; how could I possibly know that? What I am saying is that this is just the type of thing the Party would do, to discredit this guy. If, say, they planted child pornography on his home computer and then arrested him, that would probably be a bit too suspicious. This way, with an actual person pressing charges, it’s more official.
Anyway, look at how these sharks go after the guy. I actually think the establishment media in this country disgust me more than the politicians. At least the politicians actually get some power and serious fame, in exchange for their playing the game. But would you want to have to act like this, in order to have a show on CNN?
5-Year-Old to PhD Economist: Sorry!
A bit of background: I have a PhD in economics from New York University, which I believe is arguably one of the top 10 departments (in the world?), though when I was there, it was more like top-15. (BTW, I’m not being funny with that line; I really mean that NYU’s ranking went up because of a bunch of new hires, just as I was leaving.)
While at NYU, it’s true that my dissertation was on capital & interest theory. However, my “major” (not the actual term) was in “theory,” which meant microeconomics and game theory. And within the game theory classes, I was kind of a big deal, to quote Will Ferrell.
So you can appreciate my shock when my 5-year-old absolutely destroyed me in two back-to-back games of Sorry! Naturally, my first thought was that our strategy profile did not constitute a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium.
But then I realized that my decision to “mix things up” by switching from Blue to Yellow–while my son continued to play his favorite color, Green–had serious strategic consequences:
Has Bernanke Been Reading the Free Bankers?!
I am working on a Mises Daily article discussing the recent Fed announcement. I was going through old FOMC statements to see if they had hinted at this.
In the midst of this research I came across the following line, from Ben Bernanke’s February 2010 testimony to the Committee on Financial Services. It is the last sentence in the last footnote to the prepared remarks:
The Federal Reserve believes it is possible that, ultimately, its operating framework will allow the elimination of minimum reserve requirements, which impose costs and distortions on the banking system.
Those pesky reserve requirements, distorting the ability to create new money at will!
(BTW, I know the Austrian “free bankers” do not endorse the existence of a central bank. Some bloggers boost traffic by showing pictures of scantily clad women; others gain mystique by writing in haiku. I choose to pick fights with Steve Horwitz. It’s all good.)
Explore the Theory of the Completely Free Society
Here it is, the full infomercial for my upcoming online class on private law and defense. Be sure to check out the screen shot and syllabus.
For those of you who are old pros, make sure you see this part too:
Something for Everyone
While the teaching assistant, Grayson Lilburne, and I were discussing the course, we realized that the topic of free-market anarchy is perfect for in-depth discussion and debate. We also realized that there would be many different types of people attracted to this course, including the complete newcomer, the skeptical minarchist, and the veteran anarchocapitalist who read Rothbard while nursing.
In order to accommodate these different students, every week we will post a list of suggested discussion or debate topics. For example, in the first week the issues would include, “Does society need a Supreme Court?” and “Doesn’t the group with the most guns become the government by definition?”
If two students want to volunteer to represent opposing sides on a particular issue, then we will set up a discussion thread devoted exclusively to them. They go back and forth, while the other students can only to comment on the “sidelines” in an accompanying thread. (See Grayson’s blog post to get a better idea of how this will work in practice.)
Of course, Grayson and I will ensure that the weekly discussions and debates constitute an ordered anarchy, rather than a free-for-all involving name-calling, Hitler comparisons, and seven species of logical fallacies. Also, in addition to the student-led threads, Grayson and I will also oversee a general “questions on this week’s material” thread, for the students who were confused by the readings or a point I had made in the lecture.
Jeff Tucker Interviews Me About the Upcoming Principles Class
Apparently Jeff got bored in the beginning, and started moving my head around…
Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell Get Pretty Radical on Fox!
It’s Judge Napolitano’s show, of course, but still:
BTW, I was pleased to hear that Ron Paul also favors a transition period, rather than a one-shot “End the Fed on Tuesday.” This is the approach Carlos and I take in our new book. I think we accommodated the twin goals of ending injustice immediately, and avoiding a global financial panic. If you haven’t read the book yet, check out the PDF starting at page 270. (Obviously I am not claiming that Ron Paul would necessarily endorse our proposed rollback of the Fed. I’m just saying our ideas are in the same spirit.)
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