Even the hypothetical soccer mom you presented as the opposite extreme from the armed drug trafficker gets a poke if she fails to respect authoritah. Pretty much everyone is a no good criminal except the boys in blue. Too bad you live so far east; Jimmy Fennell could have used on his jury after he responded to a domestic disturbance where he kidnapped a woman at gunpoint, drove her to a secluded location in his squad car and raped her. Kinda makes me wonder who REALLY strangled his ex-fiancee with a belt the way he told his police academy classmate he would do if a girl ever cheated on him. But, hey, he arrested a black guy she had sex with for it, so the right guy is probably on death row. After all, the police arrested him; he MUST be guilty and deserve any treatment they choose to inflict.

I know, I know; I suck, moondog sucks, university professors suck, soccer moms suck, armed drug dealers suck. We are all pretty much the same and anything any cop does to us is better than we deserve. Like I said, way to maintain your objectivity.


He DOES work for her. She pays his salary to protect and serve her, not brutalize her. Refusing to meekly obey all his orders, legal and otherwise, "forces" him to do nothing. I think you made a Freudian slip there: You are absolutely correct she does not have the FORCE to force him to jeopardize his safety. She simply cannot do it unless she attempts some physical action justifying his use of force to restrain here; passively sitting in her car does not qualify. The officer in Austin a few years ago whose arm was grabbed by a suspect who then sped off down the road? Totally justified in pulling his gun and shooting the guy dead (which he quite rightly did.) That is not at all the situation we are describing.

Please tell me which of these definitions of "force" http://www.thefreedictionary.com/force you believe the soccer mom exerts in your example.


OK, let us take the gross inaccuracies step by step:

1) Full Rodney King video is linked below; it is a video of someones TV, but it apparently a copy made by the FBI, presumably for use in the federal trial.

2) The federal trial: L.A. acquitted three of the officers (the fourth got a hung jury," prompting President George H. W. Bush to state, "viewed from outside the trial, it was hard to understand how the verdict could possibly square with the video. Those civil rights leaders with whom I met were stunned. And so was I and so was Barbara and so were my kids." Subsequently, FEDERAL civil rights charges were filed, and the officer in charge (Koon) and the principal beater (Powell) were convicted and sentenced to 30 months; the other two officers were again acquitted. That is NOT double jeopardy: They were charged in different jurisdictions for different crimes. Calling that double jeopardy is like OJ saying, "you cannot arrest me for killing Ron and Nicole because I was convicted of speeding during the getaway."

3) The beat him AT LEAST 1 minute and 25 seconds (they had already begun before the video starts, though not MUCH earlier.) He does make an aggressive move towards an officer at the start, is struck in the head and goes down hard at the 0:05; thenceforth there is no sign of resistance, but the beating continues. He manages to get to his knees at about 0:25, raises an arm with an open hand to ward off additional blows and tries to crawl away from more blows, which reduce him to slowly rolling side to side from around 0:33 as officers continue raining two hand blows down on him. At about 0:55 he is flat on his back when an officer lines up a blow to his chest as if chopping wood. He manages to ALMOST push himself onto his side at about 1:10, and is clubbed and kicked several more times before reaching a sitting position with his hands behind his neck at around 1:25. The officers spend about another minute cuffing and hogtieing him, then drag him to the side of the road and leave him there until an ambulance arrives to tend him 6:00 later (they knew he would need medical attention before going to County.)

4) After Reginald Dennys beating (that is the name of the man for whom you are so deeply concerned,) one attackerswas convicted of assault and sentenced to three years. Another (the one who infamously threw a cinderblock into Dennys head then danced away) was convicted of felony mayhem and misdemeanor assault and sentenced to ten years, but released on good behavior four years later, after which he murdered a drug dealer, for which he is now serving a 46 year sentence. A third was convicted of misdemeanor assault and sentenced to time served. A fourth (whose only previous record was for joyriding) pled guilty to felonious assault and two misdemeanors and was sentenced to 27 months probation; he was shot and killed in a night club in 2004.

So "mob justice" did not give Reginald Dennys attackers a free ride while railroading Rodney Kings: Three people were convicted and a fourth copped a plea for Dennys beating, and the AVERAGE sentence was still twice as long as that received by the two officers convicted of beating Rodney King.

With all due respect, you should probably get your facts (and definitions) straight before commenting further. I will even help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King#Trial_of_the_officers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Denny_incident


Broadcasting his home address does cross the privacy line, and maybe the reckless endangerment line, too; I dunno. I am not too worried about my work videos being released online, however, because there was only one night out of all of them anyone would care to see, and in that case the person who would be interested in it (the store manager who falsely accused me of theft) has already seen it.

Thing is, I was not employed by the public nor conducting my duties in public. People have their home addresses posted along with videos of them publicly doing awful things all the time, but that is a separate issue from public servants expecting a "right" to privacy while performing public duties in public.