Three days of protest sear into the public conscience the claims of citizens angry at the custom of immunized police brutality following the killing a week ago in Minneapolis of George Floyd.
By David Tulis / NoogaRadio 92.7 FM
Protests at the Hamilton County courthouse Saturday and Sunday were marked by incidents of vandalism. A dozen people are arrested Saturday for disorderly acts and eight were arrested Sunday, Chattanoogan.com says.
On Sunday evening police fire tear gas into the front part of a crowd that is under and around the UTC side public entrance of the Hamilton County courthouse upon the balustrade of which stood officers with beanbag-firing weapons and other equipment. A woman fell as one exploded in front of her and another device exploded within 10 feet of me as I sat with my cell phone running FB live. Though it is reported that tear gas was used, on the scene I was not able to detect any poisonous effects of the smoke. Perhaps people were thrown back by flashbang, and not by teargas.
Sheriff Hammond issued a statement saying that he protects and defends the right of the people to make public protest, but will not tolerate injury or threats of injury to his officers, vandalism and damage to property.
Word that protestors might go to Hamilton place mall, the operators of the property shut down all tenants businesses and near 6 o’clock police massed Around the mall as if facing a military thread. At 6 o’clock, 17 trooper cruisers parked on the upside Hill of the empty shopping center. The shutting down the mall seems very strong response, a nuclear type or spots to the expression of public sentiment by any kind of group. The mast response has the air of demonizing the protesters with the implication that they are destructive and that their presence requires tremendous military presence. Troopers are a sort of state militia
On Sunday night toward midnight, the National Guard has a unit deploy across the northern mouth of Market Street bridge, along with a raise of chatted a police department officers and highway patrol men in their Brown shirts. They carried truncheons and war riot style helmets with plastic visors.
“If I get pulled over I have to Facetime my mom to be a witness,” Brienna Johnson of Jacksonville, Fla. says.
If there is trouble, I call witnesses first. Then I call the police. Our first responders are our moms, our dads, our sisters, our brothers, our cousins and our uncles. *** Their rights are being stripped from them every time they are pulled over. You are a criminal in the eyes of a cop. They will take your life for no reason because they have an ego issue. They have an attitude that you are an animal to them. They will tear my brother and my sisters out of their cars for no reason. If my brother says something wrong, in the wrong tone, he will be dragged out of the car. If my man goes to work and he doesn’t make it back home, he is stopped by a police for something he did so long ago. He’s going to go to jail again, stripped of his rights in that traffic stop.
We’ve seen little girls just as small as me — I’m 26 years old, I’m 109 pounds, I’ve done no wrong, I went to college — and I’m still stripped of my rights in multiple traffic stops. I’ve been dragged out of the car. I’ve been thrown on the ground. I’ve been beaten. I’ve got my head stepped on. *** I drove 10 miles over the speed limit, and my mom has to wonder if I’m going to come home tonight. *** We’ve seen it multiple times happen. We’ve seen it all over the videos. *** The cop is gonna ask, ‘Who the fuck are you talking to?’ Why does the police have to talk that way when they are supposed to protect and serve us? Because we go to work and we pay our taxes, and we work there because we pay them to do their job. We’re scared to call the police.”
The protesters reflect a broad swath of opinion about the direction of the country. More than half wear CV19 protective masks, believing if the official narrative about public health, and very little of what is said opposes the government’s collapse of the economy and the worst depression in national history. The socialists condemn capitalism and other groups also the espousing a racial view of society. It’s not clear if any official rep for Black Lives Matter was present, though the Letters BLM were everywhere. Numerous libertarian leaning signs were available and visible, and probably more than half of the people are Caucasian.
The protest is not an occasion for the proposal of remedies, but the arguments and rhetoric press harshly against the harsh brillo pad of policing scarring off the red, white and blue coloration of traditional liberty. Little attention is given in blusterings and strings of profanity to the city council or county commission, who routinely permit police violations and decline to tighten purse strings to wield their power to stop misdeeds of custom.
Many participants attribute police abuse to racism, as if racial black or white intent are at the heart of violent police action. Rather, the problem is deeper and in a way easier to fix. The problem is in disregard of constitutional rights, disregard for black-letter statute such as the warrantless arrest restriction statute, training that favors violence over negotiation and the escalation, and a military us-vs.-them training outlook.
Faith Ford of Nashville tells about the police killing of her son in Louisville, Ky., Corey Boykin Jr., 24, a student, a concealed carry permit holder, in 2017.
“I currently now struggle with PDST. I struggle with depression. I have anxiety. I can’t go into a store — when I see police officers, they are triggers for me now. You see me shaking now.”
Mrs. Ford fights back tears, amid uproar of applause and the cry, “No justice, no peace.”
City lets cops routinely ignore law
Police in Tennessee routinely ignore the requirement to get a warrant prior to an arrest. They also routinely ignore the constitutional right of communication, which protects the right of movement and travel, even among black people, who are free to go on the public right away at liberty without the state’s permission or privilege. The statute in question is Title 55, 871 pages, and Title 65, chapter 15, the carrier statute, 20 pp in the printed copy of the Tennessee code annotated. These two bodies of law regulate shippers, truckers, haulers, transporters, movers, bus operators and the like whose livings and place of business come from and are on the roads themselves for private profit and gain in commerce.
But police use these laws to get easy access to targeted groups of people, starting with African-Americans, not required under the criminal law to have probable cause. They us, instead, technical infractions upon commercial business to harasses private people such as Ms. Johnson and many, many others.
Jim Crow, a cultural and political holdover from the South’s slave days, operates powerfully through this business-supported and politically protected activity, which cannot be made to stop apart from a bottom-up legal resistance and religious reformation or counterrevolution. My notice project lets individuals fight back and claim damages for all ultra vires, or extralegal, enforcement action. Cops in Chattanooga and Hamilton County are under transportation administrative notice and legally have consented to its analysis about the limits of a foot-wide law they enforce as if its scope were a yard wide
Abusing the police is akin to abusing a waitress for having served a plate of dried bone pieces, sawdust and oyster shells. The problem is with the cook in the owner. In Chattanooga, the Hamilton County commission has purse string power over sheriff Jim Hammond common who refuses reforms. The Chattanooga city council has purse string power over the F$75 million budget of the police department, led by chief David Roddy. He serves at the will of Mayor Andy Berke. These men do very well what pleases them because the council members, even the blacks among them, think and act without effect to benefit the people of the city by removing the evil of illegal arrest.
Chief Roddy refuses to give me a comment for this story Saturday.
Councilwoman Demetrus Coonrod, in an interview with TV9 Monday night, says laws need to be improved and revised to end police abuse. It’s a “hard pill to swallow when it comes to police officers who are white that continue to treat us as if we were animals. We are not animals, we are humans, and we need to be respectful of each other. We’re not slaves anymore, and we’re not going to continue living as if we were slaves,” she says.
“Be peaceful and don’t throw anything,” announces Cameron “C-Grimey” Williams, to applause in front of the Joel Solomon building this evening, where another protest is launched across downtown streets, peaceful as of 10:30 p.m. Monday.
Sheriff Jim Hammond says his department has helped “support and defend our citizens right to peaceably assemble and exercise their 1st amendment right.”
As a nation, free speech and the right to peaceably assemble it is one of our most fundamental rights. However, we will not tolerate unruly protestors vandalizing any property. Physical assaults upon my deputies will not stand and we will respond to these types of threats accordingly. The death of George Floyd was tragic and those involved in the incident will be held accountable and will have to answer for their actions in a court of law. Those who wish to protest the events that occurred in Minneapolis can do peacefully and will be supported by your sheriff’s office.
Let me be clear, assaulting any person, including our local law enforcement, vandalizing buildings, destroying private property, and burning vehicles is not honoring Mr. Floyd or his death. I implore those who wish to protest to do so in a respectful, peaceful manner. I assure you your Sheriff’s Office will support your right to protest, but not if you endanger members of our community, threaten or assault members of law enforcement, or vandalize our buildings or personal property.
“I’m here because me and my friends came down here to protest on black lives matter,“ says Rence Gibbs. “Not only that, but all lives matter. We should not be separated by race. This is a human race. We should not be treated like this. We should not have cops killing bystanders each and every day. This has been going on too long. *** They’re forcing us down and back to Coolidge Park,” he explains.
Myriad messages among protesters
➤ Anti imperialist
➤ Justice for George Floyd; say his name
➤ F– k Trump
➤ We deserve a future of free from state violence
➤ Make racists afraid again
➤ Tear the fascists down
➤ White supremacy is the real virus
➤ I see you, I fear you. Come out. I stand with you,
➤ Racism is disorderly conduct
➤ There comes a time when silence is betrayal
➤ End police terror
➤ Wake up and show up
➤ Check your privilege
➤ Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter
It seems that you are missing the story here. You have plenty of pictures that tell the tale, but perhaps they could be bolstered a bit with some description.
The story is wholesale violation of the People’s rights, and authority by corporate (no authority with regard to the People) policy enforcers (which includes the Sheriff).
The best picture you have of it may be the one where the brownshirts are threatening violence upon the People as they bring those People to a state of “arrest”, on the public-right-of-way, in front of their courthouse.
And, apparently they do this because they are bought and paid for by a criminal cartel operating as a “government”, outside of the Law.