A news story from Las Vegas airport.
A soldier (sgt. Mark England) - a medic - comes back to the US from Iraq. He misses his plane because a TSA "security" man at an airport holds him over too long. A bottle of soda in his pocket, you see. Also, the TSA man pulls rank on our soldier boy, claiming he is a higher rank than our hero from Iraq (then why isn't the TSA man in Iraq pray tell?)
Sgt. England smells bullshit and asks for Military ID which all soldiers have.
The TSA man gets pissed and makes the sgt. miss the plane.
Sgt. Mark England comes back to the airport to confront the TSA man.
Which is a big mistake, as in America, if someone wears a uniform, that person is a GOD and his or her actions are infallible.
A policeman shows up.
That first police officer takes the sgt. away to where he thinks there are no cameras and lays into the soldier with his night club. He does a roll with his nightclub, and with an "around the world" movement lays into the sgt. Again. And again. And again.
Another policeman joins him in the beating.
That second policeman proceeds to taser the soldier THREE times.
Another, third, cop observes the incident from behind a plexi glass door - he does not intervene to stop or subdue the soldier, but laughs and does a little dancing jig because of his good humor. Apparently he enjoyed the show.
The soldier was due to be shipped back to Iraq, but was held back in the states because of the injuries sustained from the beating (in his own words, his ribs were "caved in").
The TSA "security" man is still employed at the airport, because he did nothing wrong. The two policemen are obviously heroes for beating up the soldier on leave, and they did nothing wrong according to Metro PD. Their officers "acted within the bounds of department policy".
The news story is here.
The follow up is a goody, as the sergeant's cell phone auto dialed his wife and (thanks to all cell phone conversations being recorded I guess?), we get the audio of why the soldier was beaten up.
Sgt. Mark England: "Sir, what did I do to deserve handcuffs?"
Policeman: "Well its law enforcements view that you used foul language, and because we want to. I told you to give me your boarding pass".
The news story follow up is here
I blogged about this in my History of Violence post, but I think this deserves its own spot.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Perhaphs y'all missed this the first time and an update
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1 comment:
The cops were justified in beating with a nightclub a war hero at McCarren Airport because he almost brought a soda through the medical detectors.
The Las Vegas cops were also justified in shooting a handcuffed teenager in the back.
And killing a skinny, short, fifty-something woman.
And of breaking the ribs of an eighty year old senior citizen after a traffic stop because he was moving too slowly.
And of burning the skin of a mother by pushing her against her hot car in the middle of summer after a traffic stop.
And of killing a pregnant woman who was in town to celebrate a birthday of her relative.
And of drawing weapons on and arresting an entire family after a teenaged son skated away from cops on his skateboard.
Shall I go on? The cops have a lot of discretion and are justified in doing pretty much anything if they come up with even the weakest of explanations.
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