This officer should be immediately fired for his gross dereliction of duty in protecting the rights of Chicagoans. Instead, I am quite sure he will be secretly praised at the station house for putting those pesky reporters in their place.
Of course, things could have been much worse for Dan Ponce and Donte Williams. By just recording that officer while he was in public, those reporters could have been charged with a Class 1 felony.
I’m not kidding.
Chicago falls under the purview of the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, a fascist statute which makes it illegal to record a police officer enforcing laws in the field. There have been several high profile cases in recent history dealing with the law, including local artist Chris Drew, who could have spent up to fifteen years in jail for recording his own arrest. At the beginning of this month a Cook County judge ruled the law being used to persecute Chris Drew and others is unconstitutional, but prosecutors will certainly appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.
Given the political climate in the state, I would not be shocked if the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s ruling. In the state legislature, a recent attempt to amend the law to allow the recording of police was defeated.
This undoubtedly pleased Mayor Emanuel, whose sentiments concerning the First Amendment, very much in line with the CPD officer from above, are pretty well known.
While some say he is only joking in that news footage, I beg to differ. His maniacal obsession with presenting just one side of an argument is famous, and it made him a much-desired operative in the ranks of the DNC. His Chicago-style politicking made him darling in the Obama administration. Now this callow bully, who helped shove the incredibly unconstitutional Health Care Mandate down the throats of America, managed to become the mayor of (despite not living in) Chicago, where his Machiavellian methods are not only expected, but applauded by the masochistic apparatchiks of Chicago’s machine.
4 Comments
Theo–
Did you write this article from a bomb shelter after a long day of cleaning guns and stocking spam? You are starting to sound more an more like your own episode of “Doomsday Preppers” with your paranoia.
Our police forces throughout the US protect citizens and deal with more BS than you can imagine. These officers had just witnessed the aftermath of a young child killed. How would that play on your psyche personally? In the aftermath of a 6yo girl killed and helping her mother and other families into the hospital…would you be able to function properly? Why jump to conclusions and form the assertion that they “intentionally impeded 1st amendment rights” and use the Glenn Beck buzzwords without taking a more logical stance that one officer obviously acting in error, on a power trip or perhaps even a little bit shaken up emotionally merely over-exerted power in order to protect the family from what he perceived as a mob of cameras and reporters?
This is a prime example of paranoia taking over common sense. You even compared this to communist Russia. What is wrong with you? If it was your daughter and your family in mourning, what would you want the police to do? Protect your family or just sit there as they are overrun questioned and taped in their most private time merely for some entertaining B-Roll on the 5:00 news.
So here we are a small group of officers acting in error…all of the sudden we have a city-wide Stalin/Hitler/anti-free speech conspiracy on our hands!!!
Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn has an interesting take on this epidemic of fear promoted by the right.
He calls it “scaroin,” the right-wing’s antidote to what Trib columnist John Kass has cynically coined as Obama’s “hopium.”
Right-wingers tend to be ruled by their fears and the Republicans manipulate the masses by playing on those fears, whether it’s gay marriage somehow ruining hetero marriages, or that the government is going to take over every aspect of their lives. It doesn’t really matter who or what the bogey-man is, as long as it creates enough fear, the faithful will become compliant.
Just look at how they have demonized Obamacare by playing on the fear of death panels, long lines, loss of freedom, etc. The typical right-winger is so afraid of Obamacare that they are willing to repeal it even though Republicans have absolutely no plan to replace it with something better.
Wingnuts are so afraid of Obamacare that they are content to go back to a system where insurance companies can deny coverage and drop coverage on those who become sick. They don’t even mind that built into the cost of their insurance and care is the cost to subsidize the uninsured who, by law have to be treated by hospital emergency rooms.
You talk about the protesters rights ! Theses are not peaceful protesters . They’re profession protesters from the west cost with intentions of causing mayhem and destruction of property costing tax payers. They are anarchist looking to hurt police officers by throwing human waste at them. When did the police officer become the bad guy? The county is in sad shape.
Mr. Roe,
I enjoy reading what you write in the same way I enjoy “People” magazine…..Mindless reading…All you seem to do is try and stir the pot with people. Most of what you write is fun to read and not based in fact. There is enough truth in what you write to make an argument that what you are saying is completly factual. God bless everyone of our men and women in blue. Each and everyone of them are true heros.