The Long Arm of the Law

It is always nice for the police to give us a peek into how efficiently they execute their job. Here's a wonderful example of a policeman demonstrating take-down techniques and the vigorous action of the "long arm of the law" applied to the head of a young girl who apparantly needs some "applied reasoning" given to her. Notice how he helpfully lifts her up by the hair on her head once she is fully secure (shackled). Obviously he didn't want her to strain herself with any effort on her own part in getting up.

Without any commentary from the police, it appears that this lesson in "proper conduct" was applied by the police because this girl got huffy and removed her shoes improperly. As you can see she simply flicked her feet and allowed the shoes to fly into the hallway.

This is obviously a very aggressive act and the police were forced to defend themselves. So two burly guys came in and took her down and then applied a few blows to the head in order to "knock some sense into her". I'm always encouraged to see the police reasoning with a prostrate inmate. It shows that they are willing to take the time to ensure that the legal niceties are fully explained and that this young girl doesn't get any wrong ideas about the exact behaviour desired by the police.



Now, apparantly the prosecutor's office in Seattle didn't see it this way, at least according to this account in the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper. But everybody knows the liberal bias in the news media. And everybody knows that prosecutors are bleeding heart liberals that want to coddle criminals. Right?

Why bother with codes of conduct or waste time on laws when we can simply dress some goons up in uniforms and give them guns and let them "police" the streets. In fact, I'm pretty sure some drug gangs are more than willing to volunteer their "staff" to take over these functions. The nice thing is that this could lower taxes because the gangs are already armed so your precious tax dollars won't be needed to arm them. And, given all the gang violence already displayed on our streets, we obviously would not have to waste taxpayer money training the new force in techniques to take down recalcitrant citizens.

In fact, the gangs won't even waste time like these lame police officers who seem obsessed with beating sense into somebody. I guarantee you, the gangs won't bother knocking you down and shackling you. The gangs have taken efficiency to a new level. They just shoot anybody that crosses their path. Hey... that solves the problem of "law enforcement" and "overpopulation" all in one fell swoop. Sounds like a winning to me!

Now... seriously... according to the Seattle PI report, the "crime" was:

The girl was arrested after she was caught in her parents' car, which had been reported stolen from her parents' Tukwila home. Deputy Travis Brunner spotted the car driving without headlights about 3:45 a.m. on 32nd Avenue South in SeaTac and pulled it over.

For this you beat a 15 year old girl?

Wait a second, the Seattle PI gives some details of why the police lunged at her, took her down, and beat on her:

The video shows Schene and Brunner as they escorted the girl into the holding cell. Schene had asked her to remove her basketball shoes, and, as she slipped out of her left shoe, she appeared to kick it at Schene.

Schene then lunged through the door and kicked her, striking either her stomach or upper thigh area, court documents say. He pushed her against a corner wall before flinging her to the floor by her hair. He then squatted down on her and made "two overhead strikes," although it's unclear where the blows landed.

The detective who reviewed the video said it appeared Schene and Brunner had the girl under control when Schene struck her. Schene, who is 6 feet 2 and weighs 195 pounds, did not explain his action to investigators, court documents say.

He and the girl exchanged words. Brunner said she was "real lippy" after being informed she was under arrest and called them "fat pigs."

This is not the first time this police officer has apparantly used "excessive" force:

Schene had previously been in the news in 2006 after he fatally shot Pedro Jo, a mentally ill man, during a struggle after a traffic stop on Interstate 5. It was the second officer-involved shooting of his career.

You have to read the Seattle PI news article to fully appreciate this case of police misconduct.