@L.W.M. (September 2, 2008 12:44 PM):

"I like Amy

"But 'Don't Arrest Me!'

"Sounds like 'Don't Tase Me, Bro!'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Florida_Taser_incident#Legal_action

"I'm in full agreement with the woman at FDL in most cases. Cops could be better trained in these interactions with civilians. Some are in larger cities with community policing programs but when you throw in the large crowds and political conventions and protests and media hovering all about and other security concerns there just isn't time for any nonsense. Strictly business."

Yes, if it's concrete examples of the thought processes of the authoritarian mind that you're after, you can't do better than perusing the musings of Salon's most unabashed martinet, L.W.M. (See his UT archives).

And he is, significantly, a card-carrying Democrat.

Am I wrong, LW?

Are you O.K.? You seem to have grown angrier and angrier recently, until it has now reached the point where (there's no gentle way to put this) this

I don't have to. Don't you get it?

Lawful order to disperse. Case closed.

is indistinguishable from something written by sharter28%.

Yes, some protesters were apparently causing property damage. When the police encircle masses of people, tactically cutting off their retreat, how can a "lawful order to disperse" be obeyed? But you don't have to look at videotaped evidence of just such behavior on the part of the police? What's happened to you?

Yes? So? The relevance to this discussion is what?

I used to hand those out all the time when we were taking testimony on the police brutality research. We absolutely wanted people to survive these encounters, and we knew lots of citizens had never understood there were ways to interact with cops (sometimes) and not get beaten bloody or killed. We were consciously trying to reduce the bloodshed. The information in the ACLU pamphlet is very effective -- in one on one encounters with The Law.

But that's not what we are discussing here.

We're discussing a militarized police force violating citizens' basic constitutional rights, authorized -- apparently -- by city and county elected officials, with the aid and assistance of (if not the direction of) the FBI, DHS, CIA, SS, and who knows who else, and being provided $50 million in "free money" to do it. We're discussing a militarized police force grossly overreacting to the most minor threats to the civil peace and order.

It ought to be comical. There is no real threat from the "forces" the police are fighting so manfully. The Permibus is not a bomb factory. The Anti-Capitalist birgades are not going to overthrow the System. The onlookers and passers by who are swept up in the arrests are not in any way about to subvert the neo-cons. IT'S NOT HAPPENING. There is no Revolution to fight, boys. Get it?

Susan, I really don't know what you're going on about. There is and was no riot in St Paul. The minor acts of vandalism -- no matter who did them -- are minor acts of vandalism. I'll bet more windows are broken and more tires are slashed on an ordinary summer's night in the Twin Cities than have occured throughout the current "disturbances."

Are you seriously saying that if the police aren't seen in full SWAT cum RIOT gear, blasting away with their weapons and hauling away a certain number of the unwashed every day, the Good Bourgeois Citizens will rise up in vigilante fury to smite the youthful foe?

You've got to be kidding.

That's not really the way I put it. There are three things I meant to convey. Hopefully I will convey them clearly this time.

One: its hard, given the things I've seen and experienced to be truly shocked by what happened over the weekend. On the one hand, I've been at demonstrations where the authorities actually assasinate demonstrators. On the other, I've seen this same thing happen about a dozen times, and the details have rarely varied. From rampaging police, to the ever present black block anarchists, to the people caught in the middle, to the lawsuits that will follow, the outrage, and the eventual slip into obscurity of the event. Until the next time it happens.

Two: There's something annoying about the high-pitched shock and condemnation. Poor people and people of color are experiencing this kind of thing on a personal basis every day. ITs beyond political, and rarely attracts the attention of civil libertarians. It ranges from spending the weekend in jail on a trumped up charge or because a cop didn't like the way you looked at him, to spending two or three years in jail on what would be a misdemeanor for a person with cash enough to hire a decent attorney. What's shocking to me is that the only time this is shocking is when it happens to a bunch of college age white folks. Long before I became politicized, I spent the weekend in jail because I pissed in an alley. I was taken to jail because the cop said he wanted to wipe the smile off my face. That's seventy two hours. No apology, just my wasted time. That wasn't the last time.

Three: Yes, its important to note the abuses. But its also important to note them accurately, and to stay away from the idea that everyone in the demonstration had their hands clean. I can assure you from experience that you will end up looking the fool going in that direction. Most people were peaceful, some weren't, its not that hard to accept. If the police gave you three orders to disperse before you were arrested, and you didn't disperse it means that you wanted to risk getting arrested. There's nothing wrong with that, and thank you for protesting for my rights to protest, but don't play the victim of a totalitarian state. You could have gone home instead.

This is pretty well documented, let the people that were involved pursue it. They seem to have adequate legal representation through the ACLU and NLG, and generally people win these lawsuits and those things rarely occur in the same way in that city again.