Florida Police Tells World: Trust Us, Not Your Lying Eyes

The University of Florida police responded immediately, requesting an "independent" review by the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement (FDLE) . It came as no surprise that FDLE supported the police mauling. But the executive summary of the report does offer a rare glimpse at a police investigation of police - normally "internal affairs" (tain't nobody's business but our own). This is what a police state looks like.

Seeing through the police snow job

Although it is a myth that so-called Eskimos have an excessive number of words for snow, it is no myth that the modern bureaucratic police state we live in has a profusion of different agencies empowered to relieve you of the burden of life and liberty. Police agencies benefit from the resulting confusion in public perception, when the call for "independent inquiry" goes out. We must ask, "Who is FDLE, and are they independent?". The FDLE website tells us:

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement provides investigative, forensic, and protective services to local, state, and federal agencies...FDLE conducts independent investigations and coordinates multi-jurisdictional and special criminal investigations with local, state, and federal authorities...

So it's the state version of the FBI (the California equivalent is the California Bureau of Investigation: CBI). Florida's G-men are tasked with another duty:

FDLE also investigates fraud and abuse in Florida's public assistance programs. Primarily, these investigations are in the cash assistance, food stamp, Medicaid, school readiness and subsidized child day care programs. Investigations are conducted on program recipients...

So in Florida, when the inept brutality of local police is revealed to the world, they call on the state's food stamp police for "independent" investigation to clear them.

Flushing out the facts

The report summary (http://www.president.ufl.edu/incident/FDLE-Executive-Summary.pdf) tells us that the FDLE mission was to review: "The University of Florida Police Officer's establishment of a criminal violation which would constitute a physical arrest." In other words, did the police establish "probable cause" before arresting Andrew Meyer for violating the Florida statute that declares:

it is unlawful for any person to knowingly disrupt or interfere with the lawful administration or functions of any educational institution...To conspire to riot or to engage in any...disruption or disturbance which interferes with...activity on school board property.

The summary also reported that FDLE was also tasked to review the use of force by University police in making the arrest. The summary provides the relevant law:

A law enforcement officer, or any person whom the officer has summoned or directed to assist him or her, is not justified in the use of force if the arrest is unlawful and known by him or her to be unlawful.

FDLE had a tough job: the world watched the many videos and saw that the event was not disrupted by Meyer. When a speaker at a forum is trying to address a questioner and the questioner's mike is shut off, it might be argued that the forum organizers disrupted the event. When the police stop the discussion to drag the questioner away, one wonders why the police were not arrested for disruption. But the video clearly shows that Meyer's questioning did not disrupt: Kerry asked (sheepishly) to be allowed to answer Meyer's question. We witnessed that Kerry even continues (bizarrely) with a response to the question while six police sat on Meyer and Tasered him. So the facts showed that the arrest was unlawful, and thus the use of force to knowingly make an unlawful arrest was also unlawful. FDLE was forced to free the world from these disturbing facts, bringing the situation under control with police state propaganda.

Q. Did University Police act lawfully?
A. Stop asking questions, or you'll get Tased!

(Note: the report summary sloppily blacks out Meyer's name - as shown in the sample above - so it is quoted here as [Meyer])

FDLE dived right in with a passion: not investigating the arrest, nor the use of force, but building the criminal case against Andrew Meyer. The "investigative narrative" begins:

During the course of FDLE's investigation, Agents learned that approximately one week prior to this incident [Meyer] had made comments and acted out in a public place on campus. This incident...was documented as investigators believed it potentially provides the State Attorney a background or reference into [Meyer's] mind-set or his pre-disposition [sic] to act out in a specific manner at the John Kerry Speech.

Then we see a standard police tactic: spin lawful actions into criminal behavior . The report summary repeatedly uses the terms" interruption" and "disruption" as if they are the same thing. The law forbids "disruption": causing a disturbance or problem. The law does not forbid "interruption" : breaking a speaker's flow. An interruption is not a disruption when the speaker yields, as Kerry did. Yet, in a section titled "[Meyer's] initial interruption", we read: "[Meyer] disrupts Senator Kerry who is speaking with another audience member", even though a few sentences later the summary implicitly acknowledges that the interruption did not rise to a disturbance: "Senator Kerry jokingly replies...Senator Kerry tells [Meyer] to wait and the police officers let [Meyer] wait at the microphone". Nonetheless, the following section is titled "[Meyer's] second time at the microphone and second disruption" - even though the section never states what the disruption was, and the body of the section never uses either the term "disruption" or "interruption"!

In the effort to refute our lying eyes, the report summary unwittingly confirms what the videos only implied. Although on the videos it appears that police did not speak with Meyer before laying hands on him, it seemed possible that their words were not picked up. But the report summary makes it clear that the world witnessed what Taser opponents have long observed: that Tasers are used not as an alternative to guns, but as an alternative to speaking:

Officer Wise and Mallo stated they were told by one of the Accent Staff Members [forum organizers] that it was time for [Meyer] to leave. Officer Wise and Officer Mallo then walked up to escort [Meyer] out of the auditorium.

The summary tries to cover the lack of words spoken by police with an excess of words about what they claimed was their mindset and intent:

Officer interviews detail their mindset when making contact with [Meyer]... Officer Wise stated it was his intent to merely escort [Meyer] from the auditorium at that time...

We learn that before Meyer began questioning Kerry,

Officer Mallo spoke to [Meyer] and requested to meet with [Meyer] outside after the forum. Officer Mallo stated her intention was to issue [Meyer] a Judicial Affairs form and explain to [Meyer] the UF Code of Conduct.

Note the word "requested". Police only "request" for consent - i.e., when you are legally free to say no, as in a request for a consensual search. Otherwise they "command". So, again, the report summary unwittingly reveals the absurdity of police claims: Meyer is charged with felony resisting arrest for simply declining a prior police request to meet outside (which they failed to repeat before grabbing him) - even though police admit there was no intent to arrest him.

Perhaps the summary's biggest challenge to our senses was the conclusion that the Taser deployment was used as a last resort, following a prolonged struggle with Meyer. The use of force investigation completely omitted any mention of the earlier Taser deployment, shown in the videos (and above photo) no more than 15 seconds after the mike was shut off (85 seconds before the first "Don'tTase Me Bro"), and described in the police report of Pablo DeJesus Jr (http://michellemalkin.com/2007/09/19/document-drop-the-andrew-meyer-taser-stunt-police-report):

I drew out my department issued X-26 taser to respond to Meyer's active physical resistance and/or to possibly gain compliance from Meyer. I gave Meyer verbal commands to "put your hands behind your back," but he continued his active physical resistance. I was promptly non-verbally directed, by shaking his head no, to re-holster the X-26 by Sergeant King #32 [aka "Bro"].

Alma Mater or Alma Incarcerus?

The US prison population is now at 2.2 million, by far the highest in the world. But the US prison system is not only growing in number, but is rapidly extending its turf. Traditionally, communities of African, Hispanic, and Native Americans have been maximum security units where police freely killed, tortured, and kidnapped without penalty. Then the bogus wars on drugs and gangs became the pretext for removing what little protections were left in those communities. To ensure that community imprisonment was not just de facto, but de jure, DNA profiling has expanded along familial lines. Along came the phony war on terror, used to extend the prison to a wider group, with mass detentions and loss of fundamental rights like habeas corpus. Now college students are seeing their campuses become the next frontier in the Great US Prison Empire.

Anyone who still thinks we are we merely "heading towards a police state" better wake up: the train pulled into that station years ago. Keep sleeping and you may miss the last chance to avoid the next stop.