tinydr

This post once contained information, the author has chosen to remove it: web 2.0 is a *****.

brotherj

He ought to see about getting perjury charges filed against the police and sue the city for false arrest. This is totally unacceptable in America that the police can assault anyone they want, arrest them, force them to appear in court then lie about the basic facts of the case and totally get away with it.

This sounds like Nazi Germany reincarnate! I am totally outraged!

zeytoun

Grass roots surveillance will be the end of lying tyrants.

Bikepacker67

All three little piggies perjured themselves.
But of course, they'd have to sprout wings before they'd ever be charged.

SingingSabre 

While I agree the police were extremely out of line, I find it offensive that you refer to them as "piggies."

Congrats to Mr Ganely on his not guilty verdict!

TiberiusBTkirk

I seem to recall raw unedited video footage proved the innocence of another
CM arrest in NYC. I hope it did, it was on the NY Times website some time ago.
The police provided an edited copy of the footage to the defendant but
the defense found an original uncut copy.

Bikepacker67

Too bad they so often live up to the moniker.

jamesdenver

The passion is appreciated. But it's a lot different.

genec

Kinda weird eh, just the opposite of the "warnings" of the book 1984. So far "the net" (blogs) and ubiquitous surveillance, seem to have helped democratic society, vice trap it.

George Orwell failed to foresee that the cameras "look both ways."

Daily Commute

I don't remember the Gestapo giving people they arrested fair trials before fair juries. They would have figured out which cyclists were Jews, murdered them, and then murdered their families. The non-Jewish resisters might have "only" faced a slow death in a concentration camp.

The cops here were thugs, but they were not Nazis. Don't demean the evil that was the Holocaust by comparing it to such relatively petty abuses.

Bikepacker67

While I agree that comparing the actions of these POS with the Nazis is pure hyperbole, I'd hardly call perjury by those sworn to uphold the law, in order to convict an innocent man to prison qualifies as petty abuse.


Again, WTF aren't these "officers" (using the term as loose as a $2 wh0re) being brought up on charges of lying during sworn testimony?

wheel

task force was created to monitor the August 31 Critical Mass ride, which included three traffic enforcement officers, three intelligence officers in unmarked cars, and two officers in a state patrol helicopter.

Wow really they need all that for a CM ride? How much did that cost?

As for the people lying on the stand I hope charges are filed at once.

Bikepacker67

Ya right.
Greased pigs have nothing on these oinkers.

(ya... that's right SingingSabre, I'm sick and tired of those tasked to "Serve and Protect" running around tasering folks for minor infractions and lying on the stand to cover their ample, donut-fed asses)

Dchiefransom

From the article, they don't need that many resources to cover CM, which is what the article said. They were there because another group joined the ride that they felt they needed to watch. CM seemed to be doing fine with just one officer following along.

Daily Commute

Compared to murdering six million Jews (and starting a war that killed 100 million others), the abuse in this case was petty. Brotherj was the one who made the Nazi analogy, not me.

mike

+1 For too long, police officers have been blindly applauded for being "heroes". We have definately seen a swing toward a violent police force that feels they can bully, lie, beat, abuse, and perjure themselves with impunity.

mike

The Nazi didn't start out killing millions of Jews. It started with the German people too lazy or too apathetic to do anything against the nazi's small abuses while the abuses were still small.

Pretty soon, the people were too frightened to do or say anything against the Nazi.

Before long, the people were nearly powerless to do anything against the Nazi and the crimes being done were out of control. By that time, Lucifer was dancing with delight at a new level of inhumanity.

Daily Commute

This guy was acquitted after a fair trial in front of a fair jury. That ain't the start of a decent into a Nazi state.

mike

When you have the police beating innocent people and lying in the courts, THAT IS the decent into a Nazi state.

El Julioso

There's nothing "fair" about a court which won't convict police officers for perjury and assault. What you seem to be forgetting is that it shouldn't have been the CM rider on trial in the first place - it should have been the police officers on trial. They had NOTHING on him but lies, while he had nearly a dozen eye witnesses and video evidence on them.

If I were to, for no good reason, mace you, beat the crap out of you, take you to court, claim under oath that you assaulted me, then subsequently be shown to be a liar due to video evidence, would you not want me brought up on charges? Would you not be able to successfully sue me?

I think people need to divorce the definitions of "Nazism" and "Fascism" in their minds. Nazis are fascists, but fascists aren't necessarily Nazis. A nation with a legal system which allows certain people to be above the law does indeed exhibit one of the markings of fascism. (other markings of fascism include enormous military spending, repression of civil liberties, and rampant nationalism, by the way).

Daily Commute

I don't know if you realize how much harm you do to cyclist advocacy when you make specious Nazi analogies. Do you know if the victim sued the cops? I don't. People sue cops all the time, and they win those suits whenever they can convince a jury of non-cops that the cops acted illegally. That's far, far, far away from being a Nazi (or even a pre-Nazi) state.

tinydr

edited

Daily Commute

Remember, this guy won his case. The US system clearly isn't perfect, but we do as good a job of holding the powerful accountable as anyone.

tinydr

edited.......

mconlonx

Wrong. The powerful were not being held accountable here, the person whose rights they violated was. If they are ever held accountable, chances are they will get away with it. A friend of mine has been fighting for his rights, trying to get the "Justice" System to hold those in power accountable for their illegal actions. So far it's taken him 6 years and he's nowhere near done yet. Yes, he got off of the false charges leveled against him (with predjudice the second time around...) but all efforts to hold those in power accountable for their actions have met with legal barriers every step of the way.

www.checkpointusa.org (Check the "TOPD Roadblock" link in the menu on the left for details)

Now what was that again, about how the system holds those in power accountable for their illegal actions?