In his Washington Post chat earlier today, Gene Weingarten opined that the Henry Louis Gates arrest and was less about race and more about "the casual arrogance of a police officer who expects compliance and has the power of arrest."
Another fine example: the Mobile, Alabama Press-Register reports that police got called to a department store because a man had been in the store's bathroom for an hour. When the cops couldn't get him to come out, they fired pepper spray under the door, pried it open and then tasered him. It was then that they found out he was deaf. And *then* they arrested him for disorderly conduct and held him for six hours until a magistrate refused to uphold the charges.
They dropped him off in his driveway.
From the Press-Register story: "'When he walked in, his shirt was ripped, and he was just in a daze.' his brother, Brodrick Love, said. 'When I went outside, they (the police) took off. They stamped on that pedal.'"
The story doesn't make it clear when the cops knew that in addition to being deaf, Antonio Love is mentally challenged, having the faculties of a ten-year-old.
A Mobile police department spokesperson told the Press-Register that "Use of the Taser and the pepper spray appear to be justified according to the department's policy."
What kind of "policy" says it's okay to taser and pepper spray an ill, deaf, mentally retarded person?
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Am I the only one curious why an ill, deaf, mentally retarded person was allowed to be in a mall bathroom stall for over an hour? Most people with the mental capacity of a 10-year-old have someone watching over them. Seems there should also be some welfare-endangering charges filed somewhere.
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