The crime they were originally arrested for was jaywalking. Good thing the cops never stopped me for jaywalking.
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Video by Davis Fleetwood
SEATTLE (CBS/AP) The president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, Rich O’Neil, told KCPQ that a Seattle police officer who punched a woman in the face during a jaywalking incident, used an appropriate use of force.
O’Neil says it’s wrong to call the punch racist, or describe it as police brutality.
Cell phone video, which has gone viral on YouTube, shows Officer Ian P. Walsh trying to control two women Monday and punching a 17-year-old girl in the face.
17 Year old girl had previous run-in with police
According to court records, Levias had previously been arrested for assaulting a police officer while resisting arrest last year at a youth center where she was a resident at the time. The documents say that Levias kicked a King County Sheriff’s deputy in the stomach during the confrontation at the Ruth Dykeman Center in Burien, Wash., about 15 miles south of Seattle.
Teen Punched by Seattle Cop Apologizes
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
In 1921, Judge King Dykeman saw many young women who needed support outside the home but there were no appropriate services for them. To address this problem, he founded Ruth School for Girls, which later became Ruth Dykeman Children’s Center. Originally, the agency was located in Seattle’s Ravenna district but moved to its present eight and a half acre campus on the shore of Lake Burien in 1931. Over the next 60 years, the agency slowly expanded its residential programs to serve boys and girls, ages 6 to seventeen, with serious behavioral, emotional and psychological disturbances. This is the same population being served today in the Behavioral Rehabilitation Services program.
More background information …
Seattle police to review tactics, officer’s conduct after videotaped punch
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I think Fleetwood is correct that the law is on the cop’s side. He was punched (pushed?) first and responded to the attack with what I’m sure the court’s will say was appropriate force, i.e. responding in kind versus, for example shooting her. In fact, both woman may be facing much more serious charges, i.e. resisting arrest and assault on a police officer. You’ve got to stay cool when dealing with the police, no matter how stupid and arrogant they may be. Here in my Illinois home town a cop was just fired for beating the Hell out of a drunk driver who was totally non-resisting. Ironically, the evidence was the cop’s own dashboard video camera which is mounted in all of our town’s police cars. DON’T RESIST!! EVER!! If the dunk had swung on the cop, that cop might well have still been patrolling our streets and the drunk facing felony assaulting an officer charges, even “Road Rage” which is a felony in Illinois.
It’s not about what’s right. It’s about street survival.
Outside the Phillies game last night they were selling t-shirts that said.
I got drunk.
I got high.
I got tazed.
In obvious reference to this.
I heard people in the crowd talking last night. They said the kid is going to Penn State next year.
Right now here in the SF Bay Area we’re following the Johannes Mehserle trial. In case it doesn’t ring a bell, that’s the one where a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) cop shot and killed an unarmed black man who was lying face down on the platform with his hands when the cop delivered the shot in the wee hours of New Years morning.
Mehserle at the time of the incident said that he was actually going for his taser and mistook his right side for his left side and his taser for his Sig Sauer. Then he began telling fellow officers that Oscar Grant, the victim, appeared to be going for a gun. That story held up for the morning to the point where Mehserle, with attorney present, refused to check “accident” on a form accompanying an alcohol test while his lawyer said it was an intentional discharge of his weapon.
Then the videos began showing up on the net and in the media. The shooting had occurred in front of a trainload of mostly young people returning from New Years celebrating in SF and because the cops were using so much excessive force people wanted to record it. But no one expected the execution-style shooting.
The cop is charged with murder. The trial was moved to LA because of all the publicity in Oakland where the shooting occurred.
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Stories related to Johannes Mehserle
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I live in Oakland, not far from the station where Grant was shot. If Mehserle walks, as most of the press seems to think he will, it will not be pretty. Just to aggravate matters, the jury lacks a single African-American, but has plenty of Caucasians. Even if Mehserle mistook his pistol for his stun gun, which is highly dubious, there was no reason to taze Grant, who was completely prone and no longer any physical threat. There are still broken windows from the last riots, I am dreading what will happen if the jury finds in Mehserle’s favor.
1964. Dallas. I was 19 (underage) leaving a state liquor store with a bottle of Southern Comfort in a brown paper bag. I crossed the street to the Hilton Hotel. I heard the traffic cop on the corner blowing his whistle, didn’t think anything about it. He stopped me as I was entering the hotel’s revolving door. Conversation:
Cop: “I saw what you did!”
Me: (fearfully) “What? What did I do?”
Cop: “You crossed the street in the middle of the block!”
Me: (perplexed) “I’ve been crossing the street by myself since I was three!”
Cop: (noting my lack of drawl) “Where are you from, Boy!” Yes, he actually said “Boy”.
Me: “Chicago.”
Cop: “Ah! Well, I’ll let you go, but don’t you let me catch you jaywalking in Dallas again, Boy!”
Me: “No sir. No sir.”
Went into the hotel, to my room, and had a stiff belt of the Southern Comfort.
Ahh Texas.
Ahhh Texas priorities. He must have noted that I had a brown paper bag, had just crossed directly from the liquor store and looked very young. But, no jaywalking in Dallas, got to stop that!
David Crosby was somewhat less fortunate, IIRC.
Is the issue that he punched her, or that he used force at all? Because I watched a longer version where the girl in pink tries to get to the officer, is held back by another young man, hits him, gets away and goes to shove a cop off someone he is arresting. It seems pretty reasonable to me. Also, she apologized to him.
As a side note, situations like this always remind me how important it is for people to videotape police encounters. Any attempt to restrict such recording is an attempt to evade accountability on the part of the police.