Military Style Checkpoints

In one D.C. area, officers will be checking cars:

“Starting on Saturday, officers will check drivers’ identification and ask whether they have a “legitimate purpose” to be in the Trinidad area, such as going to a doctor or church or visiting friends or relatives. If not, the drivers will be turned away.”

I would imagine that depending on who you are visiting, the police could decide to turn you away. Also, how will they determine if you really do know the people there or not?

More disturbing is this:

“Police will search cars if they suspect the presence of guns or drugs,and will arrest people who do not cooperate, under a charge of failure to obey a police officer, officials said.”

The article does not say how the police will determine if a car is suspect or not, so that means that all cars can be inspected. And if you refuse this unconstitutional search you will be arrested. Pedestrians will not be searched-for now.

“…In this country, you don’t have to show identification or explain to the police why you want to travel down a public street.”

Until now.

The interim Attorney General is confident they won’t be sued-he doesn’t anticipate it, “But if you do want to sue us, the courts are open.” That’s quite the display of arrogance.

And they are planning to revamp the Safe Homes Initiative:

“The plan, announced by Lanier and Fenty at a news conference in March, called for police to go door-to-door in crime-ridden areas and ask residents whether they could go inside and search for guns. Residents and some council members voiced concerns that homeowners would feel intimidated by police. Lanier backed off, but said she plans to move forward soon by having residents call police to set up appointments.”

Put all this together with the fact that this summer, the police will be armed with semiautomatic rifles. No wonder the residents feel uneasy.

Technorati Tags: police, papers please, civil liberties, tyranny

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More on Children’s Day

My first post on this was the sanitized version. Now we have more of an idea of what really happened:

“Police officers surrounded more than 100 parents protesting Tuesday against shoddy school construction that they say resulted in the deaths of thousands of children during the recent earthquake here.

The police dragged away several crying mothers and harassed journalists trying to report on the event, according to witnesses and photos of the protest.”

Several Chinese journalists were told to stop reporting on this story. Some officials were hoping to quiet parents down by offering financial compensation for their dead children. In other words, a bribe-officials are hoping parents will take the money and be quiet.

The intimidation started the day before when town officials visited with seven leaders of the group and persuaded them not to protest. Persuaded them how-by threatening harm to their other family members, perhaps?

Police forcibly removed a few reporters who were on the scene early in the morning.

The Foreign Ministry doesn’t want us to worry:

“He said at a news conference in Beijing that the “principle of transparency and openness remains unchanged.”

He added that the local authorities were making decisions based on the conditions in the disaster zone, though “they are not trying to block any news or to make difficulties for the reporters.”

Removing reporters from the event and dragging away crying mothers is not making difficulties for reporters? Telling reporters to stop carrying the story is not blocking news? Does he really think people believe him?

All part of the wonderful life the Chinese have, don’t you know?

Technorati Tags: censorship, journalism, civil liberties, protests

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