Why do I read comments on news stories? They just make me crazy. Yet I’m drawn to them like an unlucky city slicker panning for gold. They’re almost as bad as comments about radio goings-on on the SOWNY or QUAD CITIES message boards. In both cases the lion’s share of those involved are people spouting off about things they know nothing about. Below a story in the Free Press a woman said she saw a police officer on a Youtube video from the Fleming Drive/Fanshawe College riot just “grab a guy who was standing by a wall and start roughing him up.”
Maybe that’s true. Maybe the cop snapped after having beer bottles and pieces of wood thrown at him for a couple of hours and grabbed some random guy to release his frustrations on. But hasn’t this person ever heard of editing? The stand-off began at 10 pm and didn’t end until dawn. A lot of sobering up can happen during that time. Did this woman not consider that maybe the guy in question had been acting like an absolute hooligan earlier in the night and a cop grabbed him when he had finally settled down? A 15 second clip doesn’t tell the whole story. Some people are so dumb!
And how many people will read that comment and accept it as fact, pass it on and believe it? Now that everyone has the freedom to access their own news they’re also free to half-read whatever they want and form uninformed opinions to liberally spread like Mrs. Dash on a salad.
Now two of those arrested the night of the riot have come forward to complain about how they were treated. A 20-year-old Mom of a 2 year old complained that at 4 am when she finally left she was treated horribly by police because she broke the police tape. Does anybody else see a bunch of problems with this picture? Everything else aside, if I had innocently been in the middle of that melee as this woman claims, I would have gone out of my way to avoid the police tape and get home to my toddler in one piece just in time to make her breakfast. So much bullshit and it’s such a waste of resources and time. I am grateful that my job doesn’t involve stupid kids who can’t hold their booze, trying to knock my block off with a thrown beer bottle. If that 20-year-old broke through the police tape and got shoved to the ground, after those cops and firefighters spent a long and frightening night under attack, it sounds like my tax dollars at work.
I’m sorry, but, a 20 year old mom with a 2 year old child, out performing acts of stupidity until 4 AM, exactly where was the child and who was taking care of them during an evening of juvenile delinquency? Roughed up, toss her sorry ass in a cell and remove the child.
Civil disobedience needs to be handled in kind. Unfortunately, the bleeding heart, leftist, socialistic mantra runs far too predominently in our society. I believe this is the root of this and many other problems.
I’m not totally advocating an American ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ method of justice but something damn close.
Like gasoline and fire, booze and kids (with testosterone) are a bad mix. Another area needing some attention.
Nice blog.
Bill