Former Police Chief on Historic Obstacles to Civil Rights

Shouldn't the Madison Capitol Police be out
raising pit bulls or planning Klan rallies?
That is more their style.

In the wake of the Scott Walker's Dept. of Administration ordering that any citizen in the vicinity of a group of citizens singing in the Wisconsin state capitol is subject to arrest, we have seen children and 80-plus-year-old citizens dragged from the Wisconsin People's House.

This deplorable action is in direct defiance of U.S. District Court Judge William Conley.

Notes the Wisconsin Lawyers Guild:

All the singers and others present arrested Wednesday [and last week] were charged with violating an administrative code provision that describes what kind of activity would justify a declaration of an 'unlawful event' by Capitol Police. Yet no access was blocked to any part of the building, and no violence, threats of violence or any interference with the operations of state government during the lunch hour singing was observed during the event, which has continued for over two years every weekday in or outside the Capitol. The tickets merely listed 'No Permit' as the basis for getting a citation, and when citizens asked why they were being arrested, Capitol police, state troopers and DNR wardens told them they would 'find out downstairs,' but no further explanation was offered. 

It is time for federal marshals to be ordered by Justice Conley to accompany Wisconsin citizens as they are assaulted by capitol police and their liberties discarded.

This morning former Madison Police Chief David Couper writes in an e-mail on policing in a democracy: "I still maintain that police will never be as effective as they could be unless they overcome the four historic obstacles that have tended to 'arrest' their development: anti-intellectualism, violence, corruption, and discourtesy."

Can anyone viewing the actions of Capitol Police Chief David Erwin and Scott Walker dispute the anti-intellectualism, violence, corruption, and discourtesy employed in what Republicans apparently view as their political fortress?

No questions from any police; just obey orders and the hell of with Wisconsin citizens' civil rights.

A sad show by the likes of Erwin and Walker.

And one we have come to expect.