Fascist cop threatens arrest for peace T-Shirt

onlinejournal.com...
Busted for wearing a peace T-shirt; has this country gone completely insane?
By Mike Ferner
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Jul 5, 2006, 01:49

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Friday afternoon, drinking a cup of coffee while sitting in the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center on Chicago's south side, a Veterans Administration cop walked up to me and said, "Okay, you've had your 15 minutes, it's time to go."

"Huh?" I asked intelligently, not quite sure what he was talking about.
[...]
You know the rest. Handcuffed, led away to the facility's security office, past people with surprised looks on their faces, read my rights, searched, and written up.

The officer who did the formalities, Eric Ousley, was professional in his duties. When I asked him if he was a vet, it turned out he had been a hospital corpsman in the Navy. We exchanged a couple sea stories. He uncuffed me early. And he allowed as to how he would only charge me with disorderly conduct, letting me go on charges of criminal trespass and weapons possession -- a pocket knife -- which he said would have to be destroyed (something I rather doubt since it was a nifty Swiss Army knife with not only a bottle opener, but a tweezers and a toothpick).

Read the rest HERE

Wow I hope this doesn’t happen often, as if it does America is really on the grip of an open fascist type police state, where only violent minded people are welcome. I hope and pray that is a one off.

Mod Edit: Fixed link

[edit on 6-7-2006 by TheBandit795]

Mod Edit: New External Source Tags – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 2006-7-6 by wecomeinpeace]

Cop must have been having a bad day, if thats how he always is....then he should be
fired.

PS: link isnt working can you fix please.

Thanks - link fixed

[edit on 6-7-2006 by imbalanced]

[edit on 6-7-2006 by imbalanced]

Always... two sides to every story...

and you're link didn't work for me

What?
Is this for real?
Well, if it is, I smell a civil suit in the works...

Thanks to the bandit he has fixed the link for me

It's hard to believe stories like this. Whatever the Governments are doing, they are succeeding in dividing people as far as possible, and blinding common sense with the
"bright light" of fear

www.cnn.com... is another example of the same thing.

I am not sure why my links do not work?



[edit on 6-7-2006 by Faeden]

Since the cop said you had your 15 minutes, what had you been doing during that time? Further, what did the T-shirt look like--you did not provide a picture of it. Why did you even go to the Va. hospital at all? What I'm trying to determine is the parts of the story you didn't tell.

Well if you read the article it says:

I was at the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center because I'm participating in the Voices for Creative Nonviolence's 30-day, 320-mile "Walk for Justice," from Springfield to North Chicago, Illinois, to reclaim funding for the common good and away from war.

...drinking a cup of coffee while sitting in the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center on Chicago's south side, a Veterans Administration cop walked up to me and said, "Okay, you've had your 15 minutes, it's time to go."


"You can't be in here protesting," Officer Adkins said, pointing to my Veterans For Peace shirt.

So he was at the VA Center for a valid reason, and is a vet, and was just drinking coffee and wearing his t-shirt of choice, supporting the Veterans for Peace.

Originally posted by Astronomer70
Since the cop said you had your 15 minutes, what had you been doing during that time? Further, what did the T-shirt look like--you did not provide a picture of it. Why did you even go to the Va. hospital at all? What I'm trying to determine is the parts of the story you didn't tell.

What is there to tell? He was asked to leave a building because he was wearing a T-Shirt. Do you think that is democracy or fascism? When your threatened with arrest for wearing a T-Shirt, you know something is wrong, and when someone looks for excuses to try and gloss over the fascism, you know that they are trying to put there head in the sand.

[edit on 6-7-2006 by Faeden]

onlinejournal.com...
I was at the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center because I'm participating in the Voices for Creative Nonviolence's 30-day, 320-mile "Walk for Justice,"

Sounds like he was protesting.


The cop clearly over-reacted (what exactly is a "Veterans Administration cop" anyway?). However, there's an anti-war assembly going on there, this guy is one of probably a crowd with a t-shirt with a slogan, and the cop figured, 'this is going to get out of hand quick'.

We can recognize that the cop was wrong, (and lets see if there's any actual prosecution here anyways), but we should also recognize that the article is a propaganda peice.

Originally posted by Astronomer70
Since the cop said you had your 15 minutes, what had you been doing during that time? Further, what did the T-shirt look like--you did not provide a picture of it. Why did you even go to the Va. hospital at all? What I'm trying to determine is the parts of the story you didn't tell.

What the TSHIRT looked like seems absolutely irrelevant to me. There is no reason to arrest someone based on their TSHIRT. Why he was at the hospital has already been explained, so I'm not going to. If we are going to start arresting people for TSHIRTS then we are truly reaching a hard plane of existence in our country. This is unacceptable to me. I could see people getting arrested for ripping down fences to bases, riots, and whatnot, but I'm sorry, a shirt is just that; a shirt.

Originally posted by Nygdan
We can recognize that the cop was wrong, (and lets see if there's any actual prosecution here anyways), but we should also recognize that the article is a propaganda peice.

Nygdan, I think that is too easy. The article is propaganda? Well, if we take every bit of news on the planet, we could probably find someone out there to say that each article is a form of propaganda, and then we'd be left without any news. Does it ever reach a point when you have to look at something even though it is easier to claim "it's propaganda?" I could go through this site and make a claim that there is something that shows every news article is a piece of propaganda, but that doesn't allow me to consciously disregard them. I have never met a person completely devoid of all human emotion, so I doubt there would be much of a market for news that would be devoid of all human emotion.

The author of the article composed it in order to provoke a response with information. Its only at the end that we hear he is a protestor, its only at the end that we hear that there was a large anti-war protest going on. THe title itself shows that its intended to produce an emotive response, not to rationally and objectively inform. He was not arrested/busted for wearing a t-shirt, the cop felt that he was a protestor, not unreasonably, given that there was a large organized anti-war protest scheduled.

Again, the cop was stupid and wrong, we can see that. We should also be able to tell when someone is trying to pull our strings in their favour.

The fact of being a participant in a 320 mile walk does not explain why the arrested person was at the VA center. Were all the march participants there? Was that a scheduled stopover of the marchers? Or did you just decide on your own to stop there? When you got to the VA center did you just go straight to the cafeteria for coffee or did you do other things first--like make a speech or something else to disturb the peace & tranquility of the place? Had anyone asked you to leave, or hush, or in some way indicated their displeasure at all?

Come on, tell us the entire story, not just the parts you want to use to gain sympathy. You've painted the VA cop in a very bad light when that may not be an accurate portrayal of his actions at all. Am I questioning your veracity? You bet I am. You've portrayed yourself as completely innocent, but is that really the case? I wonder what the arrest record at the VA center would say if we had it in front of us?

[edit on 7-7-2006 by Astronomer70]