Let's go to the tape. Do watch the whole thing, from beginning to end, but after you do that, let's start watching it, again, starting at 3:40 into it.

3:50 MPD squad, lights and sirens on, screams to a stop, and two cops leap out and join the struggle. The one furthest from the camera brings his fist -- it's not clear if he's holding a small weapon in it -- up and down seven times, apparently striking Jenkins repeatedly.

4:05 a third and fourth squad car scream to a stop, and a cop in a wool cap runs over, and at 4:06 shoves one of the cops out of the way, and begins kicking Jenkins.  While Jenkins is being kicked and punched by several cops, one voice can be heard to shout, "Put your hands behind your fucking back."

4:25 One of the cops screams about "something sharp," and the cops take a break from the beating long enough for Jenkins to roll to a sitting position. He's then dragged out of view of the closest squad camera, and the beating continues, with one of the cops taking what appears to be a cigarette break, looking back from time to time to the camera, then for whatever reason, positioning himself so that he blocks the view of Jenkins.

Over on the forums at officer.com, Buck Eight and Squad51 sum it up thusly:

I watched the video and didn't really have a problem with it. Things always look worse on video. Now that Dolan has the FBI getting involved and the story is ALL over the news, the guy is in for a big payday. I hope nobody loses their job over this.

Tasing, spraying and joint locks/pain compliance all look a hell of a lot better to someone watching a video (ie: a jury) than punches and kicks raining down.

http://www.startribune.com/local/534...tml?page=3&c=y

...I doubt that any of the officers will be in serious trouble over this. Kicks our part of our use of force training when dealing with combative suspects. This will be ruled a policy failure and kicking will disappear. The reason that the other officers will not get into huge touble or worse is that they where responding to an officer need help call and when they arrived saw that one officer was fighting with one and they responded to that with force to take one that they had reason to believe had assaulted an officer and he was dealt with. we have a good relationship with the county prosecuters I doubt that they would get much milage out of this. Not only that but I bet you money that if he does sue it is settled out of court for basically lawyers fees....if you watch the video in its entireity..yeah this is a no brainer the cops are in the clear...

Happy to be here proud to serve.

Minneapolis is in Hennepin County; the County Attorney -- the guy whose office prosecutes felonies in HennCo -- is Mike Freeman.  squad51 and his friends have a "good relationship" with county prosecutors.

The quote?  That's from Officer Richard Walker, early on in the stop.  Tim Dolan, the Minneapolis Police Chief, has ordered all of his officers to watch the video. The kicking it seems, was too much even for him.  "Dolan said the actions of Officer Richard Walker, the initial officer involved, 'all appear to be very appropriate.'"  He just doesn't like the kicking. Walker not stopping the thumping?  Doesn't bother Dolan.  Nor does the thumping bother squad51 and his friends at officer.com.  After all, they have a "good relationship" with the county prosecutors.

What will they learn from this?  A skeptic might think that they'll learn to station cops in front of the cameras to block recordings of the kicking in the future.

Either that, or there'll be an in-service on the use of the erase button.

But I'm sure they'll all watch the tape. Hell, maybe they'll even use some CI money to buy doughnuts for Movie Night.  Been done before, after all.

I just visited the Apple store in Old Orchard for some accessories for the new hotness, and I spotted something I've never seen before:

License-plate-specific reserved parking? This must be reserved for one person, and including the plate number makes it easy for mall security to recognize the right car, but don't they have parking stickers or something?

. . . which this reminded me of.


It was about seven in the evening, the end of a nice spring day, and my older kid, then a junior at Washburn High in Minneapolis (a school so badly run that they had to fire all the staff, including some of the best teachers, and start over, but I digress...)  hadn't returned home. 

Not a big deal; she often went over to a friend's house after school, and had been known to stay for dinner, and the nice thing about cell phones is that it makes it easy to check up on things.

So I called her cell.

"Hi, Dad."

"Hey, kiddo.  About time to be heading home, no?"

"Sure.  I'm on my way right now."

"Oh?  Where are you?" 

A suspicious pause. "In a car."

"[Julie] giving you a ride?"

"No.  I'm getting a ride from a nice Minneapolis police officer."

I opened my mouth, closed it, and opened it again. "Put him on."

"I'm not in trouble."

"Good.  Put him on."

"I can't; I'm in the back, and there's that -- "

"It's called 'the cage.'  Slide the phone through.  Now."

She did.

The cop -- I'll call him Deputy Mike Williams, 'cause I got a strange sense of humor -- got on the phone. 

Nice guy.  He started off by explaining that no, my kid wasn't in trouble, and in fact, she and her friends had done a good thing.  He couldn't go into detail, he said, as there was another minor involved, but a friend of Judy's had disappeared from school, and Judy and her other friends had helped the police locate her, after which, well, he couldn't say more.

"You know my kid's going to tell me all about it."

"Sure.  But I gotta follow the rules; I can't."

Which was fair enough. 

I met him and Judy at the curb, and we chatted for awhile*.  Officer Williams couldn't go into detail, but Judy could, and she explained that a friend of hers -- I'm going to arbitrarily say it was a girl, and call her Granola Oatmeal-Smythe, which isn't her name, honest -- had was going through some not atypical teen drama, involving a boy having dumped her, and making noises about maybe doing some harm to herself, and disappeared from school in the middle of the day. 

After the school administration had turned a deaf ear to the concerns of the kids -- the administrators at Washburn High in Minneapolis were not exactly reknowned for having working clueservers -- the kids had ditched school to find Granola in Minnehaha Park, and enlisted the aid of a bunch of the boys and girls with guns and badges, and Granola had been located, unharmed, but still making those sorts of noises. 

She was taken to the nearest hospital for the appropriate sort of observation, with very little protest.  (My own guess is that the kid might, but probably wouldn't, have hurt herself if she'd been dared into it, but the badged adults and kids involved had all taken a sensible approach, and it probably didn't come as close to being tragic as it sounded to me, then, so I'm trying to downplay it a little.)

I could go more into detail, but if I do, that might identify Granola, so I won't. 

With the kid safe, it was starting to get late, and the cops involved all decided that they weren't all that comfortable with just leaving the kids alone at the park to make their various ways home, so various squads had gone off in different directions with kids in the back, and if it turned out that that wasn't exactly according to MPD policy, maybe I wouldn't have any trouble with that? 

I allowed as to how I wasn't in the business of enforcing even sensible MPD policy, much less stupid policy, and we parted with a handshake, and a mental note to myself that if I ever blogged about this to fudge a few details to hide Williams' identity, which I just did.

I was actually proud of Judy -- although fairly irritated that she hadn't informed her father (that would be me) as to what was going on, until it was all over.  Minnehaha Park is not the safest place in town -- there had recently been some remarkably unpleasant events there --

And she did agree that she should have, but pointed out that the kids actually were being driven around there by cops, and were probably pretty safe, under the circumstances. 

Which is where I thought things ended. 

But I was wrong.

Turns out that there were at least two people irritated by the whole thing -- one of the vice principals, and the school mall ninja security guard; I'll call him Ken Jones, even though that's not his name. Seems that their decision that there was nothing to worry about had turned out to be demonstrably wrong, and, let's face it, tinpot dictator types don't like to be proven wrong.

So, the next day, when Jones was searching through Granola's locker, what he was really doing was trying to find some way to get the kids who had embarrassed him in trouble. 

Which he kinda sorta found -- Granola's diary, in which she talked about all sorts of stuff, including some musing about how she might take an overdose of drugs.  His keen quasi-cop mind leaped to a stupid conclusion, and he summoned all the kids who had embarrassed him into the school security office, to engage in a little amateur interrogation.

I think his theory, such as it percolated through Ken Jones' pointy little head, is that if a kid is talking about taking drugs, other kids must be dealing drugs, and maybe that could be used to punish them for embarrassing him.

Which didn't work, which irritated the mall ninja.   So he called in the school "liaison officer", a cop who I'm going to call "Dan Grout" -- the name is pronounced like that stuff between tiles -- because that's the guy's name.

"I know you kids were dealing drugs to her," he opened with.  "And if you don't confess to me now, when she kills herself, I'll see you all charged with first degree murder."

At which point the kids started freaking out, just a little.

Including, on the inside, my kid.  But only on the inside.  "I want my father and I want my lawyer, now."

Daddy's girl did Daddy proud.

Grout snorted.  "Like you got a lawyer."  (Not sure I exactly agree with your police work, there, Danny.) 

"I have a lawyer, and I want my father and my lawyer, now." 

. . .

Which is kinda where I come in, a few minutes later, with the Vice Principal of the school calling me, out of irritation.  He gave me a rather abbreviated and not entirely accurate version of the events -- "We have to do these sorts of things for the children, of course" -- and asked what I planned to do about it . . .

"Well, I guess I better get in the car and head over there.  David on his way?"

"David?"

"My daughter's attorney.  He's on his way, right?  I'm kind of surprised that I haven't heard from him."  Then again, if he's representing Judy in this, I'm just the guy paying the bill, not the client, and he's got to at least talk to the client before he --

I think this is the moment where I realized that I was talking to an idiot:  "Why would a child need an attorney?" he asked.

"Because of jackbooted thugs with delusions that the Constitutions' been repealed for their fucking convenience," I said, about as gently as I could. 

"I don't think I like your tone."

"Well, good.  Let me ask you a question -- do you own your own home?  Got a lot of equity in it?"

"Are you threatening me, sir?"

"Play the tape back, if you've got any questions.  And, in case I'm not clear, nobody at your school -- not you, not your mall ninja, not anybody -- is to interrogate my kid on anything without either her attorney or me being present.  You can talk to her about her homework, but anything else, David or I are to be there.  On a good day, you might get us both.  You got that?"

Long pause.  "I want to hear a yes on that right about now."

"Yes."

That was the last time the Vice Principal of that school and I had a chat about anything. 

What we can learn from this is left as an exercise for the reader. 


_____________
* Since I know somebody's going to ask:  yes, yes, there was a gun visible on my right hip when I met them outside, no, that didn't enter into the conversation on either Williams part or mine.  Wasn't relevant. 

I don't understand what the issue is when people talk about making English the official language.

It was one of the questions at the presidential debates of both parties. Closer to home, Fran Eaton at Illinois Review links approvingly to an article by Phyllis Schlafly and to a report that Carpentersville has passed a symbolic resolution to make English its official language, commenting that "it should also be the state and nation's policy, as well."

What the heck does that mean? Talk about making English the official language is pointless without discussing the details of what exactly it means to have an official language. Do supporters of English as the official language really want the United States Congress to pass a symbolic resolution? That would be pretty shallow.

I assume supporters have something more specific in mind, as must opponents, but neither side ever spells out the details. Do the supporters just want to make sure that English is considered necessary and sufficient for legal purposes? Do they object to non-English signs in government offices? At airports? In supermarkets? What about "E Pluribus Unum" on the back of our money? Is that just caving in to the Latin Lobby?

Is it just me? Am I the only one who doesn't know what "official language" means? Or is it just feel-good legislation for the anti-immigrant crowd.

In the bathroom at the hotel where we stayed last week:

conserve

As part of Hyatt's commitment to conserve the environment, we will change bed linens and towels as necessary or upon request.

If you wish to have your linens and towels replaced daily, please contact the hotel operator.

Yeah, I'm sure they're just very committed to the environment...

I heard some radio talk show host discussing the idea of sending a delegation of former Presidents of the United States to try to get Israel to settle down. I have no considered opinion on the matter, but I was rather peeved that the guy kept referring to "President Clinton." Bill Clinton is not the President anymore, and people technically shouldn't be using the title.

You may have heard of Senators and Governors being called by those titles long after they are out of office, and that's okay. They are allowed to keep the honor of the title for holding the office. But the rules are different for the President (and the Vice-President).

The general rule—established by Thomas Jefferson, I believe—is that official titles which are only held by one person at a time should not be used after the person leaves office. Note that it's the title, not the office, that has to be unique. There's only one Governor of Illinois, but there are many people with the title of Governor. There are also a lot of Senators, but there's only one President.

There's also only one Vice President, so he loses the title too when he leaves. I'm not sure about the Chief Justice of the Supreme court.

So what should Bill Clinton be called? (Please don't go there.) The answer is that he reverts to his previous title, which is the highest title he held before becoming President. Ex-President Bill Clinton is now Governor Clinton.

Jimmy Carter is also still properly referred to as Governor Carter.

As for George Bush Senior, well, he's now back to being Ambassador Bush.

It's not that important, and I don't know why this bothers me, but does.

Lenny Kravitz's album 5 has been out for a few years now. I remember especially enjoying its hit single "Fly Away" which had an energetic video to go with it. You can hear "Fly Away" on Lenny Kravitz's MySpace page (you'll have to click the song yourself, I can't figure out how to link to it).

Meanwhile, however, I'd like to discuss these lyrics:

Oh I want to get away.
I want to fly away.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's go and see the stars,
The milky way, or even Mars.
Where it could just be ours.

Is anybody else bothered by the cosmology implied by those lyrics?

For one thing, the Sun is a star. It's just really, really close. The next nearest star is called Alpha Centauri, and it's about 265,000 times further away. That isn't what bothers me about the song, though. After all, Lenny obviously means he wants to go and see the other stars. Let's talk about those.

All the stars we can see in the sky, including Alpha Centauri, are part of a large group of about 100 billion stars that are organized into a thin disk called a galaxy. It's a big disk: From one edge to the other is about 24 thousand times greater than the distance between the Earth and Alpha Centauri, or 6.3 billion times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Our Sun, and therefore our planet, is also in this disk, somewhere around half way between the center and the rim.

If you go out at night someplace far enough from a big city so that the sky is truly black, you can see this disk. You'll have to wait for your eyes to adapt. We're embedded in the disk, so we see it edge-on. It appears as a faint uneven band of light stretching across the night sky.

If you travel the earth following that band, you'd see that it stretches around the entire sky of our planet. We're in the middle of a glowing ring of light. The ring is patchy and uneven, and appears to wander around between the stars. Our ancestors staring up at the sky during the late hours gave it a descriptive name: The Milky Way.

The stars are part of the Milky Way, and so are we. So Welcome to the Milky Way, Lenny. Make sure you try some of the food here, it's really good.

Actually, that's not what really bothers me either. I'm bothered by the reference to Mars, specifically to the implication that Mars is something special. It's not.

With apologies to all those who study Mars, it's a cold, nearly-airless jerkwater little planet that's practically right next door. Many nearby stars will have planets just like it, or far more interesting.

So when Lenny Kravitz sings

Let's go and see the stars,
The milky way, or even Mars.

it's a lot like someone earthbound in Chicago singing

Let's go and see Paris,
The World, or even Joliet.

Addendum: Actually, if you do the math, if the nearest star is as far as Paris, then Mars is the corner bar. On the other hand, if the Milky Way is the size of the Earth, then Mars is like a speck of dust on your skin.

On Eminem's latest album, Encore, there's a track called "Mosh" in which he lashes out against President Bush and the war in Iraq. At about 3:30 there's this bit of tripe:

Let the president answer a higher anarchy
Strap him with an AK-47, let him go, fight his own war
Let him impress daddy that way

You see the problem don't you?

The notation AK-47 stands for Automatic Kalashnikov rifle 1947 model and refers to an assault rifle designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov and produced in Russia for the armed forces of the Soviet Union. It was the preferred weapon of our enemy (which "makes a disctinctive sound when fired"—name that movie). It's a simple and inexpensive weapon that is easy to manufacture and maintain, and therefore it's very popular with irregular forces and recreational shooters. It is not, however, what American soldiers use.

If you're going to send George Bush off to war, you'd equip him with an M-16.

This bother anyone else? Or is it just me?

Ogre repeats an old Marine joke which I'm just a little too smart to enjoy anymore:

A Sailor is relieving himself in the head when a Marine walks in and steps up to the urinal beside him.

After a few seconds the Sailor finishes, shakes, zips and walks over to the sink to wash his hands. The Marine also finishes, zips-up, and walks to the door.

Just then the Sailor says, "Hey Marine! When I was in boot camp, they taught us to wash our hands when we finished!"

The Marine looks at the Sailor and says, "When I was in boot camp, they told me not to piss on my hands."

That's a good joke, but I wonder if I'm the only one who wants to yell at the Marine, "Good! But did you touch your dick?"

That's because somewhere along the way I've learned that you don't wash your hands because pee is dirty. In fact, urine is normally sterile. The reason you should wash your hands is because your crotch is dirty.

So the Marine in the joke is acting under a false assumption and is, in fact, behaving in an unsanitary manner.

Does this bother anybody else? Or is it just me? Everybody else just laughs at the joke, don't they? It's just me, isn't it? I hate when that happens.