Ferguson protests and gamers?

I’ve been reading way too much Ferguson news lately. It’s a stressful story about a city and population essentially under siege, journalists accosted and harassed by police, and the slow semi-transparent wheels of justice…

Even though I heard about the news of Darren Brown’s death the day it happened (and the night of the first protest) it’s taken a while for the news to finally reach the national stage.

With Twitter leading the way with most of the on-the-spot news of what’s been happening, I’ve long wondered how gamers and the MMO gaming community has reacted so far.

Looking at Google and the Internet at large, and a dearth of articles on the subject (from said community) I’d have to say I agree with Helvetica at Vox Ex Machina in that the impact is little seen.

How has the Ferguson news affected the MMO gaming community? (Not much) | Helvetica | Vox Ex Machina

I’ll be keeping an eye out for news to tip the people I know who write about this sort of thing, but I’m not holding my breath. If anyone notices any gaming groups making an effort to spread awareness -– through in game rallies, their own blogs, Twitter, etc. -- let me know and I’ll pass it along.

LAPD, SFPD Act Like Shameful Troglodytes

If there’s anything that civil rights movements have shown us, it’s that the police forces involved in suppressing protests and demonstrations (even peaceful demonstrations) behave with violence and inhuman lack of compassion.

With all this in mind, this week the LAPD and SFPD have displayed shamefaced bad behavior that reflects poorly on their departments and casts them and theirs into a very poor light.

The LAPD

Patrick Meighan, a writer for Family Guy, described his arrest and subsequent shamefully bad treatment at the hands of LAPD. Although it makes sense that the police may need to apply force to separate protesters who have linked arms in order to stay together to make arrest difficult, the level of sadism necessary to produce the sort of assault described is beyond the pale.

It was horrible to watch, and apparently designed to terrorize the rest of us. At least I was sufficiently terrorized. I unlinked my arms voluntarily and informed the LAPD officers that I would go peacefully and cooperatively. I stood as instructed, and then I had my arms wrenched behind my back, and an officer hyperextended my wrists into my inner arms. It was super violent, it hurt really really bad, and he was doing it on purpose. When I involuntarily recoiled from the pain, the LAPD officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement. It really, really hurt and my face started bleeding and I was very scared. I begged for mercy and I promised that I was honestly not resisting and would not resist.

My hands were then zipcuffed very tightly behind my back, where they turned blue. I am now suffering nerve damage in my right thumb and palm.

I was put on a paddywagon with other nonviolent protestors and taken to a parking garage in Parker Center. They forced us to kneel on the hard pavement of that parking garage for seven straight hours with our hands still tightly zipcuffed behind our backs. Some began to pass out. One man rolled to the ground and vomited for a long, long time before falling unconscious. The LAPD officers watched and did nothing.

Shame on you, LAPD officers who brutally assault people who recoil from your careless use of zipcuffs. Shame on you, LAPD officers who fail to act like compassionate, proper human beings by leaving protestors to sit in squalor, vomiting, falling unconscious without seeking medial attention for them.

Your callous, inhuman behavior not only sets you apart as bad protectors of the public trust, but also makes me sad to think that you’re people worth believing serve that trust.

The SFPD

In another instance of police failing to stand up to their actual duties, SFPD sergeant Peter Thoshinsky has been caught on camera giving an illegal order to officers to commit what is essentially criminal battery.

“If they do not do what you tell them, strike them,” he ordered his officers at the line of a kettling of protestors demonstrating at Occupy San Francisco.

Assault is not necessary to affect the arrest of a nonviolent offender and assault is illegal when there is no case of arrest. This sergeant’s order may have been illegal, and in fact his officers may have been to intimidate the protestors, but both cases make Peter Thoshinsky an irresponsible, failure as a commanding officer.

Threatening protestors with violence won’t deescalate a tense situation, but it will make it scarier. This sort of intimidation endangers not just the protestors but the police officers that he commands. His action in saying that in front of protestors shows a vast failure of judgment and extremely poor leadership.

Both links LAPD, SFPD via Boing Boing.

Mill Avenue Nights: Friday, October 7th 2011

Tempe police have become much more zealous about stopping people from bringing their own chairs to Mill Avenue citing a City of Tempe ordinance previously unbeknownst to Ave visitors. This policing was discovered tonight when Tempe city police officers warned Arienne, Dragon, Omni, and I when we were sitting on chairs, playing a tabletop game of 1^st Edition Dungeons & Dragons. (Yes, dice and all.)

The law is quite clear on the subject from Tempe City Code §§ 29-70,71 that nobody shall rest upon blankets, towels, or not permanently affixed chairs upon a Tempe public sidewalk and to do so would be a class 3 misdemeanor. Apparently, this is the case even for the region near the Post Office which is not part of the sidewalk thoroughfare and is public property.

Of course, according to the code we could have been permitted to do this on a weekday after 10 p.m. or, it being a Friday, after 1 a.m.

The officers were polite, cordial and addressed the situation. They even paused to tell one of the nearby buskers that he would not be permitted to sit in a chair and play his guitar in front of the Post Office. All of us so addressed complied with the lawful orders of the police and moved our chairs away to against the side of the PO.

Of course, we continued to play the game on the ground.

The officer in question could have done without making up lame excuses for why the code is in place (none of us disagreed and we complied immediately.) The code is not in place “for our protection as drunk people might come along and bother us,” that’s just outright wrong. The law had nothing to do with us playing a game on Mill Ave; it may have more to do with preventing people from blocking thoroughfares…

…or more likely it’s a form of legislation designed to alienate and darken the city’s benevolence towards itinerant peoples.

The City of Tempe a few years ago had an ordinance of the same type that made it illegal to sit on the ground itself. The ACLU of Arizona and others got together to fight that exceedingly obvious and stupid legislation and eventually got it overturned. The current legislation is probably an outgrowth of that law that is avoiding making the same mistake.

Michigan High Court Didn’t Forget About Dr. Dre: Police Cannot Invoke Private Conversation in Public

In a rare term of wit, one of my favorite states—as I live there part of the year—has managed to come down with a ruling about recording the police while in public. This happened over a case involving rapper Dr. Dre and one of his concerts.

According to an article in the Michigan Messenger,

The suit was filed by Gary Brown, now a Detroit City Councilman but formerly a high-ranking police official. He and other officers were videotaped while threatening to shut down a concert featuring Dre and Eminem if they showed a sexually explicit video. The video was then included in a DVD produced about the tour.

The court, in a 6-1 ruling, dismissed the suit, saying that there is no right to privacy for police while on the job. The implications of this ruling are far more important than they may seem initially because it explicitly makes it legal in the state of Michigan to record the police while they perform their duties.

This is incredibly important because cell phone videos of police officers have revealed misconduct, abuse and lying on reports in case after case around the country. But in some states, like Illinois, it is illegal to videotape the police in the performance of their duties.

It should be made clear that the police in this happened to be proceeding in the back stage of a concert with multiple cameras and third parties wandering everywhere. The concept of a “public space” was in full force and the conversation was not taken out of public into private.

The entire idea that public officers would be stupid enough to argue that they had an “expectation of privacy” in these circumstances is wholly ridiculous. I would love to see what the single dissenting ruling opinion had to say on this subject.

Furthermore, if you are a public official and operating in that capacity and in public while doing so there’s no real expectation of privacy. Many police SOP is to report all contact with civilians when operating in an official capacity; the requirement of report itself removes any concept of expectation of privacy. The operations of law upon the citizenry should be fully accessible to the citizens they affect sans a writ or warrant withdrawing it from them. This is necessary especially for the ability of the public to assist with their own defense against the State in matters of accusation.

I should be able to record any conversation I am a participant thereof—and further, especially those that involve the operations of public law.

This does not infer that such recordings should be automatically admissible in a court of law; but it should proceed forth from the law that anything that I can legally access should be mine to retain.

The ex-officer in this case felt that the recording of his actions embarrassed him. And they did—his actions were embarrassing. As an officer of the court and a holder of the public trust he was entrusted with certain powers and authorities that flow forth from that public trust and part of being a public official is being under public scrutiny and the public eye.

Many states still have laws on their books which make recording the police illegal; even when the police have the right to record a conversation or action with an individual who is directly affected by it. This really needs to stop. Recording the police is not “wiretapping” and stretching laws that prohibit wiretapping and eavesdropping is obviously ridiculous when the police are exempt from the same rules sans need of a warrant.

Mill Avenue Nights – Saturday November 1st 2008

Tonight the crowds were spare. Only the staunch outers came to ply their time on the streets. Pretty much every venue from sidewalk to preachers to the drum circle. Some bare few people have come out to our Ave tonight.

Perhaps everyone tuckered out from the bulging crowds of Halloween. Perhaps the Ave just needed a rest.

I met a few new street rats who just got into town a few days ago. As other more veteran players along our streets have noted before: “Every time we come out here, there’s new faces.” A great deal of the street rats are migrant in nature, they move around, by train, hitchhiking, or just buses from here and there. This increases somewhat in winter as those from the northern states make their way around California.

The gallow’s pall on the unfinished condominiums and the now-dead movie theater that gateways Mill is even more telling when there’s few people. There’s so few things to distract the eyes from glancing up at that dark shadow, with the red lights blinking atop.

The drum circle ended far early when the police arrived and arrested a young woman and a young man for drinking alcohol. The young woman apparently took a sip of the alcohol from his cup, didn’t know it was until she did, but she put up resistance to the police officers and thus they decided to take her in for whatever disrespect she showed. Tonight, police were out in strange force—packs of them, five to six together, would prowl around individuals in ones and twos as they arrested them at the sides of the street.

I watched one vehicle being searched by an officer near the Post Office while taking notes while the occupants were held on the side of the road. The car strangely off-kilter, open and in the way of traffic as they searched it, sticking out of the right-hand turn lane.

With very little to do, and none to interview, I took a long circuitous constitutional with my friends around the loop of the Mill Ave from one side to the other in order to get the lay of the land. Even walked past the adobe walls of La Casa Vieja as I often do. The newly repaired sign is unfailingly visible. The old one took storm damage in the violent monsoon that struck two months ago.

Drawing to the end of the night, only one member who visits the drum circle with any regularity remained—aside from Remy, who drunkenly staggered about with us in his jocular spirits. She parked out in front of the Post Office as is traditional for the Drum Circle in Exile. But, only one exile tonight.

Copies of Spoofing the Ave—which are humor shorts for Mill Avenue Vexations—got handed out. One went to Lawrence at Graffiti Shop, who made his adoration of the new story well known. Hopefully further copies will garner equal approval. There are still many to come.

Not much else to tell about the night.

Perhaps things will pick up somewhat next weekend.

Until then.

Mill Avenue Nights, Friday, Halloween (October 31st) 2008

Friday again, and we’re out on the Ave. Since I get a ride down there with the ASU Secular Free Thought Society I am getting a lot more of a view of their activity on Mill and less of other areas that have been hotspots. Of course, Halloween isn’t exactly the hype of local culture—but it is a good place to find various clashes.

Tonight’s episode involves a local extremely vocal group who come from The Door—a highly insular Christian outcrop who appear to use cultish and brute behavior to silence and bully critics and detractors who are attracted to their extremely prominent and disruptive demonstrations. I will be documenting some of their bad behavior here while attempting to reflect the activity that they brought to Mill Avenue tonight.

Is it just me or is this starting to feel a lot like Discovery Channel’s Meercat Manor?

Preachers: The Door

Around 7pm there wasn’t much in the way of crowds to see. Just the odd scattering of costumes amidst the normal Mill Ave bounce-about types. A band whose music wasn’t half bad set up in front of Urban Outfitters and would play for the rest of the night. They come up obliquely because the Door demonstrators set up in front of Coffee Plantation—a location normally off-limits to noisy and disruptive people—which is directly kitty-corner from Urban Outfitters. We discovered them as they had laid down wooden crosses in front of Coffee Plant early on to stake out their territory.

The SFTS decided that they would set up in front of the Post Office. The purpose of which I would later learn was to direct their efforts to provide a counterpoint to the Door’s operations that night. Apparently anticipating the antics of that group ahead of time. When everyone arrived there a trumpeter already had a small boosted set up and was playing there. He eventually turned out to be a preacher from the Door who’s purpose was to act as a forward scout. The Door apparently also anticipated the intersession of the SFTS and have modified their tactics accordingly.

I received a pamphlet from them espousing some Christian mythology. For the most part it was a mundane recital of their less-interesting elemental prose from their mythos book; most of these pamphlets are creative and clever in their presentation but generally unimaginative in their delivery or choice of how to frame their lore. However, an odd linguistic quirk in the text did catch my eye.

Buried in the prose there was the ubiquitous mention of people being sent to Hell (part of the Christian mythos afterworld) except that it didn’t have a capital “H.” A mistake by a copy editor? Over the years Hell has lost its capital “h” when written in ordinary text, but generally only when it is used as an explicative or injective, like “The hell if I know!” or “The hell with it!” But I think that if Hell is being used to refer to a place it is therefore a proper noun, and there are no proper nouns that we don’t capitalize the first letter. It’s weirdly telling that this word so breaks English conventions for these people.

At around 8:50pm we had a visitation by an obvious demonstration from the Door. Along came an effigy of Jesus, dragging a cross, and two apparently Roman Centurions with whips. The costume was pretty grotesque, which is a good thing for Halloween, and the multiple actors did make the demonstration pretty interesting. I wonder if we can get other individuals to put together performance art pieces like the Door does; but to more educational end. There were at least three effigies wandering down Mill, the Centurions had whips—and even assaulted Rocco from the SFTS with a whip, but I have not substantiated the when/how/why.

Around 9:45pm an altercation happened at the Door demonstration site that summoned the police. I had been warned by members of the SFTS that the Door demonstrators had a tendency to physically assault people and then call the police—so I came with the expectation of seeing something. The Halloween crowds were likely to have at least one drunken individual who would fall for this sort of bait.

A man with really blue hair and a nicely done retro-affect decided to shout and yell along with their demonstration. The tactics used to control him mostly involved standing in his face, getting in his way, pressing up against behind him to corral him. One more than one occasion elbows were used to strike him in the sides or stomach—a behavior which he shouted out as he would charge them with assault for. Several extremely barrel chested individuals would deliberately block the view of video cameras while others harassed the blue-haired man.

Eventually the police were summoned by the Door after they shoved the blue-haired man and then manhandled him around their demonstration. It was really hard to tell who was inciting whom in the mess, but watching the behavior of the people from the Door it is very difficult to give them any doubt to benefit from; for the most part they’d riled their blood to the point that they were culpable in what happened. Deliberately blocking video cameras filming also puts a black mark on them—these are not the acts of civil people.

According to Jordan from the SFTS allegations were made, and then proven to be outright lies by film evidence from three different sources that were variously blocked and unblocked during times of the scuffle. After the police arrived and spoke with them man he went on his merry way—but it certainly didn’t raise my opinion of the Door demonstrators that they made false statements to the police about the blue-haired man, attempted to cover up their own bad acts by occluding cameras, and general bellicosity.

This sort of behavior is dangerous to the health of the Ave.

They had quite a show involving reciting elements of various stories from the Bible. Three crosses with three people who hung on them, the Jesus effigy wept and shouted quotes. The Centurions called out asking what to do with him… Standard fare. Hecklers were inserted in the crowds readily enough from the some forty people present.

In closing, I didn’t get a chance to talk to many of the Door individuals from the demonstration; when they behave in this manner they rile themselves up and aren’t interested in actual dialogue. For the most part, I discovered them belligerent, presenting themselves with a spume of disrespectful questions and then when they didn’t get answers they liked from me attempted to batter me with religious rhetoric from their mythology. Those whom I asked questions of to determine the affiliation or why they were on Mill (my standard fare) quickly gave up under interview or refused to answer me after I tried to honestly answer their questions.

One individual in particular (who after attempting to ask me a series of personal questions) then went on to refuse a copy of my newest Mill Avenue Vexations story because he “Didn’t want to have to read it.” It strikes me as grossly disrespectful of other people to approach them with pretences of shouting them down, asking them questions, and then offering nothing in return—for the most part this individual behaved was entitled to abuse my time but not respect me for it.

The words he used reminded me of another individual from Extremely Prophetic who said the exact same thing when I tried to give him one of my books! Surely, people are welcome to refuse my offerings, I have no problem with them; but this is a very odd response.

Preachers Halloween

A great deal of the time I find them out making anti-Halloween messages. This time: Nothing. Only the Centurions abusing the effigies and that’s about it.

Costumes

The crowds disoriented me a lot more than I expected but there were quite a few out. The vast majority of popular costume happened to be, as expected, The Joker from the new Batman movies. I spotted at least three Benders, from the cartoon Futurama. The rest were a scattering of more standard archetypes from zombies, dark hooded, and various applications of profession uniforms.

One highlight, which amused me, was at least two Doctor Horrible costumes. And at least one person had a girl with him dressed as Penny.

Fin

Pfew. Okay that’s enough for now. I have many more notes from last night, but this is the limit of my energy at the moment. If anyone else has thoughts on what happened please feel free to speak up.

And I’m sorry that the Door stuff dominates this discussion, it actually received very little time in my notes; but it was an event that really needs to be handed to the public because, really, this sort of behavior is uncivil and unhealthy.

Have a good night everyone. Anthropologist out.

Incident Last Month on Mill Ave

I was just stumbling around Technorati when I came across a blog post about a horrible incident on Mill Ave on July 26th, 2008 about 2a.m. This blog post by Alex Berger outlines some extremely bad acts by Tempe police, particularly mounted, against bar close rush crowds.

The entire idea that mounted police would assault half-drunk, terrified people with pepper spray and drive them through the street at any time (let alone 2a.m.) is reprehensible. And, frankly, disgusts me.

I am interested to know if anyone else witnessed this or if they know about newspaper articles that I'm missing out on. I would like more journalistic (citizen and otherwise) so that I can add this to my Mill Ave anthropology scrapbook.

Link to the post here.

And -- on a lighter note, I've subscribed to this blog's RSS because he did a thesis on virtual worlds and that's something that I'm also into.