What the hell?

Updated Is this another step down the dark ladder?

Pittsburgh (AP, August 20) - Two women protesting the war in Iraq were taken to a hospital Saturday after police broke up an unauthorized march involving about five dozen people on a busy one-way street near an Army recruiting station.

David Meieran, who helped organize the protest, accused police of "inappropriate and excessive force."

Sgt. Clint Winkler, a supervisor on duty, told The Associated Press that one woman who would not leave was subdued with a Taser. He also confirmed that a police dog bit another woman on the leg when she refused police orders to disperse.

Both women and a man involved in the march were arrested, Winkler said.

"They were told to disperse, peacefully disperse, and failed to do so, so we started down the sidewalk - officers in front, K-9's behind us, and started pushing the crowd down the sidewalk," Winkler said. He said the march broke up after the arrests.

Tasered? Police dogs? "Unauthorized march?"

What the hell is going on here? Now, this AP report is all I've found on this, meaning I have to admit there could be more to it, but based on what's here, this was not "inappropriate and excessive force," it was criminal abuse, outrageous, and unconscionable.

For one thing, for over a year I've been warning that the use of tasers, sold on the basis that they offer an alternative to lethal force and aggressively promoted as "safe" and "harmless,"

will become routine, that they will not be seen as weapons of protection and necessity but of control and convenience.

And what do we have here but exactly that? A woman tasered for what? For "refusing to leave?" What the hell? Did she attack a cop? Did she threaten anyone? The cops themselves don't say that. It was because she "refused to leave." Obey or suffer!

Siccing a police dog on a woman for "refusing to disperse?" What the hell? What is this, Bull Connor's Birmingham? Are these cops auditioning for the next Abu Ghraib?

"Unauthorized march?" What the hell? Hey, you lamebrain twerps, you ignorant jackasses, you Constitutional cretins - marches which follow traffic rules and do not deny the use of public facilities to others come under "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" and do not need your flippin' permission! I don't give a flying damn if it was a "busy" street or a "one-way" street or any of the rest of it.

Now, again, I don't know for certain because the article doesn't have all the necessary details, but the police official did say the cops "started pushing the crowd down the sidewalk" - down, not onto - which seems to me a pretty damned good hint that the march was on the sidewalk, not in the street, and so was not blocking traffic.

Municipalities can impose "reasonable time and place restrictions" on demonstrations without running afoul of the Constitution - but the purpose of that authority is to insure that others are not unreasonably denied access to public facilities (including sidewalks). It is not a means for them to make blanket demands for permits for any and all public gatherings; otherwise they could insist that even a single protestor or a single person handing out leaflets could be required to get official permission before acting. It is to regulate access to be fair to all - and therefore any assembly which does not hinder the ability of others to use that public facility should not need any "authorization."

But Pittsburgh, it seems, has a history of trying to use administrative claims to limit, control, and even prevent public protest. Apparently when that doesn't work, officials are prepared to turn violent. They should all be in the dock. Scum.

Updated to note that thanks to Tim and Harry in comments, there is some more information about what happened; check there for the links. It seems that, interestingly enough, the march did go into the street and when it moved up onto the sidewalk at the recruiting station, it did pretty well block the sidewalk - but all that occurred with "limited police interference." The trouble started when a Fox cameraman got his equipment into the face of one protester and when they objected, a "minor confrontation" developed which lead to the cameraman "screaming" at the cops to arrest the protestor - at which point, hell broke loose with cops chasing protestors, hitting them, and using other such routine crowd control tools as pepper spray, tasers, and police dogs. One video at the site clearly shows a cop walking up to a woman already held on the ground and tasering her. It also develops that the woman who was bit was bit on the back of the leg; i.e., she was moving away from police when it happened.

One sidebar is that it seems a number of the protestors were wearing masks, something supposedly done, at least according to some at other actions, to express solidarity with Palestinian militants but which in my opinion is merely a pointless affectation. Based on reports at the link, however, it seems that police focused their assault on precisely those members of the group. Which suggests to me that the cops were afraid of them, saw them as threatening (or, perhaps more precisely, as more threatening than the others). The old line about how "paranoia strikes deep" works both ways.

Be that as it may, none of this additional information has altered my opinion: scum.

Update to the update: As of Sunday evening, all those arrested had been released in good health.