Brutality Eyed in Arrest of UVA Student By Alcohol Agents
The state is investigating whether excessive force was used during the arrest of a 20-year-old black University of Virginia student after he attempted to enter a bar near the college early Wednesday morning, officials said.
Third-year student Martese Johnson was arrested by Alcoholic Beverage Control agents after he was rejected entry from a University Avenue bar, authorities said. The agents then approached Johnson and “a determination was made” to arrest him – during which time “the arrested individual sustained injuries,” according to the ABC agency, which is charged with enforcing alcohol laws in the state.
Cell phone video of the incident shows the student lying face down on the sidewalk with two agents detaining him as bystanders yell, “His head is bleeding!” From another angle, he is shown with his face bloodied, shouting, “I go to UVA!” and then “You f—ing racists!”
University Vice President for Diversity and Equity Marcus L. Martin and Dean of African-American Affairs Maurice Apprey described the incident in a message to students and staff as “appalling” and said the student’s head was “slammed into the hard pavement with excessive force.”
“This was wrong and should not have occurred,” Martin and Apprey said in a written statement. “We view the nature of this assault as highly unusual and appalling based on the information we have received.”
The governor has asked the state police to begin an independent investigation into the incident.
“As evidenced by both his academic and extracurricular achievements, Martese is a smart young man with a bright future,” Watkins said. “I have spoken with him several times today, and he is absolutely devastated by yesterday’s events. Currently, we are preparing to investigate and defend this matter vigorously. Please keep Martese in your prayers during this difficult time.”
Virginia ABC said in the statement that they are restricting the special agents involved in the incident to administrative duties while the investigation into the matter is underway.
This is not the first time an ABC agent has caused a controversy at the school. In 2013 they mistakenly thought the bottled water Elizabeth Daly was carrying to her car from the grocery story was beer, and the plain clothed officers surrounded her car, one even drawing a gun.
Daly panicked and drove away, because she didn’t know the men were police. She ended up spending one night in jail. Daly later sued the Alcoholic Beverage Control and collected a $212,500 settlement and a letter from the ABC board explaining the circumstances of her arrest to present to any future employer, according to a July 30, 2014 statement from the state Attorney General’s office. The ABC did not admit any wrongdoing in the case.
Meanwhile at another Virginia University…
VA State Senator questions Sweet Briar College near Lynchburg, VA being suspiciously shut down.
Is this some kind of insider crony real estate pillaging? The college has $100 million in its endowment, which is above average for its class size.
In Heinleinian terms, I aim to address this forum, like a bullfrog fighting a cat.
Grok is a word coined by Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science-fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, where it is defined as follows:
Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man.
Drinking is a central focus on Mars,and also my home in the Mojave desert, where water is scarce. Martians(and also this Mojavean) use the merging of their bodies with water as a simple example or symbol of how two entities can combine to create a new reality greater than the sum of its parts. The water becomes part of the drinker, and the drinker part of the water. Both grok each other.
Things that once had separate realities become entangled in the same experiences, goals, history, and purpose. Within the book, the statement of divine immanence verbalized between the main characters, “Thou Art God”, is logically derived from the concept inherent in the term grok.
Martian words such as grok are “guttural” and “jarring”. Martian speech is described as sounding “like a bullfrog fighting a cat”. (That’s how I hope to be heard in some small measure as well someday.)
While vacationing in Tahiti in early 1978, Bob Heinlein suffered a transient ischemic attack. Over the next few months, he became more and more exhausted, and his health again began to decline. The problem was determined to be a blocked carotid artery, and he had one of the earliest known carotid bypass operations to correct it.
Heinlein and Virginia had been smokers, and smoking appears often in his fiction, as do fictitious strikable self-lighting cigarettes. [is the author trying to imply causality via proximity. Does he imagine just stating these facts is all that’s needed, every prole knows smoking kills? He died at age 80, and once you stratify deaths by wealth, because smokers are far poorer than non-smokers, the whole myth of killer tobacco evaporates.]
Asked to appear before a Joint Committee of the U.S. House and Senate that year, he testified on his belief that spin-offs from space technology were benefiting the infirm and the elderly. Heinlein’s surgical treatment re-energized him, and he wrote five novels from 1980 until he died in his sleep from emphysema and heart failure on May 8, 1988.
My Disqus comment at Popehat as Doofor has been removed.
Discussion on Real Lawyers Have Blogs 5 comments
Popehat unmasked : For a good cause
Doofor 2 days ago Removed
There is no such thing as a moral member of an authoritarian prison state judicial system. When the current regime collapses Ken deserves the same fate as such prominent Nazi jurists as Curt Rothenberger, Franz Schlegelberger, and Josef Altstoetter who were tried in Nuremberg Proceedings on charges of “judicial murder” and other atrocities.
Ken is a heartless creep and profiteer in a profession which destroys families and innocent lives to acquire undeserved wealth and power. If you really want to help, resign immediately from this inhuman system of control euphemistically called the justice system. Start earning an honest living in the free market like any other self-respecting man with a soul and conscience does.
– Am I being unreasonable here. Am I the aggressor. Is Ken White allowed to make his living in peace as a Federal Judicial Prosecutor and also as a blogger.
I suppose I am a traditional anarchist more than anything. I’m valuing freedom at such a high level, that not even earning a living is out of bounds of attack.
Nor is breaching every known social protocol. Especially including biting the hands that feed me, as it were.
I am mostly okay with the cognitive dissonance, if there is any. But perhaps others are not. Most importantly, those who facilitate my platform to pontificate yet not remunerate. At some point, am I just another leftist reason.com liberty hipster commenter incoherently lashing out at the ancien regime and everyone and everybody, but not really offering any articulate course of action of my own.
In Soviet Russia people film themselves being cops and enforcing traffic laws, maybe they fear losing their standing, as one of the greatest tyrannical states of all time to a bunch of fat grotesquely miscegenated Amerislobs.
Stop a Douchebag” Episode 17 – Sticker For the Lady
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHJxIwvFIGY
Guy saying he was not resisting tasered by cop at loud music party
A man staying at College Towers was tasered by Kent City Police officer Lt. Paul Canfield, because he exhibited physical resistance.
The Prole had a different story.
“There was no physical resistance or any type of resistance,” he said. “I have witnesses that I was not resisting arrest. ”
Christopher Roff of Oberlin was at the party that night.
He recorded a video of the incident on his cell phone that shows McFarland crouching in a corner as he is tasered.
“Daran started asking why they were there, but the cop didn’t respond.
He just pulled out his Taser and shot Daran with it,” he said.
“Everyone’s going to believe a uniformed officer over you unless you have hardcore footage to prove otherwise.”
The events leading up to the incident were not recorded.
The police approached the party of 10 to 15 people by knocking on two separate doors leading to the same apartment.
“I guess we had the music up too loud and when music is loud, voices are even louder,” said Jackie Tirbaso, McFarland’s girlfriend.
“When we heard knocking, we told everyone to turn the music off and chill out,” Tirbaso said.
Tirbaso, a sophomore fashion merchandising student, said she opened her door a few minutes later to address the officers, but Lt. Paul Canfield grabbed her arm and tried to pull her out of the apartment.
“The cop pushed the door open, knocked her down and he got on top of her and was trying to arrest her,” Roff said.
Officer Sarah Berkey entered the apartment through a different door and arrested Tirbaso while Canfield tasered her boyfriend.
McFarland is charged with unlawful noise, resisting arrest and obstructing official business.
He is scheduled for pre-trial hearing in Kent Municipal Court and is charged with unlawful noise and resisting arrest.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=821_1252009431
“the student’s head was ‘slammed into the hard pavement with excessive force.’”
They should have found some soft pavement and used the appropriate amount of force.
Pheroes