{"id":5961,"date":"2009-07-28T23:48:48","date_gmt":"2009-07-29T07:48:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=5961"},"modified":"2009-08-02T08:30:25","modified_gmt":"2009-08-02T16:30:25","slug":"doing-55-in-a-54","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/28\/doing-55-in-a-54\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing 55 in a 54"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kelley Vlahos has a great piece<\/a> today on the Henry Gates affair and the larger problems of which it’s a symptom. One such problem is the ever increasing number of pretexts on which the authorities can interrogate, search, assault, and arrest citizens. The authority figure, equipped with endless excuses to initiate an interaction with the citizen, from an expired tag to a false burglar alarm to an alleged whiff of what might be a controlled substance, uses his or her superior knowledge of legal arcana to find some way to put the citizen behind bars.\u00c2\u00a0 For instance, what struck me when reading the policeman’s account<\/a> of the Gates incident was a small detail: the repeated use of the term “tumultuous.” It appears three times in the brief report in descriptions of Gates’ behavior. Why was the cop fixated on this SAT word?<\/p>\n

Turns out, it appears in the Massachusetts statute<\/a> defining disorderly conduct. The cop goaded the agitated Gates into stepping outside of his house (he made sure to give a reason for this in the report \u00e2\u20ac\u201c poor acoustics in Gates’ kitchen!) to create the grounds for an arrest.\u00c2\u00a0 The cop already knew the specific \u00e2\u20ac\u201c though vague and debatable \u00e2\u20ac\u201c adjective he should use in his report to make the charge sound incontestable to the lawnorder crowd<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The proliferation of new laws in the wake of 9\/11, all full of vague and debatable terms, has given the authorities infinite points of entry into all of our lives. They truly can arrest first and read the statutes later; you’re sure to have done something wrong. Even if they eventually drop the charges or fail to convict you, don’t count on getting any compensation for your anxiety, lost time, injuries, or legal fees.<\/p>\n

An analogous situation prevails in international affairs, where the global police churn out endless legal pretexts for subjecting whole countries to full body-cavity searches<\/a>, house arrest<\/a>, assault<\/a>, and capital punishment<\/a>, and we’re watching it play out yet again in the case of Iran. But that’s a post for another day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kelley Vlahos has a great piece today on the Henry Gates affair and the larger problems of which it’s a symptom. One such problem is the ever increasing number of pretexts on which the authorities can interrogate, search, assault, and arrest citizens. The authority figure, equipped with endless excuses to initiate an interaction with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,6,57,95,17,32,20,69,51],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bogus-terrorism-cases","category-civil-liberties","category-drug-war","category-intervention","category-iran","category-iraq","category-libertarianism","category-sanctions","category-wmd"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5973,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5961\/revisions\/5973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5961"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}