Cosmic Cowbell wrote:marmot wrote:however, i don't feel the wizard had the right ('the freedom of speech' as one spectator yelled it) to get naked in public as he was. i'm a real libertarian in the sense that we should be as free as we should be as long as we don't infringe upon the rights of others. the wizard-clown was infringing.
imho, it was unacceptable behavior!
Agreed (obviously)
I respectfully submit that it's neither necessary nor desirable to reach a uniform agreement on whether or not his behavior was "acceptable." Because as I understand it, the police are charged with enforcing the law, as opposed to, say, the etiquette, the custom, or the conventionally preferred mode of personal conduct. And as I further understand it, the 14th amendment actually has something to say about whether or not the acceptability of someone's behavior is, per se, any of the government's business, and (very reductively stated) that something is: Hell, no, not under our constitution and not at any level, whether federal, state or local.
From the perspective of anything that could be generally construed as an issue affecting the common good, general welfare, or public interest, the first relevant question is therefore whether or not it was reasonable for those cops to regard the naked wizard's behavior as sufficiently in violation of any of the various codes or statutes that they
are charged with upholding and/or enforcing to justify or mandate police intervention of some kind.
And if so, the second relevant question is: Well, okay then. What kind?
And I'd say that the answer to the first question is pretty unambiguously: Yes. It was. Specifically, it was reasonable for them to regard his behavior as a misdemeanor under Sec. 314-318.6 of California state law, as follows:
Every person who willfully and lewdly, either: 1. Exposes his person, or the private parts thereof, in any public place, or in any place where there are present other persons to be offended or annoyed thereby; or, 2. Procures, counsels, or assists any person so to expose himself or take part in any model artist exhibition, or to make any other exhibition of himself to public view, or the view of any number of persons, such as is offensive to decency, or is adapted to excite to or thoughts or acts, is guilty of a misdemeanor.
Which leaves us with only one relevant question wrt which there's a whole lot of room for debate. ("If so, what kind?") -- ie, the question asked and answered here by marmot....
was it all so worthy of a tasering? that's another issue. if you want a clear-cut Yes or No from me - i'd say No.
....except asked with a clear understanding of why both the question and the answer touch on issues of profound public importance to everyone that has absolutely fuck-all to do with such season-to-taste matters as anybody's individual personal preferences or opinions on the subject of public nudity. Which is not to say that any threat to someone's individual right to form, hold and express those opinions isn't also an issue of profound public importance. Because it absolutely is. It just strikes me as a little off-topic to focus on it on a thread that doesn't involve any threat to it.
Indeed, I'd say that given that: (a) the social and/or moral acceptability of public nudity varies significantly both on an individual level and according to the context in which it occurs; (b) the nakedness of the wizard indisputably constitutes legitimate grounds for police intervention of some kind under the law as it presently stands; and the emphasis placed by both the video and the thread title on the use of tasers, there's much to recommend the view that it's the use of tasers rather than the nakedness of the wizard that's the primary if not the only subject the propriety of which is under fucking consideration here.
And quite apart from the question of whether any intervention was necessary and not just legitimate, I really don't see a single fucking thing that justifies it.
Or, for that matter, a single fucking thing that would have prevented three huge, armed and physically imposing cops from picking up one definitively unarmed medium-sized naked man of lesser physical strength than any one of them from just putting him in the standard face-down hold on the ground that they do put him in without using any more force than they need to in order to do that, cuffing him, and carting him off into custody.
Cosmic Cowbell wrote:Again, agreed as to the nudity aspect of the case.
Again, respectfully submitted that the acceptability of the nudity aspect of the case is not, per se, an issue regarding which agreement is necessary, given its unambiguous status as a misdeamenor in the state of California.
Cosmic Cowbell wrote:But it should be clear to all that public nudity is absolutely NOT the reason he got tased. Only after he became violent (resisting arrest) did he get the jolt.
Could you point me to the part of the video at which he became violent? Because I neither see him acting violently nor threatening anyone with violence at any point. In fact, if you pay attention to the sequence of events, I think you'll at least grant the possibility that he resisted arrest because he was getting tased, not the reverse.
As to the implicit preemptive defense raised here:
I'll assume I've taken the politically incorrect position here on this matter. At least as far as the membership here at RI goes.
I would further respectfully submit that any time you hear people invoking the evil specter of political correctness, you try taking a moment to ask yourself whether those invoking it are raising a legitimate objection to something that constitutes such a genuine and severe offense against the common good, general welfare or public interest of some, any, or every part of the community that whatever it is, the 14th amendment either doesn't or shouldn't cover it, or whether they're just grousing because their lives would be much more congenial if everyone was required to exercise one or more of the numerous personal rights and freedoms that aren't specifically protected by the text of the Constitution, but rather by the doctrine of substantive due process under the 14th amendment -- for example, the right to raise your children in accordance with your own beliefs regarding the absolute and unalloyed unacceptability of children being exposed to the sight of a naked man in public -- in the same way that they themselves do.
Oh, come on. Go back and read it again. I asked you to try asking yourself, I didn't fucking dictate the answer. And that was because I am actually already fully and consciously aware that (a) it's none of my fucking business what the answer is; and (b) nothing entitles me to tell other people what questions they should or shouldn't ask themselves. Which is why I only
asked you to
try asking. You're perfectly free to skip the whole exercise if it doesn't interest you. It's not like three large armed men are twisting your arm behind your back, forcing you to the ground and repeatedly using a high-powered stun-gun on you.
Which is how I, for one, would like to see things stay. And also why I'd argue as strongly as I just did against the acceptability of any representative of the government using high-powered stun-guns on anyone for any reason or in any circumstance other than those few in which it's arguably a safer method of immobilizing someone who urgently needs to be stopped before he or she harms self or others than shooting them might be.
Because once you start making exceptions to that, the only relevant question becomes whether taser use will become as widely tolerated a police tactic as non-violent restraint now is in your lifetime or in your children's. And please forgive me for putting it so forcefully. But that's a future I want to avoid passionately enough to take the position that anyone who can't see that is just asleep at the wheel, and it's by far the lesser of two evils to say that flat out than it is to prevaricate out of a misplaced sense of civility.
Not that I don't feel guilty about saying it. Please don't yell at me. I respect and like you. I just think you're making a dangerous mistake.
