Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
What would you do?
So, your 12 year old daughter is in your yard. Three men suddenly pop out of a van on the street nearby, come onto your property, grab your daughter (and hit her when she resists their abduction), and attempt to make off with her as she cries "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." What would be your natural reaction?
Yeah, though I don't have kids, that would be my reaction too. People would get hurt.
So, here's what happened:
It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.
As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."
Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.
As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galveston police officers who had been called to the area regarding three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black drug dealer.
OK, so that's according to a lawsuit. As Radley Balko says:
So you’d think that after the police figured out they had the wrong house, they’d apologize, and possibly even compensate the girl and her family. According to the lawsuit, you’d be wrong:
After the incident, Dymond was hospitalized and suffered black eyes as well as throat and ear drum injuries.
Three weeks later, according to the lawsuit, police went to Dymond’s school, where she was an honor student, and arrested her for assaulting a public servant. Griffin says the allegations stem from when Dymond fought back against the three men who were trying to take her from her home. The case went to trial, but the judge declared it a mistrial on the first day, says Griffin. The new trial is set for February.
I have a call into the Galveston district attorney and with Dymond Milburn’s lawyer. We’re going on a press account of one side of a lawsuit, here. So it’s possible—and I would hope—that there are some important details missing.
Otherwise, a police mistake leads to an innocent 12-year-old getting violently snatched up and roughed up by a group of plainclothes cops jumping out of a van . . . and they charge her for resisting?
Amazing.
Let's see what more may be dug up as this gets some press. But right now, I can honestly say that had this happened to a family member of mine, in my presence, there would have been gunfire in the first few moments. Probably would have wound up with serious injury, including my own.
Then again, maybe it wouldn't have happened with me at all. Because I'm white, you know.
Jim Downey
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What I Would Do
I'd write a strongly worded letter to the U.N. asking for them to write a strongly worded letter to the kidnappers. Or if I really felt bold I'd ask the U.N. for a peace keeping force to guard my home.
Damn, you guys have some l33t shooter skillz!
I mean really, you'd shoot into a group of four scuffling people, one of whom was your own daughter? It's not like she had an apple on her head you could aim at.
It's not magic.
A good friend of mine in college didn't drive. Didn't have a license.
At first, I just figured he had some variety of physical limitation which prevented him from being able to do so. No, turned out that wasn't the case. And he didn't live in an urban center where he was able to live his life without a car, and hadn't gotten around to getting a license. Rather, he just couldn't face the "responsibility if something went wrong", as he finally admitted to me. Instead, he pushed that responsibility off onto friends and family members, forcing them to schlepp him around.
Finally, all of his friends got sick of it, and told him to grow up.
A gun is not magic. It will not save your life by magic, nor will it stop some threat by magic. It is just a tool. One which hurls a small chunk of lead at high velocity along a predictable path. You can learn to use it well, and under a variety of conditions, but it is still just a tool.
Yeah, Johnny, there are circumstances where a gun would not be useful in the very basic scenario described. And there are others I can imagine where it could be used without the need to fire a shot. I can't say that I would use a gun perfectly under all the possible permutations. Just as I cannot say that I always use my car perfectly when driving in heavy traffic under less than ideal weather conditions. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't want the option, nor that employing that particular tool in a less-than-ideal fashion couldn't still be beneficial. The decision to intervene to save a loved one from kidnapping and violence is the critical choice, not the specifics of what tool is used or how exactly. And part of the responsibility that goes with that decision to intervene is to do so only if you think you can do something to make the situation better, and accept that your actions may actually make things worse.
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Ah, America!
So you'd've been in the shit far worse than this. No guns used, no serious injury occurred...
So if your daughter was being kidnapped.......
......what would you do, Yorickoid? Because note that nowhere in the reports does it say that the plainclothes officers identified themselves as policemen.
Your daughter is outside, in your yard, around dusk, and three guys jump out of a van, tell her she's a prostitute, and try to drag her into the van. She tries to run away, they try to pull her into the van, she fights back, you try to fight them off - and exactly when do these guys tell you that they are police officers?
According to the complaint that the family filed, it was "later". It's not clear when "later" happened, although it was apparently before the officers said they would shoot the family's puppy if the dog - which was defending the family in the only way it knew how - was not restrained. And like many states, in Texas the charge of resisting arrest requires that you know that the person is a peace officer and that you are being placed under arrest - two items that, from the reports I have read, are missing in this case. When the situation started, and I don't see anything from the police denying this, it appears that three guys in a van tried to grab a black girl out of her yard. Period. Were it me and my family, yeah, I'd think it's three scumbags trying to kidnap my daughter.
And if the claim is that since the girl is African-American and wearing "tight shorts" (actually they were athletic shorts, no surprise if it's August in Texas), these guys presume she is a hooker and they can pick her up no matter where she is, and even if they aren't looking for someone of her description? So now we don't just have the issue of "driving while black," we have the issue of "being in my own front yard while black." Charming.
If three guys come up to your yard and grab your daughter, tell her she's a prostitute, and try to stuff her into a van, what would you do?
And as for "no serious injury," shame on you and Jim. The complaint lists some injuries that, while not requiring extended hospitalization, certainly seem more than minor. Not to mention the nightmares the girl is suffering, and the damage to her reputation for being arrested in school.
What would I do?
The same as pretty much anyone else - I'd think it was a kidnapping too, I'd be angry as hell and rush out to intervene. But I don't have any firearms, so, unlike in Jim's hypothetical, there'd be no gunfire in the first few moments. It probably would go down as it did in that report, I suppose.
I have to agree with Jim
Everyone that I know in my neighborhood has at least a shotgun available. If that would have happened here (not very likely in rural Arizona I suppose), to us, or to one of our neighbors, I can tell you with certainty that someone would have been shot and killed. Because I would not have hesitated to shoot, and once my neighbors heard gunfire, there would be a bunch of people with shotguns, rifles, and handguns piling out of their homes, ready to help.
That's the whole point of having the right to bear arms. So that you have the ability to protect your family and your neighbors from those who would do harm to them.
There has GOT to be more to this story, though. Police authority does not extend to kidnapping 12-year-old children, then trying to prosecute them for fighting back. There's something else to this story. I hope. If not, then those cops, and the corrupt officials who ordered this idiotic stunt, need to be hammered by the justice system and prosecuted.
Follow-up to the "What would you do"?" post.
Just a note - Radley Balko has posted up a follow-up. Doesn't say much else, but the matter is starting to get the attention of some actual media. As Balko says:
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
It's what really pisses me off.
I think this is what really pisses me off. There have just been so many instances of police para-military abuse of our civil rights that it is relatively easy to believe that these cops actually did what was reported.
As I have said before, the trade-off for handing police the authority to use deadly force and to deprive people of their freedom means that they *must* be held to account for when they abuse that power. They are our servants, not our superiors. But all too often thanks to the misguided "War on Drugs" and the new "War on Terror" police are allowed greater latitude without increased accountability. And that is very dangerous, both in terms of specific cases like this and in the general health of our republic.
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
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Removed by Author
You're right.
Yorikoid, you're quite right - I would have expected to be shot or killed in response. I'm no Rambo, and have no illusions about being immune to return fire from people who carry guns for a living.
But that would not have stopped me. The alternative would have been to stand by and watch a loved one abducted by three men not in uniform, who did not properly identify themselves or conduct themselves in a manner I could reasonably expect armed officers of the law to. That I have the right to do so as an American is one of the only counters to this kind of absurd behaviour we currently have.
I don't fear death. I want to avoid it for as long as I can, but I don't fear it. I've had guns shoved in my face before, by both criminals and agents of the state. I've been shot at. My father was killed while on the job as a cop. I'm not just living some kind of survivalist fantasy here - I know and understand the cost of violence, and I have sought to avoid violence through my adult life. But there are worse things than death, and seeing a loved one dragged off by thugs when I could do something to stop it would be one such.
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.