this happened several months ago less than a block from where I'm sitting. The officer who chokeslams the kid got 15 days unpaid suspension. Meanwhile the trials of 3 of the kids involved just finished up. The cameraman was charged with disorderly conduct for taping this.
__________________
Say what I mean and I don't give a damn
I do believe and I am who I am
-Robert Hunter
We must all be foolish at times, it is one of the conditions of liberty.
-Walt Whitman
That old whisky drinking, bluegrass listening, North Face wearing, all night roaming rambler he'll always be.
chokeslam? lulz. The kid who got some shit for taping is bs, but other than that it coulda been some douche screaming and being a dumb dick prior to the 30 seconds that were recorded
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"The people I got to know—aboriginal people in Malaysia,...they enjoyed life, they lived life. Life did not live them, as happens to us."
-Robert Wolff
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Sep. 10--SALEM -- A Peabody District Court jury yesterday cleared a Swampscott man of disorderly conduct charges stemming from his arrest in downtown Salem last October, after he was taken to the ground by a Salem police officer.
It was just one of a series of setbacks yesterday for prosecutors and the police, who received significant scrutiny after a video of Patrolman Lawrence Puleo taking Travis Markarian to the ground in what he called "a jaw-line takedown" appeared on the Internet.
Puleo was suspended for 15 days over the incident, in which Markarian was charged with disorderly conduct and failing to disperse during a riot.
Before the jury heard the case, Judge Robert Brennan had already decided to clear both Markarian, 21, of Swampscott and a second person, Thomas Matson, 25, who had recorded the arrest on video, of charges of failing to disperse during a riot.
Brennan found that prosecutors could not prove that there had been anything resembling the legal definition of a "riot" in the early morning hours of Oct. 17 as bars were letting out. He issued a directed verdict of "not guilty" before the trial got under way.
And earlier in the day, prosecutors decided to dismiss charges of assault and battery on two police officers filed against Markarian's friend, Michael Wermuth, 21, of Swampscott. Wermuth admitted that prosecutors had sufficient evidence against him on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Those charges were continued without a finding for three months, after which they will also be dismissed.
Much of the morning was taken up with legal wrangling over the issue of whether prosecutor Colleen Cashman could prove the elements of each charge against the men.
When the case finally got underway, Cashman urged the jury to convict Markarian of disorderly conduct, acknowledging that while Puleo was wrong, so was the defendant.
"Two wrongs don't make a right," Cashman told jurors. "It's a simple concept."
She said Puleo gave the group that originally included Markarian, Wermuth and another man, Christopher Burke, ample warning to leave the area.
He and fellow officer Kevin St. Pierre had already arrested Wermuth and Burke when Puleo spotted Markarian back in the area he'd been asked to leave, Cashman said.
Markarian was peppering Sgt. Kate Stephens with questions, Cashman said.
On the Matson video, Markarian is heard asking "What did you arrest them for?" and why his friend had bandages on his face.
"He will tell you he's out of gas, he's frustrated," Cashman acknowledged of Puleo, who told Markarian "Get the (expletive) out of here."
But that, she said, did not justify Markarian's actions, including interrupting Stephens and smirking at the officer instead of obeying him and leaving.
Markarian's lawyer, John Morris, argued to jurors that Markarian was already walking away, obeying the officer's order, and had done nothing to justify being arrested, particularly in such a dramatic way.
He called the case against his client an attempt by police to distract from the officer's own actions, comparing it to a situation in which an architect steers someone away from flaws in a project.
"A picture is worth 1,000 words," Morris told jurors, "but a video tells the story."
He played that YouTube video for the jurors, who would see it a total of three times during the trial.
The jurors, six women and a man, declined comment as they left the courthouse yesterday.
Markarian also declined comment. Morris said his client simply wants to get on with his life.
The fourth suspect, Burke, 21, of Swampscott, has not yet stood trial. He is facing charges of assaulting Puleo, as well. His attorney said Burke is ill and unavailable to stand trial.
__________________
Say what I mean and I don't give a damn
I do believe and I am who I am
-Robert Hunter
We must all be foolish at times, it is one of the conditions of liberty.
-Walt Whitman
That old whisky drinking, bluegrass listening, North Face wearing, all night roaming rambler he'll always be.
ms-nah the cops had responded to a call about a fight outside a bar here. You can clearly see the kid trying to leave after being told to do so and the cop coming up behind him and grabbing him.
__________________
Say what I mean and I don't give a damn
I do believe and I am who I am
-Robert Hunter
We must all be foolish at times, it is one of the conditions of liberty.
-Walt Whitman
That old whisky drinking, bluegrass listening, North Face wearing, all night roaming rambler he'll always be.
__________________
fuck this city, and fuck this filthy air
let's build a-frames in the woods and just live there.
we'll all eat berries and build fires every night
and forget this mistake we call modern life.
Right, instead they were fighting and asking the police a bunch of questions then finally leaving as he marched towards him. Not saying cop was justified in taking him down by the throat, but not only is chokeslam a stretch, so is brutality. Some drunk yelling questions at a cop that just broke up a fight getting taken down is minuscule in comparison to things like the BART shooting in Oakland that happened recently. Not to downplay or excuse what's obviously a misuse of authority by a police officer by any means, but I can't deny that I'd be a little pissy too having someone shout questions at me after I broke up a fight involving his friend.
__________________
fuck this city, and fuck this filthy air
let's build a-frames in the woods and just live there.
we'll all eat berries and build fires every night
and forget this mistake we call modern life.
we need something besides cops to be peace officers. the title of a cop is to much for some people to handle... or go thru an extreme emotional breakdown to see if they are even people with the right head on their shoulders
this seriously makes me cringe at the thought of over powering police. I mean jesus crhist what are we in 1950 gustapo or something... no one should be treated like this and it makes me sick to think these officers are running the streets of our country.
The officer should be relieved of his duties right now, he let his emotions get the better of him and he reacted to those emotions. A police officer needs to be a robot in these situations, the guy could have stood there for an hour and called him baby killer and a good officer would ignore him until there was a threat to public safety.
That said, the rest of the crowd was wrong as well. If you want to know why your friend got arrested, then ask him when you're posting his bail. Its not on anyone to figure out what is going on with who except for the cop.
The only smart one I saw on the tape was the girl telling homeboy to shut the fuck up while dragging him away.
I will say the charges of disorderly on the camera man looks like an admission of guilt on the part of the cop. he should have looked into the camera and told him to make sure his focus was good so the tape will stand up in court for his defense.
And bongo, we don't need anyone other than the police to be a 'peace officer', what we could use is some common sense. If we were to follow it back and see what happened to lead the police to the bar, there would have been a couple of guys refusing to use the sense they were born with. The incident didn't start the second the cops got there.
Thats a problem I have with the media too, lets make sure only the dramatic parts are seen, so what if everything else justifies what they did show. It isn't good TV.
__________________
There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on.
"The people I got to know—aboriginal people in Malaysia,...they enjoyed life, they lived life. Life did not live them, as happens to us."
-Robert Wolff
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