Editorial from the Richmond Times Dispatch:
“Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement,” said the Cato Institute in its 2006 report, Overkill, “along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units … for routine police work.” Virginians have witnessed the phenomenon in action recently in their state capital — particularly last Saturday, when officers of the State Police dressed in combat gear squared off against protesters who were peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights.
A number of those protesters later were arrested for refusing to clear the steps of the Capitol. The protesters had a permit to protest at the Bell Tower, but not the Capitol steps. Although the courts have upheld restrictions on the time, place and manner of public demonstrations, those restrictions ought to be as lax as possible. Giving demonstrators broad latitude is more in keeping with the First Amendment than rigid enforcement of arbitrary constraints.
That said, the protesters’ refusal to obey a lawful order was unwise. They already had made their point, and did not advance their arguments by provoking a confrontation that distracts from their message. The politically motivated debate over the arrests that has followed — complete with utterly ridiculous comparisons to the era of segregation and Massive Resistance — has now overshadowed the issue to which the protesters were trying to bring attention.
Still, the broader issue is worth drawing out. Saturday’s display of force is far from unique in the commonwealth. Homeland Security grants lavished on local police departments in the wake of 9/11 have only encouraged the tendency to blur the distinction between civilian and military operations. A number of Virginia localities now have armored assault vehicles such as the Lenco Bearcat — an 8-ton, quarter-million-dollar behemoth with half-inch steel plating. Among those localities is Warren County, a bucolic community of 40,000 people with an average of one homicide every three years — not exactly Hell’s Kitchen.
But the grants only accelerated an existing — and troubling — trend that started many years ago. Law enforcement exists to protect the rights of the citizens; maintaining order is a means to that end, not the end in itself. Police officers decked out like combat patrols in Fallujah send a far different, far more threatening message: that they have come not to protect and to serve, but to command and to conquer. Saturday’s events in the capital of Virginia stain a state with a reputation as the cradle of democracy.
The responsibility for this action falls untimately on Governor McDonnell. Additionally, Virginians all over the blogosphere are comparing dogs and riot gear to ‘Massive Resistance.’ That really isn’t what Massive Resistance was. Check it out, if for nothing else, the sake of Virginia history.
Did the State overdo the riot gear and police state mentality? Did the State over-react? Was it necessary to call out officers in riot gear? Do peaceful groups have the right to sit on the steps of their own State Capitol if they aren’t hurting or blocking anyone?
That the RTD dug so deep to quote CATO makes me smile. It amuses me that such a progressive paper ONLY agrees with CATO when it drives home their point that they want the 1A protected for something they agree with (a woman’s protest). But silent they are on what the Richmond City Council has done to the Richmond TEA party.
Virginia is now a police state, patrolled by jack-booted thugs al decked out in black masks and armed to the teeth. Virginia was once the cradle of liberty. Washington, Jefferson, Henry and Lee would be ashamed at what Virginia state government has become.
@marin,
Now I am smiling. The Richmond Times Dispatch has always been a time honored traditional newspaper and a favorite of the old guard. I think if you checked out their history you would find that they were not exactly what we would call progressive.
What did they do to the Richmond Tea Party? What did the Council do to the Tea Party?
The Richmond Times Dispatch is not a “progressive” paper — they were a bastion of massive resistance and continue to be one of the more conservative papers in the nation.