Minnesota U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s guest for the State of the Union address was removed from the chamber during President Trump’s speech and later arrested.
“My guest, Aliya Rahman, stood up silently in the gallery during the president’s speech for a short period of time, part of which other guests were also standing. For that, she was forcibly removed, despite warning officers about her injured shoulders and ultimately charged with ‘Unlawful Conduct,’" Omar said in a statement.
Rahman, a Bangladeshi American, was dragged out of her vehicle by federal agents in Minneapolis last month on the way to a medical appointment. Rahman testified at a Congressional forum that she was dragged through the street and suffered severe injuries to her shoulders, leaving her unable to lift her arms normally.
Omar claims Rahman was treated aggressively again last night.
“Reports indicate she was aggressively handled until someone intervened to secure medical attention. She was taken to George Washington University Hospital for treatment and later booked at the United States Capitol Police headquarters,” Omar said. "The heavy-handed response to a peaceful guest sends a chilling message about the state of our democracy. I am calling for a full explanation of why this arrest occurred.”
Arrested for “unlawful conduct” sounds like even more bullshit than being arrested for “resisting arrest.”
Yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s no law on the books that states “it is illegal to commit unlawful conduct.” It’s just a bullshit charge cause there were no real laws that she broke for them to charge her with.
If it’s anything like my state’s Disorderly Conduct law, it’s a wide-reaching law with a lot of room for abuse.
For Disorderly Conduct, all a cop in my state needs is one (1) non-law enforcement person to say they were offended by your conduct, and it’s off to jail for you.
Yup, all it takes is one nimby curmudgeon to provide a statement saying your behavior was disruptive of public order or something and they can book you on whatever bullshit they want. Basically makes it illegal to be nonconformist or even just generally unliked.
Human rights are kinda meaningless when they’re so easy to circumvent.
And if there’s anything we know about nimby curmudgeons, it’s that they’re on the rise and rewarded for their behavior, generally. Just look at the lady who retired off of calling a toddler the n-slur for social media.
The 2/2 (I think?) arrests I’ve made for Disorderly Conduct, both times reminded me of how bizarre it is that the statute is so incredibly powerful and nobody seems to notice or care.
Wait, are you a cop? Or are you saying you’ve been arrested twice for disorderly conduct? Because being arrested is completely different from making arrests.
Used to be, yeah. Got fired about 6 years ago now.
Probably for saying something like “Hey wait a minute, what are we even arresting this person for? They didn’t break any laws.”
Actually no, both were very much “This person definitely needs to be removed from the public before someone gets hurt” and (virtually) all we had was that catch-all statute.
TLDR:
Lady kicks open a door to a church with 300+ people and screams “None of you are getting to heaven on my watch!” Panic, chaos, everyone assuming she was a mass shooter and went running for the doors.
Roomate vs. Roommate increasingly tense arguing and 911 calling on each other “fearing for their lives.” This being Florida, both had guns “and weren’t afraid to use them.” The last call was them arguing at each other on their porch and a neighbor called 911 because it seemed like it was getting heated to her.
You can read the post I made about my termination. I’d sticky it on my profile like I did on Reddit, but I don’t think lemmy.world has a “sticky” feature:
https://lemmy.world/post/43267939
She refused to pick up the can.
I used to think the same thing before I became a cop. Reddit was flush with what seemed like justified outrage at the obvious recursive and thus tyrannical nature of arresting someone for resisting arrest.
… then I found out some states call their Obstruction statute “Resisting (Someone Else’s) Arrest.”
Obviously this leads to a lot of confusion, anger, and division. Another fine example of how legislation can drop the ball on doing their jobs and leave law enforcement holding the bag of public ire.
Obstruction isn’t just used when someone is interfering with someone else’s arrest. Ive seen countless bodycam videos where either one of these is used as a catch-all charge for the heinous crime of “contempt of cop” where some jackboot gets a bruised ego and slaps charges on someone to justify an illegal detainment or worse. They know most people don’t have the means to get competent representation in court and will take a plea deal at the overworked public defender’s suggestion which retroactively ‘justifies’ their crime and prevents any sort of blowback later since the victim plead guilty to something.
I mostly agree with you (because most of it is pure fact and not opinion) and it mostly doesn’t refute what I said (because it’s also factual).
They’ll drop the charges. It’s about sending a message.
Message received. Burn it down. There are far too many off us for this racist, homophobic, and most importantly unorganized group of thugs.
When will it be enough?
You are under arrest for crime crime
This was the price for making comedy legal, it made not-crime into crime.