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.”
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
I see. My initial reaction was “aren’t there psych holds for situations where people are unstable/ a danger to themself or others, but haven’t committed any crimes yet?”
But the first example sounds like some sort of incitement to panic, which some states have laws about (like shouting “fire!” in a movie theater). So I’m surprised it was just a disorderly conduct.
The second example depends a lot on context which I obviously don’t have so I can’t really make a judgement, but depending on how far things escalated and what sort of history they had, it sounds like it could be either a case for a psychiatric hold, a protective order, or some type of domestic violence or credible threat charge. But depending on the degree of escalation I could see “disorderly conduct” over psychiatric hold. I’m not the judge though and I don’t know the details of the case, nor am I a lawyer, so take it with a grain of salt