Arrest Them All!

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Here’s a video taken of a mass arrest in Leon Valley, Texas. The people – among them credentialed reporters, according to news accounts – had gathered at the request of the chief of police, Joe Salvaggio, to discuss previous video-recording of armed government workers (aka law enforcement) and police abuse/brutality.

Salvaggio and several additional armed government workers appear and announce that everyone present is under arrest. This is an interesting concept given there’s no possible way he could know all the people present much less whether any of them had committed an actionable offense.

Salvaggio asserts that some of the videos taken previously and posted on YouTube (by which people apparently doesn’t matter; “god will know his own,” etc.) had elicited “death threats” and other such – and claims that the posters of the videos are criminally responsible for the comments made by other people unknown to them in a  public forum, where anyone can post.

Plus their friends and relatives and pretty much anyone else in the vicinity.

He also orders the arrest of the others as “witnesses to the crime” – just for being present at the event and for taking video of this incident.

“If you refuse to give up your devices (i.e., your phones/cameras) “you will be charged with interference with the duties of a police officer.”

Which apparently do not include respecting the law. Much less common decency.

This Salvaggio guy – who comically (except it’s not funny) wears the bars of an Army captain, something he’s not – apparently has decided that in his town, the First Amendment does not apply. That people are not free to record the doings of “public servants” out in public … notwithstanding the law is very clear that, indeed, people do have that right.

Even if there is some local ordinance it doesn’t obviate federal law – which includes the Bill of Rights; much to the dismay, no doubt of Salvaggio. The Supreme Court has upheld the right of people to film anything in public which can be see from a public-access area. This includes armed government workers performing their “duty.”

There is no expectation of privacy in public – as much for them as for us.

And this idea that a person who lawfully records (in public) and posts a video is somehow criminally culpable for comments made by people unknown to them and over whom they have no control – if it is not stomped, hard and fast – will be used to intimidate anyone who publishes anything that might generate anger toward the government and armed government workers.

Even when that anger is justified. Especially when it is justified.

That is the whole point of publishing such videos – as well as writing newspaper article and columns such as the one you are reading right now. To call attention to outrageous conduct by the one gang we’re not permitted to defend ourselves against, except in this manner.

If the standard is to be that the only coverage of armed government workers is coverage which  generates no controversy – and if all it takes to criminalize such coverage is the reaction of a viewer or reader – then we might as well out the First Amendment in the same dustbin of history the Fourth and Fifth and other amendments long ago got tossed into.

“No more discussion,” barks Salvaggio – who also deploys the now-common tactic used to degrade people by ordering them to sit as they await the cuffs. This is done to establish dominance and to demoralize the victim. The sort of thing that guys like Salvaggio love to do.

Why aren’t the state police – or better yet – federal goons – coming to the aid of these people? After all, Salvaggio is clearly guilty of false arrest and imprisonment as well as general thuggery.

He is the Bull Conner of our time – one of many. But it’s not white vs. black anymore.

It’s black vs. all of us.

. . .

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31 COMMENTS

  1. An increasing problem with arrests, including false arrests or arrests where the charges are dismissed, is that the arrest itself follows you around forever in a law enforcement background check or employer background check. Most employers can and will fire you on the spot for an arrest even if the cops were completely in the wrong.

    In gun-control states, arrests are increasingly used to deny people gun permits and to confiscate guns. In my state, if you have a gun permit and you are arrested for ANYTHING, no matter how minor the infraction or how bogus the charge, the cops will CONFISCATE ALL of your guns and then you need to fight in court to get them back even if the charges are dropped.

    Any other licensing — such as the ability to handle explosives, drugs, chemicals, etc. — or security clearance will be immediately affected also.

    I think that the criminal “justice” system is increasingly using arrests as a form of extrajudicial punishment… even if you beat the rap, you have an arrest record and you have to spend your own money out of pocket for legal defense, while the cops laugh all the way to the donut shop and dream about how they’re going to spend their big, fat pension when they retire at age 49.

  2. They think they’re the boss of everyone now. This is what happens when there’s no checks & balances – absolute power attracts the worst criminal element of society like a magnet and then those criminals power grab at every opportunity they get … and here we are … totally corrupt swampville.

    What have the public servants got to hide? The only reason they confiscate phones/etc is because they want to destroy the evidence of their own crimes/wrongdoings. They may want to COPY the videos so they can GATHER evidence, but there’s no reason to confiscate/destroy videos.

    • Exactly, Anonymous!

      The very idea of a “public servant” is risible. A servant is one over whom you have control. He is your inferior. Subject to your will. Do you feel like the master – or the servant – when dealing with an armed government worker?

  3. This is a suburb of San Antonio. I’d say the majority of people in that town would bend over and lick that cops bridge they are so pro-military there.

    • Hi Brazos,

      I suspect you’re right about that. It’s disgusting. Worship of one’s oppressors is the lowest form of human degradation I can conceive of. Stalin’s chicken comes to mind…

  4. Man. Listen to how retarded these pigs are. Just making shit up as they go along just like they do all over the country. This bogus YouTube damage control stuff is their ThinBlueMeToo movement man. Listen to his voice shake, he knows he’s wrong and he’s afraid, he seriously believes his life and his goons lives are worth more than all these little guys who are just looking for transparency.

    • Listening again, it’s either fear or exasperation because he’s so fucking fat. It’s ridiculous that he’d be so concerned with death threats when he’s a picture of heart disease and a bacon beacon to his easily influenced subordinates.

      I’m also loving the simplicity of the one dude’s “just say no to the thin blue line” sign, need to get me one of those symbols on a bumper sticker, some bucking is overdue.

    • Hi Moose,

      I was once inclined to generally support what cops did – which was once at least roughly in line with keeping the peace. But they have become law enforcers. That is a brutal, tyrannical concept. But the imbecile masses don’t think. Well, they ought to. Law enforcement? Ok. Well, didn’t the goons in East Germany – in Nazi Germany – also enforce the law? Did that fact excuse the murder they committed? The Nuremburg Court thought not.

      And while we’re not yet at the point of mass round-ups and executions, certainly the principle has been established. If it becomes the law to do so, won’t the law enforcers “do their duty” and enforce those laws, too?

      In my opinion, any man who voluntarily signs up to enforce seat belt laws and laws which arbitrarily criminalize the “possession” (and use and so on) of various arbitrarily illegal drugs or laws which forbid forbid the possession of guns by ordinary people has no respect at all for the rights of other human beings and would not have any qualms about abusing people in far worse ways. The Law is the Law.

      This is why I take the position that there is no such thing as a “good cop.” Because there are no more cops. Just law enforcers.

      • You’re right on dude, the precedent is set and people are too chickenshit to stand up and do what’s right in this climate. I was taught to call bullshit on authority from an early age. The other kids’ parents in my generation were more concerned about herding sheep than they were about looking out for the natural rights of their respective humans.

        • Thanks, Moose!

          There was some sort of confluence of trends that occurred in the late ’80s or so. Like several rivers coming together to form a torrent. There was “law and order” Reaganism and his dry-humping of anything with a badge and a uniform. There was the rise of the Safety Cult and “concerned” moms. And a general spreading of idiocy. Not differences of opinion. I mean literal idiocy; an incapacity to think critically. To emote, to feeeeeeeeeel.

          I put my stethoscope to the chest of the patient and shake my head; it is terminal.

  5. Americans said that alcohol was dangerous so it must be outlawed.

    Americans later found out that alcohol wasn’t so bad and should be legal.

    Americans then said that marijuana was dangerous so it must be banned.

    Americans later found out that pot wasn’t so bad and should be legal.

    Now Americans scream guns are dangerous so they must be illegal.

    If people were wrong before, how can they can be so sure that they are right now?

    http://www.badharvest.net/forum/viewforum.php?id=2

    • Hi Graves,

      I read up about him, too. Typical government hog-trougher (literally as well as figuratively). And I love the military rank insignia – especially the five star “generals” (usually of some small town).

      I know enough German to speak to address them appropriately and will do so in the future.

      Was willst du, Herr Haupsturmfuhrer?

      • My favorite is when they dress up like some G-Damned US Navy Fleet Admiral looking like Cap’n Krunch! (who, by the way, is also wears epaulets and Admiral’s stripes on his cuffs). This infantile preoccupation with wearing military officer’s costumes is psychotic!

  6. Crime: “Talking” Crime: “Video Recording in Public” Crime: “Not identifying yourself” This entire Police Department needs to fired and arrested for false arrest, but no one will do it. Think we’re not living in a Police State now? To top it all off everyone there came at Captain “Blye” Salvaggio’s invitation to a “public press conference”. If this were even a “crime”, inviting the public to join him in the commission of a crime is entrapment, at the very least, and racketeering at the very outside worst. The crimes being comitted here by this thug “captain” and his “lackeys” are numerous, and violate federal statutes. This man and his “boys” should all be in prison getting “serviced” by “boyfriends” of their own right now. This mafioso crap makes me sick!

    • Hi Graves,

      Another saying in German: Der tag kommt.

      I loathe violence, which is exactly why I loathe armed government workers. These cretins are increasingly loathed by more and more people, as people become aware that, somehow, police work (once at least plausibly related to peace keeping) has become law enforcement – that is to say, no different than what the NKVD and Gestapo were up to. Enforcing laws. The justice of those laws being defined as a function of their being the law.

      I will not feel a twinge of pity when these “heroes” reap the whirlwind they’ve sowed.

      • There is also a Leon Valley website, and the first thing you see down the middle of the page is all the public hate-email comment they are getting right now over this shithead.
        The Governor should revoke their City Charter; this crap continues only because the city officials allow it.

        • gtc,”… this crap continues only because the city officials allow it.

          Slightly disagree. The crap continues because the “citizens” of Leon Valley allow it. Why are not the Liberty loving people of Leon Valley not gathered en mass at the exact same spot as those arrested in the video were and each recording the police response to their massive resistance?!

          • Agreed, Skunk!

            Also, my bet is there are lots of people in this town who support “law and order” – i.e., are themselves authoritarian types – and so support the authoritarian enforcers.

            • US amerikans love to claim they live in a free country but they have no idea what Freedom really is. Fools and sheep are not worthy of Liberty.

              • True, Skunk –

                The tragedy, though, is that not all US Amerikans reject (or don’t grok) freedom; witness the people here. They are what Albert J. Nock called “the remnant.” And that was more than 70 years ago. I try to maintain a similarly stoic perspective. We are not unlike the monks who – after the collapse of Rome – kept the books and tried to keep the knowledge of the ancient world from vanishing entirely. I doubt we will live to see a renaissance of liberty; but it will happen, in time. If it happens 1,000 years from now and we in some small, unknowable way, contributed to that I will consider it well worth the effort and for myself, a life well-spent.

                • I too am a believer in fighting the good fight and letting the chips fall where they may.

                  “The remnant” – I like that.

    • Hi Cederq,

      The question at hand is – Why aren’t the entire gang themselves in cuffs, or at least relieved of “duty”? It is astonishing how blithely the public seems to accept law-breaking by law enforcement while at the same time accepting the most abusive treatment at the hands of these enforcers.

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