Jupiter says,”Fuck the Police”

At the DNC, a CODEPINK protester was attacked by a police officer.

Watching the video, I became extremely agitated and angry. I called on my husband to give his opinion on the matter. We seem an unlikely couple on lots of levels,especially one – during the Gulf War (Senior), he was a soldier and I was protesting. One valuable aspect of the dynamics between us is that we offer each other opposing perspective on issues and bring each other to the middle to see both sides of a situation more objectively. It’s a good thing because really, opinions based on nothing more than emotionally impulse and knee-jerk reactions are not always well-formed and lack rationale. Sometimes we use each other’s voices to come to a more balanced view of something and other times – well, we just have to agree to disagree. The point is, we respect each other’s opinion, even if we eventually discard it and embrace our own initial reaction.

When it comes to protest with police interaction that turns ugly,sometimes we do not see eye to eye. In this case,I see nothing but pure and outright police brutality and a man misusing his power against a woman.Others may just brush it off,placing blame on the outspoken activist and pass it off as “The policeman was just doing his job.”. I know by now that my husband may see things differently than me (as do others) and he’ll point out,”See,there…the protester did such and such….he is trained to react that way.”blah blah blah.

As it happens, he is an ex-military police officer, with experience in riot control, so he does actually know a thing or two about the subject.Me? I’m just a CODE Pink Protester who has never experienced anything even close to the magnitude of the Denver events.

His official opinion after watching the video is that there is a police officer in Denver who deserves to be reprimanded and punished for misconduct.The protester was not behaving agressively toward the police officer. In fact, she had her back turned to him. When doing crowd control, police officers are trained to conduct themselves in a professional manner and avoid using language that is confrontational or offensive. They are supposed to remain united and not act singly against any one member of the crowd. Psychologically, a breakdown in organization and procedural methods demonstrate that an officer has lost control of himself and the situation. And obviously, there was no cause for the excessive force demonstrated. Clearly, this police officer did not follow proper protocol.

A statement made by Codepink said the officer has since been pulled from the protest lines and can no longer interact with demonstrators. My husband’s response was ,”That’s it ? Someone should make sure that guy’s wife or girlfriend sees that videotape so she can know how he treats women who ‘get out of line’ “