Another bad road we’re going down – the old False Accusation to Justify Authoritarian Moves ploy.
After New York City comptroller Brad Lander this week became the latest prominent Democrat to be arrested while monitoring and protesting US immigration authorities, the Trump administration trotted out a familiar refrain to justify his detention.
The mayoral candidate had “assaulted” law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asserted, warning “if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences”.
The accusation, which DHS has also recently leveled against a member of Congress and a high-profile union leader, have sparked consternation, particularly as videos of the incidents did not show the officials attacking officers and instead captured officers’ aggressive behavior and manhandling of the officials.
It’s what they do, because of course it is. Just make shit up to justify the arrests, the beatings, the totalitarian rule.
In several cases, DHS’s public accusations of assault were not followed by criminal charges. Civil rights advocates and scholars on policing say the government’s assault claims against well-known members of the opposing party, and the repetition of those accusations, nonetheless are troubling indicators of rising authoritarianism.
Well of course they are! It’s what authoritarians do.
Lander was arrested by federal agents inside an immigration court building on Tuesday, as he asked officers whether they had a judicial warrant to detain an immigrant he was accompanying. He was released after four hours, and so far, no charges have been filed against him.
Video of the encounter shows plainclothes officers, some in masks, pinning Lander to a wall, handcuffing him and escorting him away. Lander had held on to the arm of the immigrant who was being targeted.
Still, DHS assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement to the press and on social media soon after the incident that it was Lander who had assaulted officers.
Despite the existence of video that shows him not assaulting officers. It’s one of those rare occasions when one can demonstrate a negative: “Look, here’s the footage, of Lander not assaulting officers.”
In a statement to the Guardian on Thursday, McLaughlin said Democratic politicians were “contributing to the surge in assaults of our Ice officers through their repeated vilification and demonization of Ice”, adding: “This violence against ICE must end.”
Ah that’s the ploy is it? Pretending dissent is violence? If that’s how that works then Trump is a mass murderer. Trump dissents from every norm we have.
Lauren Regan, an Oregon-based civil rights lawyer who has represented activists facing prosecution, said she saw arresting elected officials as part of an “authoritarian playbook” designed to make people widely afraid that they, too, could be targeted, regardless of their backgrounds.
“You keep it chaotic and random so no one thinks they’re safe,” said Regan. “When elected officials with privilege, power, education and training get thrown to the ground and cuffed or jailed, then what is going to happen to us? Everyone is at risk.”
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Indeed, since the recent protests against immigration raids began in LA, hundreds of demonstrators in southern California have been arrested by local police. Federal prosecutors have formally charged a handful of them assaulting officers – though soon after moved to dismiss two of the first cases they filed.
In an incident of two protesters arrested at a 7 June demonstration, a video of the chaotic scuffle showed one of the protesters being shoved by an agent just before the arrests, and officers taking both protesters to the ground. US prosecutors charged both men with assaulting officers, but filed a motion to dismiss the charges a week later after one of them told the Guardian he had not attacked the agents, and was himself severely injured in the confrontation.
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Mike German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit, said that the government’s repeated misinformation about violence against officers risks backfiring: “Officers do at times get assaulted, but if agencies continue to make patently false claims and suggest that any physical contact is an assault, you’re going to undermine legitimate cases.”
He said he was also concerned about the impacts of officers using heavy force in arrests that don’t require it: “Three or four agents tackling a US senator clearly isn’t necessary. That kind of force compels resistance. It’s hard to let yourself be violently attacked without your natural reaction of trying to defend yourself, and then if officers say that’s assault, that undermines public trust.”
I think they want to undermine public trust. They want to amp up the us v them atmosphere as much as they can. It’s one of the steps.