Everyday Erinyes

I have a few news items today which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."

I doubt if anyone can have forgotten quite so quickly, but Alton Sterling was killed by police officers in Baton Rouge, LA, on July 6, 2016.  On July 8, roughly 500 people came to downtown Baton Rouge to peacefully protest this killing.  They met at a Methodist church near the corner of France and East, where they were met by about 100 officers dressed in riot gear.  (Parenthetically, there is a meme going around to the effect that if you want to know who is rioting, maybe you should look at the ones who came dressed for it.) 

In order to protect the protesters from being arrested just for being in the street, a homeowner invited them to come into her yard to continue the protest, which seems to have consisted primarily of chants of "No justice, no peace!"   After 90 minutes, the officers charged the crowd.  This caused protestors to scatter.  Many ran down a side street.  Of those who did, perhaps 100 were arrested for "obstruction of a highway."  (In other words, for "just being in the street.")

The homeowner told CBS News she was “stunned” by police behavior.

“I kept telling them: ‘This is my property, please do not do that, I live here,’” she said.  “They just looked at me and ignored the things I was saying.”

“I’m very upset,” she told CBS News. “I’m stunned at the behavior of police officers that utilized, from what I understand, the ability to take someone that I guess they targeted that was actually on the street, to bombard my yard and bombard my house.”

Throughout the confrontation, police threatened to arrest all journalists without credentials.  The Daily Beast and other media were forced into a 10-foot wide zone.  They threatened to arrest any who put a foot into the street.  The following day, at least three journalists were arrested, including a credentialed news director with WAFB.

I think the Daily Beast headline summarizes it pretty well:  "Baton Rouge Cops Throw Protestors Into Street, Arrest Them for Being There."  That's a good catch, that Catch-22.  I think this qualifies for your interest, Tisiphone.

Meanwhile – well, no not actually meanwhile; this happened last month, in Canada, at an Urban Planet store, where a young woman – aged 18 – was working.  For some reason, she ate some seasoned nuts, which turned out to include capsicum (pepper) in the seasoning mix.  She almost immediately went into anaphylactic shock.  Her supervisor refused to assist her, but a co-worket got her assistance.  She nearly died – anaphylactic shock does that to a person.

Now, if I were a retail store owner, or manager, an incident like this would lead me to read up on anaphylactic shock, in which case I would learn that an Epi-pen is the emergency treatment of choice, and that it's not ALL that difficult to keep one on the premises and train staff how to use it.  If I were foolish enough to consider my employees expendable, it would still occur to me that a customer might one day have this happen, and that it could lead to a huge lawsuit which could financially cripple me.  So I would take steps to acquire an Epi-pen.

That was not the reaction Danielle encountered.  Instead, she was fired.  BY TEXT MESSAGE.  The message read, "Hi it's (name withheld) I gave your shifts away this week and unfortunately I won't be scheduling you any longer.  We will mail your last paystub to you.  Take care, wish you all the best."  The co-worker who drove her to the clinic was also fired by – text message.

Now, we could talk all day and all night how Danielle should have read the ingredients (assuming she even saw the package), but the fact is, allergic people considerably more mature than she and who have had allergies longer than she's been alive have had similar things happen.  It's an easy mistake to make.  And besides, a person with allergies can go into anaphylactic shock at any time, including upon contact with a known allergen which has never before caused a severe reaction at all.  But let's say it's all her fault.  Still, NOBODY deserves to be fired by text message.  Am I out of line to call ths story a Grudge Report?  Megaera, Urban planet is a chain.  I think maybe the top management needs to be educated on this.

Moving right along, over to Georgia, where Jen Hayden asks the question, "How quickly can police ruin an innocent man's life?" and proceeds to show a video which goes from, "What's your name, man?" to "All right, tase him" in 38 SECONDS.

Summary of the video:

24-year-old Patrick Mumford was sitting in his own car in February, 2016 when he was confronted by three Savannah-Chatham Metro Police Officers, who were serving a warrant for another man, Michael Clay.

The lead officer confronts Patrick but does not believe Patrick when he truthfully identifies himself to the officer, twice. Patrick rightfully asks the officers what is the matter and to see the arrest warrant they say they are serving.

Fearful and confused, Patrick retreats into the passenger seat of his car. Within 38 seconds of his initial introduction to the officers, the lead officer is ordering Patrick to be tased for non-compliance.

It takes a violent use of force for officers to realize what we already know: they have the wrong guy.

Rather than apologize, the officers rationalize and justify their actions to horrified neighbors and even Patrick's parents. These rationalizations include the repeated false statement that the officers asked Patrick for his ID.

Patrick is arrested for obstruction. As a non-violent drug offender serving in a first-offender probation program, a pending probation violation could cost him his job, his college education, and seven years in prison: all for sitting in his own car, minding his own business, and telling the truth.

Now you may be wanting to point out that Mr. Mumford is already on probation, so he is not perhaps technically innocent.  However, if you do, I will respond by reminding you that what he is on probation for is a non-violent drug offense, which is exactly the type of offense for which the "War on Drugs" was designed to get black people off the streets by locking them up.  You have just had the word "offense" drummed into your head for so long you have completely forgotten it was a "crime" made up out of whole cloth.  I hope his probation officer will support him.  Truthfully, some will and some won't.

In any case I hope we can agree he doesn't look any more like Michael Clay than Leonardo diCaprio looks like Johnny Depp.  And, Alecto. this has just been going on too long, foever and ever, world without end.  And it needs to stop.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 at http://www.care2.com/news/member/101612212/3999054