Choke Hold
The LMPD is a state sanctioned taxpayer funded 1033 armed enforcement of modern Jim Crow.
IT’S TUESDAY, IT MUST BE TIME TO F*CK WITH PROTESTERS.
Last night, a 1A protest clashed with LMPD selective parking enforcement. (See footage here.) The timing seemed designed for the news cycle.
Was every vehicle parked in a faded yellow line across the city towed, or just the one at the center of a protest whose unheard voices aimed at the LMPD and City Hall? Of course the 1A protesters responded, among them an 18 year old girl. She responded, accordingly and consistent with her age and circumstances, with the relatively benign act of throwing water.
On a hot day.
What this Black teen girl got in response was a choke hold and knee in her back, not by the three female officers nearby, but by an officer weighing at least 200 lbs, from the look of things. There were more officers present for towing a vehicle than subduing a man known to have problems social services could have been addressing, that resulted in the alleged killing of Tyler Gerth, just steps from where last night’s brutal choke hold response to a Black teenage girl. This isn’t to say she didn’t know her own mind and as an 18 year old isn’t responsible for her actions, more that she responded as reasonably expected. Take this in as what is reasonably expected: the LMPD designed, not her specifically, but someone in the group of 1A protesters to behave in this way to trigger use of code against speech critical of the department. Peaceful protest doesn’t go away unless it can be criminalized methodically, worn down, services for 1A protest choked out. The LMPD set a trap for last nights confrontation.
There were at least three female officers right there who chose not to intervene when their fellow officer tackled a teen to the ground with a choke hold. Yet it was his knee on this teen’s back. His arm around her neck. In a post George Floyd world, that is a brazen and open declaration that this officer and the department, that will predictably fail to self-correct his egregious use of force, endorses a policy of brutality. This officer had lots of options when dealing with a female citizen over H20, especially with his mandated training in de-escalation. Instead she gets jammed up for inciting the riot, in a trap set by the LMPD. Her life and the consequences she will individually bear, was as much as a tool of the LMPD as the duty belts they issue. The icing on the cake is the narrative that such responses are legitimate because of the “lawlessness” of protesters. It becomes an easy 2 minute news segment.
However, what is also happening, with regularity, as the protest drags on with underestimated momentum that kept LEOs from spending time on their boats on the lake with their kids this last weekend, is 1A speech thwarted by such obvious counter terrorism techniques.
Go back and look at the footage. This response is tactical, designed to inflame already heated confrontations in the 118 days without arrest of LMPD killing of Breonna Taylor by officers Mattingly, Cosgrove and Hankison, including the state sanctioned tax payer funded assassination of David the BBQ man McAtee in a misdemeanor curfew enforcement of a LMPD unit backed by two large transport trucks of Kentucky National Guard. In those trucks was the yet to be named soldier who trained on David’s center mass as he responded to first shots fired by LMPD. Try to tell me otherwise when LEOs can’t tell Tamir Rice held a toy gun, yet David was supposed to tell the difference between the velocity of non lethal and lethal projectiles.
Weaponizing of ordinance and statutes.
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The last selective tow last Tue with SWAT used on a Mother and Child, & that 👏🏻took 👏🏻planning👏🏻. That doesn’t happen with the snap of fingers.
LMPD kettled 1A protesters after recycling they had picked up after themselves was cast into the street (the overt act, however, again, like the water was benign).
The line formation from the north, & hidden unit to the south, was not a response, of “just keep it legal,” but the planned “b*tch I’m gonna hurt you” of an abuser. 1A speech clashed with a damned if you do disperse/damned if you don’t disperse fast enough. A white man doing the same thing gets immediately released with misdemeanors, and the Black woman near him gets detained and charged with felonies. The LMPD overtly demonstrating its determined intent to continue with brutal execution of unequal application of the law. (Citations omitted, available on request.)
This isn’t a protest about tree hugging, but LMPD brutality, & it is responding with all in its 1033 off books SOP arsenal designed to stifle 1A speech. They would rather this noise than firing the officers involved, arresting them, and addressing the larger issue of why they over police the Russell neighborhood in the first place.
“Just follow the law, and we won’t have to punch you in the face with concrete walk.”
LMPD Standard Operating Procedure (https://www.louisville-police.org/DocumentCenter/View/615/Standard-Operating-Procedures-PDF) is hard to get through. Should it be given the low barrier of entry for joining the force? That aside, the LMPD is supposed to keep the peace, not weaponize code for parking to peeing* to littering.
Yet here we are.
The LMPD in a choke hold on its citizens.
- Puts pin in that for next time, but yes, the placement by the City of port-o-cans, are not benevolent acts for hygiene, because if they were, the contract with the vendor would provide for enough of the port-o-cans for the people using them, with sufficient contractually obligated cleaning, and their placement wouldn’t result in an arrest if used after 11pm.
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Footage & source of screen shot, by Bailey Loosemore of the Courier-Journal: https://twitter.com/bloosemore/status/1280659724015480837?s=21
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I write as a private citizen. Through my solo law practice, the Law Office of Nancy Moise Haws, PLLC, I am offering pro bono representation as co-counsel to SLlawfirm.com, for arrests arising from First Amendment protest. The number to call is 317 — 721 — 9214. The Law Office of Nancy Moise Haws, PLLC does not represent any of the parties directly involved in the death of Breonna Taylor. All facts are uncited, based on public record and publicly available information at the time of posting. All opinions are my own, individually.
