Neutral Observers Arrested Overnight in Baltimore

[nadinbrzezinski]

As a way of introduction, if you all remember as far back as Ferguson, we also had observers and media pens as well. I can attest that as early as Occupy I saw local cops arrest an NLG legal observer. This matter because this is a national trend, and cops do not like these legal observers. This is not a San Diego issue, or a Baltimore Issue, or Ferguson, or for that matter New York.

May 3, 2015 (BALTIMORE) We have learned from the National Lawyers Guild that 12 National Lawyers Guild Observers were arrested overnight. The arrests also included “street medics.” There were other limitations imposed on the media, just like Ferguson, Missouri.

This arrest of neutral legal observers is troubling at multiple levels and the NLG raises them in their press release:

“The events of Saturday night vividly illustrate how the curfew itself created the very problems it purported to solve. Curfews are an unacceptable exercise of police force and violence that promise to provoke rather than quell further resentment and unrest.” “The constitution does not have office hours. No city should be in the practice of revoking its peoples’ First Amendment and other constitutional rights,” says NLG Maryland Mass Defense Committee member and University of Baltimore Assistant Professor of Law Colin Starger.

http://reportingsandiego.com/2015/05/03/neutral-observers-arrested-overnight-in-baltimore/

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. kick. the U.S. would complain if this happened in a foreign country

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Yup, we would

but it's been happening more and more

[bigtree]

3. excellent article

...very important reporting on a critical and crucial subject.

Thanks for posting this here, Nadin.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. You welcome

[SoapBox]

5. The Mysterious Militarized Police Militias...

Have grown to be uncontrollable.

GOTV

[yuiyoshida]

6. What rights?

it seems each and every day, our rights are eroded, and the people in charge don't care, because to them, we are just a public nuisance, and the more we can be swept out of the way, the more we will have to just Shut the fuck up.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. It is a historic cross roads

[Enthusiast]

9. It certainly is. On nearly every front.

[bigtree]

8. kick