Once again your wild assumptions make an ass out of you.
My views on US democratic leadership from the eighteenth century (I would have been a revolutionary, not a loyalist) have nothing to do with my views on the Civil War.
Attorneys should not be considered witnesses at all when they are simply repeating the allegations of their clients, many of the attorneys in the articles you linked to are not witnesses and are not even saying they are. They are just repeating what their clients, or people they have worked with, have said. That’s not the same thing as being a witness. Witness means you saw or heard something directly.
Like I said, if we have evidence then that’s serious. But right now I don’t see how Homan Square is any different from any other police station in almost any part of the world. If a journalist wanted to they could easily find hundreds of people who have spent time involuntarily in police custody who will say they were mistreated. Some of them certainly were, but the plain truth is many of them will just be liars. There’s no way to know without actual evidence–of which we have scant.
I think everyone at Homan Square is probably in custody, or at least the specific ones we have heard about were. But some of them I don’t believe were ever interrogated. Like the anarchist protester, her narrative even doesn’t include her being interrogated. She’s just complaining she was held without being allowed to speak to an attorney for 18 hours. But as has been noted, there is no strict time rule on when an attorney must be made available to speak with someone who isn’t being interrogated. Lots of people get arrested and it’s a few days before they find themselves before a judge/magistrate, which is one of the first times they might need an attorney. The guy who was arrested for fleeing the scene also falls into the same category.
What’s the point of an anonymous police source if all it’s doing is debunking a juicy controversy? To be frank I got the impression from the CPR stories that this is another example of basically dumb polemical writers at The Guardian (a trash newspaper) making stuff up; the local reporters in Chicago in their words and the people they picked as sources (like the anonymous cop) don’t seem to buy into it. That’s what I gathered from the CPR story–the local reporters that are a lot more familiar with Homan Square than some Guardian writer trying to copy Glenn Greenwald and make a career out of bashing the United States don’t seem convinced. And yeah, actually I expect if there was a stronger likelihood of all this bad stuff happening at Homan Square that the CPR would have quoted an anonymous police source confirming all the bad stuff–they didn’t. And I think it’d be ludicrous to suggest CPR was in the “pockets” of the police, public radio reporters all tend to be lefties, but pretty balanced. They wouldn’t be ones to gloss over something if they felt there was any good evidence it was going on. The Chicago reporting establishment, who have lots more sources than Ackman ever will in Chicago, basically seems to be taking the (appropriate) skeptical view I have–that yeah, if this stuff is going on that’s bad, but based on all their sources and information they don’t have anything to go on. Since they are more legitimate journalists than Guardian trash writers, they aren’t going to print or report stuff just because it would get them attention if they cannot source it.
Also if you think about it, why would the police even interrogate a protester or a hit and run driver? Protesters get arrested for disorderly conduct or et cetera when their protest is outside the bounds of the law and First Amendment protections, typically based on a police officer directly witnessing them doing something they aren’t allowed to do. What exactly would the interrogation entail? The cop saying “I saw you do this, did you do it?” The police may or may not have spoken to either person in those relatively minor criminal incidents, but if they were actually ever tried or anything I doubt interrogation evidence was used. They both would have been arrested based on direct police witnessing of a criminal act.
A lot of time unruly protesters are arrested similarly to drunks, they are held/detained then released and the charge often put aside. It’s more a matter of police instilling order. These anarchist protesters were not peaceful or legal protesters by the way, they were essentially a rabble. I also suspect the woman was probably screaming/frothing at the mouth the entire time she was in custody–and by doing so justifying her being shackled. I’ve been arrested a few times in my youth, and I’ve seen guys shackled to benches in police stations. To a one they were all screaming and acting crazy. While I was guilty every time I was arrested (DUI, few bar fights–never convicted of anything) I was also compliant and calm, and things went pretty well for me in terms of the police. I’m not saying police wouldn’t shackle someone for no reason, but in my experience they shackle people for reasons, too. Someone who was engaging in disruptive and illegal street demonstrations is exactly the kind of person I suspect would seek to “resist” her arrest/detention the entire time, and thus someone I’d expect might end up shackled to a bench.
Saying that the Guardian is a ‘trash newspaper’ is about as accurate as saying the same about the LA Times.
Just because you disagree with its politics does not indicate the quality of the journalism.
In terms of ‘trash’ reporting, The Times of London is probably worse than the Guardian, Independent and Telegraph.
It amuses me that the Right Wing while so keen on protecting individual rights against the State, are also so dismissive when dealing with rights transgressions by the police or military which exemplify State power.
Well, any USer has to know that there are massive right-wing US police violations of constitutional rights going on continuously all over the USA.
I saw it on Law & Order.
Martin covered the point pretty comprehensively, so I’ll just add one note to his. There is no independent verification of the length of time these folks were detained. In each instance, the duration is reported as a time “estimated by the detainee”. Now, they could have over-estimated or under-estimated or made it up to sound convincing. Without an independent source, I just can’t take the claim seriously.
It disappoints me that someone will plow along with this nonsense after it’s been pretty equivocally shown that no, CPD doesn’t operate “Blacksites”. You could back-pedal to the idea that CPD abuses the rights of some suspects, but that’s not exciting without you first proving it’s worse than is elsewhere or particularly endemic, and you haven’t really gotten anywhere near proving that.
If all you’ve got is that the CPD violates the rights of some suspects, you’ve got plenty to address at home before you’re perfect enough to go pointing the finger across the Atlantic.
You don’t find it curious at all that the Guardian is the ONLY one talking about the ‘US Police’ supposedly operating a ‘Detention Blacksite’(s)? I checked again through both national and local websites and no one else has brought this up independently (some report it by attribute the report back to the original Guardian story), and just checked the BBC…nada there either.
What will it take for you to actually look at this critically and consider that maybe your knee has once again jerked? Could ANYTHING make you consider that perhaps the ‘US Police’ aren’t actually operating ‘Detention Blacksites’, and that this was all sensationalist journalism that you bought into because you have a bias and want the US to be doing this (without seeming to actually understand how the US is set up, how our various state and local police operate, how our rules might be different from yours, or how it’s possible, just possible that the lawyers of people being detained might not be the best source in all things and might, you know, exaggerate in order to put their client and their case in the best possible light in hopes of getting them off or maybe getting a nice fat law suit out of the deal…or, just because they do this when a credulous reporter from the Guardian is asking them wide eyed about CIA type ‘Blacksites’ operating in Chicago :p).
The irony of this is almost off the scale in the context of the thread.
Best laugh I’ve had all week.
I think pretty much all English newspapers are shit, so it isn’t like you’re saying very much there.
Seriously, they’re all just different shades of yellow journalism.
I have not said any of that.
I am lamenting the powerful chauvinistic defensiveness.
If such things were charged against a British Police Service, I would be calling for an enquiry by the national authority set up just for the purpose of ensuring that such accusations are investigated properly and independently.
In your humble opinion.
And your independent, non-political, non-non-chauvinistic cites for the quality of various presses are…
Or is it just political and nationalistic bias?
I’ve been reading bad reporting in the Guardian for years. You obviously like them. Opinions differ. But I don’t like my journalists sensationalizing and distorting everything to serve political ends. That’s why I only get my news from a very narrow selection of outlets I feel do not do this. Most major ones are guilty of it. Generally NPR and affiliated groups in the United States avoid sensational journalism. Probably the only British publication I regularly read is The Economist, they are not unbiased (and do not intend or pretend to be), but they avoid sensationalizing issues.
The truth isn’t a right/left issue. I don’t believe allegations without any real evidence. Simple as that. As a “right winger” I’d love for Obama to actually be a Muslim from Kenya or corrupt or etc, but I don’t believe claims to that effect when spouted by some right winger just because I’d like to believe them. I only believe what can be demonstrated to some reasonable degree.
You would need to differentiate between online and broadsheet versoins as they are so different, and also between different online versions of which there are three. But you don’t so you’re probably most familiar with (a) the online (b) US version.
It’s kind of refreshing that any paper these days even attempts to do old school investigative journalism, even if they do sometimes fall on their face. Most just repeat what they’re told, perhaps occasionally offering a veneer of independence for old-times sake.
You have been reading what you think is bad reporting in the Guardian for years.
Other opinions are available.
But other sources for ‘Detention Blacksites’ and ‘Gestapo tactics’ aren’t. Only the Guardian is apparently making these claims, and others (very few others) are simply parroting what they are saying and citing them as a source. Again, does this not suggest anything to you? Do you not have any twinges on your BS meter, or an itch in your skeptical sense (assuming you have one when talking about the evil US)? Nothing at all? The fact that no other major publication (at least not one that I can find) has even mentioned any of the sensational claims in the Guardian means nothing to you at all?
I know it’s not National Enquirer but The Guardian did at least win the Pulitzer for journalism last year.
Which may say more about several of the contributors here than it does about the award committee, Greenwald, MacAskill and Laura Poitras.