Protestors Let Lose by the Courts

Another brief read. This time as a partial take from TPM’s, “Chicago Protestors Reel After Fending Off Federal Charges,” TPM Josh Kovensky piece. Again, referencing my experience in 1971. 4th Bn 10th Marines trained for riot control in Washington D.C. No special loaded weapons. Just stock M-14s with no rounds passed out to us. Probable snipers with us, JIC. Mybe a few tear gas canisters. We could do more damage with the stock to the chin and the barrel of the M14 coming down on the head chin of an attacker. To counter the protests, ICE masks up . . .

Come on, an unarmed seventy-year-old man is a physical threat to ICE? No weapon, just him. Who are we kidding here? The courts do not appear to be too interested in these cases brought before them either.

As Josh explains in his TPM article . . .

“The administration governs by propaganda. There is bluster, threats, and even real violence — all deployed to push a far-right agenda forward while dissuading as many people as possible from opposing it. But what happens when that all-out campaign to intimidate makes contact with reality?

Nowhere has that approach been clearer than in Chicago. Spearheaded by deportation hype man Greg Bovino, federal law enforcement flooded the city in September. Under Bovino’s command, DHS officials used a military helicopter to raid an apartment building while apprehending undocumented immigrants and, in a single day, deployed more tear gas against protestors than Chicago Police had used all year, one investigation found.

That mix of spectacle and force galvanized protests across the city. Many demonstrators were arrested; fewer were charged. And of those charged, many cases crumbled. Federal prosecutors declined to pursue some cases; in others, judges or grand juries declined to let them proceed.

Many of those arrested had earlier experience attending protests, mostly around immigration. All were outraged by what they described to TPM as an operation seemingly as concerned with detaining undocumented immigrants as with heading off public displays of dissent. It’s resulted in prosecutors aggressively bringing charges of interfering with a federal officer. Five Chicago protestors were charged under the statute over one incident on Sept. 27; all of those cases have since collapsed.

Prosecutors dropped their case last week against Dana Briggs, a 70-year-old Air Force veteran initially charged with felony assault of a federal officer over an incident in which his arm hit a federal officer as he was being arrested. Prosecutors later downgraded the charge to a misdemeanor, then moved to abandon the case entirely.“