Ethics

Disorderly Conduct. Again.

By Ed Brayton

The Huffington Post reports on another arrest for disorderly conduct, this time for expressing an opinion against the police in the wake of the Gates arrest. Here's the setup:

Pepin Tuma, 33, was walking with two friends along Washington's hip U Street corridor around midnight Saturday, complaining about how Gates had been rousted from his home for not showing a proper amount of deference to a cop. "We'd been talking about it all day," said Tuma. "It seems like police have a tendency to act overly aggressively when they're being pushed around," Tuma recalled saying.

Then the group noticed five or six police cruisers surrounding two cars in an apparent traffic stop on the other side of the street. It seemed to Tuma that was more cops than necessary.

"That's why I hate the police," Tuma said. He told the Huffington Post that in a loud sing-song voice, he then chanted, "I hate the police, I hate the police."

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on August 06, 2009 (boomark / email).