It's easy to say the entire Miami PD should be fired. The problem is, who would they hire to replace them? Even in the suburbs where the pay his higher and the stress is lower, there job is basically enforce crackheaded laws.

Something like 10% of the population is behind bars on drug related charges, which means that 10% of the population is behind bars on charges that are purely for the profit of large corporations.

Even if most cops are good and conduct themselves, well, cops *NEVER* report their peers on their illegal activits. So to me, almost every cop must be at least guilty of obstruction of justice. In America, the point of police is pretty much to keep the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer -- in light of their "crack down" on the pro-Democracy/pro-Union (the two are identical) protesters in Miami, it seems that the police exist for little more than enforcing the status-quo.

Maybe I'm over-reacting, but I think there are very few good apples, and 90% of the cops are bad apples. Even if only 10% are abusive, it's the 90% who hold the thin blue line.

As for the issue of cops in general, I remain on the fence. My general tendency is to believe that while many of them are probably bad, they are a necessary evil. Better than the alternative of de facto rule of thieves and gangs. Even if some cops amount to little more than that, it's better that there be some kind of oversite by a democratically elected body than having no cops at all.

The issue with Miami, as I see it, was probably not as much the cops themselves as those overseeing them. Shortly before the FTAA meetings, the Miami city council passed a temporary ordinance that made "obstruction of sidewalks" an arrest-able offense. This was a law that only took effect shortly before the meetings, and expired shortly after.

Basically, it gave the cops a lawful excuse to arrest anybody who happened to be committing the "crime" of walking down a sidewalk, which is exactly what they did to several people who weren't even involved in the protests during days leading up to the events. Bad cops, worse government.

As bad as the actions and cops themselves were, what's more alarming to me is the news media's utter failure to report on the incidents. When black people marching for their civil rights in the 60s were sprayed down with firehoses, part of what ignited the national outrage to improve things was seeing those pictures broadcast on national tv.

If the media (especially television) is so blind/corrupt as to virtually omit

these cases from their reporting (or, in some of the cases I saw, they did report on it in a very one-sided manner, leaving out the parts about police brutality), then most of the population will remain unaware of the atrocities that are happening in their own country!

A few days after the protests were over, I happened to hear Paul Harvey on the radio. He made a brief mention about how some groups organizing protests in Miami were demanding that next time they came to protest, the city should provide porta-potties and bring in water for the trouble makers. (Making it sound as if these were a bunch of spoiled children coming into the city demanding that local taxpayers finance their ranting and screaming.) Not a word was mentioned about what the police had done, or any violence of any kind. From the Paul Harvey spin of things, it was just a bunch of idiots getting together in Miami to cause trouble and make silly demands.

(Factually, as far as the requests for water and porta-johns go, he might have been right. I can imagine the logistical problems it might cause to have thousands of people in a small area with virtually no bathrooms or sources of drinking water.)

Anyway, yeah, the way the whole thing went down just smells of corruption up to the highest levels. I'd like to think there are enough people paying attention to sources other than big corporate-controlled news outlets to find out what's going on around them, but sometimes it's hard to be optimistic.

Well, I don't consider Paul Harvey much of a journalist. His job is about anecdotes and stories that make you chuckle. Whatever he's done in the past, he's little more than a radio version of

Andy Rooney.

What is concerning is that the self-proclaimed "legitimate" media, such as CNN, CBS, etc do little to cover the story. It's sad that the BBC covered the story (I don't have the link here) and included some of the reports, but the same could not be said for the American media, with some few exceptions.

Despite showing her credentials as a journalist? I know that's not what you intended, but I think this does show something of an assumption here on the part of everyone: journalists are generally treated better by the cops.

The real question is, what happens to the people whose only credential is being a concerned citizen?

I suppose it is a sort of unwritten rule in civilized societies that journalists be granted a certain immunity when covering events, as long as they stay out of the fray and act as observers.

Ultimately, of course, you are right. Anyone, regardless of whether or not they are a journalist, ought to have a right to be left alone if they are doing nothing wrong. I hope they win their lawsuit against the city.

This article is very telling. A Miami judge who was there said he witnessed "no less than 20 felonies committed by police officers."

"I probably would have been arrested myself if it had not been for a police officer who recognized me," said the judge, who wears his hair in a graying ponytail.

Something I glossed over at first, is that cities are clamoring to host these WTO events. Although the WTO events bring a short-term infusion of capital to American cities through hosting these events, the WTO is ultimately out to hurt the general American (hec, the world) population.

So why are our cities hosting them? Wouldn't a mayor recognize that outside of the short-term cash infusion, that what goes on at these events is only going to hurt the American economy? If someone comes to your home and says, "I'll give you five bucks to look the other way while I steal your car" you would be nuts to accept.

But when the WTO comes and says "We'll put a few million dollars of tax revenue into your city while we plot to eliminate billions of dollars of your jobs," we welcome them with open arms.

Crazy.