Mayday-May Day

Fact: There was a May Day event at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles.

Fact: The Police are responsible to keep the peace and have a presence at any major event that includes patrolling the event with uniformed police officers.

Fact: A large portion of the crowd this day was of Mexican decent, anti-police, anti-America and illegally in this country.

Fact: Los Angeles is a sanctuary City.

Fact: The crowd instigated an incident by throwing rocks, bottles and debris at the patrolling police officers.

Fact: The police responded as they were trained to do; gain control, clear the area and make arrests.

Fact: To accomplish these goals they used tear gas, rubber bullets, batons and a show of force.

Fact: No deaths, few injuries and some arrests.

Opinion: Police do not start incidents, they respond and keep the peace. That’s their job. They do this to so that the social fabric of our society is maintained. If it weren’t for the police, no law abiding citizen could have an outing anywhere. The police are trained to deal with the unlawful in a manner determined not by the police but by the criminal. When you are asked to disperse by a police officer, you have two choices. First, disperse as a person wanting not to be involved in the incident would and should do; second, defy the order and confront the police, in which case you buy into the results of your actions.

There are numerous civil remedies if you believe your civil rights have been violated. These can be executed either singularly or in a group after the fact. Resisting arrest or resisting the lawful order of the police is fool hardy and unnecessary given the previously mentioned civil remedies.

Society demands of its police that they keep the peace, catch bad guys, keep our streets safe from the criminal element, protect our women and children from rape, pillage and plunder and do all this without making it look messy or hurting anyone. Unless you have been there you have no idea what an impossible task this is. It is not and never has been the police officers' decision whether someone gets hurt and/or things get messy. The person who is the recipient of the police presence always makes that decision.

Given the current situation with terrorism, immigration and gangs, just what would you have the police do in the future? At MacArthur Park one person with a heavy Hispanic accent said to the police, “We have a right to be here,”. That is untrue, particularly after the police have given you a legal order to leave. Furthermore, if this person was illegal as I personally suspect was the case, she had no right to be in the country, let alone MacArthur Park.

So what would you have the police do: leave and go back to the station, take it, stand by and let innocent people get hurt, set a perimeter and contain the violence inside that perimeter? What if it spills over, what then? Talk to the bad guys, yup, that’s a winner. Who determines the level of escalation of force? Not the police; they react to the level of insurrection confronting them. When they react, the people involved can reduce the response simply by doing as they are instructed. What a novel concept, doing as a lawful protector of society instructs us.

The people involved in the incident at MacArthur Park wanted not reason and lawfulness. They wanted insurrection for the sole purpose of making the police look bad and gaining our sympathy and a free ride in the press. It is time all lawful and law abiding Americans step up to the plate and tell our elected representatives that we are tired of this nonsense by activists and they’re anti-American attorneys. It is time that we impeach activist judges who go afoul of the law and that we recall our legislators who condone this riotous activity. Let’s send a message that our country is not for sale to the highest bidder and that this is not a partisan issue. If our representatives can’t do the job or don’t have the stomach for it we will replace him/her with someone who will.