Just a story I saw in which a law enforcement officer attacked a decorated veteran for parking a van in his driveway. He tossed in some ignorant AND false racial epithets for good measure (not that "true" racial epithets would be any better :P)
Heard about this from SALDEF... They're calling for the Joliet Police Department in Illinois to investigate an violent incident involving an officer patrolling a local neighborhood last month. The cop allegedly assaulted a Sikh American man while yelling racial epithets, right in front of his wife and six-year-old child:
On Friday March 30, 2007 at around 3:00pm , Mr. Kuldip Singh Nag, a Sikh American who was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in the U.S. Navy during the first Gulf War, was at his home in Joliet , IL when a local police officer noticed that a van parked on Mr. Nag’s private property had expired registration tags. Upon being confronted with this, Mr. Nag’s wife, Vera Kaur Nag, informed the officer that the van is parked on their driveway and was inoperable.
Mr. Nag then came outside to answer the officer’s questions regarding the van. The Joliet police officer then demanded that Mr. Nag park the van inside his garage and not on the driveway, to which Mr. Nag responded to the officer that it was not possible and that regardless, the van is parked on his private property and he has a right to park it on his driveway.
At this moment, the officer pulled out his pepper spray and attacked Mr. Nag. As Mr. Nag screamed in agony, the officer removed his baton and violently struck Mr. Nag numerous times until he fell to the ground. While the assault ensued, the officer was reported by both Mr. and Mrs. Nag as saying, "You f****** Arab! You f***** immigrant, go back to you f****** country before I kill you!"
The assault landed Mr. Nag in the hospital for five days, with complaints of intense pain and head trauma. And the whole thing happened right in front of his wife and kid. All this, because Mr. Nag parked a van with expired tags in his own driveway. Police brutality alone is unacceptable, but this clearly crosses the line as a hate crime. This incident needs to be investigated, and this officer needs to be taken down. That's racist!
FWIW, this also made BoingBoing yesterday.
Here's a news link: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=local&id=5204526
Just awful...
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http://glock21.blogspot.com
From the ABC link:
"The officer was explaining to him that he wanted to put this sticker on the vehicle, explained to him the process involved in getting the vehicle removed so it wouldn't be towed. Mr. Nag became upset and pushed the officer. At that time the officer went to arrest him and a struggle ensued," said Cmdr. Keith Turney, Joliet Police Department.
this sounds a bit different than the story Xian printed. I am always a bit skeptical of stories where anyone just starts beating on someone without any provocation. The provocation may not warrant the beating, but there is almost always something.
RSW... it's hard to say in a he said / he said match... it's awful regardless. It could be that the officer was in some ways justified but it doesn't excuse the rest of the story. If the rest of the story is made up, which probably isn't the case, but if, then it is equally as awful.
I have my suspicions that the police department didn't mention anything about the fact that the vehicle was on private property, which means it doesn't require a license at all, let alone an updated sticker. Most cops are fairly decent individuals, but the ones that aren't make me not doubt this story entirely in spite of the extremely biased way it was presented initially on this thread.
I think it deserves the benefit of the doubt and feel that there is a strong likelyhood that the vet acted stupidly but didn't deserve the bashing he got for the reasons given.
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http://glock21.blogspot.com
Do you know for a fact that being on private property doesn't require the vehicle to be registered? Many municipalities require that vehicles that are not currently registered either be stored indoors or under a cover. What is Joliet's law concerning this?
Glock- Not defending the actions of the officer because I was not there, but in addressing PB's question the wife admitted that the van was inoperable. I imagine that Chapter 19 Article 11, Divsion 6, section 19-239 of the Joliet city code which starts off with this would come into play,
"Sec. 19-239. Removal of abandoned or inoperable vehicles from private property; pre-tow hearing; court authorization.
I agree its awful Glock, and in a perfect world I am sure it would have been handled much differently. I just don't like it presented that the guy simply asked the cop a question, and the cop started beating on him.
"Mr. Nag became upset and pushed the officer. At that time the officer went to arrest him and a struggle ensued," said Cmdr. Keith Turney, Joliet Police Department."
I'll try to read some more stuff on this incident, because the above statement also has a suspicious feel to me. Was Mr. Nag so ignorant of the probable consequences that he really pushed the officer without provocation and instigated the incident? If he did, then a response was warranted, but unless Mr. Nag put up a helluva fight, a five-day stint in the hospital seems to indicate more than a proportional response.
I can easily imagine the incident escalating to a charged exchange of words, especially if Mr. Nag had decided that codes or not, the vehicle was on his property and that was that. Unless other witnesses turn up, unfortunately, we'll have Mr. Nag's testimony and that of his wife versus the officer's version.
I can easily imagine the incident escalating to a charged exchange of words, especially if Mr. Nag had decided that codes or not, the vehicle was on his property and that was that.
I agree. And that sounds like a reasonable position (private property rights are being whittled away). And if the cop was being a real butthead about it (doesn't he have anything better to do...) I could see getting quite upset.
Has anyone ever had a police officer stop to explain how to put a tag on a vehicle with an expired license? I move my hot rod in and out of my garage, in nice weather, all the time without incident. My hot rod does not have a license plate or even a place to mount it. I have had police stop several times over the years and chat. None of them have threated to have the car towed. I have also noticed golf carts operating on the streets around the various county clubs without licenses, expired or otherwise. Given my experiences, It would appear that there is another agenda besides what Cmdr. Keith Turney and the Joliet Police Department have disclosed.
I'm certainly not condoning the actions of the officer, if the story is correct. The officer deserves whatever is coming to him, and van owner certainly did not deserve any such abuse (or the whole conversation with the officer, for that matter) at the hands of the police.
However, what does the van owner's veteran status have to do with the story? Although there are many relevant emotionally-charged points in the story, it seems like the only reason that vet status, receipt of an award from Gulf War I, and the title of the post are there is to further inflame the reader against the police officer.
As both a soldier, and a creative writer (according to that little piece of paper conferred on me by UIUC), that would seem to me to be written "cheating," using irrelivent information to pull at the heartstrings of the reader. In this case, use of vet status of the story's subject as a tool to incite anger against against someone else was entirely unnecessary.
The story certainly has just as much weight against the officer without that information.
James,
This is the way liberals can claim that they "support the troops".
I don't see it as a liberal/conservative/GOP/Dem thing.
1st Amendment aside, I don't think anyone should be using anyone's vet status as a tool to support an unrelated concept or position, but that's just me.
Being a vet is being a vet, nothing more and nothing less. Earning an award, especially the more important ones like the Bronze Star (an all-service award for exceptional valor or merit when facing an enemy), is typically based on single acts or a handful of related acts of merit or valor, not being a good person for a really long time (they've got a few for that, in the Army it's called the "Good Conduct Medal," or an AAM/ARCOM/MSM ETS award).
I don't mean to cheapen the individual's service, by any means; in fact, I salute him for his service, and for serving in hostile fire zone. But to blindly throw out that "he's a vet," to say that "he's a good person" is a little far-fetched. I shouldn't have to provide examples, but here's a fun one: Tim McVeigh.
Being a vet doesn't make you an angel. It also doesn't make you evil. It just makes you a vet.
I agree James, but you are completely being unfair to me here. Being a decorated veteran might not make you a wonderful person, but it does suggest that you are patriot in my book.
It is an additional bit of information that is useful in the face of being told: ""You f****** Arab! You f***** immigrant, go back to you f****** country before I kill you!"
It wasn't directed primarily at you, xian, since you didn't write the original article. I appreciate the gravity of the substance of the article, which is what I believe you intended.
I agree, it sounds like this guy got an incredibly raw deal at the hands of a cop with serious issues. But do you think it would have mattered to this particular cop that he had served in the US military or not, given that he couldn't even understand (or care) that Sikh <> Arab?
Finally, I disagree that being a vet automatically makes one a "patriot."
1) That word has no meaning any more. It's been thrown around by everyone and their mother for political ends for way too long. It's about as useful a word as "things" or "stuff."
2) Being decorated with the Bronze Star means you acted heroically under fire. It doesn't necessarily mean you're a swell guy. Again, see McVeigh.
3) Being enlisted in the US military does not necessarily mean you are a US citizen (being an officer, does, however). My closest buddy from college is currently a Captain in the Reserves in Florida. He was a Polish national without US citizenship when he was enlisted, and his commissioning almost got pushed back because it took so long to get his citizenship. It's really not that uncommon a scenario, but more often non-citizen soldiers come from Central American countries than European ones.
I know its sounds odd for me (of all people) to say something like "not all servicemen are angels," but its the bigger picture of what it means to be a vet that I'm focused on, and what that means in terms of what being a vet "should" or "should not" reasonably support, and I (subjectively) don't agree that his vet status had anything substantially to do with the meat of the story.
Once again, I agree with the shades of grey you are introducing. I have a friend who served heroically in the armed forces but neglected to apply for citizenship status and was almost deported to a country he could not speak the language for possession.
But technicalities aside, I do think that all things being equal, a veteran is one of the last people who should have their "right to be here" questioned. After all, all I did for my citizenship status was pop out of the womb in the right place...
"After all, all I did for my citizenship status was pop out of the womb in the right place..."
hehehe
I thought about your post last night. I've changed my mind (go ahead, this is the time for everyone to pop the champagne corks).
Regarding the comments the cop made, the fact that the van owner was a vet probably was enough cause to include that fact in the article. It's subjective, but I'll concede that you're right.
However, here's my thought process: I'm trying to be equitable for every case where vet (or active duty, guard, whatever) status is brought up in a news article or commentary and completely irrelivent to the substance.
A few months back, some Rangers committed armed robbery on a bank. They were active duty, and it was near post, but the article I read spent WAY too much time discussing their Ranger status instead of focusing on the crime.
Also, you may remember this from the local news: several years ago I had a buddy in ROTC at UIUC (ahem, I commissioned through OCS, not ROTC...not that there's anything wrong with that). ROTC is a part of who you are when you're a student, but it really takes up relatively little of your time compared to your studies, the reason one GOES to college. He was a little shy, a little socially inept, but a soldier is a soldier, and my and my buddies took him under our wing and tried to acclimate him to being a social person. Well, one Saturday, instead of coming to the ROTC house party that weekend, he decides to head off to Michigan to screw a 12-year-old girl whom he met on the internet, and got caught.
What did the big-ass headline on the DI say that monday? Was it "Area resident gets busted being perverted" or "Local UIUC student likes banging kids"? NO: it said "UI ROTC Cadet..."
Needless to say, that was an emotional rollercoaster day for all of ROTC. Bottom line: his status as a cadet didn't have a damn thing to do with him screwing little girls, but the DI (this was during its peak of leftist extremism in the DI leadership a few years back) had an axe to grind with the government and the military, and this was their way of doing it.
This is a good point.
Some would argue that the armed forces promote a certain view of gender equality and sexual relations. I'll never forget the Japanese revisionists' justification for their systematized rape of thousands of women with "rape is a natural part of war".
That being said I think it's important that if you want to make that connection in a news article, you'd better get a source who is an expert on such issues rather than just making the connection yourself.
Furthermore, I've certainly seen the abuse you are talking about: even when the general incidence of sexual assualt is LOWER among a group that is stereotyped as sexist such as the military or athlete population, often people will use individual incidents to promote their generalizations about such groups.
Finally, I think there's a a common phenomenon that those in certain professions are held to a much higher standard. Certainly it makes sense that more is made of an off-duty police officer beating a barmaid than a random citizen doing the same. Even if among teachers the general incidence of child molestation is low, it's still makes sense the extra outrage you see when a teacher assaults a child whether or not they are in a professional capacity at the time.
It's not cut and dry, but it does make some sense that military personel would be held to a similar standard.
"It's not cut and dry, but it does make some sense that military personel would be held to a similar standard."
One would hope so, and it has been my experience through active, combat arms, guard, combat service support, enlisted, cadet, candidate, and officer, and multiple, multiple units and schools, that we do try to do that as best we can (anecdotal that my experience may be).
Unfortunately, we do have duds. Some get missed on the way in, some were duds in disguise on the way in, and some become duds after they've been in. We try to get rid of the duds that can't be un-dudded, and we try to fix the duds that can. But really, in an organization that big - that is a pretty representative cross-section of the nation as a whole, by the way, and therefore a reflection of the society in which we live - we can't ever achieve 100% unduddedness, we can only mitigate it.