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Woman Arrested, Dragged Away After Speaking About Flock at City Council Meeting

115 pointsby 54m ago404media.co
33 comments
33m agoHN ↗

The cop said, “You’re under arrest,” grabbed her arms, and pulled her out of the room. “I can do this all night. I get paid by the hour,” the cop added.

Two sentences showing precisely why no one can trust the police. Not only are they completely unaccountable, but they will trample your first amendment rights and do so with smug amusement in full public view. These are the kinds of people we're supposed to be happy to give massive surveillance power to?

11m agoHN ↗

One rotten apple spoils the entire barrel.

7m agoHN ↗

I don't even get what the comment has to do with anything. Is it supposed to be some kind of zinger? It's a great idea. Make him spend all night arresting people.

4m agoHN ↗

The article is written to enrage you. Including that "zinger" makes you angry at the establishment. After reading the article, while I sympathize with the woman who was arrested, I am not surprised at the outcome.

3m agoHN ↗

Have you not heard similar from parents/teachers/chaperons?

"I will take as long as I need, to get you to comply. Your resistance doesn't make this go away, it just prolongs the inevitable."

6m agoHN ↗

An attendee interrupted the discussion on the law being passed, flipped off the council, and refused to leave.

How is that First Amendment rights?

4m agoHN ↗

Looking at the the wrong way, what the citizenship in mass should be doing is surrounding the meeting with torches and making said council fear for their lives.

26m agoHN ↗

As an european guy. Interesting to see things happen from far away. Knowing that crazy country has so much power, makes the near future of the whole world even more scary.

19m agoHN ↗

Indeed. Though omnipresent surveillance and restricted speech is an issue in some of Europe too.

14m agoHN ↗

On the other hand, I see a lot of HackerNewsers and European geeks utterly angry at laws that forbid (blanket) recording of public places and GDPR which controls what the videos can be used for.

Every EU topic here is filled with people wishing for its destruction and dismantling of such privacy protecting laws.

17m agoHN ↗

Thankfully we have no voting power in the said country so they don't care what we think as long as we consume and overall behave. Let's see how long this lasts though. It seems as though EU is approaching the finding out stage.

13m agoHN ↗

It's not that much different in the most powerful parts of Europe. For instance Germany does this to people who talk about Palestine. So does the UK. Poland does it to people who talk about gay rights. I don't know the equivalent in Spain, France or Italy.

11m agoHN ↗

EU is covered in cameras, possibly more than USA

22m agoHN ↗

At this point I no longer think the US can say anything about the Chinese. Yes they have a surveillance dystopia and highly entrenched state crony capitalism, but we now have exactly the same thing.

16m agoHN ↗

You don't have remotely the same thing. You don't have high-speed trains, housing that populace who don't already own real estate can afford, a government that keeps the tech-oligarchs at a short leash and who mercilessly removes corrupt officials, functional public transit, functional anything public really.

13m agoHN ↗

Ahh, but we haven't finished making America Great Again! Give the great helmsman Trump more time!

Oh... wait... the great part never happens. We'll just copy all the bad things about China. Got it.

7m agoHN ↗

It’s a good think they are open to immigration! The promised land awaits you!

12m agoHN ↗

The US was one of the earliest countries to have these things. China, Russia and even Nazi Germany were inspired by the US.

6m agoHN ↗

Flock is extremely controversial here and it is child's play compared to the Chinese surveillance apparatus.

It's not a promising trajectory if left unchecked, but we are not the same.

17m agoHN ↗

“Well, I said: ‘Jeff Schrag is a cuck.’ I said: ‘Fuck you Jeff.’ I said: ‘Worthless’ and then, also, the final thing I said was: ‘Jeff Schrag has a tiny, stinky, cock,’” Powell explained.

I agree with the point she was trying to make. As a member of the public she should not have been arrested for being verbally abusive. But I'm OK with her being removed for subjecting the people who work there to that abuse. If she had made the same points with something approaching civility I'd be in her corner, as I still am with respect to surveillance.

If she were a coworker directing that to me, one of us would be a former employee by the end of the day.

12m agoHN ↗

That wasn't the woman (Heider).

“Hello, my name is Miley Heider. I’m a Springfield, Missouri constituent, and I’m here to oppose the usage of ALPR cameras, most commonly made by Flock Safety. These cameras are not just surveillance,” Heider started.

“I’m sorry ma’am,” Springfield Mayor Jeff Schrag said. Her mic was cut. A cop approached her at the podium.

Heider held up both of her middle fingers while continuing to speak: “They are an invasion of our privacy,” she said.

Powell was the other person arrested.

Heider was one of two people arrested

9m agoHN ↗

A reasonable take. It’s a hot button issue, and arrest is absurd, but these people are embarrassing and actually the most counterproductive way to approach this.

You want to know how to turn the masses of normies that could otherwise be persuaded to join you? Send in people like this to behave like this.

16m agoHN ↗

Later in the evening Mia Heider tried to speak out about Flock during public comments about a housing issue. Police arrested her while Schrag looked on. “Sorry ma’m,” the mayor said as police led Heider away in handcuffs.

I mean, what is the appropriate response to someone refusing follow protocol after giving guidance that there's a different topic at hand now? There was a comment session on Flock cameras, people talked about it, then they moved onto housing. You can't run a public meeting where people get to drag every issue back to their favorite issue uninhibited, it just literally doesn't work. The meeting would run 24/7/365 and still nothing would get done.

11m agoHN ↗

Sure makes it awfully convenient to end a comment session when you don't want to hear what's being said. We are approving the budget for the death ray, do we have any objections? You have five hundred microseconds to object. Let the record show there were no objections. Guards, arrest that man for speaking after the time for objections has ended.

4m agoHN ↗

The comment session was for an entirely unrelated issue.

Heider explained that she waited until the public comment period for a different issue, filled out a form to talk, and then got up to deliver a written statement about Flock cameras.

It wasn't that the council disagreed with what Heider said, it's that what she was talking about was unrelated to the meeting.

2m agoHN ↗

How it works in Seattle is that people are supposed to sign up and talk about things on the agenda for that council meeting but they are not stopped from talking about anything. This is why you'll see people like Alex Tsimerman (look him up) speak nonsense at nearly every council meeting. The councilpeople just ignore those comments and I believe they aren't included in the meeting record since they're off topic.

There's other ways to also try and limit the length of public comment, if there's more than say 30 people signed up, reduce public comment from 2 minutes per person to 1 minute. Be aggressive about cutting mics rather than giving everyone 10 extra seconds.

Finally, if enough people are frustrated enough about an issue to constantly show up to public comment to talk about it, councilmembers should try meeting with those people at a different forum to at least hear them out to try and diffuse their anger. Council meetings should not be the only other place where residents can talk to their councilmembers.

13m agoHN ↗

Improved title:

Woman Arrested, Dragged Away After Speaking About Flock (YC 17) at City Council Meeting

12m agoHN ↗

Based on reading between the lines and watching the video, here's my sense of what happened:

1. Some protestors showed up at a council meeting to complain about flock

2. The council moved to disallow discussion of flock cameras

3. The protestors started disrupting the meeting, chanting, etc, and were forced to leave/were arrested

4. One protestor went to the podium and started talking about flock cameras, was politely interrupted, then had her mic cut. She flipped off the council and was arrested

If you oppose flock/this kind of surveillance, fine. But this kind of behavior is not tolerated at council meetings, and it's not a surprise that some of the protestors were arrested.

“Well, I said: ‘Jeff Schrag is a cuck.’ I said: ‘Fuck you Jeff.’ I said: ‘Worthless’ and then, also, the final thing I said was: ‘Jeff Schrag has a tiny, stinky, cock,’” Powell explained. “I just let myself get handcuffed and let them do whatever power trip they wanted to do. Got my ticket and left.”

I mean, really?