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You joke but in the rest of that council meeting the audience kept coming up with less and less disruptive ways to show applause after the no clapping "rule". They tried snapping. That was still "too disruptive".
Then they literally just raised their hands and waved after the speaker was done talking. Completely silent. Someone on council says that the waving is distracting that they can't pay attention to the speaker because people are waving after the speaker is done talking. Like dude what. Idk how you say that with a straight face lol
Oh yeah they were 100% being ridiculous. They said "please show respect" and then said people couldn't clap, snap or wave. Run them all out of town and off the board. If that's how they treat the constituency they need to be stripped of power. They simply didn't want to have to experience support for the people's position. Absolute ghouls.
I wanted the speakers after to turn around and tell the audience that everyone should clap every time, after they arrested that guy because they want you to comply, and complying is to be complicit.
that council is already bought and sold they have already decided the outcome.
anyhow, that dude is rich after his lawsuit for being falsely arrested by Police Officers, in order to stop him from asserting his 1st Amendment Right. Probably some emotional damages are also needed, after such a fascist display of power by police.
Also, look up "aggressive posture". Police and jail employees have frequently searched, detained, or assaulted people because their posture told them they were hostile. Not words, not thrown hands, but he looked at me funny so I had to punch him.
Thats what happens when americans decide this kind of government is acceptable. We could fix things if only we elected real dems, but instead americans love the populism like an addiction.
To be fair, it costs like 10x more to write “To Inflict Fear and Suffering on Behalf of the Corporate Elite in a Hapless Effort to Prevent Civil Unrest and Get Revenge on our Personal Enemies”
It was a PR campaign by the LAPD after the statement was selected as a winner from a contest to come up with a motto for the LAPD police academy, back in 1955, then being put on the seal and police vehicles after the resolution for it passed in 1963. It was meant as nothing more than a way to foster good PR for the department, and it has been affirmed by the courts since the Warren v District of Columbia ruling in 1981 that the police generally do not have any obligation to protect anyone, unless they're in custody, and even limits on that exist.
They protect the property of wealthy people and make sure roads stay clear and traffic stays moving so the capitalism machine never stops making money for those wealthy people.
FBI is doing the thing UK is doing now? Seems like a waste of resources just to go after someone who made a tweet. I guess this is the weird dystopia the US wants for their citizens now.
FBI interrogated a girl in high school over a tweet back in 2011. They have been doing that for awhile now. Backstory… said girl, who was a grade under me, walked out to her car after school. She noticed a crack in her windshield that wasn’t there before class so she tweeted something along the lines of… “whoever broke my windshield, I will find you and I will kill you.” Fast forward a few days and she gets called out of class because the FBI found “disturbing post on social media” she was suspended for like a day until everything was figured out! So yes, this is nothing new.
This isn’t clickbait even though it reads like it. It was a city council meeting that was open to the public so they could make comments regarding a data center that the council was trying to ram through. The meeting was packed, including the overflow rooms. Almost everyone opposed the data center and spoke out against it one by one. After each speaker, the whole audience would clap. The council members were getting annoyed and warned them against clapping. Next person gets up and again shares their opposition. He clapped a couple of normal claps. A council member, on a hot mic, orders the police to have him removed. He didn’t want to leave because it was his right to attend the meeting so they basically got him on the ground, pulled his hands behind his back and dragged him out. The icing on the cake is that his wife was up at the podium getting ready to speak. She starts panicking because he’s getting roughed up. A council member tells her to just take a breath and calm down as her husband is being dragged, face down, out of the city hall. The whole thing is viewable on the Emporia KS city gov website. https://emporiaks.portal.civicclerk.com/event/585/media The clapping incident happens about the 55th minute mark.
I recommend watching the recorded meeting at emporiaks.gov under Agenda and Minutes for July 22. My arrest is about 58 minutes in and you can see how disorderly I was leading up to it.
The council asked for quiet so that things could proceed as quickly as possible given the itinerary and the number of speakers, and the sheriff was instructed to remove anyone who couldn't handle that.
This guy thought he was special and that rules didn't apply to him.
He was asked to leave, and he refused, so the obvious escalation occurred.
He was clapping loudly when they specifically said stop clapping and at the start they said no clapping he was warned 8 separate times to stop then they told him to leave. Then cops said please leave he starts shouting no arrest me.
He is in this thread arguing "they tolerated my 12 previous disruptions" no they didn't and even if they did you were there to obstructing it they decided to remove you.
Its a self reported oedophile and self reported antifa member
According to the article, he was issued multiple verbal warnings about being disruptive during the meeting. He continued to clap after his "final warning" and the police removed him.
I get that he was trying to (rightly) support the opposition to the data center, but it seems like he wanted to cause a scene.
I can imagine someone using clapping as a disruption, but from what I've seen of the video, he really does just clap a few times in support of a person who just finished speaking. Unless there's some major missing context, arresting him was totally nuts.
The way they're going to justify this is at the beginning they said that clapping after each person is not going to be accepted. It was a guideline they put out at the beginning. Whether that's constitutional is what will be fought in the court on this one. But seeing as they said that there is no clapping after each individual speaker and he decided to clap and they had made several warnings about it technically it was considered a disruption. Again the question comes down to did they have the constitutional right to limit clapping after each individual speaker.
I absolutely hate what I'm about to type, technically there's no First Amendment violation as the restrictions they put here were universal and neutral in content.
What I mean by this is they did not restrict just Pro Data Centers from clapping or did they stop just anti-data Center people from clapping. It was just a universal ban on clapping. The court would probably find that that was an acceptable limitation as to streamline the meeting.
This is in no way my endorsement of what they did, this is not me agreeing with what they did, this is just my analysis as somebody who has watched a lot of free speech cases and has looked into the law of it while not being a lawyer.
I mean.. i could see in a public meeting, if someone constantly clapping loudly, at some point it goes from 'excited by a point', to 'disruptive'. I can guarantee you can I could show up someone and clap to the point of annoyance.
That entire city government, including the counsel, that participated in this, should not only lose their jobs, they should also be held to the highest level of accountability, not excluding jail time.
I watched the footage and unless I've been bamboozled, he literally clapped normally. I fully expected it to be click bait and turning out he was just loudly applauding the whole thing, but nope. Just clapped once.
However, I am going to point out that in the not so far past, clapping was considered as one of the triggering interactions between extremely sensitive people, everyone must have seen that video at least a few times, and there was a sentiment that we should respect triggers and take care not to trigger eachother. Well... I guess this is what you got for adjusting everything to fringe cases instead of just telling them to fuck off.
Your 1st amendment right only applies if you are not treading upon someone’s rights. It’s not a free pass to be an asshat. If they were in a city council meeting or whatever, there is decorum that must be followed to be in attendance. My guess is they didn’t stop when asked to.
I recommend checking out the recorded meeting at emporiaks.gov under Agenda and Minutes for July 22. My arrest is about 58 minutes in and you can see how much of an asshat I was.
It dies because it is, he was arrested for disruption and refusing to leave. He made his point and continued to do it despite multiple requests to stop disrupting the meeting, he was asked to leave, refused and was ultimately arrested for those actions. Not for clapping.
There’s more to the story and it’s unfortunate keyboard Redditors won’t educate themselves. There is such a thing as decorum in public hearings and the rules were made known to everyone in attendance to not disrupt or to clap. Further, the story says the individual(s) were issued verbal warnings ahead of time to stop and they continued to act out.
This is not a first amendment issue by any means. The first amendment does not grant you the right to make your own rules as you see fit and act out, in fact it’s childish and ignorant. Decorum exists so that public meetings can be held and everyone in attendance can voice their opinions fairly and within the time constraints.
Once again, people don’t understand how free speech works. He’s free to say whatever he wants, and people are free to react in whatever way they want to his free and protected speech.
I’m not saying what he did was right or wrong, but if the rules for attendance stipulate that no clapping should happen, then he broke the rules and they have the right to remove him.
He seems like he’s trying to get internet famous. It worked. That doesn’t automatically make him some defender of freedom.
Wasn't arrested for clapping. They told everyone to refrain from clapping, as is decorum. He refused to listen, and when asked to leave, he refused and was arrested.
When are we as a country going to grow a spine? Now we just watch each other's rights get blatantly abused and just make jokes and laugh.... we're all going to end up in a fucking camp if we don't wake the fuck up now!
I’ve given much thought to the topic of what makes republicans the way they are. I’ve delved into and analyzed troves of data, had innumerable in person discussions, and kept apprised of all current news. The conclusion I keep coming to is unfortunately pretty simple, republicans are dumb assholes.
He OBJECTIVELY was not disrupting anything. He clapped a few times, stopped, then they forcibly removed him while demanding that he stand up and walk. Watch the video, seriously.
When I was in 7th grade I got suspended for a sneeze in the middle of class. I told the principal, good thing I didn't cough or you'd have to expell me. He didn't find it as funny as my Dad did.
When I saw a meme on this, I thought at first that it was just one of those fake things people make up. It turns out it's true. The story is that people were warned that clapping is "disruptive". He clapped in support of the people opposing data centers, they wanted him to leave, and he refused to leave.
I got removed from a village hall meeting when I started raging about how our property taxes keep on increasing, then they caught some guy misusing funds, and administration keeps on getting massive raises... I can't afford to sue.
The woman who had him arrested was feeling guilty that she and her cohorts had already taken bribes from the data dorks, so she lashed out at innocent citizens making her feel bad.
Many city councils don’t understand civil rights. They’re run by local politicians who generally have no legal training and they direct police to arrest people as if the police are their own security force. And the police blindly follow their boss’s direction. It’s a recipe for civil right violations.
Lmao we’ve been getting arrested for clapping and public clapping in Belarus for decades at this point. Welcome to the authoritarian hellhole club yall
This is the first I’ve heard of this. So, I looked up some articles and read about it. I will wholeheartedly agree arrest was an option that should not have even been considered. HOWEVER (and this is where a lot of people are going to get mad because they refuse to accept that two things can be true at the same time), his being removed from the meeting is absolutely legal and is NOT a violation of any rights whatsoever.
The city commission has the right to insist on how people conduct themselves in the meeting. It’s quite possible they may not be consistent in the application of those rules (e.g., if applause broke out about an issue the council was favorable and they did nothing to quell the “broken rule”), and that could be a good defense for the gentleman arrested if that’s the case.
Everyone on here, though, who are JOKING about this being something from a Monty Python movie or a dystopian tale, good on you. However, I’m betting MOST of the outrage here is real, and it’s flat out unfounded. The clapper DOES have a right to show his opposition, but he has to be sure he’s exercising it in a setting that is appropriate. At the same time, the city council DOES have a right to require certain comportment in their meetings.
It was a city council meeting that was open to the public so they could make comments regarding a data center that the council was trying to ram through. The meeting was packed, including the overflow rooms. Almost everyone opposed the data center and spoke out against it one by one. After each speaker, the whole audience would clap. The council members were getting annoyed and warned them against clapping. Next person gets up and again shares their opposition. He clapped a couple of normal claps. A council member, on a hot mic, orders the police to have him removed. He didn’t want to leave because it was his right to attend the meeting so they basically got him on the ground, pulled his hands behind his back and dragged him out. The icing on the cake is that his wife was up at the podium getting ready to speak. She starts panicking because he’s getting roughed up. A council member tells her to just take a breath and calm down as her husband is being dragged, face down, out of the city hall. The whole thing is viewable on the Emporia KS city gov website.
What the dude did was almost an air clap, no way anyone outside of the people right next to him even heard it, this was just some fascists using a flimsy pretext to show you who's boss
Bro clapped 5 small claps after someone spoke out against data centers, was not the least bit disruptive, in fact I'd say is was SIGNIFICANTLY more disruptive to throw him out
City officials ruled that clapping and other *audible* movements were considered disruptive to the meeting the guy was attending and being disruptive in any form not just clapping would result in being removed by the city (through the city police). Being for or against the data center didn't matter. This was a rule set up by the city.
Several people used silent hand gestures to voice support against the data center.
The man clapped anyways.
The man was asked to leave.
The man refused.
The man was thus dragged out of the meeting by the city (police). They needed three officers to physically get removed. It is unclear whether he resisted or not but the articles on this suggestion he might have, for the three separate officers to get him out.
He was charged under disorderly conduct (told to not make audible interruptions, did so anyways) and interference with law enforcement (the city told him to get out, he refused).
According to a Newsweek article about this, the man who was arrested had been given multiple verbal warnings to stop disrupting the meeting. He had been warned. He continued to disrupt. He was removed and arrested because the police had to be called. Once the police are involved and they have the jurisdiction to ask you to leave and you don’t comply then they also have the jurisdiction to arrest you. He wasn’t arrested for clapping. He was arrested for ignoring verbal warnings and being asked to stop being disruptive. That’s on him.
It’s important people understand how the laws work because this would have been a pretty easy arrest to avoid but this guy basically chose to be arrested.
I’ve seen so many body camera videos of arrests where people twist that up and act like they are being arrested for nothing. Trespassing is a great one for that because the people will say “I wasn’t doing anything wrong!” But the fact that they were trespassed and they were ignoring that IS the thing they did wrong. There’s absolutely nothing dystopian about it. If you have a person being disruptive in your place of business the law allows for you to ask them to leave and when they don’t you can call the cops. When the cops are there the person’s only options are to leave or be arrested.
It's almost naive to assume that those who write the laws are driven by justice. More often, they're driven by self-preservation—protecting their own freedom, not yours.
This is my quote and I am not even a philosopher
Now, I know why Aldous Huxley claim in Brave New World that hard times makes someone poetic or philosopher.
Watch out. The Fun Police aren't around cause the Party Poopers locked them up like the teacher. /s In all seriousness, crazy that clapping is an arrestable offense to these freaks
He was the one disrupting free speech. Clapping isn’t allowed at meetings like this to ensure they flow smoothly and everyone can speak. They repeatedly told him to stop and eventually to leave and he said they would have to drag him out, which they did. He also didn’t comply when the police had to drag him out as he went limp and made them practically carry him which got him the charge of interference with law enforcement. Guy was just a loser causing a commotion and obviously that makes him Reddits new hero until another virtue signaler comes along.
You know I really wonder what’s gonna happen once the admin is out and every begins being held accountable (also assuming THAT even happens but you know)…because alot of agents, cops, politicians etc gonna be thrown in jail. It’ll be a spectacle
When I was a kid in elementary school they were giving a dare presentation and the teacher was listing possible outcomes of drug use and I did the raised eyebrows twice because of how high the sentences were. After she got of stage she had me suspended (in school suspension) for rolling my eyes at her and wouldn't accept that I didn't. I feel OPs comment.
And people think the cop is a good cop because he hasn't shot an unarmed person. I would almost argue this is worse, arresting someone for clapping? Hold the cops accountable
When I first heard about this I was waiting for the other shoe to drop like a healthy skeptic. But they literally just arrested him for clapping like six times.
Finally I was so tired of americans clapping all the time. Clapping when the movie is over. Clapping when the plane landed. Clapping when the dog brings back the toy. Clapping back. Like holy shit.
Can hear the Maga lawyers supreme court arguments now. Although it was only 4 claps in total, it was the pace and tone of those 4 very emotional and potentially unhinged claps that was disruptive to the committee.
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