I Take it all Back. I Love Cops.

My posts lately have been of the glass-half-empty variety, a perspective which I'll admit comes naturally to me. It's my old MO. But I'm promising myself to cut it out for a while after this post.

Last week I was bitching about the minor league extortion pulled on me by the city of Romulus, who told me I could appeal my speeding ticket by writing in with an explanation, then switched the violation to a more expensive parking ticket ($170) when it was too late for me to do anything about it. I whined about the naked "aggressiveness" of it.

But that incident doesn't even come close to the absurdity and macho-fascism of what took place at the CAID art gallery in Detroit last Friday night. In short, a SWAT team descended on a dance party happening there, guns drawn, forcing every "motherfucker" in the place to lie on their face (some in the mud outside) with their hands behind their backs while they "secured" the building. Accounts say people were physically hit and kicked and guns were placed to heads. Anybody who questioned what they were doing was cuffed and penalized. After a considerably long detaining, the small group of perplexed suburbanites were issued tickets and left on foot in the ghetto to find a way home - because everybody's cars were impounded.

In the end it seemed to have something to do with the venue's serving of alcohol past legal hours. Or the patrons' young ages. Or something. Nobody's really sure. What we can be sure of is that the city made a lot of money off that raid. In addition to the personal tickets, there were close to 50 vehicles towed at $900 per car.

There are two great forums where this is being discussed:

Five Three Dial Tone

and

Web Vomit