This time we go to the “law professor”, Ann Althouse:
Are the men in the T-shirts also from Moveon.org? Who were they? There were no arrests and though there was a crowd, no one bothered to have detained these men. Did they just melt back into the night? It’s very convenient that these bad actors were wearing labels identifying them.
Apparently Ann missed the part where on of the assailants has already been identified, and there are unconfirmed reports that he has now been detained.
But back to Ann:
AND: Perhaps the reason the crowd did not detain the men is that, in person, it did not look as brutal as it seems in the short video clip — a clip that has the words “head” and “stomp” near it. What was the woman doing before the men activated themselves to stop her? Also, look closely. There is no head stomp. The head is on the curb, but the foot presses down on the shoulder. That ends pretty quickly. That restraint might be a reason to speculate that the men were part of some Moveon.org theater, but it could also mean that the men felt they needed to stop her — because she was in disguise and rushing toward the candidate? — and they reacted quickly. There is force, but they soon back off. I’m not endorsing their judgment about what amount of force was appropriate, but perhaps I can see reason to think that they may have been motivated not by their preexisting propensity toward violence, but by the purpose of protecting the candidate.
Well let’s split hairs over where the foot actually landed. Here’s the image again:
Yes it might have actually been the shoulder, but if you watch the whole video, it looks like it was a miss for the stomper. And it doesn’t matter where the foot landed. If this was a police officer engaging in this then there would be an excessive force investigation. She was already down and detained. I guess the law professor doesn’t understand the law?
And I guess it’s a good thing that Lexington PD doesn’t use Ann as a resource on law training:
“I think we’re probably going to come up with something later today,” Roberts said, adding that tips have been coming in literally from around the country about who the suspects in the attack might be. “Because it was captured on video, we have a good idea what happened [and] at this point there doesn’t seem to be anything to justify how this incident unfolded.”
Though the victim of the attack, Lauren Valle, was interviewed by police on the scene for about 20 minutes, none of the suspects were questioned. Roberts explained the crowd was chaotic, and the perpetrators had disappeared into it by the time police arrived.
Ann’s question of why they weren’t detained is answered right there by law enforcement and we also find out that this case is anything but shut. As matter of fact, it sounds like there might even be charges later on.
But keep spinning wingnuts. Show America how little you think of our democracy by trying to support the violence that has become an all to common part of it.