Posted by Mary on October 22, 2007 at 11:42 AM
When I recently read the blog posted by Amber Pacific about their run in with the law in Philly, I wasn’t surprised. What I was surprised with though was how much it mirrored a few of my past experiences with the cops in Philly. It’s obvious there’s some gross misuse of power coming from those parts....let’s start out with Amber Pacific’s specific incident aken from their MySpace blog:
Hello all, it’s Rick! For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been tagging along since April with the A-Pac guys, mostly just beating Greg in Halo and melting faces. Oh, and I also play some guitar. To those of you I’ve met over the last 7 months, thanks for being great and welcoming me into the “family!” To those I haven’t met yet, well get your butt out to a show and say “Hi!”
Now that we got that out of the way, I’m writing here to set the story straight about an incident a few of you have heard about after our show in Philadelphia at the Fillmore this past Tuesday, the 16th. A basic summary of the night would be our drummer Dango was a victim of completely unnecessary force used by a Philadelphia Police officer for absolutely no reason. If you are queasy about swearing, as used by this officer and others, you can stop here. If you want the whole story, read on!
After our show, as we always do, we waited by our merch table to meet anyone and everyone who would like to say hi, get a picture, or get something signed. We were told after a few minutes by venue security that there wasn’t enough room near our merch area, and that we would have to go outside to the sidewalk. We went outside in front of the venue to meet and greet. After a few minutes, a Philadelphia Police officer came by with his bike, and threw his bike in front of the kids waiting in line, and gruffly told everyone to move, as blocking the entrance was a fire hazard. We moved about 20 feet down so we weren’t near the door anymore. We continued to sign, and then that same cop came back a minute later, very agitated, and said “ Did you not hear what I said? I told you guys to move!” He then very angrily yelled at the kids waiting “ get out of here!” We felt maybe we could just move behind the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus’ trailer, where we couldn’t be blocking the sidewalk. As we did so, The officer was following us the whole time, and Will told everyone “ Ok, let’s move down here where there aren’t rude cops” Apparently, that touched a nerve. He yells at Will, word for word, “ What the fuck did you say, you little faggot douchebag???” Will spins around, and asks him “ What did you call me???”
Here’s where it gets weird though. The cop grabs Dango, who hadn’t said a word, and yells at him “ DO NOT RESIST!” several times, really loudly, as he spins him around and throws handcuffs on him. As we start to protest, he grabs Dango and throws him violently up against Red Jumpsuit’s trailer, and then starts to rummage through his pockets, throwing his stuff to the ground. He then goes through his wallet, and throws that stuff to the ground too. Dango, who hadn’t said a thing this whole time, finally asks “ Sir, why am I being handcuffed? I haven’t said a thing.” He wouldn’t give him an answer, just more profanities. Meanwhile, another cop comes over and tells us to step back. We ask him why Dango has been detained, as we’re just signing autographs for kids. He just proceeds to tell us to “Shut the fuck up and step back!”
It finally ended when the cop let Dango go about 15 minutes later, no explanation, no reason why he was detained in the first place. After that, I asked the first cop for his badge number, and we told him we were going to file a complaint with the city. He got angry, but then he laughed and said “ it wouldn’t be the first time, bud, I’ve been around the horn.” I then asked who the supervisor of the group was, and it so happened to be the other cop. I asked him for his badge number, and he refused to give it to me. I ended up seeing it on his shirt, so I wrote it down. I told them to expect a complaint, and the first cop then said “ Let’s just take them all away.” Luckily another cop there said “ no, we can’t do that, they haven’t done anything.”
Dango’s wrists were very visibly bruised, and none of the officers could or would give us a reason for their actions. A complaint is being filed with the city and Philly PD Internal Affairs. Hopefully the cops receive some sort of reprimand, but I’m not holding my breath. We hear this thing happens a lot in Philly, and that the cops arrest people all the time for no reason.
So that’s it, sorry for the length and profanity, but the story had to be told in it’s entirety. But thanks for reading this far!
On another note, the show was great though! Thanks to all the people in Philly who have supported us! And we’re about ready to head into Canada on the amazing Red Jumpsuit tour, with Monty Are I (tour bus bretheren!!), New Year’s Day (amazingly cool people and new friends!), and Red Jumpsuit (whom we’re definitely going to beat again in football.) So come out to a show and say hi!
Until next time,
-Rick
Now, if any of you have ever met Dango, you’d realize how absurd all of this is. And if you haven’t met him, check out the interview Stacie did with the band about a month ago to get a feel for what these guys are all about. Violence and abusing the law don’t really come to mind.
Now, let me run you through a few of my own personal experiences with the cops in these same parts. Both of my experiences occurred outside of the TLA in Philly, which is on South St. If you’re not familiar with South St., it’s a thriving metropolis of nightlife and activity. There are shops, restaurants, clubs, etc. It’s well lit, people everywhere, and MOST people are just minding their own business having a good time - except for the cops.
Flash back to a few years ago...Butch Walker was playing the TLA. After the show, everyone is filing out, having a good time, talking about the show. We’re met directly with a barricade of cops standing outside yelling at people to keep moving. Fine...don’t block the sidewalk, we get it, we’re not robots, we’re people. As one guy was coming out, he met the cops with a comment - the exact words don’t come to my mind at the moment but it wasn’t anything outlandish or rude, it was just a remark made to their overtly aggressive behavior. You’d think they were transporting people in a high security prison from their cell to solitary confinement...sorry dudes, we’re just a bunch of rockers leaving a show. Anyway, before the poor kid even finished his sentence, they had his face bashed up against the wall of the building, smashing his camera as it met the building with the same force. They “cuffed” him with their zip ties (I guess the big boys haven’t graduated to real cuffs yet) and started screaming at him. I walked away because I knew if I said anything, I’d be thrown into the same position, and frankly, I don’t look fashionable in cuffs. Many people stood around basically telling them they were a little out of control and the guy didn’t do anything...I don’t think it made much of a difference.
That was my nice story. The next story is even more absurd. Julie and I drove to Philly to see our boys in The Lashes. After the show, I had a bag of things in my car for the band, so I ran to get them, and came back. They wouldn’t let me back in the club at this point though so I was standing outside just waiting. A cop came over to me....and stood about THISCLOSE to my face and yelled in a voice not unlike that of the devil himself “KEEP MOVING YOU CAN’T STAND HERE”. Mind you, I was the only soul standing in front of the club and it didn’t really look like I was holding up any major traffic or causing any sort of problem. As I took about half a second to process the information and decide what I was going to do..he got EVENCLOSER to my face and yelled..."WHAT, DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ENGLISH!?!?!?!” I was sort of horrified and shocked..and just kinda looked at him. I usually have a mouth that doesn’t stop but I think I was just a bit shocked by his behavior...so...we started to walk around the building to go find the band. As we were walking, he yelled that we couldn’t go behind the club....we sorta shrugged and went anyway. I had had about enough of that guy.
We finally reached our happy place when we found the band loading out behind the club. Nate was playing his accordian (which he does after most shows and people hang out, sing, dance and LOVE it!) and everyone was just having a good time hanging out. There was nothing going on - no tomfoolery, no hullabalou, no shenanigans. The opening band had their van parked behind The Lashes band and they were hanging out with their friends as well. Before we know it, cops on bikes come at us from all angles and there was nowhere to escape. They are screaming and yelling and you’d think there was a murder in progress - no....just a bunch of hooligans hanging out. Before we could even look at each other, they had pulled all the girls sitting in the opening band’s van out of the van and had them face first up against the wall. These looked like 18-22 year old girls..you know, the real dangerous type that go to rock shows and support bands. We were all sort of just looking at each other like what the fuck but before we could even say “what” the cop was giving Nate shit telling him to put his accordian away and that he couldn’t play it in public, that it violated some “no having fun in public” law that they seem to have in Philly. Ah..dude, no offense but we’re in a dark alley behind a club and the only public here is US and we’re certainly not offended by Nate or his accordian. Nate looked a bit bewildered but...put it away without so much as a peep. While they were using their zip ties to tie up all of the dangerous teenage girls we thought best to split the scene. We hadn’t done anything but by this logic, they’d be locking up Ben for wearing too many belts at the same time any minute now. So we round the corner and head for cheesesteaks...but before we get there, we run into cops on bikes who have some helpless dude laying IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD hog tied. And by hog tied, I mean hog tied. He was laying on his belly and his hands were cuffed behind his back and his feet were tied together. We all sort of looked at each other and I think we all simultaneously just said RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!! It was like we were in some bad B movie. Scotty wanted to fight back but...we thought the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt he was wearing might break a law of some sort and we weren’t willing to let him get sent to the clink for that. We had to hold him back though, he was ready to rumble with the law. We sat there for hours just saying.."did we really just see all of that absurdity?????” I think we reinacted a few of the busts as well..you know, just for fun.
The bottom line is, this kind of behavior is tolerated by the city of Philadelphia, and has been tolerated for quite some time. Perhaps it’s time something is done about it. You can’t just decide that because you have a badge and a cruiser that you can muscle innocent people around at will because you’re bored with your job..oh wait..strike that, these boys don’t even have cruisers, they have bicycles...maybe THAT’S why they are so mad. They haven’t worked their way up the big boy ladder yet to four wheels instead of two. The point is, people need to start fighting back against this sort of injustice, not in the physical sense but by reporting these incidents, getting badge names and numbers, writing to the Philly papers, talking about it online, etc. Remember...the power belongs to the people…
If you live in Philly or go to the clubs in Philly, we’d be interested in hearing your experiences with the men in blue.....
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Where was it that our beloved Damian got arrested?