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ftaa (insert clever f-word based acryonym here)

This FTAA incident reminds me of an incident, less about violence and the misuse of public resources (which is covered in the FTAA thing well enough) than just misrepresentativeness in the current legal system:

Two friends of mine were walking through the woods in the hills behind UCSC. One was attending school there, and the other was visiting from Berkeley. They happened to walk into an area where protesters had chained themselves to trees, and officers were arresting them for impeding a construction process (IIRC). My two friends, who had paused to see what the hubbub was about, were quickly surrounded, arrested, and taken into custody. This begs the question, "why?" to me. It's one thing to get a speeding ticket, or a jaywalking ticket, but to be arrested for being in the wrong place seemed foolish on the part of the police.

Both friends were booked, put in jail, and were made to wait overnight for a preliminary hearing. The friend from Berkeley had both work and school exams, and had no way to be excused either. He pleaded "no contest," which has the same result as saying "guilty as charged," but without admitting guilt. He has that on his permanent record, for whatever that can influence.

The other friend, equally irate, but benefiting from being local, pleaded "not guilty," and the prelim went to actual trial. I'm a little fuzzy on this, but she was released, and told to show up in court on a specific date. where the case was dismissed as wrongful.

Now one of them has a questionable record and the other does not. The one with the questionable record got it from trying to be responsible to his commitments while the other has no record of the event because she had time to fight it. (via scattershot)

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