Last Wednesday a Baptist minister from Tempe, Arizona named Steven Anderson became involved in an altercation with the Border Patrol and the Arizona Department of Public Safety (Highway Patrol) at a permanent Border Patrol checkpoint located about 70 miles east of Yuma.
Today he posted a Youtube video providing his story about what happened. It can be viewed at this link:
http://www.youtube.com/...
If you believe him, you will learn that he approached the checkpoint and declined to answer any questions and remained stopped in the through lane (blocking it) for about an hour until the DPS officers arrived. He contends that the officers then beat and tazed him, in the process smashing his car windows, pushing his head first into the broken glass and then into the pavement. He required 11 stitches and was arrested.
However, for me, horrendous as it sounds, that is not the story. This pastor is a victim, to be sure, but not necessarily of the law enforcement people. (There is some likelihood that the police overreacted and used excessive force, particularly the multiple tazings.) Yet, he is more likely a victim of right wing hate propaganda. He seems to be a believer in the meme that Obama and his federal minions are somehow depriving us of our constitutional rights, specifically, the Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. The fact that these checkpoints have been in operation for over 25 years is lost on him
His anti Obama attitude can be seen from this video, where he is seen disagreeing with an Obama supporter at his church and ordering the fellow out, referring to Obama as "The Devil" and being "wicked as hell." He is far from benign.
http://www.youtube.com/...
I can also observe here that Anderson’s church is not any kind of mainstream Baptist, but an independent of some sort.
In any event, after listening to him rail about being ‘tortured,’ he complains that he was simply peacefully insisting on his Fourth Amendment rights, later concluding by urging America to "Wake up! Why is this happening in the United States of America?"
I think it clear that this guy’s behavior at the checkpoint was very odd. It should be understood that these permanent checkpoints are fairly common along the Mexican border, are authorized by statute and have been approved by the Supreme Court back in 1976 in US v. Martinez-Fuerte. These checkpoints are well-marked and the BP is entitled to ask basic questions to see if you are smuggling people. And, usually they ask where you’re coming from to see if you’ve been in Mexico. Ninety-nine percent of the time they wave you on. But they don’t need probable cause to ask you questions there.
Here, after the good pastor refused to answer any questions, they put the sniffer dog on his car and it apparently ‘alerted.’ (No issue of a phony alert, so far as I can tell, though the pastor doubts it. When that happened, the BP and later the DPS did have probable cause, even though, again, the good pastor doesn’t seem to be aware of it.
So the question is: What drove this dude to refuse to answer the simple questions that would have resulted in a wave-through? What principle was he trying to affirm? The only thing I can see is that he is suffering from some sort of misinformation about his rights and was trying some sort of misguided civil resistance. I think he believes that the Obama administration, Devil that it is, needs to be bearded and that he is making a patriotic statement in doing so. And, I think he has been led to this view by right wing hate of the government.
Now maybe I’m extrapolating too much from these limited facts, but I’m betting that this pastor is self-educated (poorly) and vulnerable to right wing hate groups’ persuasions. Either he doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand. Or, perhaps, he wants to be a martyr to the anti government cause.
This type of right wing propaganda needs to be addressed much more vigorously than it has been so far. Obama is not depriving people of their rights under the Constitution and we need to say so.