“Ordinary folks should listen to the hair on the back of their neck”
by digby
Yesterday I noted that Fox News was hysterically flogging the story of FBI head James Comey was down in Mississippi speaking to law enforcement, ginning up all kinds of paranoia about terrorists lurking around every corner and exhorting citizens to keep an eye on their neighbors and report anything suspicious. Here’s a highlight of his speech:
“Mississippi is a great state, but like all 50 states it has troubled souls that might look to find meaning in this sick, misguided way. The challenge that we face in law enforcement is that they may be getting exposed to that poison and that training in their basement,” Comey said. “They’re sitting there consuming and may emerge from the basement to kill people of any sort, which is the call of ISIL, just kill somebody.”
So he stressed that the threat is very real, not just for military or law enforcement or the media, all of whom have been warned by the FBI that ISIS could be gunning for them, but for ordinary citizens as well.
“If you can video tape it all the better, if it’s law enforcement all the better, if you can cut somebody’s head off and get it on tape, what a wonderful thing in their view of the world,” he continued. “That’s the challenge we face everywhere.”…
“Ordinary folks should listen to the hair on the back of their neck,” he said. “We’ve gone back through every homegrown violent extremist case in the United States and studied it. In every single case, someone saw something online, at a religious institution, in a family setting, at a school, that was weird, that was out of place, this person was acting in a way that didn’t make sense.”
I even made this arch remark:
That guy living across the street from you who has a kind of weird accent? He’s probably one.
Well guess what? In neighboring Alabama the citizens are on the case and so are the police:
Madison police last week roughed up a 57-year-old Indian citizen who was walking on the sidewalk outside his son’s home, leaving the older man temporarily paralyzed and hospitalized with fused vertebrae.
“He was just walking on the sidewalk as he does all the time,” said his son, Chirag Patel, this morning. “They put him to the ground.”
No crime had been committed. Madison Police on Monday issued a statement saying the department had suspended the officer and were investigating the use of force in this case. The police statement wished the man a “speedy recovery.”
Chirag Patel, an engineer for one of the many government contractors in Huntsville, said he had just bought a one-way ticket for his father, bringing him from the small Indian town of Pij to his new home in fast-growing suburbs of Madison.
He said his father, Sureshbhai Patel, was to help his wife care for their new baby, a 17-month-old son, so he could pursue his masters degree in electrical engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
“This is a good neighborhood. I didn’t expect anything to happen,” said Chirag Patel, who recently bought the new house on Hardiman Place Lane.
Madison police issued a statement on Monday saying they received a call early Friday about a man looking in garages among the brick homes just south of the city’s new high school.
“The caller, who lives in the neighborhood did not recognize the subject and thought him to be suspicious,” reads the statement released by police.
Hank Sherrod, attorney for the family, this morning said the man was not walking on other people’s property nor looking in garages.
“This is broad daylight, walking down the street. There is nothing suspicious about Mr. Patel other than he has brown skin,” said Sherrod.
But Sureshbhai Patel does not speak English, this being only his second trip to the United States. He had arrived less than two weeks ago.
The statement by Madison police refers to a “communication barrier.” Chirag Patel said his father speaks only Gujarati, and some Hindi.
Sherrod says the Sureshbhai Patel told the police officers “no English” and repeated his son’s house number.
The police statement says the officer attempted to frisk the man.
“The subject began putting his hands in his pockets,” reads the police statement. “Officers attempted to pat the subject down and he attempted to pull away. The subject was forced to the ground, which resulted in injury.”
Sherrod said he spoke with Sureshbhai Patel at Huntsville Hospital this morning. He said there were two officers present and that Patel was patted down and did not pull away. Sherrod said one officer then pulled Patel’s arm up behind him and slung him face first into the ground. He said Patel could not say what happened after that.
“This is just one of those things that doesn’t need to happen,” said Sherrod, saying the police escalated to violence without cause and left Patel lying bleeding from his face, paralyzed and in need of paramedics.
But hey, you really can’t be too careful, amirite? What with ISIS commonly walking down the streets of small Southern towns and the head of the FBI telling people that they’re coming to kill us all in our beds any day he’s lucky they didn’t waterboard him. I’m sure the hair on the back of the necks of everyone involved was screaming “there’s a terrorist!” and I don’t think we need to know any more than that.
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