“If you’re going to act like a woman I’m going to treat you like a woman”

First thing that popped into my head was “What elicited this response?”

Perhaps she said something like “You can’t do this to me, I’m a woman” in her panicked reaction to being arrested/questioned. Mere speculation, but more plausible than the later embellishments.

She does feminism no favors here, what with the “I may have … ” and “It could’ve been” statements that remind me of the fainting couch outside of Larry Summers’ lectures.

Jumping the gun does you no favors either.

Also, for those of you unfamiliar with our subway system, it is crowded and the people are in constant motion–always in a hurry. The laws requiring animals to be in carriers are for the public safety and I might add to protect the animal too. She could have easily lost control of her dog, who was probably not in the best of moods–overheated and scared from all the noise–and the animal could have been further injured. Forget Chrissie for a minute and consider the same situation if it was not a Pug, but a sick, scared Pitt Bull instead. No one wants dog puke on them, nor do they want a dog bite, nor to see a dog injured. So, for it to work, the law has to be enforced equally, EVEN for Chrissie and HER Pug. She doesn’t get a free pass because she is so special.

It is totally unbelievable that the officer involved went from 0 to arresting her without some behavior warranting such on Chrissie Brodigan’s part. While NYC cops can be incredibly callous, racist and generally fucked up, they also have alot of SHIT to deal with and have their limits too. Most of us NYers get this concept and when dealing with the Police, we don’t act a fool and as mellow as possibe–we STFU and take the summons and go on with our lives. If Chrissie didn’t agree, she could have fought her summons at a hearing.

I am by no means an apologist for Cops–in an ideal world they would be good and fair–unfortunately this is NYC reality. This city is TOTALLY corrupt and the cops are no exception. Chrissie Brodigan CHOSE to transplant herself right in the middle of it. To me this is not a question of misogyny and power differentials THOSE ARE A GIVEN in this city and most of us use better discretion when chosing our battles. Instead this incident and the way Chrissie Brodigan handled it is quite disturbing. How can someone be so totally disengaged from the reality of her environment? How can someone purport to rescue Pugs and then endanger their wellbeing by taking them on the hot, noisey subway? Why has she created this circus around a simple summons? As someone else pointed out, her story keeps “evolving”. To me she is fishing for sympathy.

Chrissie has been searching for people to sue for a few years. She creates blown out of proportion incidents and then writes her own history. For example, she claims to have studied the history of oppressed people her entire life. Uh – not according to her resume. She claimed then that she studied the history of new media and never finished her phd on the history of flight attendants. There are real victims in this world, but this woman is not one of them. The real victim will be her next employer and the unfortunate people she inflicts herself on. Not to mention those poor pugs, who with naturally difficulties with breathing (due to their mushed up little snouts) don’t fare well when squashed into a person’s big satchel pocketbook.

I generally agree with you, but I do think that the power differential is mitigated by the race and class of both parties. I’m not sure that so many people would have stopped to witness/help if Ms. Bronigan had been black or Latina, for example (I wish it were so, but I doubt it).

She also may have physically attacked him and the bruises were a result of his trying to subdue that attack with minimum force. I’m not enough of an expert to guess if that’s likely from the photos, but it might be the case.

I do enjoy the goose stepping example, though.

Um, noooo. I was just curious because what I got from your post didn’t match up with what I’ve experienced with Chabad, so I thought perhaps I misunderstood something or missed a detail. Your comment about your Conservative grandmother makes it make perfect sense–although I wish the Chabad rabbis where I grew up were that lenient re: bat mitzvah.

The problem is this kind of thread attracts impolite speculation and airing of prejudices! And it drags people’s names through the mud (it will affect the results for google searches on their names). This kind of speculation isn’t idle.

Look, we can make a reliable judgement without knowing any of the window dressing because it doesn’t matter. The absolute bottom line is that, at worst, the woman in question might have committed a trivial and ticketable offense which had ended. The point of not allowing animals outside of carriers is for the comfort of other passengers, she was on her way out, the point is then moot. Regardless of how she may or may not have acted, the response was out of line. She could have goose stepped around the officer reciting passages from Mein Kampf and it wouldn’t have changed the fundamental facts here at all. The officer is an officer, he has a badge and a belt full of weapons, he is granted the authority to make arrests and use force in order to ensure compliance. That level of power demands that the people who hold it adhere to a higher standard of behavior. Regardless of what the woman might have said, it was the officer’s responsibility to remain calm and professional. It was his responsibility to use good judgement. If he cannot maintain that level of behavior, he does not deserve to continue being a police officer, much less have his little temper tantrum defended.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if this woman did say something which caused the officer to use force, then she isn’t the one who ought to be heading to jail. The power differential in this situation was extreme on virtually every level. Any use of force outside of self defense was out of line regardless of what precipitants might have been present.

All that being said, though, I receive verbal abuse and threats worse than “asshole” on a fairly regular basis and I’m just a security guard with a non-threatening stature who makes 12$ an hour. While working, I have met many police officers and made a few arrests myself. I don’t know anyone in a uniform who would blink at anything anyone could say other than perhaps direct threats of violence. I’ve also seen a couple of arrests involving agitated suspects who were being directly violent towards the arresting officers, and some of the scuffles have become fairly intense, but no one was ever injured in any way.

These experiences make it hard for me to believe that the officer was behaving professionally and was using as little force as required (as that is assuming that he even had legal justification to make the arrest- I’m not familiar with US laws, but Roy made some good points upthread). Basically, I’m not sympathetic to arguments that relate in any way to “verbal abuse” or “hurling insults”. That is the job. I’ve been called a “cunt” and a “bitch” and I’ve seen a black officer behave with professional amusement when arresting a purse-snatching skinhead screaming the “N” word at him, to name a few examples. That absolutely goes with the job (even a cheesy version of it, like mine- I write parking tickets for the municipality in case your wondering why I hear so many insults). Appologies for the lengthy rant.

chava says:

Of course we don’t have enough information yet. If we did, well, there would really be no need for this thread. I think as long as we attempt to keep our speculation polite and thoughtful, it’s really quite fine…

The problem is this kind of thread attracts impolite speculation and airing of prejudices! And it drags people’s names through the mud (it will affect the results for google searches on their names). This kind of speculation isn’t idle.

As far as being a Reform Jew, uh, no. I was Orthodox from my early childhood until adulthood. My grandmother–a conservative Jew–was upset at the choice my mother made to embrace Orthodox Judaism when I was younger and insisted on me having a Bat Mitzvah. Since our rabbi had done similar things for the reform girls that went to our Sunday school–the only Jewish sunday school in the area–he did the same for me too.

From what I’ve read of the officer’s remarks, they sound quite misogynist. And from my time in an Orthodox congregation–being raised in it–I can say definitively that the attitudes of the men towards women that are too outspoken or independent are deplorable and eerily similar. If you’re a good woman and cover your body and obey your father, then you’re separate but “equal”, if you seriously want to think that not being included in religious services is “equality”. Otherwise, rumors and such follow you everywhere. If you’re too outspoken and uppity, they might even arrange the Jewish equivalent of an exorcism, because a woman shouldn’t have opinions of her own unless she’s possessed by something. I’ve had friends who I grew up with get disowned for marrying people who weren’t Jewish. So WestEndGirl’s idea of the Hasids’ treatment of women is quite rosy compared to my experience.

The culture at large is really quite shitty towards women, and that’s all that it takes for a lot of men–religious or not–to be misogynists. My point is that the commenter on the linked thread who tried to justify his remarks with a comparison to Yiddish is being deliberately obtuse. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter where his misogyny came from, as long as his comments reveal what he thinks about women is creating a situation in which he abuses his power.

Of course we don’t have enough information yet. If we did, well, there would really be no need for this thread. I think as long as we attempt to keep our speculation polite and thoughtful, it’s really quite fine…