Critics of the St. Petersburg, Florida Police do not realize the important national security work that department is spearheading. They are, in fact, doing their bit in the War on Terror. Like President Bush, who shies away from getting compliant judges to rubber-stamp his wiretaps (too much paperwork in the 72-hour period AFTER the wiretapping commences with the Attorney General's approval), they are enhancing national security without infringing upon civil rights at all. In fact, they are working with Governor Jeb Bush on the "In-School Anti-Terror Initiative," which Jeb is overseeing for his brother.
You see, young children apparently throwing verbal temper tantrums are a definite threat to national security. Recent intelligence shows that Al Qaeda recruits such children and teaches them to act up in school or on school transportation. These children are not, in fact, simply at an overly emotional moment, nor are they acting in perfectly normal ways. They are trained terrorists, disrupting our educational systems, and testing our ability to react to adolescents and even young children having a bad day.
The videotapes of the two recent handcuffings of mouthy children do not show overbearing swaggering by unintelligent police officers. They do not depict dumb cops looking for an "exit strategy" in a situation in which they have lost self-control. Rather, these tapes depict the carefully crafted use of verbal and postural disdain for the terrorist mentality. This disdain keeps the young terror-mouth at bay. Handcuffing shows the terrorist child that police have ultimate control, and remind them that the Constitution, common sense, and decency will be ignored when necessary to protect our cherished American freedoms.
So, America, lay off the St. Pete Police. They are in lockstep – not "goosestep," "lockstep," so don't go making any "Nazi" comparisons in your mind – with President Bush.
Copyright © 2005 by Gregory P. Lee. Mr. Lee is proprietor of Three/Four Communications, and is an Adjunct Professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts. His
writings can be found at www.threefourcomm.com.
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