Mugshots of those arrested during the No to Marxism in Berkeley event
Berkeley, CA police arrested 20 people on August 5 during a mostly peaceful “No to Marxism in Berkeley” event. At least it was peaceful until the police department decided to tweet out the names and mug shots of the Antifa members arrested. During the “alt-right” rally, local police said they made the arrests based on protesters in “possession of a banned weapon,” or “working with others to commit a crime.”
The cry of injustice began almost immediately. University of California law professor and former Berkeley police review commissioner Veena Dubal called it “public shaming”:
Veena Dubal
“This is very disturbing,” she said. “It seems like a public-shaming exercise, which is not the role of the police department … They are making it really accessible for folks who might wish these people harm to locate them.”
As opposed to Antifa members being trained by a professional fighter, supposedly for self-defense, but we all know better, don’t we.
There’s nothing wrong with “public shaming,” when the left does it; however, in this case, it’s the police letting their citizens know that certain individuals in their community had been arrested. Police blotters often have pictures, names, and other information regarding those who have been arrested. Just think of newspapers that publish mug shots of alleged drunk drivers.
Now, the left is all over Twitter for allowing the posts, or what they call “doxing.” An example of a tweet (that was removed) follows:
Andres Gonzalez, 35, of Oakland, was arrested at Civic Center Park on five counts of carrying a banned weapon. pic.twitter.com/GbU9PgFv9K
— Berkeley Police (@berkeleypolice) August 5, 2018
Huffington Post contributor Jesse Benn responded to the tweet with one of his own less that politically correct verbiages:
hey @TwitterSupport I thought doxing wasn’t allowed or is it just fine when a ghostskin does it from an official police account?
— Jesse Benn (@JesseBenn) August 6, 2018
Before the event was held, the police department posted notices that explicitly prohibited weapons or anything that can be deemed a weapon at the demonstration. The notice also forbade the wearing of masks — which we all know was directed at the cowardly mask-wearing antifa members. Still, counter protesters were arrested for ignoring the banns and bringing weapons or conspiring to commit a crime, according to the Berkeley police.
Sam Menefee-Libey, a Washington DC activist who has helped Trump protesters, compared the cops to Nazis:
“It’s clear that the cops have chosen sides and that they think of the left as their enemies,” he said. “The cops are doing something that Nazis do all the time, which is dox people.”
The “cops” were only using the social media as everyone else does – a means to quickly get the information to the public. Antifa members are just upset that their own tactics were turned against them. But, in this case, it was not doxing those arrested, it was reporting it as police departments and newspapers around the nation have done for decades.
Arrests are a matter of public record; putting the information out on Twitter just delivers it faster. The mask-wearing Antifa members are not likely to be happy about being “revealed” to the world since they go to such lengths to hide their identities. But that’s just how the cookie crumbles.
