The mainstream media has gone crazy over a viral video showing a police officer arresting a young woman on a train in Los Angeles. CBS News has the headline “Video shows officer drag teen off train for foot on seat.” The L.A. Times has the headline “She put her foot on the seat of a Metro train and got detained. Did the LAPD overreact?” Many other media outlets had similar descriptions.

Basic Spin

If you only follow the leftist media, you will be left with the impression of an obvious case of police brutality and the excess use of force. However, when you watch the video (see below), you can distinctly hear the officer saying “I told you what to do and you disobeyed me. You’re getting off the train.”

In other words, the chain of events was as follows: 1) A young woman disobeyed the rules of the train and put her feet on an empty seat. 2) A police officer saw this an instructed her to remove her legs, informing her that it was against the train rules. 3) She then repeatedly refused to comply with the officer’s instruction. 4) The officer then removed the young woman from the train for disobeying an officer of the law.

The situation escalated because the young woman insisted she had a right to have her feet on the seat because she had paid for the ticket and she was arrested.

Spoilt Generation

More than anything, this incident illustrates how far left the media in America has become. What should have been an obvious case of a spoiled teenager being disciplined for disobeying an officer of the law was portrayed as if the young woman was somehow violated and that the police used excessive force.

Once upon a time in America, such a story would have been unthinkable. Only a few decades ago the respect for the law was high and police officers, like soldiers, were respected as honorable enforcers of the law. People had a keen understanding that rules of conduct and politeness were about respect for other people.

In the case of the civil code on the train, who wants to sit on a seat sullied by feet that have stepped in dog droppings? Having the feet on the ground is about respecting other passengers on the train. Decency used to be such a common trait that it would be almost unthinkable that a police officer would have to tell someone to behave properly. Now, this art of civility is so lost that it becomes world news when enforced.

Laying the Blame

So how did we get to a place where a young woman finds rudeness and blatantly disobeying an officer of the law to be perfectly acceptable behavior? Here the complicit media and radical leftist professors must take most of the blame. In the last few decades, the media has pounded law enforcers with so many fake accusations of police brutality and racism that a significant portion of the population no longer has any respect for the law. In the universities, students are taught by professors that the police are part of a white supremacist patriarchy and has no legitimacy.

While decent people have been busy doing decent things, the left has been busy sowing seeds of hatred; what else could be expected? To quote the Galatians (6:7): “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”