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Houston Police Department.

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muffy:
That whole thing was entirely messed up.

I'm fully aware of the fact that I care more because it's a band I absolutely love, but then I guess it's things like that which bring your attention to a rather serious problem like Really Stupid Cops With More Meat Than Brain Cells and the authority to use it in such a threatening, childish manner. They're meant to be the authority, for god's sake, not there to intimidate people on what seemed like a whim.

greenMonkey:
I hope that cop gets fired and punished.  Even if the so called noise complaint was valid, the cop had no rationale for acting in the manner that he did.  You can clearly hear his tazer in several of the videos.  Why the fuck did he start beating up the band?

Action_franky:
I'm from Texas and it's a fact ALL Texas cops are dicks.

they all think they're cowboys and have a high incident rate for beating people without reason.

they suck balls.

Johnny C:
The HPD Has Problems has moved here. As well, Pitchfork did an interview with Two Gallants about the incident. Excerpt (the first two quotes being from Adam Stephens, guitarist and Taseree):


--- Quote ---"I think he was getting on the stage right when I was turning around. Had a flashlight in his hand and it was turned on, he was pointing it at me and walking towards me and yelling at us to stop. And I questioned him--I don't remember my exact words, but I don't think it matters. I asked 'why?', or said 'what's the problem?' just wanting to have some explanation, which I think I'm lawfully due. And I questioned him once and he didn't give me any answer, he just yelled at me to stop again. And I think I questioned him one more time.

"I wasn't rude about it. I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea if there was some huge problem, maybe he needed to evacuate the building for some reason. I didn't immediately think this was an antagonizing situation, but I wasn't about to stop just because he said 'stop.'"

Vogel was equally confused. "I just looked up, and there was this huge guy shouting at Adam. I didn't know what he was doing."

Stephens continued, "He didn't give me any explanation after me asking twice. This all happened in a matter of seconds. And at that point, he simultaneously put his arm around my guitar and around my neck and threw me down to the ground. And Tyson was there immediately. As far as I remember Tyson was there pretty much when he grabbed me, because Tyson jumped over his drums. And he threw Tyson down immediately as well, and was on top of both of us trying to do something--I don't know what his intention was."

According to McDuell via the Houston Chronicle, Stephens "used a sexual obscenity and shoved the officer with his shoulder."

"There's no way I shoved him at all," Stephens said. "I think anyone with a little bit of reason, if you just picture the situation, we're there to play music, not to attack police officers. We're playing music and a cop comes in, we had no idea what was going on, why in the world would we immediately attack a police officer for walking into a venue while we're playing? We're not on tour to take down law enforcement. It's just ridiculous to me that someone would make up that rumor, because why would anyone do that? He completely took the first offensive move by throwing us to the ground."

--- End quote ---

The videos appear to corroborate this, as well as the claims that Officer Rodriguez went out of his way to taser people.

It's utter bullshit, the whole thing. If you want a show to stop and it's in a venue, it's ridiculous to hop up on stage where it's going to be the loudest, shine a flashlight in someone's face and shout "stop" without giving a reason. You tell the sound guy to stop, and if it doesn't work then, fuck, call for backup or something. There should be no Taser usage or mass arrests at a noise complaint.

Fuck tha po-lice.

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