Rounding up the usual suspects

See the follwing link for an interesting LRB Blog post by David Simpson, who teaches English at UC Davis. The boys in blue (UC campus police in this case) look like all the police everywhere. They are all overweight, over-equipped and over-the-top. All events involving the police look like they are choreographed by the same testosterone-sated people that choreographed the G20 in Toronto. Whether it’s the arrest of Adam Nobody (see an interview with him here) or a young couple asking for directions after a baseball game in Baltimore, overreaction seems to be standard police procedure these days.

UPDATE: The Chancellor of UC Davis later starred in a “let them eat cake” appearance on Good Morning America. You have to wonder what her handlers were thinking when they primed her with lines about how her actions were all informed by a concern with student safety. Keith Olbermann has a pretty good special comment on Mayor Bloomberg’s decision to clear Zuccotti Park here. There were other ham-handed clearances before New York City (we covered Toronto’s own Officer Bubbles at the 2010 G20 here), but Bloomberg is pretty much the gold standard now.