gotbaum and police power

The Gotbaum death in Phoenix airport is somehow very troubling to me. On the one hand, there's sympathy for the police who have to deal with a situation where they don't know the facts... it's tough to look back in retrospect and imply that they should have known how troubled/suicidal she was. But on the other hand, this seems to be one more demonstration of a disturbing blunt force implementation of police order. I keep seeing all these videos of people getting taken down by police and it's beginning to leave a really bad taste in my mouth. And there's a continuing thread of what seems to be the terrible modern truth that if you're alone and in trouble in public, no one will help you.

I think back to a situation where a friend and I were playing tennis by the Triboro bridge. The courts abut a gated off area under the bridge controlled by the police. We hit a couple balls over the fence during our game, so we went up to the cop and asked him how we could get them back. We asked nicely, but the cop was apparently annoyed. (I'm guessing he gets asked that a lot.) He kept emphasizing that we couldn't go get them, but that they gather them regularly. So then when we asked when they gather them so we could know when to come back.. but he just emphasized again that we would be arrested for trespassing if we went ourselves. We said that of course we understood that, but if they're gathering them, should we come back to this same booth for them tomorrow? Then he seemed to refuse to answer and seemed very angry that we weren't just leaving. He wouldn't say what time, or whether tomorrow would work at all or if we needed to go somewhere else. We were both offended, but my friend's tone had started to get pissy ... I decided it was time for us to just walk away. A couple tennis balls was certainly not worth an altercation with a cop who clearly didn't want to help us. As we walked away, the cop stared at us all the way to the car, as if looking for some reason to give us trouble. It felt like paranoia at the time - but more and more I feel like police have such brute power at their disposal and I worry that all I need to do is give them an excuse to want to use it against me. And I'm a non-poor white girl - if I'm getting that sensation, I can only imagine how strong that sensation is for, say, a poor black man.

But back to the Gotbaum situation:
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Arrested by police in the airport for disorderly conduct, Carol Gotbaum ended up dead in a holding cell after being left alone. From the reports, she was handcuffed behind her back and shackled to a bench by a 16 inch metal chain. She was found unconscious with her hands and shackle pressed against her neck - perhaps she was able to pull her arms forward and then was choked by the shackles.


CNN coverage
"police made no effort to calm her down"
"pulled her arm with extreme force"
"rushed in and grabbed her"
"what happened in the airport was so excessive"


More CNN coverage with the video from the airport

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/nyregion/05gotbaum.html
Video and extensive coverage from nytimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/nyregion/06gotbaum.html
"The police say they believe she had been drinking during the layover, and she protested in a way that they later characterized as “crying,” “hysterical” and “irrational.” She was dragged to a holding cell at the airport, hands cuffed behind her back, was shackled to a bench, and was left alone, yelling.

A few minutes later, when she grew silent, officers looked in the cell and found Ms. Gotbaum unconscious with the shackle stretched across her neck. Attempts by the police and medical workers to revive her were unsuccessful."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/nyregion/06call.html

"During a later call, an operator put Mr. Gotbaum on hold and got on the phone with Lt. Rick Gehlbach. When the operator asked Lieutenant Gehlbach if he wanted to speak with Mr. Gotbaum, he responded: “I want somebody who’s professional to be talking to him. Not just blow it to him over the phone, because I don’t know how he’ll react.”

At one point between Mr. Gotbaum’s second and third calls, the transcripts indicate, the operator took a break to answer a question from a colleague about Chinese food they were ordering for dinner.

When Mr. Gotbaum called back — after two US Airways representatives at a call center in Winston-Salem, N.C., had contacted Phoenix on his behalf — the operator again put him on hold. Then the operator spoke with another sergeant, who said, “I need to get a phone number because we need to make, uh, we can’t tell him what’s going on right now.”"