Papers Please? St. Paul Cop Harassed Black Man Waiting For His Kids for ID, Caught on Tape

While voter identification laws are a hot button
issue in national politics, those laws aren’t usually discussed in
the broader context of identification requirements in various
aspects of everyday life.  For starters, border patrol agents

dozens of miles away from an international border ask for
identification purportedly to root out illegal immigrants.
Identification is required at the doctor’s office, for increasing
amount of medication, at the airport, on trains and now even for
some interstate bus trips, for renting a car, getting into most
government buildings, and so on in that manner. A mere fifteen
years ago much of this may have seemed unthinkable.

So while the debate over whether voter ID laws are effective or
whether they infringe on the right to vote (which ought to be
universal given citizenship, which should be based on residency and
necessary and proper paperwork) continues, it misses the point that
citizens and non-citizens alike who don’t have identification have
a harder time accessing all kinds of goods and services, government
and otherwise, often due to government regulations and edicts.

This is not just an issue of taking a bus instead of flying, as
former homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano once suggested
for those tired of the security theater at the airport. And a bus
is increasingly not an option either. In Houston Representative
Barbara Jackson Lee (D) lauded the Department of Homeland Security

sending TSA agents onto local buses!

Eventually it becomes about the freedom of movement at the most
basic level. Witness this interaction between an officer and a man
who told them he was waiting to pick up his kids from the local
charter school. Note how quickly it escalates despite the man’s
calm demeanor, all over a demand to produce identification:

Minnesota City Pages
identified the man, who spoke to them, as Chris Lollie. He was
arrested for “disorderly conduct” and “obstructing the legal
process,” and was charged with those crimes as well as trespassing.
They were, unsurprisingly, all dropped. Police insist they were
dealing with an “uncooperative male refusing to leave” and said
there were no complaints filed after the incident (many incidents
of police brutality can go unreported), which happened in January
but video of which only emerged online this month. The YouTube user
who posted claims the cellphone was seized for six months (likely
the length of time before charges were dropped and the
“investigation” ended).

If it’s a
war zone out there for cops, it’s the “civilians” that often
seem most at risk.

Sensible rules of engagement for cops, as well as effective
disciplinary processes, are needed to attempt to root out behaviors
and attitudes like those of the officer’s in the video.