Video Courtesy of KSL.com
On February 2nd 2009 Provo Police assaulted a man by the name of Chris Lauridsen.
Chris Lauridsen had the nerve to be be annoyed by an Animal Control agent with a chip on her shoulder harassing him for leaving his dogs in the car for 10 minutes on a 40 degree day.
Any Animal Control Officer with common sense would not have harassed Lauridsen, but this Office obviously did not have any common sense. Perhaps it was a slow day for Animal Control.
“At one point I attempted to explain to her that I was being mistreated and that she worked for me,” he said. “She said no, she didn’t, she worked for the city of Provo and I lived in Woodland Hills.”
Lauridsen explained that he owns a business in Provo that brings in $1 million a year and employs 15 people.
“I don’t deserve to be treated like that,” he said.
And that’s when she called for backup officers.
A person should get equal treatment whether or not his business brings in $1 million into Provo each year. A bagger in a grocery store shouldn’t have to put up with police brutality either.
Do people really think it’s Constitutional for a man to be beaten with night sticks, if he gets angry at police for harassing him?
We know this isn’t an isolated incident since we have the little old lady in Orem who was brutalized for not watering her lawn during our ever lasting drought.
Mike Ridgway has suggested contacting the Governor of Utah John Huntsman, and the Mayor of Provo Lewis Billings.
Mike has also started a campaign on Youchoose.net called Free Chris Lauridsen. The purpose of the campaign is to collect signatures to get the charges dropped against Chris Lauridsen and to bring attention to other cases of police brutality in Utah.
What else can be done? Who else is responsible for the conduct of these public employees? Why haven’t the names of the police officers and the animal control agent been released?
The only way police will start to respect people’s rights is if they lose their jobs when they do things like this. This means who ever is responsible for the Police Officer’s jobs has to be eliminated if he/she won’t do something about their abuse.
The way to handle an unresponsive politician is to eliminate them in a primary. People have to get together and decide what candidate in a primary they are going to back.
Although I like the views of third party candidates, supporting one as a solution is a waste of time. Here’s why:
http://elections.utah.gov/electionresults.html
| Straight Party Votes 2008 |
|||||||
| COUNTY | REGISTERED VOTERS | VOTES CAST | % | Const | Dem | Liber | Rep |
| Beaver | 4,260 | 2,563 | 60.16% | 11 | 202 | 6 | 509 |
| Box Elder | 27,412 | 19,360 | 70.63% | 60 | 837 | 56 | 4,339 |
| Cache | 69,184 | 42,173 | 60.96% | 220 | 2,496 | 104 | 9,629 |
| Carbon | 15,710 | 7,913 | 50.37% | 23 | 1,460 | 27 | 801 |
| Daggett | 700 | 451 | 64.43% | 0 | 39 | 0 | 76 |
| Davis | 145,248 | 112,889 | 77.72% | 326 | 10,017 | 371 | 30,703 |
| Duchesne | 9,930 | 5,855 | 58.96% | 22 | 364 | 23 | 1,539 |
| Emery | 6,440 | 4,545 | 70.57% | 16 | 334 | 18 | 702 |
| Garfield | 3,004 | 2,233 | 74.33% | 6 | 112 | 6 | 775 |
| Grand | 6,019 | 4,145 | 68.87% | 10 | 502 | 17 | 646 |
| Iron | 23,415 | 16,813 | 71.80% | 76 | 846 | 48 | 3,901 |
| Juab | 6,124 | 3,709 | 60.56% | 32 | 258 | 9 | 639 |
| Kane | 4,424 | 3,252 | 73.51% | 10 | 326 | 7 | 992 |
| Millard | 6,097 | 4,851 | 79.56% | 57 | 193 | 10 | 792 |
| Morgan | 5,267 | 4,222 | 80.16% | 16 | 145 | 7 | 999 |
| Piute | 977 | 810 | 82.91% | 4 | 47 | 4 | 184 |
| Rich | 1,625 | 1,018 | 62.65% | 0 | 28 | 1 | 188 |
| Salt Lake | 521,039 | 369,884 | 70.99% | 985 | 69,404 | 1,228 | 64,364 |
| San Juan | 6,946 | 5,186 | 74.66% | 9 | 1,573 | 15 | 1,049 |
| Sanpete | 11,756 | 8,965 | 76.26% | 103 | 501 | 25 | 1,864 |
| Sevier | 10,921 | 8,158 | 74.70% | 41 | 405 | 27 | 2,150 |
| Summit | 27,277 | 17,059 | 62.54% | 19 | 2,698 | 51 | 2,291 |
| Tooele | 26,604 | 17,612 | 66.45% | 59 | 2,081 | 70 | 3,654 |
| Uintah | 18,392 | 10,266 | 55.82% | 63 | 492 | 24 | 3,066 |
| Utah | 249,368 | 162,015 | 64.97% | 710 | 9,061 | 449 | 50,858 |
| Wasatch | 15,037 | 8,671 | 57.66% | 18 | 733 | 20 | 1,370 |
| Washington | 72,723 | 50,621 | 69.61% | 160 | 3,976 | 151 | 14,824 |
| Wayne | 1,850 | 1,333 | 72.05% | 2 | 90 | 8 | 238 |
| Weber | 134,776 | 74,613 | 55.36% | 145 | 8,990 | 214 | 15,890 |
| Total | 1,432,525 | 971,185 | 67.80% | 3,203 | 118,210 | 2,996 | 219,032 |
George Washington did warn us about breaking off into parties.
No matter how high your ideals are the reality is the majority of Utahns are going to go to the General Election and vote straight Republican. The exception is Salt Lake who does just the opposite and votes straight Democrat. In Salt Lake it would be a good idea to volunteer for better Democrats in Salt Lake.
Maybe it would be too much effort for people to actually research candidates before they vote ***sarcasm***
Salt Lake is outnumbered by the rest of the state however so even if they vote straight Democrat, they’re not going to be able to knock out a senator like Robert Bennett who’s up for reelection in 2010, or Orrin Hatch who’s up for reelection in 2012.
You can combine the Libertarians and the Constitution Party (although they don’t agree on what liberty means), and they still don’t add up to the numbers the Democrats voting in Utah. The number of Democrats voting in Utah is almost half the numbered by Republicans voting.
Clearly the Libertarian and Constitution Party members would have more success getting involved at the caucus and primary level with the Republican Party.
One answer for people in Utah County, and the rest of Utah, is to join the Campaign for Liberty.
It takes so much time to volunteer and get involved to prevent the country from becoming a police state. Any amounted of money can be defeted by volunteers if there are enough of them. That’s one reason why as a woman, I think women have been suckered into working. Women used to be a much greater political force, but they (we) don’t have time to get involved if they are working full time, trying to take care of a family and a home. Women have been convinced they are some how inferior, or being cheated if they aren’t out in some crappy job slaving away like their male counterparts. How gullible they are.
If people want to prevent themselves from being conned by propaganda (Public Relations) they should watch this BBC documentary called Century of Self
http://mrxfromplanetx.com/century-of-self
Utah County has a long history of malicious and brutal conduct. Almost 40 years ago my husband and I were accosted at the American Fork Boat Club simply because my husband had long hair.
As hard as the mainstream Church located in Salt Lake County tries to present a benevolent LDS Church to the outside world, the powers that be in Utah County continue to preserve the Mountain Meadows Massacre reality of the Mormon psyche.
[...] like to bring everyone’s attention to my last post on Provo Police beating a man name of Chris Lauridsen with nightsticks. This is an important issue, and I have posted some pretty important data in [...]
Wow.. from the same area that beat down a bunch of kids for dancing at night at the Versus 2 event? Whoodathunkitpossible?
I guess when you people were busy applauding the efforts of your Sheriff for beating those kids you weren’t thinking that it might one day be you.
The saga continues. The internal police investigation concludes that the police officers involved did everything by the book.
You’d think I’d know HTML. Here is the link.
People need to throw the mayor out of office and the city council
http://www.provo.org/mayor.Meet_the_Mayor_main.html
http://www.provo.org/council.members_main.html unless they do the right thing and fire the police chief, which I doubt.
People need to elect people who run on a platform of stopping citizen abuse. I for one will volunteer to help their opponents.
You never know when you might happen to drive through Provo and get harassed by some cop who wants his butt kissed.
I think it is time to look at the book
My opinion the cops are enemys of the people.
Home town Terrorist.
A Natioal Security Problem.
Huntsman and Shertleff are 2 jerks and do not care.
The entire Judicial System in America is corrupt
I think the bruises are enough to show the cops are out of control and the book is bad
Provo needs sued big time to get this States Attention
American do have rights that the cops are not being taught
Cicil Liberties
27 Amendments to the Constitution being over looked
The 5 cops and the Police Cheif needs to be incarserated in cluding the Mayor
This is the United States of America.
Yes We The People want CHANGE NOW
A Faldmo – that is an unfair assumption to make. A majority of church members may be centralized in Utah, but that does not mean that everyone in Utah is Mormon. For all we know, that police officer may not have been Mormon. For all we care, he could have been Mormon, or Christian, or Buddhist, but it does not reflect the views of the religion he may or may not hold. It reflects upon the individual. This is an isolated case from the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which is still a highly controversial subject. I will not pretend to know either way of the events that happened in that Massacre, but it really has no relevance to the police brutality we are discussing in this forum, nor should this event reflect upon religion of any kind. This is about an individual’s clearly skewed ethical perspectives that need to be examined.
I wonder if things could have been said and done on the parts of both parties involved in this to deescalate the situation. It sounds to me like egos on both sides were involved.
provo is a wonderful place..it is a lds town,it has a lds temple lots of b.o.m.in the homes.but if you ever did any research into the history of the church.you would find that the church is about controll and money..its not about god,, love..,,only money.thats why i hope and pray every day that terrest drop a bomb on salt lake city.but it is such a wonderful place to live..god tells the bishop to choose brother so&so to be sunday school teacher.then we find out bro..so&so has been rapeing our daugthers..but the lord called him to do it remember..yes we are so lucky to have gods true church and A PROFIT TO LEAD US BY THE NOSE.YES WE HAVE BROTHER HATCH BENNET TO REPRESENT US…WHAT A WONDERFUL PLACE.DONT FORGET MOUNTIAN MEADOW MASSACURE…
HOW MANY QUEERS LIVE IN PROVO..DOES THE ANIMAL CONTROL WOMEN TAKE CARE OF THEM TO..BEFORE SHE GOES TO THE TEMPLE..AND MEETS WITH THE STAKE PRESIDENT.HIS DOG WAS OUT BREEDING OTHER DOGS AND SHE CAUGHT IT..THE CHURCH DONE AWAY WITH POLYAGAMY,,REMEMBER..HA HA HA
THE DOG CATCHER IS EMMA SMITH RESSERECTTED AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR JOESPH TO GET EVEN FOR ALL THE LYES.IWAS DOWN IN PROVO AT THE TEMPLE AND MET THIS LADY.SHE TOLD ME HER LAST NAME WAS MONSEN,SHE WAS ONE OF THE PROFITS POLYGAMUST WIVES,SHE TOLD ME THAT HER AND THE OTHER WIEVES GO TO A DIFERNT TEMPLE EVERY WEEK,SHE SAID SHE REALLY ENJOYED IT,SEX THAT IS