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Right-wing politicians in PA want to increase the penalties for public protest. Under the guise of protecting law enforcement personnel performing their lawful function, they want to stiffen the penalties for “interfering.”
There is a saying among law enforcement insiders, “You can beat the wrap, but you can’t beat the ride.” By this they mean that police have the law on their side when they subdue you and detain you even if they don’t actually have proof that you were committing a crime. The rightness of their action gets adjudicated after you are apprehended (the ride). It’s a citizen’s duty to cooperate and not impede law enforcement.
So what if the police become strident and abuse the power granted to them?
Dropping cases doesn’t cure the harm. In fact, being detained costs time, money, and may put the detainee in harm’s way if they are thrown in among truly violent lawbreakers. One of the common tactics is to detain protestors at a police station in a bad neighborhood, then release them late at night onto the street.
Seeking justice after the fact is challenging and requires significant time and resources. Sadly, unbridled power corrupts those who wield it. America has already stepped over the line into the brutal techniques that authoritarians use to suppress dissent. DHS/ICE police are becoming today’s Brownshirts. (The “Brownshirts,” officially known as the Sturmabteilung (SA), were a paramilitary organization associated with the Nazi Party in Germany.).