Couple cuffed for lit near Liberty Bell
By William R. Toler
A video recently posted on YouTube features a man and woman sitting on the ground near Independence Hall handcuffed on May 18th for at least 10 minutes. The reason for their detainment: passing out fliers.
What’s that sound? I think it’s Benjamin Franklin rolling over in his grave.
According to the description for the video, Mark Passio and his wife Barb were passing out End the Fed fliers to folks standing in the line near the Liberty Bell, which Mark says he’s done nearly 20 times.
We then proceeded to continue to walk to Chestnut Street when we were stopped by two Park Police who said that I could not hand out fliers without a permit (I had already finished handing them out actually; I had a few left in my hand, and was in the process of leaving the area). They began citing some obscure federal regulation that I had never heard of. I calmly told them that I was peacefully exercising the Rights of Free Speech and Free Press as I was walking through the area, which are Natural Rights which can not be granted by man, nor alienated from man, and which they do not have the “right,” regardless of what the terms of their “job” may tell them, to usurp from me or to stop me from exercising.
In the video, the Park Police officers refuse to identify themselves and one says that he’s “not ashamed” to detain people for peacefully distributing literature.
One nearby mother questions the tactics of the officers and asks, “What are you teachin’ the kids? I don’t understand this….Children are watching this, is this what you’re teaching?” She adds that one of her children’s great-grandfathers was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. [Note: a few more “great”s should probably be thrown in.]
The man behind the camera then says, “Our children are getting an education today,” to which the mother adds, “A sad, very sad one, because if they don’t wake up, this is what they’re gonna do to us.”
At the end of the video the couple is released and Barb says they are cited for “interfering with agency function” (whatever that means) and “failure to obtain a permit.”
The officers refused to return the stolen property of the couple and claimed it was being kept as “evidence.”
In the last passage of the description, Mark gives a “wake-up call” to all viewers:
Free Speech is being shut down in America. America is actively, right before our eyes, being turned into a Police State such as Hitler’s Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Russia, and if you do not agree with that statement after reading the above, you either think that “keeping your head in the sand” will make the increasing problem go away, or you are a coward who will not speak up for Human Rights, or both. The Rights and Freedom of your children and their children are at stake. When people say they don’t care because it happened to someone else and not to them, they should seriously keep in mind that it could very easily be them next, or their children. Americans need to WAKE UP, take their eyes off the television for a few minutes, and start to inform themselves about just how far into tyranny this once-great nation is slipping, and then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, by speaking out to everyone around them, and taking action to show so-called “public servants” that their immoral and CRIMINAL activities will not stand in our supposedly “free” land.
FREE SPEECH RIGHTS ARE BEING SHUT DOWN IN PHILADELPHIA, AND THROUGHOUT ALL OF AMERICA
Tyranny isn’t lurking around the corner. It’s here.
This is what Obama has done to our nation.
The lady called the Park Police well-trained dogs. I wonder if they’re all named BO.
