A U.S. Senator being thrown to
the ground and handcuffed rather than escorted out of the building because he
asked a difficult question for the speaker holding a news conference
illustrates not only the bias towards using excessive force that having police
power lavishes on human nature, but also a proclivity toward excessiveness
without any internal mental check that is entwined in virtually any human
brain. That the primary arresting FBI employee was the only person in the room wearing
a bulletproof vest inside the federal (government) building may also
reveal his penchant for exaggeration—or, going too far without realizing it.
The prescription in terms of public policy is a strengthening of checks on law-enforcement
employees even, if possible, by embedding other municipal (or federal)
employees whose sole function it is to evaluate police conduct either by
listening in or observing even in real time. A U.S. senator being thrown to the
ground and handcuffed in a federal building in California rather than
escorted out of the building evinces a power-trip more base, violent, and primitive
than the typical power-trips that occur on the “floor” of the U.S. Senate. It
must have been a shock to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on June 12, 2025 to be
physically shoved to the ground, especially if the rationale for his removal
from the press conference was itself an exaggeration.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary
Kristi Noem was holding a news conference in early June, 2025 as protests against
the arrests of illegal aliens were going on outside in downtown Los Angeles in
California, when U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla said, “I have questions for the
secretary!”[1]
Even if the senator was trying to visibly score political points with his constituents
by interjecting, which, by the way, would be in the realm of the sort of
power-trip that is quite common in politics, the reaction of the Trump Administration
may point to a trumped up political reason for the violent way in which the
senator was manhandled by Secret Service employees and then the FBI agent. The
White House accused Padilla of “disrespectful political theatre” and Noem
herself accused the senator of having ‘made a scene.”[2]
If these opinions were behind the manhandling of the senator, then “criminalizing
politics” steeped to a new low: instant violence against the elected
representative for being political. The violence itself is much worse than
merely charging someone for being political in a way that offends someone else
in power.
For its part, the Secret Service
lied that Padilla had “lunged at Secretary Noem,” and furthermore that the
agents there “thought he was an attacker.”[3]
Reviewing the video of the event shows the willingness of people with guns to
lie to protect themselves, which I contend is reason enough for additional
checks on law-enforcement employees, whether federal or state. That the
senator, the most senior Democrat on the U.S. Senate’s Border Security and
Immigration subcommittee, announced repeatedly that he was a U.S. Senator
belies the credibility of the claim that he was thought to be an attacker.
California’s Gavin Newsom, head
of state, chief executive, and commander-in-chief of California’s National
Guard (i.e., army) wrote online a poignant point worthy of our consideration: “If
they can handcuff a US Senator for asking a question, imagine what they will do
to you.”[4]
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much imagining to consider the actuality of
employees of a government in law enforcement presuming that the law is theirs
to make in real time—casting a blind eye intentionally on the actual
law—and lying and threatening even victims of a crime with arrest should
they object. Enforcing existing law does not give a government employee
the discretion with which to ignore the law and even come up with one’s own law
and yet how easy it is simply to ignore this vital point in the carrying out of
one’s “duties.” I have witnessed this mentality enough to know that it is too
common to ignore, and thus I contend that more checks are needed on
law-enforcement employees on the non-supervisory level locally, at the
member-state level, and at the federal level in the United States. The problem
is worse “on the ground” than has reached the public air-waves.
Even if Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, was right in opining, “Padilla embarrassed himself and his constituents with this immature, theatre-kid stunt” because “he wanted attention,”[5] treating the senator as if he were an attacker rather than simply escorting him out of the building—or even letting him remain and treat the altercation between him and Noem as political—reveals an emotionally jejune, hyper-“trigger-happy” mentality among the Secret Service and FBI employees in that federal building. Such a mentality among government employees who have been given the legal right to use force is, I submit, dangerous, and thus should be exculpated from the ranks of law enforcement in any jurisdiction, lest the trend eventuate in people being surrounded by security simply for being angry and even raising one’s voice at a political event. Treating such as a threat is itself passive-aggressive, which as we have seen can turn outright aggressive given the human, all too human proclivity to go to far.
Put more plainly, assuming that lies used to cover-up
the underlying mental ailment, Secret Service employees who perceived the
senator lunge at Noem and thought Padilla was an attacker should
be put on mental-health leave so they can relax and untighten, and be
subjected to psychological tests on latent aggression, for their sort of
power-trip is much more dangerous than that which goes on in the U.S. Senate—and
the White House, for this incident is but a glimpse toward a realization that not
enough had been done even in multiple jurisdictions to root out the sordid pathology
from the field of law-enforcement. De facto absolute power “on the ground”
loves a vacuum of accountability, and is even willing to lie to keep it at bay.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
