Talk:Protesters arrested at anti-Scientology event in Atlanta

Interview

This was conducted in #georgia on irc.partyvan.org. No changes have been made from the original posted text in the IRC channel to that which has been transcribed except for spelling and grammar changes. Interview was conducted at 04:25 to 04:50 UTC or therabouts.--JamesHarrison - (talk) 04:50, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Flickr photos licensed under CC

http://www.flickr.com/photos/timdorr/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zlatko/

I will check these out, if these really are licensed already for "free-use" we could put them on Wikimedia Commons and use them in the article, perhaps as a gallery. Cirt - (talk) 05:32, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Video

Longer video of incident:

http://talkunafraid.co.uk/assets/2008/3/16/anon_atlanta_arrests.wmv

Cirt - (talk) 06:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Other "Anonymous" members arrested, lawsuits pending against police in multiple states in U.S.

Apparently at least one member of Anonymous was arrested in California, and there are also reports that members of Anonymous are planning lawsuits against Police Departments in Orlando, Florida and DeKalb County, Georgia, due to alleged misconduct by the police at the March 15, 2008 protests. Also heard reports that members of Anonymous are in contact with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) about this. More information and sources to come - it is also likely that this will get coverage soon in secondary sources. Cirt - (talk) 09:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Secondary source coverage

• Elizabeth Huff. "Group protests local Scientology; one arrested" — Battle Creek Enquirer, March 16, 2008

Ah, nevermind, this wasn't related to the above issue. Cirt - (talk) 10:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Miranda Rights

Unlike this article implies reading a suspect their Miranda Rights is not required. If the police do not intend to perform a custodial interrogation no reading of rights is required. If the police perform a custodial interrogation without reading the person their Miranda Rights the statements made can be found inadmissible, but the arrest is valid regardless. w:Miranda Rights explains it a bit more. The fact that it was not read does sort of imply that the goal was to get them out of there rather then learn something, but terms such as “follow procedure” and “unconventional manner” are NPOV. I am not sure what we should do about it though as it was part of the interview. NPOV does not generally apply to the answers but probably should to the questions. --Cspurrier - (talk) 17:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The videos show a very quick arrest in which the arresting officers failed to read the Miranda rights of the protesters. - How is the article inaccurate though? It is simply stating that it appears no Miranda Rights were read - not giving an interpretation of what that could imply for a potential lawsuit against the police or inadmissibility of statements made. Cirt - (talk) 17:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The word "failed" implies that the arresting office was somehow expected to read Miranda on the scene - something that rarely happens outside TV shows. --+Deprifry+ 17:24, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

“Failed” implies that something that should be done was not done. The police had no obligation to do read them their rights, so wording such as a simple “the officer did not read them their Miranda Rights” might be better. That is a fairly minor issue though, the interview one is the one I am really concerned about. There was nothing inherently odd about the arrests. Suspects are not always read their rights when arrested, officers will often delay for safety or other reasons . --Cspurrier - (talk) 17:29, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Changed wording to "did not..." per above. Not sure how we could change interview questions that were already asked, however... Cirt - (talk) 17:33, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It presents an interesting question. :) Maybe drop the question or include an ed note that clarifies. --Cspurrier - (talk) 17:37, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I shortened the last part of the last question - does that look okay? Cirt - (talk) 17:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It fixes most of the problem, however I am a bit uncomfortable with changing questions since it is very easy to make it out to be a very diffrent sort of question when we start making changes like that. probbaly an issue for our code of ethics if we ever get around to finishing it :)--Cspurrier - (talk) 00:26, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The sentence: "Did the arresting officers follow procedure - reading the individuals their rights, and so on - during the arrest ?" is very leading and it's embarrassing to have it in the article. My question is: why do we need to post interviews verbatim? Just use the quotes from the interview in the body of the article. - Borofkin - (talk) 06:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The sentence was not intended to be leading; there had been an expectation amongst various people I spoke to that their rights should have been read, and so I asked the above question to confirm if the rights were read or not. In hindsight it's terribly phrased, and I apologise for not spotting that before I put the question to members of the group. Perhaps we should remove that or, as you say, move the content from the interview into the body of the article? --JamesHarrison - (talk) 07:45, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the section of interview, but as it has been confirmed by various members of Anonymous who were at the protest, I have left the response from one of the members of Anonymous in the body of the article at the relevant point. I do note the message on the opinion page claiming to be from 'arrested anon'; does anyone feel like seeing if the arrested members of Anonymous would be up for giving an interview on what happened to them and what they've been charged with, etc? --JamesHarrison - (talk) 15:29, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Quotes

Quotes in that kind of format break up the article. Better to just have them both in a paragraph at the bottom, this person said this, this person said that, etc. Cirt - (talk) 17:23, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Lead seems biased.

The headline lead on the front page can bias an uninformed reader that the arrests were due to some sort of violence or incitinement of a riot, expecially with the mention of "Arrested by Riot Police". More clarification needs to be made on the front page about the peaceful protests. 198.254.16.200 23:53, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that the lead reads fine and is factual and accurate, and then more detail is given in the article itself. Cirt - (talk) 02:37, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

DeKalb Police arrest five for weekend protest in Dunwoody

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/stories/2008/03/17/scientology_0318.html

I think that it is pretty neat that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ended up covering this after Wikinews did. Cirt - (talk) 02:39, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23389091-5014239,00.html

The incident was also mentioned here. Cirt - (talk) 02:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)