I don't think a hostile attitude is illegal, but if it is the job of police to ensure the public safety, and they can do this by talking awhile with the guys in the pickup truck that are dredging their nooses around town, then that is valid.
The whole thing, both the huge number of Blacks coming to Jena from out of town and the noose freaks, are akin to dogs peeing on trees to mark their territory. And about as useful.
I would not approve of them tasering or cuffing said clowns, by the way.
Wonders who introduced the word "hostile" in this thread.
All of a sudden, it is the password and the litmus.
I have not bothered to take umbrage with those who have criticized protesting, since it becomes moot when you have to explain what protesting includes, and that no successful protesting was ever done so by playing with Reader's Digest rules. In a debate, though, nobody's bones get broken (though egos walk the plank), and it becomes simply a parsing of the immediate territory around the decisive if movable litmus term "hostile."
I was a lad in the coal fields, on the street with the town, while on the other side--the cops and the mine owners and the out-to-town thugs they hired overnight, who were hellbent to destroy any union effort at any cost. Over in West Virginia, the mine owners ran a train loaded with thugs hired off the Pittburgh streets, all issued a basebat, to help influence the locals' notion of a union.
To this day I have yet to encounter any action or tactic quite as hostile as those of Peabody Coal Company.
Guess we come from different worlds.
Meanwhile, over in La., the deputies are hiding more of the embarassing good ole boys while the Blacks are well dressed, well behaved, wearing new T Shirts which read: "we are getting tired of all this prejudice," thereby winning the high road trophy at the expense of the local dixified deputies.
