76 thoughts on “Taking Inventory of Future Worldcon Bids”

1. @Lenore Jones Bill, most of us are saying we should have worldcons both in the U.S. and outside it, while lamenting the border issues. It sounds like we actually agree with you, so why are you acting like we don’t?
   I’m not disagreeing with those who say that America should continue to host some Worldcons, and if you read my posts as saying otherwise, then either I’m writing poorly or you are misinterpreting them (I’ll go with the former).

   @Hampus Because in most countries, border police do not mace and assault people when they are slow to follow an order.
   Neither you nor I were there or know what caused the first use of force against Watts, and accounts differ, so to characterize what happened as you did is disingenuous. But it is obvious from Watts’ own accounts that he was uncooperative and mouthy. Given that, the fact that officers escalated to force should be completely unsurprising.
   It would be nice if officers of all sorts defaulted to de-escalation and persuasion, but a significant fraction of the time that would be counter-productive to whatever it is that they are trying to accomplish. In this case, they were trying to ensure that Watts’ car was not carrying contraband. He got out of his car, was told to get back into it, and he didn’t do so. He could have been arrested then and there. but the officers in effect gave him a second chance. He did not use it wisely, continued his noncompliance, and things went south.
   If he had been compliant at that point, everything else changes. It’s all on him.

   Also with regards to the americans that have had much more problems… What worldcon are you talking about here and what problem did they have at the border?
   “Americans with more problems” was in response to Morgan and El-Mohtar whose specific problems weren’t Worldcon-related, so my unnamed Americans were not Worldcon-related. I’m speaking of people who have been sexually molested as part of “pat downs”, or people like Pastor Steven Anderson, who was beaten and tased

   @Cora Buhlert
   I never said this. And I never said you did, so there’s no need to take it personally.
   And when there is a viable bid for a WorldCon that I can attend (meaning mostly Europe) I will vote for this bid over a bid for a WorldCon that I cannot attend. Which is a perfectly legitimate reason to vote for a non-USA bid. More power to you.
   My posts are in response to the several people who have suggested (mostly in other threads) to completely reject USA bids for political reasons.

   As for Peter Watts, I didn’t follow the case closely. . . .So while I don’t know what exactly Watts did, whether he was rude, etc… I did follow it at the time, and have re-read much in the last day or so. it’s pretty obvious that the border guard completely overreacted. It is not obvious, and given that you don’t have the facts, you are in no place to make this conclusion.

   @errowli
   See, this attitude (which appears to be common in US juries) is a reason many people are uncomfortable with US law enforcement, and take steps to avoid contact with it. I am uncomfortable when I contact LE, but I know that the best path forward is to pay attention to what they are saying and to do as they say. If Watts reached adulthood without learning that (even in Canada), then, again, the results of the incident are on him.

   People react to the policies and practices in place (or indicated), which may be a reason to dislike the politicians currently in power. Police overreactions (which are definitely a thing) are not a function of left-right or Republican-Democrat politicians in power, and won’t significantly change when either the US Congress or Presidency change. It’s much deeper than that.

2. “Neither you nor I were there or know what caused the first use of force against Watts, and accounts differ, so to characterize what happened as you did is disingenuous.”

   Then why is it not disingenuous of you to say that is is all on him? And you think a person should be banned from a country if he has been “uncooperative and mouthy”? To escalate into physical handling? By defending, this practice, you are absolutely arguing against a Worldcon in US. Again.

3. All of my early experiences with law enforcement involved my father being uncooperative and irritable in their general direction, which he had the right to do under UK law as someone who was not charged with a crime, and… walking away at the end, completely unharmed and without giving them any information, three children in tow. This happened a few times, since we were a home educated* family, and children regularly being taken out and about on what would for other families be a “school day” draws police (and security guard) attention.

   It’s pretty weird and alarming to see people justifying law enforcement using force in response to not-force. That’s really not what people routinely expect from law enforcement in the UK, most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, probably Canada…

   *Not home schooled. They’re different things. (Fingers crossed that nips any errors in the bud…)

4. bill on October 4, 2018 at 11:09 am said:

   But it is obvious from Watts’ own accounts that he was uncooperative and mouthy. Given that, the fact that officers escalated to force should be completely unsurprising.

   Being mouthy and uncooperative should not result in police use of force. Our cops are out of control in this. Disprespecting the police and being slow to comply should not be escalated by the police. DEescalation is proper policing and our police have gotten so bad at it that we FIRE police officers who attempt to deescalate

   There’s nothing about the Watt’s incident that reflects well on US policing..

5. A news story published at the time of the trial includes this quote from Watts’ testimony:

   “I was trying to get the hell back in the car,” he said. “It turns out I had company in the car.”
   Watts said he remembers feeling leather in his hands, but doesn’t remember grabbing the officer and might have been trying to fend him off.
   “My own recollection of this is kind of frenzied because I was under siege,” he said.

   Watts did physically engage in this incident — and that’s just the part he says he was able to remember.

6. @Mike Glyer

   I believe at that point he had already been grabbed, though? So he wasn’t the first to engage physically; it had already been escalated by the law enforcement officers.

   (That being said, I was mainly reacting to:

   But it is obvious from Watts’ own accounts that he was uncooperative and mouthy. Given that, the fact that officers escalated to force should be completely unsurprising.

   … which in my view expanded the discussion from the specific Watts incident to physical force being an expected or typical police response to someone being “uncooperative and mouthy”. Which, um, no, not in my country, and also, what the hell.)

7. Meredith: I believe at that point he had already been grabbed, though? So he wasn’t the first to engage physically; it had already been escalated by the law enforcement officers.

   I just find myself in a constant uphill battle to point people to (1) Watts’ own after-trial statement, and (2) what we know of his testimony at the trial.

   People want the narrative to be that Watts backtalked the officer, who then whaled the tar out of him. And that the jury’s idea of fairness would have suited To Kill A Mockingbird.

   And when I point to Watts’ own blurry admission that he physically engaged the officer, you want to cast that as he was defending himself against the officer.

   On the other hand, the jury heard both sides’ complete accounts and convicted Watts. A result which, in his post, he wants to blame on the drafting of the law, not his own behavior.

8. @Mike Glyer

   I don’t believe I said that he was defending himself, simply that he was not the first person to get physical. Not quite the same thing.

   I continue to be more concerned about the generalisation than the specifics of the Watts case.

9. I don’t believe I said that he was defending himself, simply that he was not the first person to get physical. Not quite the same thing.

   When called upon to support a statement that he was not the first person to get physical, what do you point to?

10. “On the other hand, the jury heard both sides’ complete accounts and convicted Watts. A result which, in his post, he wants to blame on the drafting of the law, not his own behavior.”

    From what I have heard, he was not convicted for any physical altercations. They were dismissed. Have I missed something?

11. “When called upon to support a statement that he was not the first person to get physical, what do you point to?”

    The account you quoted:

    “Watts heard an officer twice order him to get back into the vehicle, but he didn’t immediately comply. An officer grabbed his arm and he pulled away in a “flinch response.” Watts said he was starting to get back in the vehicle when Officer Andrew Beaudry grabbed him and tore his shirt.
    Watts said he was trying to comply with orders as things seemed to escalate.

    “I was trying to get the hell back in the car,” he said. “It turns out I had company in the car.””

12. @Meredith

    I continue to be more concerned about the generalisation than the specifics of the Watts case.

    This. I had some hope that documentation of the abuses that of course happen anywhere would start addressing the systematic issues in the USA. The number of law enforcement officers in the US that have essentially got away with clearly recorded abuses of power has destroyed this hope.

13. I suspect that Peter Watts can be a bit of a jerk at times – based on some blogposts by him I read during some fandom uproar or other a while back. He may have been rude and mouthy to the border guard, which is generally not a great idea. But being a jerk is not a criminal offense and normally doesn’t escalate the way it did in this case and other similar cases.

    However, in most other western countries, the situation would never have escalated as it did. Watts would still have been grumpy and mouthy, the officer would have repeated his request and might have threatened to use force, if Watts did not comply. Watts would eventually have complied (and if not, then any escalation would really have been on him), the officers would have searched his car, found nothing and everybody would have gone their separate ways, Watts complaining at home about those overreaching border guards and the border guard complaining at home about that mouthy jerk he had to deal with. No one would have gotten hurt, no one would have gotten arrested, there would have been no trial.

    I guess a lot of the US folks here have no idea how negative the image of American law enforcement personnel, whether it’s police officers, immigration officers, customs officers or the TSA abroad really is. There are a lot of horror stories about travellers caught in routine situations such as traffic stops, border checks, someone taking a pee in the woods, etc… which escalated into completely disproportionate amounts of force and the sort of police violence one would never expect to see in Europe outside anti-terrorism operations, just because someone didn’t understand an order, ticked the wrong form, etc… Now I believe that those stories are outliers and that the vast majority of American law enforcement personnel are good people just doing their jobs. But there are still enough outliers and the disproportionate use of force is considered normal by way too many folks that a lot of foreigners visiting the US are extremely wary of any kind of law enforcement personnel. For example, when I’m in the US, I always stick very closely to the speed limit to the point that all the locals overtake me, because I don’t want to get stopped by any police officers, cause I don’t want to be one of those outliers.

14. Cora Buhlert: But being a jerk is not a criminal offense and normally doesn’t escalate the way it did in this case and other similar cases.

    I’m sure it would be difficult for me to know in full how negative the image of American law enforcement is outside the US, but I don’t spend much time worrying about that because what I read in the US media is already bad enough.

    The trouble with discussing specific cases — Peter Watts — is that I see you and others just assuming that all he did was say something jerky and ignore what came out at trial and even what he said about the matter himself.

15. Peter Watts here.

    Thought I’d clear up a few ambiguities that seem to have persisted about my case, since people still seem to be arguing about it and I was, you know, there.

    1. Beaudry followed me back into the car when I returned to it; he was between me and the steering wheel when he punched me. The whole, vaguely-kinky-sounding leather-grabbing thing was me reflexively grabbing onto his jacket while he did that.

    2. After I exited the vehicle for the second time— between being punched in the face and being maced— I was told to get on the ground. It was at this point I asked what the problem was; I was then maced. After which, yes, I got on the ground. There was no actual video of the event (this occurred a couple of km from the Canadian side), but a nearby security camera had snapped a series of stills. At trial, the Prosecution attempted to play these back at reduced speed, to extend the apparent period of my “noncompliance”; when called on this, they said their laptop was malfunctioning. Fortunately I was able to offer them mine, which stop-actioned a delay of (as closely as I can remember) somewhere around 5-10 seconds.

    3. Two Homeland Security agents were called in from Detroit with an eye to having me charged under federal statutes. After interviewing everyone involved, they decided not to touch the case and returned home. Denied that option, Beaudry et al settled for charging my under Michigan law.

    4. Members of the jury who convicted me have stated publicly that they threw out the guards’ testimony in its entirety because “they couldn’t keep their stories straight” (e.g., Beaudry claimed he intervened from an adjacent lane because he saw me resisting arrest; the guard I’d supposedly been resisting had already testified that “I never got around to trying to arrest him or anything”). The jury was instructed to follow the wording of a specific law; they were explicitly forbidden from considering whether the law itself was just. (The possibility of jury nullification was never raised). They convicted me on that basis, with explicit reservations.

    5. One of the jurors not only wrote a letter on my behalf to the judge, but also stood at my side during sentencing in a show of support. Her family was subsequently subjected to ongoing police harassment for at least a year— arrests, surveillance, home invasions, no charges ever laid— for reasons which I’m certain are completely unrelated.

    6. The judge disregarded the Prosecution`s request for maximum jail time and let me go with a minimal fine. He said I was the kind of guy he’d “like to have a beer with”.

    That`s about it, except that rumors floating around at the time— that I was high on PCP, that I`d grabbed a female guard by the throat and thrown her across the pavement— were unfounded. (Another tale, to the effect that one of the guards on that shift was arrested for possession of child pornography a few days later, proved to be true) In fact, throughout the entire encounter, I never raised my voice nor used profanity. It was really uncharacteristic of me.

    And finally— to bring this back around to the original subject— I’ve since visited over a dozen countries as a convicted felon (including Russia, China, and a couple of Eastern European states). I have never had any trouble entering any of them. In fact, I’ve had considerably less hassle crossing all those borders than I ever had crossing into the US back when I had an unblemished record. This is consistent with the findings of a travel industry survey reported some years back in The Economist, reporting that international travelers regard the US border as the worst crossing experience on the planet by a factor of 2:1. And this was well before Trump.

    So, yeah. I suspect a lot of people are staying away from any US cons out of sheer principle. I even know a few.

16. @Mike Glyer

    Well… The bit immediately before the bit you quoted, mainly, from your earlier comment in the thread.

    An officer grabbed his arm and he pulled away in a “flinch response.” Watts said he was starting to get back in the vehicle when Officer Andrew Beaudry grabbed him and tore his shirt.
    Watts said he was trying to comply with orders as things seemed to escalate.

    “I was trying to get the hell back in the car,” he said. “It turns out I had company in the car.”

    I’m not sure how else to describe someone getting grabbed with enough force to damage their clothing other than being physical.

    However, once again, I primarily joined the conversation when someone defended the idea of the police using force in response to someone being a bit mouthy, not because someone defended the idea of the police using force against force. Whether or not Bill got the facts of the Watts case wrong doesn’t really matter much to me, since what they were defending — the broad idea that people should expect law enforcement to violently retaliate against mouthiness — was what I was pushing back against, not whether Watts specifically had done anything to deserve it.

    I shouldn’t really have let myself get distracted by the specifics of the Watts case in later comments.

17. Hi Peter, thanks for your comment.

18. I should have said “defended the idea that it is normal for law enforcement to use force against someone being a bit mouthy” — I don’t know whether Bill approves of it happening, only that he treated it as expected.

19. There’s a phrase for this sort of bogus bust: Contempt of cop. You really can get arrested, beaten, and thrown in jail for a bad attitude and nothing else.

    That’s how we know we live in a free country.

20. I am glad Watts himself showed up (Hello) to point out details of his trial of which I was unaware. Thank you.

    It is EXTREMELY frequent for people on the US to defend any and all use of force by their police – even on white people, though it gets visibly worse as the melanin rises. It is extremely distressing, especially for those of us who live close.

    And don’t even try “not all Americans”: we know and have seen the protest marches and the condemnatory articles, too. That doesn’t mean *you* don’t have to watch your own reflexive defense of the use of force.

    I have, BTW seen the same level of defence used for a shooting in Canada — usually if the victim was a First Nations person. (Though our cops are more noted for successful arrests followed by abuses — there used to be an actual term for dropping off someone Indigenous outside city limits and making them walk back, in midwinter, when they should have been put in a drunk tank or released in a normal manner — than for shooting first.)

21. @Hampus
    “Neither you nor I were there or know what caused the first use of force against Watts, and accounts differ, so to characterize what happened as you did is disingenuous.”

    Then why is it not disingenuous of you to say that is is all on him?
    Because the conclusion I am drawing from the situation — he is ultimately and completely responsible for his own inability to attend US Worldcons because of a felony conviction, the elements of which he has admitted to publicly and multiple times — is drawn from facts which are not in dispute. The conclusion you have drawn from it — that the border guards maced and assaulted him because he was slow to follow an order — is supported if and only if you think you have all the details of the interaction. (What I suspect happened is that the officer said “get back in the car”, he didn’t, the officer grabbed his arm to push him back in or something like that, and Watts flinched or pulled back or something similar. This is an entirely reasonable reaction, particularly if you believe the cop is being unreasonable; however, it also fits the particulars of “resisting arrest”, and guarantees that the cop will escalate promptly and overwhelmingly to establish that cop is in charge. Cops are trained to do this, and probably should be.)

    And you think a person should be banned from a country if he has been “uncooperative and mouthy”? No. But felony convictions are a perfectly rational reason to ban people (and I note that Sweden and other Schengen countries can ban you for criminal activity).

    To escalate into physical handling? By defending, this practice, you are absolutely arguing against a Worldcon in US. Again. Do I think it should have escalated? Probably not, but without knowing exactly the interaction between Watts and the officers, I can’t say. I don’t think that people should have to be submissive in interactions with police — we are citizens, not subjects — but I also know that police will not put up with crap from anyone, and from their perspective, “crap” may be a reasonable description of what Watts was giving them. I don’t know how many steps were between “Watts was noncompliant” and “Watts got beaten/maced”. If there were zero, then it is difficult to defend the officers. If there were several, and Watts contributed to them (by actively pulling back or laying his own hands on the officer), my sympathy for him drops.

    I am not defending the practice of quickly escalating to assault-level physical force to establish police domination. I understand it, am not surprised by it in this case based on the facts as Peter has described them, and am glad I don’t have to come up with a way of training officers to do something better that is as effective in allowing police to do their jobs.

    @ Meredith [Watts] was not the first person to get physical.
    From the quoted account: “An officer grabbed his arm and he pulled away in a “flinch response.” Watts said he was starting to get back in the vehicle when Officer Andrew Beaudry grabbed him and tore his shirt.”
    Assume this account is accurate. Was the cop out of line to grab Watts at this point (remember, he had come out of a car being inspected, which an officer has to consider as possibly being as an aggressive act. He had not obeyed a command to get back into the car.) ? When Watts pulled away, was that not a legitimate reason to escalate force? If not, what is? Were Watts’ actions at this point in any way inconsistent with someone who may present a physical threat to an officer?
    I primarily joined the conversation when someone defended the idea of the police using force in response to someone being a bit mouthy,
    Again, I am not defending any use of force for being mouthy other than what is minimally necessary — for example, grabbing someone by the arm and moving them. If the very first physical contact between the officers and Watts was Watts receiving a punch, I won’t defend that at all. If, rather, what happened was as I suspected above (cop grabs Watts, Watts minimally resists, force level escalates), then I still won’t defend it without knowing particulars (which I suspect are unknowable at this remove) but do not think it is unexpected.

    Since Peter has entered the conversation, I would say that as an American, I am sorry for his experience, I am fully aware that Borders and Customs officials and TSA give every reason to never want to come back, and I wish that was not the case. I have had only good experiences crossing US borders, and wish that were the norm.

    @Lenora Rose
    It is EXTREMELY frequent for people on the US to defend any and all use of force by their police Which I will not do, and am not doing so here.
    even on white people,
    Both you and Cora have brought up his race. It is entirely irrelevant.

22. Just to be clear: the only reason I exited the vehicle in the first place was because the guard who’d been interrogating me had moved away from the driver’s door and was way around back of the vehicle. Other guards had meanwhile begun to search the vehicle in violation of their own protocols for such searches, i.e. they simply started going through my stuff without warning or seeking consent. (That protocol, by the way, was confirmed by some sort of supervisor in a press interview, along the lines of “They certainly would have done this prior to embarking on a search”. They did not.). Not wanting to shout, I exited the vehicle and approached the guard. There was no aggression on my part.

    When Watts pulled away, was that not a legitimate reason to escalate force? If not, what is?

    What you are condoning here is the criminalization of a flinch reflex; when seized, one recoils. It’s a pretty ancient response— and while various authorities have found it convenient to classify it as “resisting arrest”, it makes about as much biological sense as outlawing tachycardia.

    And you think a person should be banned from a country if he has been “uncooperative and mouthy”?

    You know, I’m getting pretty fucking tired of this “Watts Mouthed Off” meme that’s been doing the rounds for the past 8 years. About the only two things I explicitly remember saying upon exiting the vehicle were “I just want to know what’s going on” and “What is the problem?” (Granted I may have said these things more than once.) In fact, if anyone wants to go back and comb through the comments on one of the blog posts following my conviction, you’ll find quotes from a juror opining that it was in fact the guards who “escalated the situation with their sarcasm and miscommunication”. That person went on to say “Unfortunately, we were not asked to convict those agents with a crime, although, in my opinion, they did commit offenses against Mr. Watts. Two wrongs don’t make a right, so we had to follow the instructions as set forth to us by the judge.”

    I can be mouthy, for sure. I revel in it sometimes. But I also have a pretty decent survival instinct, and I’m not likely to mouth off to four armed and unleashed guards looking for an excuse to throw their weight around.

23. @bill

    You’re probably unaware of this, but every time you defend police getting physical and aggressive in response to any kind of perceived non-compliance, every time you say they should be trained to react that way, every time you suggest flinching is a legitimate reason for law enforcement to escalate, you are defending a system that gets disabled people killed. I do not find that to be an acceptable trade-off, personally.

24. but every time you defend police getting physical and aggressive in response to any kind of perceived non-compliance, every time you say they should be trained to react that way, every time you suggest flinching is a legitimate reason for law enforcement to escalate, you are defending a system that gets disabled people killed.

    It also gets plain old innocent unarmed people killed, or rather murdered.

    Personally, I think there should be explicit restrictions on the actions police can take, and these actions should only be allowed in the face of a real threat, not an imaginary one. No more of this “I feared for my life” bullshit, when nothing has happened. I believe the policy should be that the officer only employs their weapon when they have been fired upon; and only escalates to physical force when someone comes at them swinging. If someone flinches or jerks back, so what? Let them. Let the officer also step back, give the person some space, and try to de-escalate. And if the officer does shoot someone without cause, then they should be fired and criminally charged. Today a lot of officers in the US feel they can get away with murder…and sadly, they usually do.

25. “Because the conclusion I am drawing from the situation — he is ultimately and completely responsible for his own inability to attend US Worldcons because of a felony conviction, the elements of which he has admitted to publicly and multiple times — is drawn from facts which are not in dispute.”

    That is not correct. Those are opinions, not facts, and they are in dispute. What you are saying is that it is disingenuous to have other opinions than you. You yourself is talking about what you suspect, not about what you know. And no, a reflexive reaction that you yourself seem to think is understandable does not in any way mean resisting arrest. It is only, as you said, a reflexive reaction. It should not guarantee an escalation.

    For how long are you going to argue against a Worldcon in US? Because that kind of behaviour is not what is expected from police in other countries.

26. Bill: Race is always relevant when talking about use of authority by Police and border officials. Always. We assume it isn’t when we talk abut white people, because we’re the ones *protected* by, rather than targeted by it, but even disproportionally positive treatment is relevant.

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