Busted flat in Baton Rouge - way to go!

Posted by Warthog on September 06, 2004

In Reply to: Bust - question posted by Bruce Kahl on September 06, 2004

: : : : Anybody know how the word "busted" for arrested came into being?

: : : : The beginning of a 5 day weekend was spent being processed thru the NYC penal system as my daughter and I were busted for "parading without a permit", which is newspeak for the Republican conspiracy of Pataki/Bloomberg/Giulliani to deprive citizens of various civil rights. These people are such piglets.

: : : Bruce, I would say sorry to hear you and your daughter were arrested, but I have a strong feeling that you're both very proud of it.

: : : I couldn't find any on-line etymology for "busted" meaning "arrested". But I'll take a guess: It comes from the fascists' storm trooper lackeys "busting" down the door and arresting a group of peace-loving counter-culturalists whose only crime is to wear beards and sandals. Or something like that.

: : Bruce, you're a trip. In a show of support, I'll look and see if I can find the origin of "busted."

: : BUST -- "meaning a police raid, 1930s, coming to mean a police dispersal of a youth gang by 1949 (this was also called a hassle), and meaning to arrest by the early 1960s, originally by rebellious students." From "Speaking Freely: A Guided Tour of American English from Plymouth Rock to Silicon Valley" by Stuart Berg Flexner and Anne H. Soukhanov (Oxford University Press, New York, 1997).

: : Another reference says "bust," to arrest or catch in the act goes back to the 1940s as police and underworld slang. But it became "universally known" around 1968-70. From Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Volume 1, A-G by J.E. Lighter, Random House, New York, 1994.

: : I don't know why "bust," but the word has had a variety of meanings. A drunken spree, a bad batch of illegal liquor (busthead), to break into some place, to hit, to catch in the act. And so forth.

: : A question: what is the penalty for parading without a permit?

: You are asked to "post and forfeit" a $50 fine. If you do not pay, which I did once when I was wayyyy too young, it pisses everybody off big time. This leads to physical threats and pain which I did not want to inflict on my daughter so I just paid the fine.
:
: My second bust was at the March on Washington during the Nixon years.
: I was among those who refused to "post and forfeit" for "parading without a permit." Enraged and really pissed by our refusal to pay the $50 fine the police subjected us to on the spot punishments carried out by the DC police and the thugs and piglets who make up the US Marshals headquarters. Those of us who insisted on a trial were separated from the others, shackled firmly right hand to left foot for three hours and then placed on a bus and driven to an underground garage. There the police refastened the handcuffs to the tightest level and let us sit again on the school bus for 2 hours when we were recharged somehow with "diorderly conduct" and released with all charges dropped. To this day ??????.

: My first bust was in 1964 right here in good ol' liberal NYC in a berg called Staten Island where this Neo-Nazi type guy refused to serve blacks at his greasy spoon diner.
: The same excuse to take away your First Amendment, "parading w/o a permit", was used but back then it was only 15 bucks to buy your way out without physical pain.

: "Now,there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest."
: "Martin Luther King, Jr.April 16, 1963

: More at:
: Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience"

: King's "Letter from Burmingham
: Jail"

: Sophocle's "Antigone"

and we naively thought (nearly elected) "President" Bush had 99.9% support - like Saddam, Mugabe and Q'daffi.

shows we shouldn't read "Stupid White Men"!