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Police “Protection”
In a nation of 300+ million people, the occasional tale of legendary idiocy or corruption is to be expected. Hey, it happens. A few incidents across one of the largest nations on Earth is not a trend.
What grabs my attention in Mark Steyn’s latest column, however, is the long series of high-ranking officials who are apparently willing to excuse the inexcusable — a young man, wrongly suspected of stealing a car, taking a bullet (which collapsed his lung) from a policeman after objecting to the cops’ rough treatment of his mother:
The District Court found for the coppers, and so did the Fifth Circuit, ruling that “Get your [expletive] hands off my mom” constituted a “verbal threat” and, from a guy on his knees 15-20 feet away, “an immediate threat to the safety of the officers” – rather than (as we approach Mother’s Day) what ought to be the sentiment of any self-respecting young man seeing somebody physically assault his mom.
The Supreme Court has now vacated the Fifth Circuit’s decision, and “remanded the case for further proceedings” [….]
Mark doesn’t bother to mention the police department’s willingness to defend this action. But let’s group those officials with the senior judges who believe this is legal.
According to the District Court ruling mentioned here, “the officer was entitled to qualified immunity because he did not violate any clearly established right.” This is later clarified as a federal right. Alas, there is no federal right to continue breathing.
Steyn goes on to summarize other recent cases of quick-on-the-draw police officers.
When the adrenalin’s pumping and seconds count, I’m willing to cut police plenty of slack. But I do wonder sometimes.
What do you think of Mark’s conclusion? Are these cases symptoms of widespread problems? What should be the consequences of such severe mistakes by police when the accused are indeed innocent?
Published in General
How about this one excessive force at a local school board meeting?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsbS9JD7Pvw
And the saddest thing, those spineless parents in the room.
Maybe 10 years and desk duty, evidence locker, bailiff duty. I don’t want to be paying for pensions for people who only work 10 years.
This hits the nail on the head. I know two ex-cops and one ex-prosecutor who left law enforcement so as not to permanently jade themselves. If the most level-headed people leave law enforcement, we’re left with too many hair-trigger Harrys and shoot-em up Sallies. This is not to excuse the actions of the police or the over-accommodation of the courts in this case, but rather to say that the day-to-day muck and mire of policing has serious consequences for the men and women whose job it is to protect us. Being jaded brings out the worst in some officers.
In case we missed it above, the problem is the militarization of the civilian police forces, both state and local. S.W.A.T. certainly has it’s place, but cops driving tanks and having artillery places them in the kill mode, not the protect mode. Apart from the arming up of the feds for the obvious purpose of keeping us “subjects” in line, the state and local cops are being fed the propaganda line about “right wing militias” as their sworn enemy.
Soldiers are trained to kill and move fast without due process. More and more the local police are receiving the same training. We are moving quickly to the police being moved to other than their home town for “broadening ” training.
Americans have always rightly expected the military to stay out of the policing business. Now we are finding the police entering the military break and kill mentality.
I’m (yet again) astonished at how quickly people interpret verbal expressions as if it constituted a threat.
Yesterday, we had the discussion about the Supreme Court’s ruling about school prayer, and the ludicrous belief that expressing a religious sentiment is deemed equivalent to an imminent imposition of a religious theocracy.
No sane person would take a simple, innocent expression and leap to a conclusion of imminent danger. And yet, that’s the underlying premise behind so many of these cases … namely, that just about anything can be held up as “evidence” of some sinister motive. Any verbal contradiction, or even not moving fast enough to please the authorities, can be interpreted (absurdly) as a “threat” or evidence of imminent law-breaking that, in turn, the authorities have an unlimited right to employ any and all force necessary to subdue the threat.
We live in a legal culture in which any action, even the most common and innocuous, can be portrayed in any way contrary to common sense … so long as it’s stretched enough to justify a plausible interpretation, or at least one a shameless lawyer is willing to sell.
It offends reason.
We’re looking at two trends here: the militarization and totalitarianization of police attitudes and tactics and the erosion of the barriers against military operations against US citizens at home.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131105/05401425129/cops-subject-man-to-rectal-searches-enemas-colonoscopy-futile-effort-to-find-drugs-they-swear-he-was-hiding.shtml
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/01/02/president-obama-signed-the-national-defense-authorization-act-now-what/
What do you think of Mark’s conclusion?
I agree with not only his conclusion, but with every single word he wrote … plus the spirit of the piece. Plus, with every word of the excerpt of Kevin Williamson’s piece.
Are these cases symptoms of widespread problems?
Absolutely. Also obviously, for anyone who’s been watching trends in this country from a libertarian point of view for decades, as I have been. There’s long-lived trend of agents of the state increasingly considering us subjects. There’s a long-lived trend of the law considering agents of the state exceptional They are not: we and they are equals, and they have no rights we do not have. Police forces have been militarized as well over recent decades. Part of the problem, as well, is that too many actions that sovereign citizens should be free to take have, over the better part of a century, been outlawed. This gives the police a much wider sphere of interest and influence than they should have.
What should be the consequences of such severe mistakes by police when the accused are indeed innocent?
Punishment.
The militarization of police forces can be attributed to the “War on Drugs” that began back in the Wilson administration with a push against Opium dens. Richard Nixon declared drug use “public enemy number 1” and the media coined the phrase “War on Drugs.”
Militarization began with military aid to Columbia etc. and has expanded from foreign aid to domestic aid. It became OK to have “drug enforcement” units that were military in style and tactics. Every police department wants federal money for “free” stuff and the feds provide it for drug enforcement. Thus… S.W.A.T. teams everywhere.
The other side of the problem is the training. Cops practice “hair trigger” situations where they burst into a mock building and have to quickly determine who are the bad guys, who is armed and who is a life threat. Translate to the field and every situation becomes a “hair trigger” event. This leads to police shootings that shouldn’t have happened.
Here in Albuquerque, there seems to be a major problem with police shootings. The DOJ has found that APD has used unconstitutional force and has recommended sweeping changes.
They don’t protect us or serve us. We are all now subjects and potential threats to police officers according to their perspective. The other thing that really bothers me, and is at the heart of police officer’s conceit, is that they keep us ‘safe’.
These guys and gals really think they are charged with protecting us from ourselves as much or more than from bad guys. The next time a cop uses the word “safe” in any form I will call him on it. They are always harping on that and it’s supposed to make us feel good about them. They are concerned and they care. BS. They are like liberals who think they can improve everyone’s lives by banning stuff. They use “safety’ as a means of control and few have figured out that it’s a lie – or else don’t know how to respond to appeals for our ‘safety’.
Not a horror story but a typical encounter with a cop: Pulled over for gliding through a stop sign taking a right turn around 4 mph. Of course I looked both ways and there were no cars coming (mistake, I didn’t look in my rearview) There were no cars andfthe right turn was more of a merge than a 90 degree. After seeing that I lived a block away from the stop and had ZERO points on my record, cop gives me a warning (ok, good) but says, “be more careful”
Thinking about this later, I became annoyed because I was careful (not however careful about getting caught, looking for cops). I am a very careful driver, and probably a better more careful driver than most cops. I’ve never had a real accidents and the two minor accidents I was involved in were clearly the other drivers’ fault. I drove for a year in Cairo ,Egypt where there are no traffic rules at all and had no accidents. I’ve been driving 20 years longer than this young cop.
So why is gliding through a stop sign with perfect visability with no cars in sight reckless? It’s not. I just technically broke a traffic law. So what’s bothersome is this cop and others conflating obeying the letter of the law with care and safety. The two things are not the same at all.
I have real horror stories too, and I have had good experiences with police as well. The trouble is, the horror stories are recent and the good experiences are far in the past.
Amen.
Another thing that really burns me is the property seizure thing. Everyone’s heard about the person losing their house because of a pot arrest, but you’ve also got things like a carte blanche policy to seize cash. If you’re carrying a large amount of cash, law enforcement can seize it on the sheer suspicion that you’re a drug dealer, and the onus is on you to prove otherwise. Good luck getting your money back. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
I’m 100% behind your frustration, but I think transportation departments bear a lot of the blame as well. Poorly conceived laws are dangerous because they breed contempt for the law.
Franco, maybe your eyesight and reflexes are good enough that the way you roll stop signs is 100% safe. Now.
But you’re developing bad habits. This whole discussion started with justified criticism of cops with bad training and leadership who therefore are dangerous. A fairly hot 9 mm bullet fired by one of those out of control cops will transfer about 400 ft-lb at point blank range.
A medium size car at 5-10 mph is more like 4000 ft-lb. That’s you rolling a stop sign.
When you do that, you’re training yourself to be dangerous. If you rent a car with different sightlines I hope that I and mine are nowhere around.
Police don’t make the Top Ten List. And thats including all the Urban cops. Those working in suburban and rural areas are more likely to die of Donut related cardiovascular disease.
From Forbes..
The 10 Deadliest Jobs:
1. Logging workers
2. Fishers and related fishing workers
3. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers
4. Roofers
5. Structural iron and steel workers
6. Refuse and recyclable material collectors
7. Electrical power-line installers and repairers
8. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers
9. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers
10. Construction laborers
No he’s not. He’s got good habits: he thinks about what he’s doing. Stop signs are put there so that people don’t think. Not thinking is what causes accidents.
A couple of cities in Europe removed all their traffic signs a few years ago, and the traffic accident rate fell. To zero.
“Controlled Chaos: European Cities Do Away with Traffic Signs”
Funny to read a bunch of Germans sounding like radical Libertarians, but they have the results to back them up. Regulations benefit bureaucrats, not the regulated.
People who know they have to look out for themselves, do. Too many people just turn off their brains, so that when the cop car runs a red light without it’s lights/siren on, they didn’t see it coming. (Happened to my sister.)
I’m paranoid, roll through stop signs when there’s no danger, but look both ways when I’m going though an intersection with a green light; and haven’t had an accident in 20+ years.
And yes, I recently had a similar interaction with the town cops.
They’re just trying to justify their existence, in my case, in a town with virtually no crime.
Where I live people pretty much ignore crosswalks. Cross a double yellow centerline in a U turn into a parking space in a busy business district. Dogs off leash. Cars with no lights at night rolling right by cops with nothing happening. People who have NO idea where the right side of their car is and drive on a narrow street more on the wrong side of the road than the right side.
Actually, I am grateful of someone who rolls stop signs when it’s “safe” Along with certain leftist bumper stickers, it’s a pretty good warning of someone to be especially wary of.
Tuck, I agree.
I got to be a really good driver in Cairo where there are no rules. Also driving a stick in Ireland was a trip. Right side of the road cltching with the right foot shifting with the left hand.
Blindly following traffic signs and developing ‘habits’ is more dangerous than being aware and making decisions actively.
Onetheleftcoast. I guess you didn’t read the part where I said I never had an accident in 40 years of driving. And the intersection is by my house, I know it well. I don’t do that on just any intersection. here is said intersection: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=sunset+and+burnt+hill+rd+skillman+nj&client=safari&ie=UTF-8&ei=2wBtU67AGsu3yASOuYCwCg&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ
It should probably have a yield sign for right turns.
Exactly. The rules in Cairo, and in those towns experimenting with no signs are no rules. So everyone is playing by the same rules.
When you train yourself it’s OK to roll stop signs in a state where pedestrians and other drivers have the right to assume you won’t then they are obeying the rules and you are training yourself not to. My mistake to miss that you limit your rolling stops to one place; I hope that keeps you from developing bad habits elsewhere.
I look forward to your discussing with experienced firearms trainers how bad it is to develop muscle memory and follow rules when you are in control of deadly machinery.
Traffic stops are misdemeanors. IOW, mostly BS – “revenue enhancers”. Yes, there are “rules”, but they aren’t terribly important on the grand scale of the world. Drive in Italy and find what people are like when they don’t particularly follow any rule at a given time.
Now this is more along the lines of what this thread was begun about. Note the total lack of discipline, fire control. Group firing is a known thing, but generally encountered on the battlefield. One doesn’t expect our streets to be scenes of major firefights. Especially when it becomes apparent that there was no specific threat. These cops fired mostly because they ID’d the car as belonging to a perp who shot one of theirs. The news is littered with examples of this lawlessness. Recollect the LA incident earlier this year I believe, where a cop asked some guy to stop as he wanted to question him and the guy ran. The cop shot him. No threat, no weapon – just a “known felon” to the cop.
Rather reminds me of the old days when we got transfers into the VA where the sheet began with “KNOWN VETERAN”.