Police abuse roundup

  Comic from xkcd.  (Click to enlarge.)

It's not that each of the articles referenced here doesn't merit its own examination;  they just keep coming so bloody fast...  And so (focusing on just two writers) it seemed that a roundup would be in order.

Wendy McElroy has been on a roll on the topic of police abuse lately, and as usual, her methodical writing can serve as a useful resource for all of us.  I know that I get awful cranky when trying to ask the basic question:  where are all those marvelous cops that all those (hundreds or thousands of) "bad apples" are giving such a bad name to?  Why haven't we heard a peep from them while the very face of law enforcement resolves more and more sharply into jackbooted thuggery?

It's a legitimate question.  I seem to get into it here quite often.  And McElroy handles it well:  see here, here, and here for some of her most recent thoughts, which get right to the heart of the matter:

Is the bar of decency so low for policemen that a good cop is the one who silently watches a fellow officer douse a baby with pepper spray while the bad apple is the one who brutalizes the infant? And what does this good cop do when the baby's parents arrive at the station to file a complaint? Police notoriously refuse to give evidence against each other, they lie on the Bible in court, they falsify or lose documents, and they justify beating people to death with official jargon about "resisting arrest" even if the victim was an unarmed 150 lb man who 'resisted' four hulking cops.

BTW, the charges are standard double-speak for when a person has committed no real crime but the police want to arrest him/her anyway. If you so much as ask for directions of a cop or accidentally step in front of him, he can (in principle) arrest you for interfering with a police officer in the line of duty. If you then say "but I didn't do anything," he can add on "resisting arrest." The amount of time he has 'wasted' in arresting you is the amount of the "theft of service" you've committed. These become bargaining chips with which DAs and others threaten innocent people into relinquishing their right to sue or other protest police abuse. By design, this leaves the police with zero accountability. With such institutionalized incentives toward abuse, no wonder the cops have become jackbooted thugs who are far worse than common criminals. Moreover, if they respond this way to a trivial infraction committed by a mother with child, how do you think they will treat someone with a serious objection? That's how unarmed and innocent people get beaten to death by cops.

...I'll limit myself to one observation: namely to comment upon "police departments maintain lists of (usually victimless) crimes committed by political figures, and have policies not to automatically charge these people, but to hold it over their heads." To the extent I have info on the inner workings of police departments, everything I know substantiates Jeanine's point. In the 1990s, I did extensive research with sex workers, especially call girls, and I became quite friendly with a few. They claimed it was commonplace for police to exchange a "get out jail free" pass for info on their clients/associates or for leverage on future snitching.

Wouldn't one think that fine, good cops, proud of the honor in their profession, would be screaming at the tops of their lungs to demonstrate and clear their good name?  To not be associated with the daily stories of horrific abuse and arrogant denial of accountability committed by their fellow officers?

Where are they?

William Norman Grigg doesn't know either.  He has likewise embarked on a new series in the vein of his classic Rubicon In The Rear-View essays.  This series is titled The Thin Blue Whine, and his firebrand style is certainly on display as he asks the same question:

Yet Sgt. Scott Westermann, capo of the Portland police union, insists that Humphreys has always "exemplified everything one could imagine a police officer should be." That is to say, all cops should be Christopher Humphreys. Which would mean, of course, that there would be nothing wrong with all detainees ending up [bludgeoned to death] like James Chasse.

Humphreys was put on "administrative leave" -- a supposedly punitive paid vacation -- after shooting the 12-year-old with the beanbag shotgun. This decision riled up Westermann and his knuckle-draggers, who began howling that Humphreys had "suffered" enough.

Following a union no-confidence vote and the above-mentioned street march, Police Chief Rosie Sizer and Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman decided to placate the armed legions by putting Humphreys back on active duty, albeit behind a desk.

In this case, of course, Stoddard had neither facts nor the law on his side -- just a sense of limitless privilege and a petulant frustration that Judge Donahoe refused to accept his puerile fictions. Following his Drama Queen turn in front of the press, Stoddard checked in to the Maricopa County Jail system.

... As one of Arpaio's brown-shirted cadres, Adam Stoddard endured none of those indignities. Citing supposed "security" concerns -- "security" being the familiar, all-purpose defense of dictators everywhere -- Arpaio refused to say exactly where Stoddard was being held. If he actually spent time behind bars it was most likely as a guest in a special, detainee-friendly facility referred to as the “Mesa Hilton." Another possibility is that Stoddard simply enjoyed a paid vacation under "house arrest" or in similarly comfortable circumstances.

To hear Stoddard's brown-shirted comrades tell the story, however, the deputy was [] a modern Sir Walter Raleigh, unjustly immured in the Tower of London awaiting his grim appointment with the Headsman. Accordingly, on the morning after Stoddard was taken to "jail," twenty intrepid, public-spirited MCSO deputies suddenly called in “sick," thereby throwing the Superior Court into disarray.

Things got even nastier when an anonymous bomb threat was called in -- the first of two that would occur, along with an incident of vandalism involving pepper-spray, during Stoddard's detention. Significantly, no similar acts occurred after Stoddard's vacation-cum-jail sentence ended.

This illegal work stoppage (assuming we can torture the word "work" into describing what the MSCO does) amounted to a criminal conspiracy against the rights of those whose legal hearings were delayed. The bomb threats and pepper spray attack would be investigated as acts of terrorism had they been carried out by common citizens in support of a detainee. But the police union thugs who demanded that Stoddard be released from jail and have his record cleared acted in the serene confidence that they confronted neither personal nor professional consequences.

We are told that 2009 was a year fraught with peril for the police because 47 officers were killed by gunfire. During the same time frame, however, at least 56 people suffered "Taser-related" deaths at the hands of police. It's difficult to find out how many others were killed by police -- in shootings, beatings, or mistreatment in jail or prison. The chances are pretty good, however, that the body count is much higher than the 117 police deaths that occurred during the past year.

Shouldn't we therefore conclude that 2009 was (to paraphrase the Washington Times) "a particularly perilous time for civilians involved in encounters with the police"?

It is a singular tragedy whenever any human being suffers an avoidable death. When that individual is a police officer, we are expected to prostrate ourselves in inconsolable grief. When the deceased is a victim of unwarranted lethal violence by the police, we are instructed to sympathize with the assailant, who has a difficult and dangerous job. Who will mourn the Mundanes?

Guys?  "Good apples"?  You there?  Hello?  Whether you think it "fair" or not, you are currently associated with these people.  Shouldn't you be doing something about that?  There are a lot of people out here who want very much to believe that you will.  Shortly.

One way or the other, those people will make note of your response.