Gangsters in Blue

Appropriately enough, given the post below, my Fox column this week looks at what’s happened in the year since Kathryn Johnston was killed in a botched drug raid.

It includes the encouraging results of a new Zogby poll conducted by the Drug Reform Coalition showing a healthy majority of respondents don’t approve of using paramilitary tactics to serve drug warrants.

MORE: Crap. It’s the Drug Reform Coordination Network, not the “Drug Reform Coalition.” Apologies to David Borden and DRCNet. I’ve asked Fox to make the correction.

This kind of thing almost never happens:

An Accokeek couple is demanding an apology after Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Deputies burst into their home and killed their dog - all because deputies went to the wrong address.

Pam and Frank Myers were tucked away in their home Friday night watching a movie when the warrant squad pounced.

[…]

They wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom which is like seven feet down the hall,” said Frank Myers.

“it was terrifying. I can’t sit on my couch at night any more. I’m looking over my shoulder the whole time,” said Pam Myers.

The Myers say the deputies knew immediately they had raided the wrong home. They say it could have ended with an apology, until the couple heard two shots from the yard.

“And I said, ‘You just shot my dog,” said Pam Myers, through tears. “I just wanted to go out and hold her a bit. They wouldn’t even let me go out.”

The couple’s five-year-old boxer Pearl was killed. The deputy says he feared for his life. They say the dog would bark but was no danger to the deputies.

The house the elite, well-trained, highly professional police unit was looking for was two doors down.

Map of botched raids here (now, unfortunately, about three-dozen incidents out of date). List of dogs shot during drug raids here. “Government Goons Murder Puppies!” rant here.

There was a time when I used to believe that the police had a duty to serve and protect, to care for our property and to keep criminals away. Over the years, however, I have come to realize that though real crime exists in society, it is the cops who commit most of it.

This was not a very easy decision to make. Whenever I saw injustice and brutality, I would brush it off as a sporadic episode and move on. Having seen (and this is another reason why it’s very important to keep the internet free) video after video of people being tasered, shot, beaten, executed, roughed up, fined, ticketed, jailed, harassed, insulted, and being subjected to an infinite number of abuses, it’s hard to stay optimistic about the police and the system that runs it.

Government police is subject to the same ethical and economic analysis that is applicable to other government functions. Given that the state has no incentive to protect; that it can always count on taxes; that it is institutionalized aggression; that it legislates and therefore steals and plunders – given all these things, I had to change my tune. What I had thought to be random incidents of abuse were nothing but the normal, symptomatic function of the government at work: a series of inefficient and unethical monstrosities committed against society, allegedly for its own good.

I understood, then, that police departments are just another government program. Government programs, because they rely on taxation and legislation, are not wanted by society. And we know this is true because by resorting to taxation and regulation we have eliminated competitors who in the market would otherwise be free to meet the demand for security with a supply of such a service. Therefore, it is impossible to know that the quality and quantity of defense that is offered by the government reflects what people want. We cannot express our preference.

So far I have talked mostly from an economics perspective and determined that since there is no choice, there is no real efficiency to speak of for one cannot decide how to best spend money and allocate scarce resources for defense. Now I shall continue to develop the idea that started this short essay: most crimes are carried out by the police.

When I refer to “crime” I don’t mean crime as defined by state legislature but seen as the violation of property rights. Things like taxation and eminent domain are clearly theft. And so are conscription and minimum wage laws because the former constitutes theft of the use of one’s body while the latter violates the right to contract freely.

We are now in a position to recognize that most crimes are committed by cops. Since cops are the enforcement arm of the state, they are the ones who must physically interact with citizens. And what do they do? Well, it’s business as usual: raids, searches and seizure, the war on drugs, on immigrants, on various “inequalities” and the list goes on and on.

The amount of “public crime,” crime carried out by the government is overwhelmingly larger than “private crime.” Indeed, there are probably not many people alive who have not been forced to pay some sort of tax or been subjected to regulation. And taxation and regulations are ultimately enforced by the police or another police-like executive authority. The existence of the state (even a minimal one) guarantees that the amount of public crime will always exceed the amount of private crime because while one can chose not to be a criminal, the state is nothing but a criminal entity.

There is one last point that remains to be said, and that is whether the police can respect your rights and act legitimately in the occasion where they prevent a true crime from occurring. At first it would seem that this would be an exception of the criminality and inefficiency of the police. But let’s not forget that state-based defense is essentially socialist – you pay for it regardless of your need and often the cost is the same no matter how much you use it. Thus, one can be glad that in some instances the police do protect you against private criminals, but it would be unlibertarian to forget that your defense was financed by aggressing against everyone else. Sounds a little bit like welfare doesn’t it?

And what about the rights of the pacifist? To the extent that pacifists are taxed to support the police, they are being forced to support something they don’t believe: any kind of violence, aggressive and defensive. Here, too, we see inefficiency and unjustness (this is similar to the vegetarian who must still pay for government-mandated meat inspections and regulations). Finally, even the Supreme Court has ruled that the police do not have a duty to protect you.

Unlike juries and judges and unlike legislators and prosecutors, the cops are the ones ultimately doing the dirty deeds. The judicial and legislative branches must count on someone to carry out their edicts. Of course, that implies that they are also guilty in the causal chain of criminality and are not exempt of guilt. The reason why I am picking on cops is because they are the most visible branch. Almost every interaction between the state and serf occurs through the executive branch – police officers, tax collectors, the various inspectors, regulators, confiscators and so forth.

Police officers technically must enforce all laws. Given the number of laws out there, let’s be thankful that they are incapable of doing that. Let’s also be thankful that we don’t get all the government we pay for. If the state is institutionalized aggression, then the last thing we want is an efficient government, or, for that matter, efficient cops.

Here is what I said a few days ago about the widespread use of tasers by American cops, in response to a recent case in Alabama:

Tasers were originally introduced for police use as an alternative to using lethal force; the hope was that, in many situations where cops might otherwise feel forced to go for their guns, they might be able to use the taser instead, to immobilize a person who posed a threat to them or to others, without killing anybody in the process.

In practice, of course, cops and police culture being what they are, any notion of limiting tasers to those situations very quickly went out the window. Cops armed with tasers now freely use them to end arguments by intimidation or actual violence, to coerce people who pose no real threat to anyone into complying with their bellowed orders, and to hurt uppity civilians who dare to give them lip. They often do so even when the supposed offense that they’re responding to is completely trivial; they often start tasering, or keep on tasering, after their victims have already been rendered helpless by the circumstances or by an earlier use of force. Since any complaints of excessive force are always handled by their fellow cops, the investigations almost always end up concluding that Official Procedures were followed, as if that made everything O.K., and throwing the complaint into the rubbish bin without doing anything at all. So shock-happy Peace Officers can now go around using their tasers as 50,000-volt human prods in just about any situation, with more or less complete impunity.

—GT 2007-11-11: Taser first, ask questions later

Meanwhile, in Canada, a gang of four cops in the RCMP has killed a man by electrocution. The victim was Polish immigrant named Robert Dziekanski, who had been detained in a secure area in the Vancouver International Airport. He became agitated and could not communicate with the employees, since he did not speak English. When the cops showed up to try to talk to him, he was is standing with his back to a counter and with his arms lowered by his sides. That didn’t stop them from whipping out their tasers and shooting him within 25 seconds of arriving on the scene. They shot him at least three, and possibly four times, including at least once while he was convulsing on the ground while offiicers were kneeling on him and handcuffing him:

An eyewitness’s video recording of a man dying after being stunned with a Taser by police on Oct. 14 at Vancouver International Airport has been released to the public.

The 10-minute video recording clearly shows four RCMP officers talking to Robert Dziekanski while he is standing with his back to a counter and with his arms lowered by his sides, but his hands are not visible.

About 25 seconds after police enter the secure area where he is, there is a loud crack that sounds like a Taser shot, followed by Dziekanski screaming and convulsing as he stumbles and falls to the floor.

Another loud crack can be heard as an officer appears to fire one more Taser shot into Dziekanski.

As the officers kneel on top of Dziekanski and handcuff him, he continues to scream and convulse on the floor.

One officer is heard to say, Hit him again. Hit him again, and there is another loud cracking sound.

Police have said only two Taser shots were fired, but a witness said she heard up to four Taser shots.

Robert Dziekanski falls to the floor as an RCMP officer looks on.Robert Dziekanski falls to the floor as an RCMP officer looks on.

A minute and half after the first Taser shot was fired Dziekanski stops moaning and convulsing and becomes still and silent.

Shortly after, the officers appear to be checking his condition and one officer is heard to say, code red.

…

[R]etired superintendent Ron Foyle, a 33-year veteran of the Vancouver police who saw the video tape, said he didn’t know why it ever became a police incident.

It didn’t seem that he made any threatening gestures towards them, Foyle said.

…

The video was recorded in three segments. The first segment shows Dziekanski before police arrive.

He is clearly agitated, yelling in Polish, and appears to be sweating. He can be seen taking office chairs and putting them in front of the security doors. He then picks up a small table, which he holds, while a woman in the arrivals lounge calmly speaks to him in apparent effort to calm him down.

… In the second segment, Dziekanski picks up a computer and throws it to the ground. Three airport personnel arrive and block the exit from the secure area, but Dziekanski retreats inside and does not threaten them.

Then four RCMP officers arrive in the lounge. Someone can be heard mentioning the word Tasers.

Someone replies, Yes, as the officers approach the security doors.

… People in the lounge can be heard clearly telling the police Dziekanski speaks no English, only Russian. His mother later said he only spoke Polish.

Police enter the secure area with no problems and can be seen with Dziekanski standing calmly talking with officers. They appear to direct him to stand against a wall, which he does.

As he is standing there, one of the officers shoots him with a Taser.

—CBC News (2007-11-15): Taser video shows RCMP shocked immigrant within 25 seconds of their arrival

Meanwhile, the cops responded by confiscating the eyewitness’s digital camera, refusing to return it as they’d promised, and then issuing blatant lies about the number of officers on the scene, the number of times they tasered their victim, and whether or not there were bystanders nearby at the time of the attack. The video, which directly contradicts police statements, has only been released to the public since the eyewitness, Paul Pritchard, retained a lawyer and threatened to sue.

Since they have been forced to release the video of the killing, the Mounties have promised that The Matter Will Be Investigated, of course. But the official excuses are already being manufactured as we speak.

RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr said no one can judge what happened to Dziekanski by just watching the video.

It’s just one piece of evidence, one person’s view. There are many people that we have spoken to, RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

What I urge is that those watching the video, take note of that. Put what they’ve seen aside for the time being. And wait to hear the totality of the evidence at the time of the inquest, Carr said.

—CBC News (2007-11-15): Taser video shows RCMP shocked immigrant within 25 seconds of their arrival

What ought to happen after the inquest is that these four Mounties end up in the dock on a charge of murder, in light of their reckless use of violence and their depraved indifference to human life. What will probably happen, instead, is a collective shrug of the shoulders from the Federalis and some sanctimonious official lectures on how important it is to cooperate with airport security.

(Story thanks to Elinor, in comments.)

The funeral for Gracia "BG" Beaugris, killed by Miami-Dade police office Christopher Villano, will be held on Saturday, November 17, 2007 at 10:00am at the New Birth Baptist Church, 2300 NW 135^th St. in Opa-Locka. BG was shot to death on October 25, less than 100 feet from his own front door. After completing his father's laundry, BG stood yards from his home with his brother and two friends when Miami-Dade police officer Christopher Villano jumpout out of his unmarked cars because the young men looked "suspicious." After searching each of them, Villano found nothing- no weapons, drugs or stolen goods- and the youth began asking why they were targeted. Villano physically attacked BG, ultimately shooting him a total of three times, two while BG lie on the ground. Since BG's slaying, three others have been killed by Miami-Dade police, including Roger Brown who on November 8 was tased, kicked in the face and beaten with batons before being hogtied and thrown in the back of a police car on 95^th Street and NW 17^th Ave. Brown died a short time after. Childhood friends Michael Knight and Frisco Blackwood were driving a friend home on November 11 when police stopped the vehicle, allegedly for running a red light, and surrounded it with weapons drawn. Fearful for his life, Blackwood followed orders to lower his window, but he accidentally put the vehicle in neutral rather than in park. As the SUV resettled on the uneven ground, police open fired, killing the two unarmed men and wounding the female passenger. These killings are the direct result of the latest round of aggressive police tactics targeting Black communities such as Liberty City, Little Haiti, North Miami and elsewhere. Several community organizations, including CopWatch, planned a demonstration in front of the Miami-Dade police station for Saturday to protest BG's killing. However, due to the funeral arrangements, the protest will be postponed. That means the 2:00pm protest at the Miami-Dade police station is canceled. The viewing for BG Beaugris will be held on Friday, November 16, 2007 from 6:00pm until 10:00pm, at the St Fort Funeral Home, 16480 NE 19th Ave. We encourage everyone to attend the funeral. Forward, Max Rameau CopWatch a project of the Center for Pan-African Development

Wow. Just wow.

Lots of people sent me the story about the teenager in Orange County, California who hacked into the local police department’s 911 computer and dispatched a SWAT team to scare the hell out of a couple and their kids.

I didn’t comment because I didn’t really think it was a case of improper use of a SWAT team. The kid reported a fake homicide. I suppose you could criticize the police department for having a hackable computer system, but just about every computer system is vulnerable to renegade teenage hackers.

But Jonathan Blanks did find a quote from the local DA that’s pretty interesting:

…the SWAT team saw a man armed with a weapon at the house where they believed a murder had occurred. We’re thankful no one was killed. It easily could have escalated to that point.”

True. And a fine reason why we shouldn’t send SWAT teams to apprehend people suspected of nonviolent crimes.

I don’t feel particularly bad about the fact that Ephraim Cruz lost his job with the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol should not exist at all, and the men and women who decide to join it are, whether they realize it or not, violently inflicting injustices on innocent people every day, as an essential part of their job duties. Cruz seems to me like a basically decent man with an acute conscience, and it will be better for him now that he has to find an honest line of work.

But Jenn’s interview with Cruz at reappropriate is still powerful, and important to read, because of what it tells us about the institutional culture of policing in general, and border policing in particular. It should be no surprise that the Blue Wall stays in place when the uniforms change from blue to green; if anything, it is worse, because abusive border cops can rely on getting away with even more than abusive ordinary cops can. Their usual victims have no formal standing as citizens, often cannot speak English well, have few advocates with high profiles in the media or the legal system, and are about to be forced out of the country, far away from anyone who might do anything about their mistreatment.

Ephraim Cruz, a former patrol agent with the U.S. Border Patrol, tried to do something about Border Patrol agents who abused captured and imprisoned immigrants. Here are some of the things that he saw while he was stationed in Arizona:

Ephraim was also amazed to find cells were frequently filled to two or three times their posted capacity, while neighbouring cells were not being utilized at all. Not only was this a clear violation of fire codes, but Ephraim feared this practice could pose a serious health risk for detainees.

… But, most heart-wrenching for Ephraim was the observation that detainees were frequently going twenty to thirty hours at a time without food. In his March 21, 2004 memo, Ephraim recounts how he watched a young ten-year-old boy — whom his mother described as in good health — break out into red bumps after going more than twenty hours without a meal. Later that same day, Ephraim remembers how a young girl went more than thirty hours without food, and complained of feeling faint. These were hardly isolated incidents: Ephraim remembers countless children and pregnant women who went without food for two or three shifts at a time.

According to Border Patrol spokesperson Andy Adame (quoted in archived Tucson Citizen article Border Agent Claims Detainees Mistreated in Douglas, written by Luke Turf, published May 22, 2004), Border Patrol policies state that all detainees should be fed at 6am, noon and 6pm and … crackers and juice are always available for immigrants. However, Ephraim writes in an August 5, 2004 memo (Memo from E. Cruz to R. Bonner, SUBJECT: Ongoing Mistreatment of Illegal Aliens and Processing Issues):

The integrity of those meal times are habitually violated, and crackers and juice are not always available. Furthermore, when crackers and juice are indeed available, it is not readily provided to the detainees… It is station policy that we feed all illegal aliens held beyond six to eight hours. Many illegal aliens easily go two to three times beyond that time frame without one meal.

In that same memo, Ephraim recounts how on July 31, 2004, he approached the control room that 220 meals would be needed that day, only to be told that 70 meals would be ordered. Most likely, Ephraim opined, two-thirds of detainees at the facility went hungry that day. According to Ephraim, the Douglas station also went weeks at a time without replenishing their supply of juice and crackers, and even when such items were in stock, they were not always made available to detainees. In one incident, Ephraim left some juice and crackers near the door of a holding cell only to have a fellow Agent remove the food moments later, muttering to Ephraim that by leaving it within reach of detainees, they might assume the food was for them.

Ephraim further notes that there was a distinct lack of concern for detainees amongst Agents; an almost dehumanization of the UDAs [Undocumented Aliens —R.G.] that helped perpetuate the mistreatment. Ironically, the Agents — who were predominantly Mexican American — looked down on UDAs as if to say that they, as legal Mexican Americans, were better than the Mexican detainees. Many seemed to feel that detainees deserved their mistreatment; Ephraim recalls how in one instance, while denying food to a detainee, one agent remarked that [the illegal aliens] knew they were coming, they should have brought food with them.

The dehumanization extended in one case to abuse reminiscent of the Abu Ghraib scandal (which ironically occurred only a few months after Ephraim began writing his memos). On March 1, 2005, Ephraim wrote a memo that included a recount of an incident he observed(Memo from E. Cruz to M. Nicely, Chief Patrol Agent, Tucson Sector) :

[I] informed FOS Jeffrey Richards and FOS Ignacio Luevano, in the presence of SBPA Robert Marrufo that SBPFA Marrufo directed BPA Jon Gleber to put an undocumented alien in our custody in a stress position. The incident took place about two weeks ago on the north side of the processing floor and to the knowledge of other agents. The stress position consisted of the alien performing the chair which entails leaning against the wall with both legs at a 90 degree angle and both hands straight out. They had the alien remain in that position until he buckled and cried.

Marrufo then suggested that the alien be placed in the forward leaning rest position, a push-up position, to give him some exercise, however I don’t know if Agent Gelber followed through with the suggestion.

—Jenn @ reappropriate (2007-11-05): The Price of Conscience: An Interview with U.S. Border Patrol Agent Ephraim Cruz

In 2004, Cruz, believing that a man’s conscience is God’s voice, began to write memos and letters to try to make his supervisors, politicians, and the media aware of violations of policies, training, state laws, fire and health codes, and illegal aliens’ civil and human rights within [the Douglas, Arizona] processing facility. Here is what happened:

Ephraim writes in his March 21, 2004 memo (Memo from E. Cruz to supervisors, 2004):

This culture… reflects a disturbing level of complacency and lack of accountability and is coupled with responses… that this is the way things are done.

Ephraim describes this culture of complacency as fostering the sentiment that, management condoned [the mistreatment] and Agents knew that management knew and [were] not correcting it. Therefore, Ephraim says, Agents asked themselves why should I rock the boat?

… Despite his 117 letters, Ephraim received little support from the Senators and Congressmen he contacted. Andy Adame, Border Patrol spokesperson, told the media that the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) would conduct a generic investigation of Ephraim’s accusations, but a recent article by the Tucson Weekly reports that this investigation — though supposedly having found Ephraim’s claims to be unsubstantiated — may never have actually taken place.

—Jenn @ reappropriate (2007-11-05): The Price of Conscience: An Interview with U.S. Border Patrol Agent Ephraim Cruz

After he began speaking out, Cruz found that his employee review scores suddenly plummeted. One supervisor encouraged his co-workers to take care of him for the accusations. Then, in 2005, he was brought up on federal charges for transporting an illegal alien across the border. He and some friends had gone across the border into Agua Prieta after work, and on his way back he gave Maria Terrazas — a waitress who lived in Douglas and who was dating one of his colleagues at the Border Patrol — a ride back across the border to her home in Douglas. Later, in an unrelated criminal investigation against her boyfriend, it turned up that she didn’t have her papers. Cruz, who had no way of knowing this at the time, was brought up on federal charges. Nobody else involved in giving Terrazas the ride was charged. If he had been convicted, Cruz could have been sentenced to up to 20 years in a federal prison for this non-crime. As it turns out, the jury found the prosecution baseless and acquitted him on all charges. But that didn’t stop the retaliation. Last month, he received a letter from the U.S. Border Patrol stating that he would be fired on administrative charges — the same charges that a federal jury had already acquitted him of. He has been forced to resign so that he could avoid having this baseless smear go on his record; he could not afford a lawyer to fight the dismissal in court.

When it comes to cases of corruption or abuse, it’s often said that cops will protect their own. That’s close to the truth, but it misses the mark in one important respect. Cops — and this manifestly includes border cops, too — will try as hard as they can to intimidate, harass, defame, abandon, hurt, fire, imprison, or even kill any of their own who speak out against their colleagues’ crimes.

That isn’t cops protecting their own. It’s cops protecting their power. And they’ll do just about anything to absolutely anybody who endangers it. Ephraim Cruz is the latest of many victims to get the long knife treatment.