Gangsters in Blue

Earlier this week, I called in to Fox News’ Freedom Watch to talk about my latest crime column. I’m not sure why the map on the screen is pointing to Phoenix.

• Cop gets away with killing two in possible DUI case because his fellow officers didn’t bother testing him for alcohol (until eight hours later). Judge who dismissed the charges is the came judge who dismissed charges last year against the cops caught beating up a couple of businessmen at a Chicago bar.
• So all those measures in the health care bill that were going to keep costs down? They won’t take effect for years. If at all.
• Tea Partiers respond to the Jim Bovard article I linked to over the weekend.
• William Anderson has more on the increasingly surreal Tonya Craft child molestation case.
• The M.I.A. video for her song “Born Free” is pretty intense. Themes include SWAT teams and police militarization, government power, and racial profiling. (Warning: It’s graphic, violent, and contains images of naked people you probably didn’t want to see naked.)
• A fine use of taxpayer dollars: 74-year-old Canadian woman extradited on a 30-year-old pot charge.

Hot Pursuit. Daily Brickbats (2010-04-27):

San Antonio, Texas, police say Officer Gabriel Villareal has been suspended indefinitely, but they refuse to say why. However, a woman, who was not identified by local media, says he showed up at her door one day saying he was responding to a 911 call. She said she hadn't called....

In which Officer Gabriel Villareal, stalker in uniform, uses his powers as a police officer to hunt down a San Antonio woman's address, barge in on her unannounced, and harass her in her own home. If you or I used our own private resources to pull a stunt like that, we'd be prime candidates for a restraining order and might well end up arrested on stalking or menacing charges. When Men In Uniform use their own far more extensive resources, as well as the implicit threat of their legal and physical powers, to inflict their unwanted attentions on unwilling women, suddenly it's a private administrative matter, to be handled behind closed doors by the Department.

I saw the following at a MySpace page that has plenty more examples to which readers can follow links:

blogs.myspace.com/blackpeoplestandup

MySpace.com | rss | inscrever-me

BLACK PEOPLE STAND UP! Última Atualização: 14/3/2010 Enviar MensagemMensagem InstantâneaEnviar por E-mail para um AmigoInscrever-me Sexo: Male Status: Solteiro Idade: 36 Sinal: Áries Estado: Georgia País: US Data de Inscrição: 20/9/2007 Quem dá Kudos: (2) Ywndricka (1) Links Patrocinados Entre Nessa Rede Invista no Seu Futuro Profissional. Inscrições Vestibular 2010 Unijorge Unijorge.edu.br

sábado, outubro 20, 2007  Stories Of Black Men That Have Been Murdered By Law Enforcement Officers. Modo atual:  acordado Click on the links to read the full stories of these unarmed men that have been choked, beaten, neglected and shot to death by law enforcement officers in the United States. This Monday is October 22. It will be a National Day Of Protest Against Police Brutality with protests planned all over the United States. If there is no rally in your area, why not reach out to a family that has lost a love one to thi senseless "shoot-first" justice the police departments are practicing on people of color across this country. This weekend, surf the web for emails and/or street addresses of Mothers, Wives and Children of these or other innocent, unarmed people that have fell victim to the murderous "Boys In Blue" and let them know you are praying for them and you support them!  1LOVE -BPSU ------------------------- Johnnie Cromartie, 40, Murdered May 25, 1993 in New York, NY by Manhattan Police officers - http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CEED8113CF937A35755C0A965958260'>FULL STORY Anthony Baez, 29, Murdered December 22, 1994 in New York, NY by officer Francis X. Livoti Jr. – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Baez'>FULL STORY

Read more "Stories Of Black Men Who Have Been Murdered By Law Enforcement Officers." Do these stories check out? Do they anger you? Do they make you feel sad, embarrassed . . .?  Are they even true?  Check it out and report back in the comments!

You know, I am glad that libgressives have declared that Arizona's dumb and thoroughly impracticable new Papieren-bitte system means that Arizona is a police state, whereas the Democratic President continuing to arrogate to His Person the right to arrest, indefinitely imprison, assassinate, and otherwise dispose of any human being on the face of the earth, including all American citizens, is, um, a misguided extension of Bush-era policies. And this is not to say that I think the Arizona law is anything other than mean-spirited and vicious (although also, I think it's doomed, which mitigates against any outrage I might be able to work up). I am a believer in open borders. Citizenship is slavery, and all that. That said, a reactionary racial profiling law in an economically wounded Sunbelt pensioners village hardly approaches an extant, supralegal, federal regime in which a single office is vested with the dictatorial power to dispose of all human life as it sees fit.

• Not exactly helping their cause.
• Cops raid Gizmodo blogger’s house over iPhone leak.
• Chicago politicians want National Guard troops patrolling city streets.
• This is a good idea in theory, but given that the cops themselves get to dictate what is and isn’t recorded, it becomes not so much a transparency tool as a tool to clear cops of wrongdoing. That’s obviously a good thing when the cop has done nothing wrong. But it does nothing to add any accountability to police departments.
• Godspeed, Bret Michaels.
• At last week’s 2nd Amendment rally, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes denounced Rudy Giuliani (for his general authoritarianism), Michelle Malkin (for her defense of Japanese internment camps), and the Bush administration (for the PATRIOT Act). You’d never have known that from this Mother Jones writeup of the same rally.

My crime column this week looks at two recent incidents in Maryland, and what they say about the need for an established, enforceable right to video or audio record on-duty police officers.