Gangsters in Blue

Here’s a good article from a while back in The Nation (which I’m mentioning now because I just recently saw it, thanks to the November Coalition listserv). In these days, I’m not surprised to see that it was written,^[1] but I am (pleasantly) surprised to see that it got published in a prominent place in an organ of the official Left. In any case, it’s right-on, and well worth reading.

Well, in the parts I haven’t crossed out, anyway. The article was originally called Ten Things You Can Do To Reduce Incarceration, but, well, we’ll see what becomes of that.

The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Criminologists have found that when too many people are incarcerated the crime rate actually increases. Imagine if we spent some of the $60 billion a year prisons cost on education, job training and healthcare. (0) Paul Butler, a law professor, former federal prosecutor and author of Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice suggests ways to undo the damage caused by overincarceration. If you have state specific resources send them to nationtenthings@gmail.com.

1 Do your jury duty. If you are a juror in a non-violent drug case, vote not guilty. Jury nullification—an acquittal based on principle—is perfectly legal. The framers intended jurors to be a check on unjust prosecutions and bad laws. Click here for more information. (1)

2 Pay a kid to graduate. A report by the RAND Corporation found that paying students to finish high school prevented more crime than the toughest sentencing laws. Dropping out of school creates a high risk of ending up in jail. Work with your community group or place of worship to create a program to pay at-risk students to graduate from high school.

3 Come out of the closet about your drug use. War on drugs propaganda says users are bad people. Let your fellow citizens know the real face of the American drug user. Don’t be scared. Barack Obama admitted he used marijuana and cocaine during his youth, and he got elected president!

4 Hire a formerly incarcerated person. Every year about 600,000 people get out of jail. The odds are against their landing a job, which is a huge factor in why more than half will be re-arrested within a year. Go to Hired Network. Go here if you are formerly incarcerated or visit Reentry Policy.

5 Vote for politicians who are smart on crime. (5) Tougher sentences aren’t the answer. In the US criminal sentences are twice as long as those in England, three times those in Canada and five to ten times those in France. And yet crime rates in US cities are higher than in those nations.

6 Just say no to the police. When cops request your consent to pat you down, peek inside your backpack or purse or search your car, you have the right to decline. When they have a warrant or other legal cause to search, like at an airport, they don’t have to ask. Too many Americans—especially in communities of color—are scared to death of the police. Go to ACLU “Know Your Rights” or the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement to learn your rights if stopped by the police.

7 Don’t be a professional snitch. If you have information about a violent or property crime, call the police. Witnessing is fine. But snitches get paid either in cash or a break in their own prosecution for tattling. They make untrustworthy witnesses. Snitches are responsible for almost half the wrongful convictions of people who were later found to be innocent.

8 Talk up the trades. Retail drug selling pays about as much as working at McDonald’s. As the book Freakonomics pointed out, that’s why most drug dealers live with their moms. Many dealers would prefer a more lucrative—and safer—line of work. People who don’t see themselves as “college material” and might otherwise end up on the street should be encouraged to get training for a blue collar trade. Click here for more information.

9 Let accused people discover the evidence against them. There are very few discovery requirements in criminal law. Many defendants in criminal cases don’t learn who the witnesses are—or even get copies of police reports—until the day of the trial. “Open discovery” laws like one Ohio recently introduced will enable criminal defendants to see the state’s evidence against them before trial. (9)

10 Listen to hip-hop. No other aspect of pop culture has considered as carefully, and as personally, the costs and benefits of the American punishment regime. Members of the hip-hop nation often come fr om the most dangerous communities and have a vested interest in safety . They help us understand that treating people who have messed up with love and dignity is, for law-abiding citizens, an act of self-interest and community safety. Visit AllHipHop.com or Hip Hop Caucus to learn the political side of hip-hop.

Here’s the quibbles from along the way.

(0) Well. If we were free to spend some of that $60,000,000 robbed out of our pockets on education, job training, healthcare, or any of the other infinite needs of civilized beings, that would indeed be something to imagine. Unfortunately, I expect that the other means the special kind of “we” here (the kind that means they, a political bureaucracy that ordinary people like you and me have no effective control over). If they spend the money on government education, government job training, and government healthcare, I expect that it will work out as well as anything else government does at propping up big corporations, corralling kids against their will, and otherwise maintaining business-as-usual and the social and economic status quo. Oh well.

(1) This really is an awesome idea, as far as it goes: if you have the opportunity to free an innocent drug-user or drug-dealer through jury nullification, of course I think you ought to take the opportunity. But how often are you likely to get the chance? Given how narrow the context is, this is really important for the individual life you can save, but it’s only going to be something that reduces incarceration in aggregate if it becomes part of a large-scale culture of non-cooperation with the state. In which case (1) really just depends on the kind of cultural change discussed in the other points. Anyway, call it half a thing you can do.

(5) Oh, come on. Really? Of course, I agree that the government’s crime policies are foolish and destructive. But that’s only a reason to go around voting for smarter politicians if voting for smarter politicians changed anything about crime policies or the War on Drugs. Call me back when that starts working for you.

(9) There’s nothing wrong with this proposal, as a procedural reform. But it’s not something you can do to reduce incarceration — changing government laws is something government could do. But if you somehow managed to accumulate the political connections to make the government do what you want it to do, you probably aren’t the kind of person who cares about this sort of thing; and for the rest of us, the you here is really just they, filtered through the illusion of democratic control. In which case, this is something that they could do to reduce incarceration. But of course there’s no reason to expect that they will.

Anyway.

That done, with those items crossed out, this is a really solid list, and does a great job of stressing the importance of moving beyond stupid, stupidifying political reform campaigns, and encourages you to make a real difference for your own life and your neighbors’ lives, by practicing solidarity on the ground, engaging positively with criminalized cultures and criminalized communities, refusing to collaborate with government cops and prosecutors, coming out of the closet, standing up for yourself and your neighbors, and generally working to shift the terms of the debate, to change the culture that fosters sado-statist mass incarceration, and the creation of positive alternatives that change the material condition faced by criminalized people, primarily by means of practical solidarity and person-to-person grassroots mutual aid.

Call it a solid seven and a half. That’s pretty awesome.

Last month, POLICE: The Law Enforcement Magazine published another ill-tempered tirade by retired L.A. cop Dean Scoville in the magazine’s Patrol Tactics section. (You may recall Sergeant Scoville from his previous ill-tempered tirade in which he openly praised police brutality against captive prisoners.) This most recent tirade, Four More Cops Killed: Where Is The Outrage? launches into this subject with the following claims of imminent and growing danger that people (non-police) pose to government police:

Shortly before I retired, I openly speculated that we were on the cusp of a new era where people would increasingly bring the fight to us. Moreover, I said they would prove to be greater threats, less predisposed to gangsta-style shooting and actually recognize the significance of sight alignment and trigger control.

I also noted that technology has helped the people who want to kill us develop better eye-hand coordination and tactics via video games and other poor man’s combat simulators, …. They have also become more sophisticated in their choice of weaponry, and are fast becoming better armed than us, accessorizing with everything from laser sights to cop-killer bullets.

… More recently, economic stress, racial strife, a resurrection of militia types, and spillover from Mexican cartel activity have made this toxic cocktail even deadlier.

—Sergeant Dean Scoville (2009-12-01), POLICE: The Law Enforcement Magazine: Four More Cops Killed: Where Is The Outrage?

He closes the article with the following credo:

Yes, I believe that the job is increasingly dangerous. And it is made more so by what is put out there about it.

(This is used as a springboard for a couple pages’ worth of rambling complaints against society at large for our willingness to embrace anti-cop sentiments and stereotypes, with a special focus on the alleged anti-cop drum beating of Hollywood, rap music, and those segments of society who have fundamentally failed to hold their own [sic] accountable — and, just so we’re clear, by those segments of society, Scoville means niggers,^[1] Also, I guess he’s pissed off that Dick Wolf decided to cast Ice-T as a cop in Law and Order: SVU.)

Scoville’s claim that being a government cop is increasingly dangerous is not an isolated claim. For example, down in the comments section on the article, another retired government cop, mtarte, writes:

I’m retired now and still wish I could do the job, but today’s cops are in much more dangerous situations than ever before.

—mtarte, in re: Sergeant Dean Scoville (2009-12-01), POLICE: The Law Enforcement Magazine: Four More Cops Killed: Where Is The Outrage?

In Milwaukee, by way of explanation for why Milwaukee Police Department had begun arming regular patrol cops with semiautomatic rifles:

It’s obvious that our officers are facing an increasingly dangerous threat to their safety as well as the safety of the community as represented by these weapons ….

—Police Chief Ed Flynn, quoted in Officer.com (2009-04-24): Milwaukee Police Increase Firepower

CRIPT Academy, a tactical training outfit for government cops, says that it:

… provides cutting edge training, information, and service that is continually updated to adapt to today’s fluid environment which is becoming increasingly dangerous for those professionals that must operate in harm’s way.

—Officer.com Directory: CRIPT Academy Mobile Training Teams

If you spend much time at all reading articles and public statements by government police, you’re likely to see this received factoid over and over again. Time never alters it; things only get more and more dangerous. No matter what year it is, it’s always this year that’s poised to become the most dangerous year for police ever; in 2007, in an article on how government cops can better confuse detained Suspect Individuals about their rights to refuse searches, former government cop and government prosecutor Devallis Rutledge offered the following:

So far, 2007 is the deadliest year for law enforcement officers in nearly three decades.

—Devallis Rutledge, POLICE: The Law Enforcement Magazine (October 2007): How to Justify Officer Safety Searches

The thing is that all these claims are false. Both in factual detail and in overarching narrative. They could easily have been discovered to be false by taking even a cursory glance at statistics about police deaths in the line of duty. In fact, 2009, when Dean Scoville declared the job to be increasingly dangerous, was the safest year for government police in the U.S. since 1959, in terms of absolute numbers of police officers killed while on duty. With only a few exceptions, the number of government police killed on the job had been decreasing steadily for the past 35 years. Here’s the annual data for the past 35 years, as reported by the Officer Down Memorial Page yearly reports.^[2]

Year	Total line-of-duty deaths	Deaths from violent attacks (Excluding terrorist attacks.)	Total violent deaths adjusted to 2009 population
1974	279	149	215.48
1975	240	148	211.93
1976	202	117	165.92
1977	189	108	151.63
1978	215	109	151.42
1979	214	120	164.87
1980	210	113	153.44
1981	201	105	141.18
1982	194	100	133.18
1983	193	92	121.41
1984	184	83	108.59
1985	179	85	110.23
1986	178	80	102.79
1987	182	84	106.97
1988	194	85	107.26
1989	196	79	98.75
1990	162	71	87.76
1991	148	75	91.47
1992	170	72	86.60
1993	163	83	98.53
1994	180	86	100.84
1995	185	77	89.22
1996	143	64	73.30
1997	177	76	86.00
1998	176	66	73.82
1999	151	49	54.18
2000	163	55	60.13
2001	242	67	72.45
2002	159	63	67.41
2003	147	51	54.22
2004	164	56	58.99
2005	164	54	56.37
2006	156	54	55.84
2007	193	65	66.56
2008	138	42	42.62
2009	120	49	49.00

Or, if you prefer, here’s the chart. The blue line represents the absolute number of cops killed that year in the line of duty; the yellow line best represents the overall danger to cops from violent attacks (specifically, the number killed in violent attacks against police, adjusted to the U.S. population at the end of 2009).

Coming back to Devallis Rutledge’s deadliest year in nearly three decades, it’s true that 2007 saw a sudden jump in the number of police killed, compared to 2006. (The next two years saw a sudden drop back to the trend of decreasing police deaths.) But the main reason for that was a jump in deaths due to automobile accidents and other accidental deaths; the number of cops killed in violent attacks — 65 total — was less than the total number killed in 2001, let alone the much higher rates of violent deaths in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. And in fact, if you adjust for the increases in the total population, and the absolute number of police on the streets, it turns out that the increasing safety of government police over the past 35 years is only the tail end of a general trend that has been going on since 1921. (The temporary uptick in violent police deaths from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s never ended up producing more per-capita violent deaths than there had been in 1935.) Following the yellow line, you can see that 2008 and 2009, at the tail end of this trend were the safest years to be a police officer in over 110 years.

In other words, it’s never been safer to be a cop in America than it has been over the past 2 years. Yet boss cops, spokespeople for the government police, and articles written by cops and for cops, constantly repeat the demonstrably false claims that criminals are more violent than ever before, and that government cops somehow face more danger on their patrols now than they ever have before. That this is a complete lie would be obvious to anyone who had spent 15 minutes perusing the police’s own institutions and resources for honoring their fallen comrades. The interesting question, then, is what kind of purpose the constant refrain of this unfact from government police serves — what it means when ever-more-heavily-armed government cops keep insisting on a completely mythical ever-present, ever-increasing danger to their politically-sacred persons, in spite of the evidence of the senses and the consistent trends over the last century of historical reality. When you see heavily-armed, well-protected men trying so very hard to psych themselves up to believe in a growing danger that does not actually exist — and when this constantly repeated Big Lie is used to slam pop-culture for any attempt to portray any abuse of police power; to swat down real-life complaints about police belligerence or invasions against civil liberties; to explain the alleged need for assault rifles, tanks, cordoning off strategic hamlets in inner cities, and a niche industry in warrior mindset trainings — I couldn’t much blame you if you did see some real danger in this concerted effort to inculcate and reinforce a consciously-constructed, fact-resistant permanent siege mentality among patrol cops. But not danger for the cops.

Do you feel safer now?

See also:

• Radley Balko, The Agitator (2007-12-28): Just how dangerous is police work?
• GT 2008-10-06: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#7)
• GT 2010-01-18: In Their Own Words: Master and Commander edition
• GT 2009-05-28: How cops see themselves (#2). National Police Memorial Week and El Monte, California.
• GT 2009-06-02: The Police Beat
• GT 2008-09-25: How cops see themselves
• GT 2008-09-19: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#6)
• GT 2008-08-22: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#5)
• GT 2008-07-12: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#4)
• GT 2008-06-05: Neighborhood Safety Ghettoes in D.C.
• GT 2008-05-15: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#3)
• GT 2008-05-12: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#2)
• GT 2008-05-06: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter…
• GT 2008-04-28: Is it just me or is the water in this pot getting a little hotter?

The Los Angeles Police Protective League Board of Directors, on their understanding of Officer Safety:

This time it was a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel, essentially ruling that unless an officer is actually under physical attack, he/she cannot use a Taser to subdue a suspect. And, for good measure, these starry-eyed jurists, who probably have never been in a physical fight in their lives, opined that police officers should not fear irrational suspects defying officer commands as long as the suspect stays 15 feet from the officer.

As every street cop knows, any suspect within 15 feet who is actively resisting verbal commands is a threat to officer safety.

If a suspect complies with an officer’s commands, the use of force or a weapon is unnecessary. When a suspect fails to comply with verbal commands, it means the situation is rapidly escalating and some form of force will be required to gain compliance.

—Los Angeles Police Protective League Board of Directors, lapd.com: The Official Blog of the Los Angeles Police Protective League (2009-12-30): The Ninth Circuit’s year-end ‘gift’ to law enforcement

(Via William N. Grigg.)

See also:

• GT 2010-01-11: Tiny weapons searches
• GT 2008-10-25: Translation from cop-speak to English
• GT 2009-10-12: The Police Beat: Officer Marc Rios, the Bronx, New York, New York
• GT 2008-06-30: Law and Orders #8: Memphis cop Bridges McRae exceeds expectations by punching Duanna Johnson repeatedly in the face with handcuffs over his knuckles for failing to stand up on command in the booking area at 201 Poplar
• GT 2008-06-13: Law and Orders #7: Portland cops Erin Smith and Ron Hoesly find it would be necessary to pull Phil Sano down off his bike, beat him up, and taser him repeatedly, for biking without a headlight
• GT 2008-02-01: Law and Orders #6: Pigs at the Trough
• GT 2007-12-23: Law and Orders #5: Daytona Beach cop takes control at Best Buy by shocking an unarmed, retreating woman
• GT 2007-12-07: Law and Orders #4: Wichita cops take control by shocking a deaf man for not following orders he couldn’t hear
• GT 2007-12-01: What a shock.
• GT 2007-11-27: Law and Orders #3: John Gardner of the Utah Highway Patrol tasers Jared Massey in front of his family for questioning why he was pulled over
• GT 2007-10-11: Law and Orders #2: Florida cop was within bounds when he punched and pepper-sprayed a 15-year-old girl for breaking curfew
• GT 2006-11-16: Law and Orders: UCLA campus police found it necessary to repeatedly taser an Iranian student already lying helpless on the ground
• GT 2009-07-29: Clown suits
• GT 2008-10-06: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#7)
• GT 2008-05-11: Cops are here to protect you. (#4)

Boston cops are using the Massachusetts electronic surveillance laws to arrest and prosecute citizens who use their cellular phones to record abusive arrests. Though they haven't been successful in prosecuting the acts, it hasn't stopped the arrests -- presumably the point isn't to secure convictions, but rather to chill the recording of illegal police activity. However, police have convicted citizens who secretly recorded their own abusive arrests, charging them with illegal wiretapping.

Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager's mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording.

Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.

"One of the officers asked me whether my phone had audio recording capabilities,'' Glik, 33, said recently of the incident, which took place in October 2007. Glik acknowledged that it did, and then, he said, "my phone was seized, and I was arrested.''

The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance.

Police fight cellphone recordings (via Interesting People)

(Image: Marathon Monday, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from cherrylet's photostream)

So here’s something a judge on the Massachusetts Appeal Court recently said — in reply to government cops who forced their way into Wilbert Cruz-Rivera’s car, without any warrant, and opened up a pill bottle while rummaging around in his things, and then claimed that this invasive warrantless search, conducted on the private property of a man who was not accused of any criminal offense, was justified as an officer safety search:

On this record, it simply was not reasonable to believe that the defendant might, upon his release with a message that he was free to go, enter his car, reach into the console, open a pill bottle, extract a weapon smaller than four-and-one-half inches by one-and-three-fourths inches, and use it in an effort to harm the two nearby, fully armed police officers who had just released him.

—Quoted in The Boston Globe (2009-12-17): Court: Concern about tiny weapons didn’t justify search

I suppose I am glad that a judge said this. But the fact that a judge had to say it — to clarify to a gang of pushy government cops that officer safety really is not a excuse reason to go on a warrantless search for tiny weapons hidden in closed pill bottles — and that to do so they had to overturn a lower court’s ruling, which upheld this ridiculous opportunistic lie — does not really make me very optimistic about the reliability or effectiveness of those constitutional brakes on police power that the court is supposedly out to save.

Here are followup articles to this one, from newest to oldest:

1. Warwick Police Pass My Case Up to Bucks County District Attorney, No Charges Filed Against Me Yet 13 Jan 2010
2. Filed Complaint with Warwick Police (video) 12 Jan 2010

So I was out at lunch with classmates from a pistol instructor course this afternoon. As usual, I open carried my Glock 23. I ordered a sausage parm sandwich and was filling up my 20 oz soda from the fountain when the guy in the next booth turned and asked if I was from around here. Yes, I answered. Did he know me from somewhere? No. This was getting creepy. I didn’t answer him.

Who ARE you?”

Then: “Who ARE you?” Has a complete stranger ever asked you such an open-ended and personal question? It was a first for me. I had no idea what information he wanted and wasn’t about to give him my name or biography. “I don’t understand the question,” I told him. He didn’t like this answer.

Cop Threatens to Exceed His Authority

It was around this time that he claimed to be a cop. He showed no badge and wore no uniform. My instructor, who is a former cop, intervened to try and appease the man, a detective Jon Ogborn of Warwick township, Bucks county, Pennsylvania state. I kept quiet until Ogborn announced that he had to know who was carrying a gun around him, even if he had to handcuff and detain me. I replied that he would be exceeding his authority if he did that; that open carry of a firearm is legal under Pennsylvania law. Even his own department’s training memos will have confirmed in the last year that open carry is not sufficient justification for detention.

Just Waiting on my Sandwich

He got up, got in my face and became rather aggressive. I was just waiting for my sandwich to come up. I let him know I had no ill intentions. The gentleman who took my order told me he’d bring it to me so I sat down. To my amazement, my instructor gabbed with the cops (his lunch companion was a cop, too) all about me and my firearm-related activities.

This was not Right

As my adrenaline rush petered out and I ate my lunch, I realized I had just been treated inappropriately by a person claiming to be a cop who had demonstrated no evidence of it. I had no idea what his name was. This was not right. At a minimum, the cops’ own laws state they have to identify themselves to the public. I might want to file a complaint. I at least needed to keep my options open. So as I was leaving I stopped at his table. “Pardon me for interrupting but may I have your business card,” I asked.

Refused to Identify Himself

He refused! He offered to give it only if I provided my ID as well. I noticed that his lunch companion had a last name of McGurney on her sweater and a patch saying Warwick township. I noted this and began to leave but he got up and blocked my exit. He demanded my ID and when I asked if it was legally required, he claimed yes! That is an outrageous lie. I demanded to know what his reasonable articulable suspicion (RAS) was. His confidence level fell when I mentioned RAS. I guess he’s used to picking on less-informed folks. I asked if I was free to go. He said no! I asked on what basis he was detaining me. A charge of disorderly conduct! Unbelievable.

Detained on Fabricated Charge

For several tense minutes he pushed me further and further into the back of the strip mall restaurant as he demanded my ID. I told him he was assaulting me but he denied it. I refused to give the ID. He told me he hadn’t planned to arrest me but he would. He claimed I had escalated the situation and left him with no choice, ignoring his aggressive actions toward me entirely! All I had to do to be free to go was to give me ID. My instructor begged me to give it so we could continue our class. I told him, I couldn’t give it to him even if I wanted to because my hands were cuffed behind my back!

Cops Keeping Track of Open Carriers?

Ogborn demanded to know if I was a lawyer. I just stopped talking to him. He didn’t expect me to resist him this much or with such pointed questions as about the RAS. I could tell he was nervous. He expected me to cave. I did not. He confessed that all he wanted was my ID so he could write up the earlier encounter with me. This really took me aback. Does law enforcement keep tabs on people who open carry?

Cops Doesn’t Care if I Consent or Not

He took me out back where we waited in the cold for several minutes, I without a jacket – that had been confiscated. He emptied my pockets. I told him I didn’t consent to any searches and he said he didn’t care. He inspected my wallet and found my driver’s license. But of course that was never the only thing he wanted. My possessions were placed in a ziplock bag. I was loaded into a police SUV, forced to lay across the back seat with no back support. There was literally no leg room. Ogborn’s lunch companion, Kathleen (Kathy) McGurney, drove me to jail.

How Can a Human Being be so Monstrous?

At the Warwick police department, I was ordered to remove belt and shoes and left in a 4′x6′ or 6′x8′ cement cell. I have to say, this was not fun. There was a camera watching me. It had one of those metal toilets. No privacy. A dirty white towel was the only potential source of cover. The only place to sit or lay down was painted concrete. The cement floor was freezing my feet. That’s the first time I’ve been locked in a cage and it is not pleasant. How can a human being be so monstrous as to lock his fellow man in a cage simply for failing to give the required level of deference?

Good Cop, Bad Cop

After 10 minutes, Ogborn showed up and gave me the good cop routine while McGurney in the background asked if I had to be taken down to the Montgomery county scanseek (??), whatever that is. I had to confirm my current address in order to get out. He implied that if I didn’t cooperate my charge could become a misdemeanor and that could become a problem for my planned move. [WTF! He got this tidbit of information from my instructor.] He justified himself again. He let me put my shoes on. He lectured me for several minutes with his version of the encounter. He complimented me. He led me to the building lobby where I waited another 20 minutes while they processed my property and reportedly a charge of disorderly conduct which I’m to hear of in the mail.

Still Completed My Course!

All of this transpired during roughly 2 hours but I still managed to complete the pistol course on time! Ironically, at least one of my four lunch companions was carrying a concealed firearm. But Ogborn didn’t see fit to search the whole restaurant for concealed pistols.

Analysis

I have a bad attitude. It simply an incontrovertible fact. I will not bow down to authority figures. This is the root of my problem. I simply can not expect to speak with cops as my equals without being detained, harassed, attacked, man-handled, imprisoned, talked down to and/or robbed. This is the world I live in. I accept the consequences of my actions. So be it. But I will never bow down.

These are My Offenses

What did I do wrong? I securely and legally carried a pistol openly. I failed to answer the questions of a person who didn’t even identify himself as a cop. I told a cop that open carry was legal and that he did not have the authority by his own rules to detain me simply for open carrying. I asked a cop to identify himself. I refused to identify myself in a situation where even the cop’s own laws don’t require it. These are my offenses. For this I was harassed, assaulted, kidnapped and imprisoned – just for starters.

That’s the world we live in folks.

What Should I Have Done Differently

I have to learn how to ignore people I don’t know. I should have ignored Ogborn’s initial, and all subsequent, questions. I should have pretended he hadn’t even spoken. This is very counter to my nature though. I’m rather loquacious, sometimes gregarious and always receptive to communication with most any kind of person – even smelly bums!

I was running with the wrong crowd. My instructor is an ex-cop. Of course he’s going to sell me out at first chance. He’s a nice guy and he doesn’t see it that way, but in objective fact he did sell me out by giving Ogborn so much info about me. I have to be very careful about who I associate with. Any but the most committed is a liability.

I failed to exercise the discipline and care necessary to audio record my daily life. Argh.

What I Did Right

I’m glad I defended myself by stating that open carry is legal under Pennsylvania law and that he has no legal authority to detain me simply for open carrying. I think being too meek with a cop simply encourages him. I’m also glad I asked for his business card because I would have felt poorly without getting the information.

I was radically more terse in my communications this time. I didn’t lecture or challenge the cop hardly at all. I remained silent most of the time. I asked if I was free to go. Then I asked if I was being detained and what for. This was good.

I’m glad I stood my ground on the ID issue. He had no basis to demand it even under his own rules.

Next Actions

I’m going to put in a Pennsylvania Right to Know (FOIA-like) request on Monday. I will attempt to get the police report. I will consider filing a complaint and I may have to file a counter-claim if they pursue this unfounded disorderly conduct charge.

Don’t Tell me to Take it Down

Don’t tell me to take this down because it’s damaging my legal case. My goal is not to rake the cops over the coal for a multi-million dollar settlement. That’s a pipe dream. My goal in telling this story is to inform people like me. The fact is that the constitutions, bills of rights, laws, legal safeguards, police training memos and assorted government public relations paperwork are for entertainment and decorative purposes only.

You Want the Truth?

The fact is that cops don’t serve you. They serve themselves. They have no limits. They have legal immunity for their acts. They have no legal obligation to protect you from harm! They can do whatever the hell they like, and lie about it afterwards. They can arrest you for nothing, drop the original charges and prosecute you for resisting their false arrest. It’s a scam.

Most people can’t, or won’t, see this. That’s fine. I just hope to reach the small number who can.

Photo credit: banspy. Photo license.

Here’s Jenn Rowell in the Montgomery Advertiser on a recent murder in Tallassee. Notice the amazing disappearing subject:

Tallassee police have released additional information about a fatal shooting that involved officers.

In the news, fatal shootings just happen somehow, and officers, poor things, somehow end up involved.

Of course, what actually happened is that some white cops working on the Tallassee city government’s police force chased a black man down and then they shot him to death. Their victim, Michael McIntyre, was not actually accused of any crime whatsoever; the cops were in the housing projects where he lives because they were looking for somebody else to serve a warrant. (Who they found, and arrested, without any trouble. But Michael McIntyre ran away, which cops in America take as a crime in itself, and sufficient reason to chase after you, force a violent confrontation, and take you down by any means necessary, even if it means lighting you up (the police so far have refused to disclose how many shots were fired, beyond the fact that their victim was hit multiple times).

Cops claim that McIntyre brandished a weapon — after a gang of heavily-armed strangers had chased him for 200 or 300 yards. I don’t know whether that’s true or not — there’s certainly no reason to just take the police at their word — but even if it is true, I don’t much care. If I had no reason to be looking for you, no reason to hang around bothering you — if you were never accused of any crime and I had no basis to arrest or detain or harass you over anything — and you decided to leave, then you have a right to leave. If I took your decision to leave as an offense against my person or prerogative, and then chased you down, threatening to use my small arsenal of weapons to restrain you by any means necessary, and so forced a violent confrontation with you when, again, you were not suspected of committing any crime, or of posing any threat to anyone, and if I then ended it all by lighting you up, in self-defense against a threat which, if it existed at all, was purely the product of my own belligerence and escalation, then I would be considered a dangerous maniac, and I would probably be in prison for the next couple decades, if not the remainder of my natural life.

Of course, here the dangerous maniac is a gang of cops armed and uniformed by the city government. So instead they get a crowd control goon squad to clear the area of upset black people, while the Mayor pro tem of the city government takes time out to roll up and do some damage control, while their colleagues in the Alabama Bureau of Investigation perform a perfunctory investigation that will almost certainly end up by declaring that everything they did was done According To Official Procedures.

(Via Roderick 2009-12-31.)

See also:

• GT 2009-10-21: Wednesday Lazy Linking (Tucumcari, New Mexico: Unarmed 14 year old girl tasered for running away)
• GT 2009-09-16: The Police Beat: Shot in the Back (Las Vegas, Nevada: shot to death for running away)
• GT 2009-06-02: The Police Beat (Detroit, Michigan: Tasered to death for running away.)
• GT 2009-05-26: Over My Shoulder #45: How Empire comes home in sado-statism and police brutality. From Fred Woodworth, “Evil Empire Notes,” in The Match! # 107 (Summer, 2009)

Officer Marcus Ramon Jackson, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, Charlotte, North Carolina. Last week, the Charlotte city government’s police force fired and then arrested Officer Marcus Ramon Jackson, for using the power of his badge and the threat of arrest to pull over, abduct and then rape at least two different young women off the street within a period of a week and a half in late December. The police force’s spokesman is keeping mum about it, but apparently Jackson was still out on patrol after the first woman came forward to the police — and raped the second victim during the time he was allowed to stay on the road. This is what Police Spokesman Captain Brian Cunningham considers act[ing] in a swift and appropriate manner.

On Wednesday, Jackson, 25, was arrested after two young women told investigators he had pulled them over on traffic stops and sexually assaulted them. He was on duty in a marked patrol car at the time, according to police.

The first incident allegedly occurred on Dec. 18 but wasn’t reported until Monday. Police Chief Rodney Monroe said Jackson — wearing his uniform and driving his police cruiser - pulled over a 17-year-old girl, forced her into his car, drove to another location and forced her to commit sex acts.

CMPD began its investigation after a relative of the girl called police Monday.

As detectives investigated the allegations, Monroe said, a 21-year-old woman reported Tuesday night that she too had been assaulted by Jackson under similar circumstances. That assault, she said, occurred on Monday.

Police would not say what time on Monday they received the first complaint, or how much time passed before the second attack occurred.

—Ely Portillo and Gary Wright, Charlotte Observer (2010-01-01): Ex-officer had past reports of violence

The reason that Officer Marcus Ramon Jackson was given a badge and a gun and the power to detain and arrest in the first place is because the city government’s police force decided to hire him even though he had already been taken to court two different times for threatening violence and battering women:

Court documents reveal that Jackson’s past included two allegedly violent episodes in Mecklenburg County. The first was in 2003 when Jackson, then 19 and a student at UNC Charlotte, was dating a 15-year-old Harding High School student.

The girl’s mother sought a restraining order against him in May 2003. The defendant threatened my daughter by telling her she was going to get hers and catch one, the mother wrote.

Jackson tried to hit the teen with a car and pushed her into a locker, according to the mother’s complaint. He was later summoned to court after being accused of violating a restraining order, but was found not guilty in August 2003.

In 2005, Jackson was working at Off Broadway Shoes on South Boulevard and still studying at UNCC when his 21-year-old girlfriend sought a restraining order against him.

The defendant grabbed me by the face several times, screaming and yelling…, the girlfriend wrote in her complaint. The defendant hit me in the back of the head, slapped my face, pushed me down in the floor, forcing (me) in (a) walk-in closet.

The judge ordered Jackson to stay away from the victim and not own or carry any firearms [for the duration of the restraining order].

—Ely Portillo and Gary Wright, Charlotte Observer (2010-01-01): Ex-officer had past reports of violence

The police admit that they were already aware of the 2003 domestic violence complaint when they decided to hire and arm Jackson. They claim that they weren’t aware of the 2005 restraining order — but, of course, they claim to do background checks before they hand out badges and guns, and the restraining order was a matter of public record, and could easily have been discovered if they took the time to follow up on the 2003 complaint, to see whether it was part of a pattern of behavior. In other words, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department chose to hire, train, arm, and put out on patrol a man who they already knew, or already should have known, to be a hyperviolent control freak with a history of violence against women. Who then went on to become a serial rapist, using the legal and martial weapons that they gave him to single young women out, force them into his car, abduct them, and force sex on them against their will. Police Chief Rodney Monroe has mentioned to the press that he thinks it would be naïve to believe that Jackson hadn’t raped other women while out on duty.

Yes, it would be. Men who attack women typically do so repeatedly; men with a known history of violence against women will do it over and over again, unless and until they are stopped. So how naive is it to hire a man with a known history of abusive rages and physical violence against women, heavily arm him, and putting him out on patrol, where he effectively holds the power of life or death over any woman that he chooses to single out?

See also:

• GT 2009-08-24: Rapists on patrol (#6) / Men in Uniform (#4)
• GT 2009-07-31: The Police Beat (on rapist-on-patrol Officer Feliciano Sanchez)
• GT 2009-06-11: The Police Beat (on rapist-on-patrol Officer Thomas Tolstoy)
• GT 2009-05-14: Rapists on Patrol (#3). Officer Gary Pignato. Greece, New York.
• GT 2008-03-10: Rapists on Patrol (#2). Officer David Alex Park, Irvine, California.
• GT 2007-12-21: Rapists on patrol. Officers Victor Hugo Gonzalez, Michael Anthony Munoz and Raymond Ramos, San Antonio, Texas.
• GT 2009-04-19: Men in Uniform (#3). Los Angeles, California.
• GT 2007-12-02: Men in Uniform
• GT 2008-02-26: Cops are here to protect you. (#2)

I got this story by email from a private correspondent. Right now, most of the news stories on this terror-murder, and the homophobic victim-blaming by the government police’s investigator on the case, are printed in Spanish. So I’ve translated the story into English, below.

Jorge Steven López Mercado was an openly gay 19 year old, well known in the local gay community in Cayey, Puerto Rico. R.I.P.

Solicitan relevo de agente investigador en asesinato de joven homosexual en Cayey

Portavoces de Puerto Rico Para Tod@s y la Fundación de Derechos Humanos exigieron hoy una investigación libre de prejuicios por el asesinato de Jorge Steven López Mercado, un joven homosexual de 19 años, que se presume fue víctima de un crimen de odio y cuyo cuerpo fue encontrado el viernes calcinado, decapitado y desmembrado de brazos y piernas en el área de Guavate, en Cayey.

El líder activista y portavoz de Puerto Rico Para Tod@s, Pedro Julio Serrano, denunció que el agente investigador del caso, Ángel Rodríguez Colón, realizó expresiones inconcebibles, inmorales y antiéticas, referentes al homicidio.

“Este tipo de personas cuando se meten a esto y salen a la calle saben que esto les puede pasar”, expresó el agente Rodríguez a un noticiario televisivo (Univisión).

“Es inconcebible que el agente investigador aduzca que la víctima busó ser asesinado. Es como el abusrdo y falaz argumento de que una mujer se buscó ser violada por llevar falda corta. Exigimos la renuncia al caso de este agente investigador y que el Superintendente Figueroa Sancha ponga en su lugar a alguien capacitado que investigue este vil asesinato, por prejuicios de clase alguna”, manifestó Serrano.

Por su parte, la licenciada Ada Conde, presidenta de la Fundación de Derechos Humanos, le solicitó a Figueroa Sancha y al Secretario de Justicia, Antonio Sagardía, que cumplan con la ley y establezcan mecanismos para que se investiguen este tipo de casos y que se procesen como crímenes de odio.

—Bárbara J. Figueroa Rosa, Primera Hora (2009-11-15): Solicitan relevo de agente investigador en asesinato de joven homosexual en Cayey

Translated into English:

They call for relieving the agent investigating the murder of a homosexual youth in Cayey

Today, spokespeople from Puerto Rico Para Tod@s [Puerto Rico for Everyone] and Fundación de Derechos Humanos [the Foundation for Human Rights] demanded a prejudice-free investigation into the murder of Jorge Steven López Mercado, a homosexual youth of 19, who is presumed to have been the victim of a hate crime and whose body was discovered Friday burnt, decapitated, and dismembered of arms and legs in the area of Guavate, in Cayey.

The activist leader and spokesman for Puerto Rico Para Tod@s, Pedro Julio Serrano, denounced the fact that the investigating agent for the case, Ángel Rodríguez Colón, made unthinkable, immoral and unethical statements referring to the homicide.

When this type of people get involved in this and go out in the street they know this kind of thing can happen, Agent Rodriguez told a TV news program (Univisión).

It’s unthinkable that the investigating agent would allege that the victim was looking to get murdered. It’s like the absurd and fallacious argument that a woman is looking to get raped by putting on a short skirt. We demand that this investigating agent get off the case and that Superintendent Figueroa Sancha replace him with someone capable of investigating this vile murder, without any kind of prejudice, said Serrano.

For her part, the lawyer Ada Conde, president of Fundación de Derechos Humanos, called on Figueroa Sancha and the Secretary of Justice, Antonio Sagardía, to comply with the law and establish mechanisms for investigating this type of case and processing them as hate crimes.

—Bárbara J. Figueroa Rosa, Primera Hora (2009-11-15): Solicitan relevo de agente investigador en asesinato de joven homosexual en Cayey

• Nokia Sues Apple, Claims iPhone Infringes on Slew of Patents. Daring Fireball (2009-10-24). In which government-imposed patent monopolies once again promote science and the useful arts by rewarding innovative research and development. (Linked Saturday 2009-10-24.)
• Would-be bounty hunters nab innocent woman in Bristol. State & Regional Politics for Richmond Times-Dispatch (2009-10-25). 1. The bounty hunters didn't just "nab the wrong woman." They strip-searched and sexually assaulted her. 2. As a result, these three rampaging rapist thugs are facing arrest and multiple charges of abduction, robbery, and sexual battery. As well they should be -- and I hope they rot. But care to guess how many charges they would be facing if they really were on that government police "drug task force" they pretended to be on, and did exactly the same thing to exactly the same innocent woman?
  
  (If your guess is "any," guess again.) (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• Sexist Beatdown: The Happy Hooker, Or Why Doesn’t Steven Levitt Suck Dick For a Living? The Sexist (2009-10-25). In which Econo-Creep Central Junior Partners Levitt and Dubner examine the economics of sex work with a sample size of N=2. (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• Soviet Shoes, by David Henderson. EconLog (2009-09-30). I mentioned in Tuesday's post that one of my favorite passages from Scott Shane's Dismantling Utopia is the passage about shoes. Commenter Bill asked me for the passage. Here it is: My informal survey suggested that some of the longest lines in Moscow were for shoes. At first I assumed... (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• Miroslav Pašek’s work, in pictures. Mike Gogulski - nostate.com, Anarchoblogs in English (2009-10-23). A couple of post-police attack photos, taken on 6 September 2009, the day after. Bruising to right upper arm showing finger impressions of Miroslav Pašek Slovak State Police hired thug Miroslav Pašek has learned how to inflict great pain with his hands while leaving few if any marks on the... (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• How an insurance mandate could leave many worse off. Marginal Revolution (2009-10-26). In which it is discovered that forcing working folks to pay for big corporate health insurance, whether they want to or not, and whether they can afford to or not, might turn out to prop up big corporate health insurers at the expense of working folks. (Linked Monday 2009-10-26.)