The recent shooting death of Pace University undergraduate Danroy Henry once again arouses questions about police abuse, a phenomenon continually evidenced anew in the United States. Local police killed the 20-year-old college athlete in the early morning of October 17, responding to the kind of fracas that typically marks the windup of any college town’s Saturday night. Henry’s is a sorry but familiar narrative in this country: A young black man sent to the morgue by law enforcement officers, who will ultimately be exonerated and even praised for their deed.
For libertarians, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about the speciously justified police killing of a black man, but usually the victims are casualties of the odious and racist Drug War. Here, in sharp contrast, the decedent’s status as a university student from a fancy Boston suburb drew the attention of the media, which nevertheless promptly advised us of his blood alcohol level (because surely being both black and drunk is more than enough to explain away the shooting).
On the heels of that nauseating bit of police power lust, the New York Times reported last week on a study commissioned by the Center for Constitutional Rights cataloging “[t]ens of thousands” of illegal police stops. The inquiry, which “examined … the 2.8 million times from 2004 through 2009 that officers stopped people on the streets to question and sometimes frisk them,” uncovered the disturbing but unsurprising trend that such stops are routinely, if not usually, based on race.
Not only were stops more frequent among blacks and Hispanics, they routinely and disproportionately involved the use of force, and — perhaps more alarmingly — were 15 percent less likely to yield “contraband.” The data corroborate what has always been clear: That the real hoodlums, uniformed officers, are dedicated to wanton tormenting of poverty-stricken minority communities, not to serving and protecting them.
As cogs in a vast, repressive system — encompassing everything from the Drug War to the prison industry — the police, agents of state power, are an incorrigible evil that can’t be adjusted, corrected or reformed; their criminal nature is immanent in the role itself. Just as the political process cannot, through any supposed overhaul, be set right and its natural propensities counteracted by “good policy,” the police system as it is can’t be repaired.
Municipal police forces function like any other coercive monopolies, gouging those who are forced to pay for their “services” and pathologically misallocating resources. As the singular provider of a particular kind of service, the important work of defense, the police system incentivizes nonliability to the community and abuse of power. One might consider a town where only one business were allowed to provide landscaping services, and where, beyond prohibiting competition, that one business were entitled to predetermined payment without consideration of the quality of its work.
Most of us think that such an arrangement is a bad idea, that there is something wrong with the process even if, in some rare instances, the lone landscaper performs satisfactorily. Anarchists, applying this reasoning consistently, maintain that defense of person and property is a priority far too high to be abandoned to an unfair, monopolistic process.
“Why, then,” asked Benjamin Tucker, “should there not be a considerable number of defensive associations … in which people, even members of the same family, might insure their lives and goods against murderers and thieves? … [D]efense is a service, like any other service.” It may be that we consider our lawns and shrubs more important than the protection of our lives, or maybe we think that there is some other reason why we ought to abide the state’s monopoly on defense services.
One objection of the minarchist — the advocate of a government limited to the narrow function of defending individual rights — is that defense businesses faced with disagreements would battle in the streets. But, anarchist theorists like Dr. Roderick Long point out, violence is expensive and institutions forced to bear the costs of their excursions into hostility are, as compared to the state, far less likely to see armed conflict as the best way to resolve disputes.
We can brush aside police abuse as an aberration in an otherwise sensible system, or we can correctly understand it as an unavoidable feature of a warped incentive structure designed by and for the power elite. To achieve optimal results, we must completely open the insurance of priceless human life, like any other enterprise, to competition and to its byproducts, efficiency and innovation.
For the last few months, my colleague Matt Welch has been
tracking
the positions of California's newspapers on Proposition 19, the
ballot measure that would legalize marijuana for recreational use.
At last count, 26 of the state’s 30 largest dailies (plus USA
Today) had run editorials on the issue, and all 26 (plus
USA Today) were opposed. This puts the state's papers at
odds with nearly all of California's left-leaning interest groups,
including the Green Party, the American Civil Liberties Union, the
Service Employees International Union, and the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People; progressive publications
such The Nation, Salon, and The Huffington Post;
and a host of prominent liberal bloggers. According to a
CNN/Time
poll released last week, it also pits the state's newspapers
against 76 percent of California voters who identify themselves as
"liberal."
On this issue, the state's dailies are also to the right of conservative publications such as The Economist and National Review, prominent Republicans such as former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a growing portion of the Tea Party movement, and even Fox News personality Glenn Beck. (Beck has said he favors marijuana legalization, although he has been typically schizophrenic on Prop. 19.) So who are the newspapers' allies? Nearly all of California's major elected officials are against the measure, and the No on Prop. 19 campaign has been funded mainly by contributions from various law enforcement organizations, including the California Police Chiefs Association, the prison guard union, and the California Narcotics Officers Association.
It's telling that the loudest voices opposing pot legalization are coming from the mainstream media, politicians, and law enforcement. The three have a lot in common. Indeed, the Prop. 19 split illustrates how conservative critics of the mainstream media have it all wrong. The media—or at least the editorial boards at the country's major newspapers—don't suffer from liberal bias; they suffer from statism. While conservatives emphasize order and property, liberals emphasize equality, and libertarians emphasize individual rights, newspaper editorial boards are biased toward power and authority, automatically turning to politicians for solutions to every perceived problem.
Because the left traditionally has looked to government to enforce its preferences more than the right, and certainly more than libertarians, it's easy to see how someone might get the impression that the news media lean left. But you see the editorial pages' lust for authority on issues like campaign finance reform, where unlike left-leaning groups such as the ACLU and the Sierra Club they almost uniformly support restrictions on political speech, despite the fact that their profession is inextricably tied to the First Amendment. This deference to authority was also on display in the Kelo v. New London case, where the Washington Post and New York Times editorial boards jettisoned traditionally liberal principles such as equality and fair play in favor of a broad government power to forcibly transfer property from people of modest means to wealthy developers. That position separated those papers from traditionally progressive groups like the NAACP and the AARP, which argued that eminent domain too often enriches developers at the expense of powerless groups.
But newspaper editors' elevation of government power above other liberal concerns is clearest on criminal justice issues, where editorial boards' deference to police powers aligns them with conservatives about as often as with liberals. To the extent that the criminal justice system treats minorities differently than it treats the white majority (which is a legitimate problem), you'll find newspapers registering concern along with the left. But while liberals traditionally have sought to address this sort of problem by protecting individual rights, editorial boards tend to stop at expressing concern, generally opposing any reform that would put significant limits on government power.
Welch pointed to a good example last week. In October the Drug Policy Alliance and the NAACP released a study showing that blacks and Latinos in California are several times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites, despite survey data showing that whites are more likely to smoke pot. The Los Angeles Times dutifully registered its concern in an editorial but felt compelled to add that "Proposition 19 is not the answer." As Welch explained, if we need to do something about the fact that blacks and Latinos are arrested for marijuana possession more often than whites, but that something does not entail arresting fewer pot smokers, the Times can only be advocating that we start arresting more white people. That's the solution proposed by law-and-order conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, who once said the disproportionate racial impact of the war on drugs means "too many whites are getting away with drug use"; the answer, he said, "is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them, and send them up the river too."
Editorial boards' objections to Prop. 19 generally boil down to two arguments: Legalizing pot will 1) increase consumption and 2) intensify the drug policy battle between California and the federal government. The first argument is little more than contempt for individual freedom, and it is particularly revealing when applied to a relatively benign drug like marijuana. Pot doesn't make users violent. No one has ever died from a marijuana overdose. The least healthy thing about the drug is that it's most commonly ingested through smoking. The objection that "more people would use it" is based on a belief that people aren't responsible enough to be trusted with intoxicants—that they’re too weak to put down the drug if it begins to interfere with their lives.
The second argument is equally telling: We can't expand freedom for Californians because doing so would undermine the federal government's authority. This concern was conspicuously absent in the debate between the Bush administration and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over whether California should pass emission standards that exceeded those of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Editorial boards seem to think it's fine to defy the feds if it means giving a state more regulatory power. But defying the feds in a way that gives Californians more freedom to make their own decisions about what they put into their bodies? Well, let's not go tipping apple carts.
Similar priorities were evident in the reactions from major newspapers' editorial boards after the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Gonzales v. Raich, which upheld the federal government's power to enforce its laws against marijuana, even in states that have legalized the drug for medical use. The lead plaintiff in the case was Angel Raich, a woman with ailments that included an inoperable brain tumor and wasting syndrome. Her doctor said homegrown marijuana was keeping her alive. While The Washington Post's editorialists sympathized with Raich, they worried that a broad ruling on her behalf might have undermined the federal government's Commerce Clause authority to protect obscure cave-dwelling insects. That isn't a caricature. The Post actually made that argument in an editorial titled (no kidding) "Not Just a Win for Bugs." While "medical marijuana and cave-dwelling insects may not seem to have much in common," the paper said, "federal authority over both depends on the same constitutional principle: Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce."
Liberals, even in the modern American sense, won't sacrifice equality, compassion, or lifestyle freedom for government power. They are suspicious of government power at least when it comes to policing, and they tend to value individual freedom, at least until it bumps up against their notion of equality. The editorial boards of our leading newspapers have different priorities. If there's a guiding principle you can reliably extract from the average newspaper editorial, it's that people can't be trusted to act in their own best interest. They need experts, politicians, and regulators to craft laws that steer them from peril and help them fulfill their potential—even if that means locking them up them until they learn.
Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason magazine.
From ProPublica and the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
The disciplinary file on the New Orleans Police Department's Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann is inches thick -- as thick as any on the police force.
The lieutenant has weathered more than 50 separate complaints, ranging from accusations of brutality and rape to improper searches and seizures. But none of the allegations ever stuck, although two complaints are still pending. Every time, Scheuermann was cleared and sent back onto the streets.
He has also fired his gun in at least 15 different incidents, wounding at least four people. Experts on police practices say the number is unusual -- most officers never fire their weapons.
Scheuermann's history of complaints would seem to make him an obvious candidate for the NOPD's early warning system, which aims to highlight and rehabilitate possible problem police officers.
Yet according to the city attorney's office, Scheuermann was never flagged for entrance into the monitoring program...
Amid the complaints, Scheuermann has received plenty of commendations. The awards depict Scheuermann as a top cop, a relentless workhorse whose arrest numbers are unparalleled and a leader who has patrolled the most dangerous corridors of the city over a 23-year career. He has been a hero in the eyes of many of his peers.
In an NOPD yearbook is a photo of a smiling Scheuermann shaking the hand of former President Bill Clinton, who bestowed a national award on him for "outstanding productivity throughout his career."
And now?
Today, Scheuermann, 49, is preparing to stand trial on some of the most disturbing charges ever filed against a New Orleans police officer. Federal prosecutors accuse Scheuermann and a colleague of setting fire to a car containing the body of Henry Glover, who had been shot by a different police officer in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Again, it isn't that there was a bad cop at NOPD. It's that nothing was ever done about it. It in part goes back to the twisted incentives that drive statistics-driven policing.
Agencies encourage officers to be proactive and make arrests, viewing big numbers as a sign of productivity. But when an officer who puts up big arrest numbers is accused of cutting corners or violating civil rights, supervisors often brush it off and declare the complaints unsustained, said Anthony Radosti of the watchdog Metropolitan Crime Commission.
"Where there is smoke, there is fire," Radosti said. "The more productive you are, the less you are scrutinized. Production means arrests, it's quantity versus quality. These arrest numbers became more important to the command structure in their efforts to regain control of the crime situation."
Back in 2008, I talked with former Baltimore cop and co-creator of The Wire Ed Burns about how the numbers game rewards the wrong sort of police work, and does little to make communities safer.
Texas has released a death row inmate.
After 18 years of incarceration and countless protestations of innocence, Anthony Graves finally got a nod of approval from the one person who mattered Wednesday and at last returned home — free from charges that he participated in the butchery of a family in Somerville he did not know and free of the possibility that he would have to answer for them with his life.
The district attorney for Washington and Burleson counties, Bill Parham, gave Graves his release. The prosecutor filed a motion to dismiss charges that had sent Graves to Texas' death row for most of his adult life. Graves returned to his mother's home in Brenham no longer the "cold-blooded killer," so characterized by the prosecutor who first tried him, but as another exonerated inmate who even in the joy of redemption will face the daunting prospect of reassembling the pieces of a shattered life.
"He's an innocent man," Parham said, noting that his office investigated the case for five months. "There is nothing that connects Anthony Graves to this crime. I did what I did because that's the right thing to do."
Graves was convicted of assisting Robert Earl Carter in killing a 45-year-old woman, her daughter, and her four grandchildren in 1992. Carter initially implicated Graves, but later recanted. Carter again insisted Graves was innocent just before he was executed in 2000. The man who prosecuted Graves apparently still believes he is guilty.
Charles Sebesta, then the district attorney, did not believe Carter. Even after he no longer held the post, Sebesta held to his beliefs, calling Graves "cold-blooded" and taking out an ad in two Burleson County newspapers in 2009 to dispute media reports criticizing the conduct of prosecutors.
The evidence against Graves was never overwhelming, depending mostly on Carter's earlier accusation and jailhouse statements purportedly overheard by law enforcement officers. Even Sebesta acknowledged it was not his strongest case.
"I've had some slam-dunk cases," he said in 2001. "It was not a slam-dunk case."
Yet he still sought—and won—a death sentence. (Sebesta has had problems in other cases, too.)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned Graves' conviction, noting the considerable weakness of the state's case against him. That court also found that Sebasta withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense and knowingly put on false testimony. Yet as late as last year, prosecutors were still seeking to retry Graves anyway, this time based largely on a "scent lineup," in which they used dogs to sniff out burnt clothing removed from a 17-year-old crime scene.
...prosecutors this summer brought in Fort Bend County Deputy Keith Pikett to conduct a "scent lineup" – a practice of dubious scientific validity that was recently the subject of a scathing report from the Lubbock-based Innocence Project of Texas. This type of lineup, with dogs supposedly matching a scent from a crime scene to a scent collected from a suspect, is junk science, the Innocence Project charges, while questioning Pikett's techniques in conducting the dog-led lineup. The procedure has indeed been implicated in a number of wrongful arrests and convictions. According to the report, released Sept. 21, Pikett has no formal training in the practice – nor does he apparently think any is necessary. Pikett has testified in court (in a matter unrelated to Graves) that there is no need for formal training or for scientific rules or protocols when conducting such lineups, and Pikett has rejected the importance of scientific studies regarding scent identification. Nonetheless, prosecutors across the state – including with the Texas Attorney General's Office – have relied on Pikett for "expert testimony" in a number of criminal cases.
I've previously written about Deputy Pikett and the junk science of scent linups here and here.
But hey, Graves was eventually exonerated and released, right? As Justice Scalia would assure us, this case is just more proof that the system is working.
"Sgt. Craig Plante writes about the "good ol' days" when veteran police officers taught new recruits the "unwritten rule:" You could beat "anyone who ran from us."' - Modesto Bee
A vivid account of police brutality came to light Tuesday after a judge
ruled an e-mail written by a retired Modesto police sergeant be released as
evidence in a murder case.
In the e-mail, Sgt. Craig Plante writes about the "good ol' days" when
veteran police officers taught new recruits the "unwritten rule:" You could beat
"anyone who ran from us.""The bad guys knew it as well as we did," Plante wrote. "If we chased you, it was coming. … You were pummeled, taken to Scenic Hospital, put to the front of the line, patched up and booked."
The biggest "B&R [beat and release] event" — when officers would beat and release people — was Modesto's Graffiti Night festivities, Plante wrote. Police would remove their name tags before doing it, the sergeant said. Plante said he wore another
officer's name tag from 1986 through 1991, the only dates referenced in the
e-mail.
"You'd start hitting, they'd start running and eventually they'd escape into the crowd," Plante wrote. "The SWAT (team) had their own 'Strike Squad.' …
They'd pour out and start clubbing people … until everyone ran away."
Police Chief Mike Harden confirmed Tuesday that Plante sent the e-mail to his colleagues on his last day of work, Sept. 12. Harden said he was "deeply
disappointed," but said there was no specific name or incident mentioned in the
e-mail that the department could investigate. He said Plante's e-mail was merely
"self-aggrandizing."
"It's either a reflection of his career or it's made up," said Harden, a 27-year veteran of the department. "I think it's inaccurate. It's not how this Police Department was run then and surely not now. This department does not willy-nilly use force without a legal justification to do so." In an e-mail to The Bee late Tuesday, Plante said he first heard a veteran officer use the term "beat and release" after breaking up fights at Graffiti Night, when thousands of people jammed downtown Modesto and McHenry Avenue to celebrate classic cars. He said these were not "one-sided affairs" but officers "fighting with groups of people," some of whom evaded arrest by fleeing into the crowd.
[An] attorney, Frank Carson, called the e-mail an eye-opening look into the mentality of Modesto police.
"It's a culture that lends itself to 'We're all in this together, and it's us versus them. The rules don't apply to us. We make the rules,' " Carson said. "It's about time that people found out, because our clients certainly know."
