Quotulatiousness

December 12, 2014

Supreme Court swings and misses on cellphone privacy ruling

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:00

Michael Geist on the most recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling on the ability of the police to conduct warrantless searches of cellphones taken during an arrest:

The Supreme Court of Canada issued its decision in R. v. Fearon today, a case involving the legality of a warrantless cellphone search by police during an arrest. Given the court’s strong endorsement of privacy in recent cases such as Spencer, Vu, and Telus, this seemed like a slam dunk. Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2014 decision in Riley, which addressed similar issues and ruled that a warrant is needed to search a phone, further suggested that the court would continue its streak of pro-privacy decisions.

To the surprise of many, a divided court upheld the ability of police to search cellphones without a warrant incident to an arrest. The majority established some conditions, but ultimately ruled that it could navigate the privacy balance by establishing some safeguards with the practice. A strongly worded dissent disagreed, noting the privacy implications of access to cellphones and the need for judicial pre-authorization as the best method of addressing the privacy implications.

The majority, written by Justice Cromwell (joined by McLachlin, Moldaver, and Wagner), explicitly recognizes that cellphones are the functional equivalent of computers and that a search may constitute a significant intrusion of privacy. Yet the majority cautions that not every search is a significant intrusion. It ultimately concludes that there is the potential for a cellphone search to be intrusive, it does not believe that that will be the case in every instance.

Given that conclusion, it is prepared to permit cellphone searches that are incident to arrest provided that the law is modified with some additional protections against invasion of privacy. It proceeds to effectively write the law by creating four conditions: a lawful arrest, the search is incidental to the arrest with a valid law enforcement purpose, the search is tailored or limited to the purpose (i.e., limited to recent information), and police take detailed notes on what they have examined and how the phone was searched.

December 9, 2014

The “broken windows theory” of policing … applied to the police

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:02

In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf discusses an interesting application of the “broken windows theory”:

One of the most influential policing concepts of our era, the broken-windows theory, holds that disorder and crime are “usually inextricably linked in a kind of developmental sequence.” At the community level, ignoring disorder leads to more of it, just as a building with a broken window soon has other windows broken. That insight has been widely embraced by law enforcement in the United States. But as Ken White observed in a recent post, we’ve yet to apply it to police agencies. “If tolerating broken windows leads to more broken windows and escalating crime,” he asks, “what impact does tolerating police misconduct have?” He points to recent examples in order to argue that the consequences are dire:

    [J]ust as neighborhood thugs could once break windows with impunity, police can generally kill with impunity. They can shoot unarmed men and lie about it. They can roll up and execute a child with a toy as casually as one might in Grand Theft Auto. They can bumble around opening doors with their gun hand and kill bystanders, like a character in a dark farce, with little fear of serious consequences. They can choke you to death for getting a little mouthy about selling loose cigarettes. They can shoot you because they aren’t clear on who the bad guy is, and they can shoot you because they’re terrible shots, and they can shoot you because they saw something that might be a weapon in your hand—something that can be … any fucking thing at all, including nothing.

    … We’re not pursuing the breakers of windows. If anything, we are permitting the system … to entrench their protected right to act that way. We give them … third and fourth chances. We pretend they have supernatural powers of crime detection even when science shows that’s bullshit. We fight desperately to support their word even when they are proven liars. We sneer that “criminals have too many rights,” then give the armed representatives of our government stunning levels of procedural protections when they abuse or even kill us.

I’d never thought about police abuses in quite this way before. But it seems to me that the reforms implied by applying broken-windows theory to police officers are very similar to many of the policy changes that critics of policing have lately been advocating. How to consistently punish police officers at the first sign of disordered behavior? Record their interactions to a cloud server that they do not control. Assign independent prosecutors to handle cases of unlawful behavior. And end the practice of arbitrators reversing punishments given to misbehaving cops.

As a former St. Louis policeman put it in the Washington Post, “The problem is that cops aren’t held accountable for their actions, and they know it. These officers violate rights with impunity. They know there’s a different criminal justice system for civilians and police. Even when officers get caught, they know they’ll be investigated by their friends, and put on paid leave. My colleagues would laughingly refer to this as a free vacation. It isn’t a punishment. And excessive force is almost always deemed acceptable in our courts and among our grand juries. Prosecutors are tight with law enforcement, and share the same values and ideas.”

December 3, 2014

Tennessee Salvation Army covers themselves with shame

Filed under: Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:04

Lenore Skenazy posted an item about a family in Tennessee who were turned away from a Salvation Army shelter because of their 15-year-old son:

When it comes to helping families in need, the Salvation Army turns a cold shoulder to one class of people: Teenage boys. A family in Johnson City, TN, found this out recently when, on a freezing cold night, they asked the organization for shelter. But because their family of five contained a 15-year-old boy, they were turned down.

But wait … for all the worries about police officers going rogue and acting like an occupying army instead of peace officers, there are still some good ones serving and protecting:

So instead the family headed to their car. The temperature: 18 degrees.

Somehow, local police officers came upon them and brought them to the Johnson Inn. The officers then pooled their money to pay for a room. When the night clerk figured out what was going on, he comped the room, so the officers’ money went to groceries for the family.

Meantime, 911 dispatchers who had been in on the action pooled their money to provide the Lejeunes some more food.

And the Salvation Army relented and took the family in … minus the 15-year-old, who felt that he was the reason his family was turned out into the below-freezing weather. He’s apparently now in a mental hospital, having had a breakdown over the guilt the Salvation Army helped him feel to the fullest. Nice work, guys. So Christian.

December 2, 2014

The brief flicker of interest in the problems of police militarization

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:04

At Techdirt, Tim Cushing relives that brief, shining moment when the nation seemed to suddenly notice — and care about — the ongoing militarization of the police:

It’s an idea that almost makes sense, provided you don’t examine it too closely. America’s neverending series of intervention actions and pseudo-wars has created a wealth of military surplus — some outdated, some merely more than what was needed. Rather than simply scrap the merchandise or offload it at cut-rate prices to other countries’ militaries (and face the not-unheard-of possibility that those same weapons/vehicles might be used against us), the US government decided to distribute it to those fighting the war (on drugs, mostly) at home: law enforcement agencies.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, it quickly became a way to turn police departments into low-rent military operations. Law enforcement officials sold fear and bought assault rifles, tear gas, grenade launchers and armored vehicles. They painted vivid pictures of well-armed drug cabals and terrorists, both domestic and otherwise, steadily encroaching on the everyday lives of the public, outmanning and outgunning the servers and protectors.

It worked. The Department of Homeland Security was so flattered by the parroting of its terrorist/domestic extremist talking points that it handed out generous grants and ignored incongruities, like a town of 23,000 requesting an armored BearCat because its annual Pumpkinfest might be a terrorist target.

Then the Ferguson protests began after Michael Brown’s shooting in August, and the media was suddenly awash in images of camouflage-clad cops riding armored vehicles while pointing weapons at protesters, looking for all the world like martial law had been declared and the military had arrived to quell dissent and maintain control.

This prompted a discussion that actually reached the halls of Congress. For a brief moment, it looked like there might be a unified movement to overhaul the mostly-uncontrolled military equipment re-gifting program. But now that the indictment has been denied and the city of Ferguson is looted and burning, those concerns appear to have been forgotten.

November 27, 2014

Perceptions of law enforcement and why it matters

Filed under: Law, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:00

At Reason, Emily Ekins explains some of the findings of the most recent Reason/Rupe poll:

The American Idea posits that the choices we make shape individual success. However, the State can undermine this promise if its most powerful tool — its policing power — is misused or allows external characteristics to skew the application of justice. It’s demoralizing and imposes a narrative of inferiority. Recent Reason-Rupe polling reveals Americans are significantly divided in their perception of abuse and bias in the criminal justice system and this perception divide alone ought to give us pause.

Irrespective of the actual extent of systemic bias, perception alone can be debilitating. The perception of a biased justice system may lead one to be less willing to give benefit of the doubt and to feel that self-determination is out of their grasp.

Compiling Reason-Rupe polling data finds dramatic racial differences in perceptions of law enforcement and the criminal justice system more generally. Minorities tend to believe the police too often use excessive force, that the cases of excessive force are on the rise, but also that police officers are not generally held accountable for their conduct.

Click to see full-sized infographic

Click to see full-sized infographic

November 25, 2014

QotD: Rand Paul and the war on drugs

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

I’ll do everything to end the war on drugs. … The war on drugs has become the most racially disparate outcome that you have in the entire country. Our prisons are full of black and brown kids. Three-fourths of the people in prison are black or brown, and white kids are using drugs, Bill, as you know … at the same rate as these other kids. But kids who have less means, less money, kids who are in areas where police are patrolling … Police are given monetary incentives to make arrests, monetary incentives for their own departments. So I want to end the war on drugs because it’s wrong for everybody, but particularly because poor people are caught up in this, and their lives are ruined by it.

Rand Paul, speaking to Bill Maher, 2014-11-15.

October 6, 2014

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Civil Forfeiture (HBO)

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 16:47

Published on 5 Oct 2014

Did you know police can just take your stuff if they suspect it’s involved in a crime? They can!
It’s a shady process called “civil asset forfeiture,” and it would make for a weird episode of Law and Order.

H/T to Dave Trant for the link.

September 20, 2014

CBC warning to Canadians travelling in the United States

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:11

I’ve seen this CBC link mentioned several times by US commentators:

American shakedown: Police won’t charge you, but they’ll grab your money
U.S. police are operating a co-ordinated scheme to seize as much of the public’s cash as they can

On its official website, the Canadian government informs its citizens that “there is no limit to the amount of money that you may legally take into or out of the United States.” Nonetheless, it adds, banking in the U.S. can be difficult for non-residents, so Canadians shouldn’t carry large amounts of cash.

That last bit is excellent advice, but for an entirely different reason than the one Ottawa cites.

There’s a shakedown going on in the U.S., and the perps are in uniform.

Across America, law enforcement officers — from federal agents to state troopers right down to sheriffs in one-street backwaters — are operating a vast, co-ordinated scheme to grab as much of the public’s cash as they can; “hand over fist,” to use the words of one police trainer.

September 12, 2014

When the government steals, they call it “civil forfeiture”

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

In Forbes, Jacob Sullum explains the amazingly lenient rules in most states for the government to steal your property:

Three key features of civil forfeiture law give cops this license to steal:

The government does not have to charge you with a crime, let alone convict you, to take your property. Under federal law and the laws of many states, a forfeiture is justified if the government can show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that it is connected to a crime, typically a drug offense. That standard, which amounts to any probability greater than 50 percent, is much easier to satisfy than proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard for a criminal trial. Some states allow forfeiture based on probable cause, a standard even weaker than preponderance of the evidence.

The burden of proof is on you. Innocent owners like Mandrel Stuart have to prove their innocence, a reversal of the rule in criminal cases. Meanwhile, the government hangs onto the money, which puts financial stress on the owner and makes it harder for him to challenge the forfeiture.

Cops keep the loot. Local cops and prosecutors who pursue forfeiture under federal law, which is what happened in Stuart’s case, receive up to 80 percent of the proceeds. Some states are even more generous, but others give law enforcement agencies a smaller cut, making federal forfeiture under the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program a tempting alternative. The fact that police have a direct financial interest in forfeitures creates an incentive for pretextual traffic stops aimed at finding money or other property to seize. The Post found that “298 departments and 210 task forces have seized the equivalent of 20 percent or more of their annual budgets since 2008.”

There’s at least some awareness in the Senate that the civil forfeiture rules are being abused:

The Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, a bill introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in July, addresses each of these issues. The FAIR Act changes the standard of proof in federal forfeiture cases from “preponderance of the evidence” to “clear and convincing evidence.” That change does not go as far as the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that has been fighting forfeiture abuse for years, would like. I.J. argues that civil forfeiture should be abolished, meaning that a criminal conviction, based on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, would be required for the government to take property allegedly connected to a crime. But Paul’s reform would make it harder for the government to prevail if a forfeiture case goes to trial, which might deter seizures of large sums in situations where the evidence is weak.

September 1, 2014

Philadelphia’s growing addiction to civil forfeiture

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:25

In Forbes, Nick Sibilla explains how the city of Philadelphia uses the civil forfeiture laws to enrich city coffers and oppress the residents:

Chris Sourovelis has never had any trouble with the law or been accused of any crime. But that hasn’t stopped the City of Philadelphia from trying to take his home.

The Sourouvelis family, along with thousands of others in Philadelphia, is living a Kafkaesque nightmare: Their property is considered guilty; they must prove their innocence and the very prosecutors they’re fighting can profit from their misery. Now the Institute for Justice has filed a major class-action lawsuit to end these abuses of power.

Back in March, Chris’s son was caught selling $40 worth of drugs outside of the home. With no previous arrests or a prior record, a court ordered him to attend rehab. But the very day Sourovelis was driving his son to begin treatment, he got a frantic call from his wife. Without any prior notice, police evicted the Sourovelises and seized the house, using a little-known law known as “civil forfeiture.”

Law enforcement barred the family from living in their own home for over a week. The family could only return home if they banned their son from visiting and relinquished some of their constitutional rights. Adding to the cruel irony, their son has already completed rehab, ending his punishment by the city. “If this can happen to me and my family, it can happen to anybody,” Sourovelis said.

Under civil forfeiture, property owners do not have to be convicted of a crime, or even charged with one, to permanently lose their property. Instead, the government can forfeit a property if it’s found to “facilitate” a crime, no matter how tenuous the connection. So rather than sue the owner, in civil forfeiture proceedings, the government sues the property itself, leading to surreal case names like Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. The Real Property and Improvements Known as 2544 N. Colorado St.

In other words, thanks to civil forfeiture, the government punishes innocent people for the crimes other people might have committed.

Update: As Eve Harris reminded me, civil forfeiture is not a US-only issue, and the police in British Columbia have been feeding cases to the province’s Civil Forfeiture Office (CFO) for further action even when no criminal charges are filed (and sometimes even when the police have violated Charter rights in the process). BC’s CFO was established in 2006 and since then has generated about $41 million in proceeds from civil forfeiture actions. Six other provinces also have civil forfeiture laws, but BC is leading the pack in the scale and scope of their activities. Eve also sent a link to a National Post article (which I can’t quote from without paying a licensing fee, which is why I rarely if ever link to that newspaper).

August 28, 2014

Reason.tv – Pentagon Has ‘Everything Must Go’ Sale

Filed under: Humour, Law, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:47

Published on 28 Aug 2014

After protestors in Ferguson, Missouri, were met with a militarized police force, new attention was brought to the Pentagon’s 1033 program, a program that supplies military-grade equipment to local police departments, often for free. Check out a commercial Reason TV has unearthed advertising the program to law enforcement.

Extremely minor quibble: the “tanks” are actually armoured personnel carriers. But as I’ve moaned on about before, everyone in media thinks every tracked vehicle is a tank and every navy vessel that isn’t a submarine or an aircraft carrier is a battleship. (And some even mistake earplugs for rubber bullets…)

August 22, 2014

The consent of the governed (or policed)

Filed under: Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:53

Kevin Williamson on the declining trust in government, not just in Ferguson, but across the United States:

The mathematics of civil disobedience has always been pretty straightforward: As Mohandas Gandhi pointed out to the raj, 100,000 government officials cannot control 350 million citizens if the citizens do not cooperate. There are not enough police in St. Louis County to control the people who do not wish to be controlled by the police in St. Louis County, as least as currently constituted. There are two ways to govern: By consent or by terror. In the United States, we govern by consent.

(Mostly.)

We spend altogether too much time talking about sentiment, e.g., polling Americans about whether they feel that the laws of economics apply in any given situation, as though their feelings were relevant to it. But there are occasions upon which sentiment must be considered, and considered seriously. One is the matter of public confidence in institutions, and the other is in the very serious business of consent.

On the matter of confidence, it is difficult to fault the critics of the Ferguson and St. Louis County police authorities. They do not give a very strong impression of competence, and the relationship between police and community appears to be adversarial on both sides. The police have been less than forthcoming, and their release of information has been self-serving. Ferguson already was a relatively high-crime area and economically depressed, meaning, almost by definition, that local institutions were failing to do their jobs. There are looters, adventurers, and opportunists, of course, but the fact is that people in the town of Ferguson, Mo., could be at home watching television or updating their Facebook pages but instead are protesting the performance of their local government. That is not an insignificant fact.

[…]

We have seen withdrawals of consent before, and we will see more in the future. From cracked Texas secessionists and Cliven Bundy to the people throwing rocks at police in Ferguson, such gestures are rarely altogether admirable, but that does not make them necessarily illegitimate. (I must confess that I’d have more sympathy with the protesters in Ferguson if they were setting fire to tax offices rather than convenience stores.) (Not that I’m endorsing setting fire to tax offices.) (At this time.) And there are real reasons to consider the question of consent: From local politicians legally looting their communities to federal government that uses the IRS as a weapon of politics, there are real objections to be made. In practical terms, we have a government that interferes with our lives and livelihoods far more than did the one our Founders threw off.

Which is not a call for revolution — it’s a call for rebalancing, for reestablishing exactly who works for whom.

August 21, 2014

Ferguson authorities issue an average of “about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household”

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:45

The relationship between the Ferguson police and the residents of the municipality seem to have been on a weird footing long before the current face-off, as Walter Olson points out:

Reading through this Newsweek article on the troubled relations between police and residents in Ferguson, Mo. before this month’s blowup, this passage jumped out at me:

    “Despite Ferguson’s relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of 2,635,400,” according to the ArchCity Defenders report. And in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, “or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.”

My first reaction – maybe yours too – was “is that a misprint?” Three arrest warrants per household in Ferguson last year?

Now let’s stipulate that some of those warrants were written against out-of-towners, especially in matters arising from traffic offenses, tickets being a key revenue source for many municipalities in St. Louis’s North County. Yet here’s a second statistic some will find surprising: while reported property-crime rates in Ferguson have run well above the national average for years, violent-crime rates have not. After a high period that lasted through 2008, they have declined steadily to a point where last year Ferguson had about the same rate of violent crime as the nation generally.

What seems clear at this point is that Ferguson – while in some ways a nicer and safer town than some have imagined – does suffer from a unusual degree of antagonism between police and residents, an antagonism that crucially involves race (the town is an extreme outlier in its now-famous extent of black underrepresentation in elected office) and yet has other vital dimensions as well.

Update: Alex Tabarrok says this is an example of the return of debtor’s prisons in modern America.

How does a stop for jaywalking turn into a homicide and how does that turn into an American town essentially coming under military control with snipers, tear gas, and a no-fly zone? We don’t yet know exactly what happened between the two individuals on the day in question but events like this don’t happen without a deeper context. Part of the context is the return of debtor’s prisons that I wrote about in 2012:

    Debtor’s prisons are supposed to be illegal in the United States but today poor people who fail to pay even small criminal justice fees are routinely being imprisoned. The problem has gotten worse recently because strapped states have dramatically increased the number of criminal justice fees….Failure to pay criminal justice fees can result in revocation of an individual’s drivers license, arrest and imprisonment. Individuals with revoked licenses who drive (say to work to earn money to pay their fees) and are apprehended can be further fined and imprisoned. Unpaid criminal justice debt also results in damaged credit reports and reduced housing and employment prospects. Furthermore, failure to pay fees can mean a violation of probation and parole terms which makes an individual ineligible for Federal programs such as food stamps, Temporary Assistance to Needy Family funds and Social Security Income for the elderly and disabled.

[…]

You don’t get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate. You get numbers like this from bullshit arrests for jaywalking and constant “low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay.”

If you have money, for example, you can easily get a speeding ticket converted to a non-moving violation. But if you don’t have money it’s often the start of a downward spiral that is hard to pull out of

August 20, 2014

The radical nineteenth century notion of “policing by consent”

Filed under: Britain, History, Law, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:55

Techdirt‘s Tim Cushing links to an interesting post by Jason Kottke discussing the radical-for-the-time (and apparently radical for right now) idea of policing by consent:

The UK Parliament passed the first Metropolitan Police Act in 1829. The act was introduced by Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel, who undertook a study of crime and policing, which resulted in his belief that the keys to building an effective police force were to 1) make it professional (most prior policing had been volunteer in nature); 2) organize as a civilian force, not as a paramilitary force; and 3) make the police accountable to the public. The Metropolitan Police, whose officers were referred to as “bobbies” after Peel, was extremely successful and became the model for the modern urban police force, both in the UK and around the world, including in the United States.

At the heart of the Metropolitan Police’s charter were a set of rules either written by Peel or drawn up at some later date by the two founding Commissioners: The Nine Principles of Policing.

On 3 December, 2012, the Home Office released the following statement in response to a Freedom of Information request:

When saying ‘policing by consent’, the Home Secretary was referring to a long standing philosophy of British policing, known as the Robert Peel’s 9 Principles of Policing. However, there is no evidence of any link to Robert Peel and it was likely devised by the first Commissioners of Police of the Metropolis (Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne). The principles which were set out in the ‘General Instructions’ that were issued to every new police officer from 1829 were:

  1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
  2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
  3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
  4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
  5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
  6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
  7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
  8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
  9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

Essentially, as explained by the notable police historian Charles Reith in his ‘New Study of Police History ‘in 1956, it was a philosophy of policing ‘unique in history and throughout the world because it derived not from fear but almost exclusively from public co-operation with the police, induced by them designedly by behaviour which secures and maintains for them the approval, respect and affection of the public’.

It should be noted that it refers to the power of the police coming from the common consent of the public, as opposed to the power of the state. It does not mean the consent of an individual. No individual can chose to withdraw his or her consent from the police, or from a law.

Tim Cushing comments on the US interpretation in current use:

You can choose anything on this list and find its correlating inversion on display in the US. Not once is “officer safety” cited as a reason to use physical force. Not once does the list make a demand for unearned respect. And above all, it makes it clear that this power is granted by the consent of the public, not provided by the State. What the public gives, it can rescind. The government’s only involvement is administrative.

US police forces talk a good game in mission statements about “honor” and “integrity,” but not once do they acknowledge the fact that they are servants of the public or that they are, in fact, just the public in different clothing. They are part of the government, an institution which derives from the consent of the governed. But there is no way to revoke that consent. Police unions and government officials continue to shelter misbehaving officers and any punishments handed down are delayed and largely ineffective in deterring future misconduct. With rare exceptions, police officials circle the wagons when one of theirs is accused of excessive force or criminal activity. The public is treated as irritating, ungrateful outsiders who don’t realize how difficult it is to be a cop and who are better surveilled than heard.

August 19, 2014

QotD: Power corrupts, police and conservative edition

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

When this principle of “power corrupts” is the driving force behind a conservative’s approach to the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, why are so many conservatives unwilling to apply it to those who enforce many of the government’s laws? In the days since Michael Brown’s death, we’ve seen video footage of police firing teargas onto people’s private property (language warning). We’ve heard reports of police arresting journalists who were not engaging in any illegal activity. If power seems to be corrupting those charged with keeping the peace during the recent unrest in Ferguson, why do some conservatives refuse to consider the mere possibility that a police officer may have been corrupted by power in the event that sparked the unrest?

The answer is, I think, quite simple. For many conservatives, especially those of us living in nice, comfy suburbs, it’s hard to apply the “power corrupts” doctrine to law enforcement because we’ve never seen corrupted enforcers of the law. We’ve never been wrongly arrested. We’ve never witnessed our children put in jail based on the false reports of police officers. We’ve never seen our neighbors beaten or tazed without cause. And in the extremely unlikely scenario that a police officer drove into our neighborhood and murdered our unarmed friend in cold blood, we cannot possibly fathom a scenario where the justice system wouldn’t be on our side and where that police officer wouldn’t spend the rest of his life in jail. Therefore Brown must have been a violent, gang-sign flashing thug, foolish enough to think he could swipe a cop’s weapon because, in our minds, there’s no conceivable way that a police officer would gun down an innocent man.

But just because we don’t see the corruption of law enforcement in our own lives doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Police brutality is not the Bogeyman. It’s not an urban legend witnessed by none but told by many. It’s not a myth created by a primitive tribe that is too simple to understand the true source of the brokenness in its communities. Black people believe in police brutality for the same reason they believe in rain — because they’ve felt it.

Hans Fiene, “Michael Brown And The Conservative Inconsistency”, The Federalist, 2014-08-15.

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