TheAgitator.com
Were those the days?
Wednesday, May 4th, 2011It what might be end of a long (and glorious?) Baltimore police tradition, two officers were convicted of misdemeanor for picking up two 15-year-old boys and dropping them off far from home, one of them barefoot. The officers were acquitted of far more serious kidnapping charges.
These officers were certain not the first police officers to pick up trouble-making youths, and, rather than dragging them through the juvenile justice system, decided a fearful two-hour walk home would be more effective punishment. (I never saw this first hand, but I heard many such second- and third-hand stories.) Such shenanigans certain fall under then category of “informal justice,” but it was never clear if it was illegal discipline. Is a long lost walk good punishment all of the time? Certainly not. But might it not be the right punishment some of the time?
I’m all for (legal) alternative sanctions. One time I guy in my squad caught two kids throwing and breaking bottle early in the morning. We were a few months out of the academy and the kids were “gigged” with push-ups (ironically that is what we learned in the academy). Was this punishment technically legal? Probably not, but I thought it was one of the smartest thing I ever saw this officer do. A little discretion can go a long way.
[--Peter Moskos]
They should have just shot the kids, I guess. There’s never a consideration of bringing a charge, even a misdemeanor, no matter how questionable the shooting was.
transport them to jail or take them home. it is not a cop’s job to ‘teach em a lesson’.
I remember when the role of the police was “Protect and Serve”. Now it seems “punishment” has been added as one of their responsibilities.
Judges are judges for a reason. Police are not judges for a reason. When you start giving your police the power to decide guilt and set punishment, you have abandoned the rule of law.
I know a cop who retired as a captain with the NYPD. He told me that cops effected their own brand of justice in some cases, depending on the circumstances. The example he used — after a similar example aired on one of these reality TV shows — was what they used to do if they caught a drunk driver who, they felt, was an upstanding citizen who just made a mistake. Instead of taking him downtown, they would throw his car keys down a sewer and tell him to find his way home.
Now, I’m sure that that’s technically illegal, and I’m not going to say that this practice is right or wrong; but it’s not the same thing as dropping two teens off with a two hour walk home through the mean streets of an inner city. To me, that’s like kidnapping someone and dropping them off in the middle of tiger country in Africa. It goes beyond “teaching someone a lesson.”
I don’t mind the walk home. Back when I was in High School, there was a police officer in the community who, when he pulled over a teenager for a minor infraction (turn signal, speeding less than 15 MPH over the limit, etc.), instead of giving a ticket and sending the kid on his way, would instead follow the kid, in his car, back to their house, where he’d knock on he door and talk to whatever parent was home. Had a couple of friends who dealt with him. They’d rather have had the ticket.
But dropping the kids off, with no shoes, far from home? Should’ve been a kidnapping conviction.
A little discretion CAN go a long way, especially when remembering that there is a system of law for a reason.
Reminds me of this: http://goo.gl/xPGeF
I used to know an old retired cop that fished a lot and he told me the story of when he was a rookie and first busted a kid for a small amount of marijuana. This was in the 60′s or whenever the drug hysteria first started and later he found out that the kid was sent to prison and horribly brutalized there (Texas). From then on whenever he caught some kids with weed he would threaten and try to scare them and make them throw the stuff out but he refused for the rest of his career to bust anyone for marijuana. So yea, I can kind of see the point of cops dealing with kids like that, especially in the old days when the police where more known to the locals, more liked and respected and not pretty much an occupying military force llike they are now.
“It what might be end of a long (and glorious?) Baltimore police tradition, two officers were convicted of misdemeanor for picking up two 15-year-old boys and dropping them off far from home, one of them barefoot. The officers were acquitted of far more serious kidnapping charges.”
Strangers picking up boys? Damn, I never thought I’d wax nostalgiac over the days of Mob Justice.
hell, after reading the linked article I’ve come to a harsher conclusion, those kids apparently weren’t doing anything wrong -the detectives were trying to pump them for information on a ‘violent drug operation’ and when they didn’t get any information, dropped them off in the middle of nowhere.
That is worse than finding some kids breaking bottles in the street or other petty vandalism – they didn’t give answers so they were punished.
sorry Peter, this is pretty indefensible.
Discretion is a critical characteristic too often lacking in police and prosecutors, but the story you tell isn’t one of discretion; it’s one of harassment. Either the kids deserved to be in the system or they didn’t. And if they did, it was because of specific facts, to which the officer would swear, that form the basis of a criminal offense. OTHERWISE, LEAVE THEM THE HELL ALONE.
I don’t think cops should ever self impose this sort of “informal justice”. Police have a job to do and it is not acting as judge and jury. Much less putting minors in any more danger then they may already get themselves into. This is punishment with out the process of law.
Kidnapping is is taking a person by force or FRAUD without a lawful excuse. Dropping kids all around town with out regard to safety (without shoes and in environments that would cause fear) while pretending it is part of official police business is shameful. If I was the lawyer I would press for kidnapping charges as well.
This is a abuse of police powers and should fall under a federal “color of law” with a FBI investigation, this is beyond what should be handled internally by a local city government.
The fact that the cops will keep their jobs after intentionally falsely imprisoning someone tells us all we need to know about our system of justice.
The article seems to be saying that the officers picked the children up from the neighborhood where they lived and kicked them out of the car in a different, dangerous neighborhood. Police also implied that the children had given police information. In Baltimore, as in many cities, just being in the “wrong” neighborhood can get a person seriously hurt if a local gang thinks they’re affiliated with a rival gang. If witnesses overheard police implying that the children had given them information, retaliation becomes much more likely. We have a situation here where police are intentionally putting children in a dangerous, potentially lethal situation and are then exacerbating the danger. Frankly, I’d probably charge them with assault and attempted murder.
Sing it with me!
No such thing as a good cop. And while I appreciate Peter’s perspective, he’s drank the kool-aid too long to be objective. Hey peter: These cops were bad.
I think that we set up impossible catch-22′s a lot of the time, tho. Sure, we can say “People should be let go or put through the system.” But the system as exists, as we all well know from reading this blog, is a soul-crushing machine, that turns people out far worse than they went in.
I think there is certainly a place for discretionary tactics. Such as “Free ride to your house and talk to your parents (or to your parents workplace, perhaps)”. Maybe there should also be some other things that are known as punishments, like maybe some sort of time-out or detention. Things that can be know, reviewed, and checked on. I think one of the biggest problems with these non-law kinds of things is that they are unchecked, and that’s where the potential for abuse comes in. If it was more transparent from start to finish, then it would certainly be better than the binary “Arrest them or leave them alone”.
The way the system is currently constructed, I would applaud an officer’s discretion in doing this if it were something like a couple of kids caught smoking a J in an alley, since the alternative could be ruining their lives with a criminal record and whatever crap an overenthusiastic prosecutor might throw at them, but in this case, it seems like they were just punishing the kids”off the record” for contempt of cop, which is pretty messed up. In cases like this, the details matter.
The problem isn’t the punishment itself, but the policemen LYING about the punishment after the fact. It is this habitual LYING that turns policemen evil and robs them of their God-given capability of recognizing when other policemen are obviously lying.
This is part of a larger theme where the problem with modern US police is so much the brutality as dishonesty. Criminal justice scholars just don’t seem to get this basic thing.
While I do encourage some discretion (a warning, confescation & disposal of drugs, etc) as opposed to fine, arrest, imprisonment, etc. I do not think it is ever the officers place to dole out punishment.
Any cop declaring himself judge, jury and executioner is nothing more than a bully at best and murderer at worst.
–is not so much–
The piece doesn’t mention what law, if any, these kids were suspected of breaking. Seems more like the police wanted information out of them and it wasn’t forthcoming, and that is what this “informal street justice” was about.
These cops should have been convicted of felony kidnapping, criminal endangerment, etc.
I feel like the Peter didn’t read the article. The police were looking for information, and were trying to pressure the kids into providing some information. So they were illegally questioned and the dropped off in the middle of nowhere (in one case without shoes!) because they didn’t provide the information the police were looking for.
This is not comparable to the cops busting a party at your house and making you pour out the beer.
Pretty sure there was a Law and Order episode that involved police officers purposefully dropping a kid off on the wrong side of town. In the middle of a gang war or something?
I’m not sure, are you saying that it is OK for the cops to go around and pick kids up off the street, then drop them miles away from home to punish them?
“Was this punishment technically legal? Probably not, but I thought it was one of the smartest thing I ever saw this officer do.”
It seems to me you really are excusing their kidnapping.
So if some stranger grabs your son or daughter off the street but decides later to just drop them off, then no punishment should be given. After all a cop is just a stranger with a uniform and badge.
You may want to visit
http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?page_id=4135
Look closely at figures, 6, 7, and 10, to see that police rape and molest with more frequency then does the general public.
In theory, I agree that a little discretion can go a long way. Unfortunately, I think most police departments have shown an inability to handle such discretion. Here in Chicago, the same discretion that might lead a cop to wisely decide that a long walk home is better than a permanent record also led cops to hook up old-style crank telephones to suspects’ genitals to elicit confessions. I suppose the bottom line is discretion has to be coupled with accountability; until we establish the latter, I’m reluctant to accept the former.
There was no law broken, as far as the article indicates, and even if there were, there is no legal process for the police to establish guilt. MAYBE there might be room in our system for a sort of police plea-bargaining: “Is this your pot, son?” “No, sir”. “Then I guess you won’t mind if I flush it.” Or, “instead of me locking you up on suspicion of _______, let’s go talk to your parents.” But there should never be an imposition of a punishment by police. It’s wrong to begin with, and it creates a culture in which even more wrongdoing can be excused.
If you do support this kind of behavior, do you also support extra-judicial punishment of officers who mistreat citizens?
As is often said, the scandal is not what’s illegal, it is what is legal. The legal system incarcerates and ruins the lives of children for consensual acts or petty crimes.
Not confessing to a crime and not pointing the finger at somebody else qualifies as “trouble-making”, worthy of punishment these days? Okay.
“Is a long lost walk good punishment all of the time? Certainly not. But might it not be the right punishment some of the time?”
I think the easiest way to answer these sorts of questions is to reverse the roles.
If I, as an ordinary, mundane citizen, witness a police officer doing something they shouldn’t be doing is it my responsibility to punish them? Maybe just some of the time? Making them walk ten miles back to the station certainly might be more responsible than going through all of the trouble of an internal investigation, at tax payer expense, that ultimately exonerates those police officers and excuses their behavior.
Do I get bonus points if I make them do it barefoot?
Police officers are the last people who should be give license to implement punishments. Maybe this guy is able to write a blog post with only a few grammatical errors but, in general, cops aren’t the brightest bulbs in the pack.
While I’m not automatically against the idea of police having some degree of discretion in choosing whether to make an arrest and put people through the system, I agree that 1) it’s not their role to impose punishment, and 2) this specific case reminds me unpleasantly of the Saskatoon teenager who was found frozen to death after he was dropped outside the city limits by two police officers.
There is nothing “glorious” about punishment, official or not. Punishment should be handed out sparingly, carefully, and soberly. People taking pleasure in doling out punishment do not deserve to be punishers. What these officers did is not funny or cute.
Can you point to one? I don’t think handing out pushups is legal, although IANAL.
Predicted response from Peter : Okay, okay, **YOU** guest blog next time
ya goddamn hippies!
omar, I think a couple of alternative sanctions could be things like I mentioned above: Talk to their parents (although given the lack of respect many police forces have, this might not do much good right away), or maybe some sort of supervised detention. With respect to the detention, it’s something that if you’re going to arrest the kid instead, then they’re going to be detained some amount of time anyway, so maybe have a non-arrest detention, keep statistics and oversight on it (to keep it from being abused to the point of kidnapping), and then transport them back home.
As I mentioned, tho, the lack of respect for police forces, in large part of their own doing due to how they’ve treated the public, makes these kinds of things less effective.
Ahh Baltimore…
At least they didn’t drop them off at a Catholic church for some of that traditional Baltimore priestly molestering. Guess that’s only for the really bad kids. Or something.
If I, as an ordinary, mundane citizen, witness a police officer…
Brian,
You have inadvertently illuminated one of the serious drivers of the issues with out of control LEOs today. Cops are only ordinary mundane citizens, and as they aren’t military, they’re civilians too – just like the rest of us.
Nomenclature really does matter here. Cops are not soldiers, they are not super citizens – they are officers of the court with a sworn duty to perform their part in the justice machine.
They have one of the easiest and safest jobs in America – and it (usually) pays pretty well, with great benes and generous retirement to boot. We have every right to expect them to behave and to understand that they exist to protect and serve their fellow citizens.
I remember when my best friend and another guy in zero period jazz band decided to race their (very non-fast) cars down the empty parking lot before class. A cop caught them and took their information. Using his sweet discretion, he decided to just wait 3 weeks and call their homes to make a bunch of noise about reckless driving… on mothers day. Net effect, cop made himself look like an ass.
In my county, two Sheriffs ago we had a Sheriff who was my ideal for the office. When he found kids on the street with a joint at any of the local festivals, he’d make them put it out, but he would never confiscate it or arrest them, if it was alcohol they were drinking, he’d make them pour it out and again would not arrest them. When he busted a kegger, he’d confiscate the keg and tell all the kids to go home. He was the best Sheriff we’ve had in my lifetime. The last one and the current one are both typical asshat cops. Wish we had the old one back, but he’s elderly, now, retired and not likely to ever run again. Here’s hoping the next one will be more like him than the two we’ve had since.
Btw, I’m 66, so saying he was the best Sheriff we’ve elected in my lifetime is saying a lot.
@ #31 “We have every right to expect them to behave and to understand that they exist to protect and serve their fellow citizens.”
I would add that they should also be expected to always tell the truth, during interrogations and in court. Testilying should be a punishable offense for LEOs, with the punishment being immediate firing from the force and being banned from ever holding a job with any police force, anywhere, ever again. We, the People should demand that ANY kind of misconduct on the part of any LEO should garner that punishment, at least (some misconduct requires prosecution). Since suing them only hurts the taxpayers, and since their superiors usually promote (or at the very least protect from any form of punishment, at most giving them a paid vacation during the “investigation”) the ones who behave badly, this is the only way we are ever going to return our police forces to civilized behavior, unless we go with the private police with competition where one subscribes to the services of a police agency instead of the government hiring police situation we now have.
I would say that any cop should always have the official capacity to use his discretion to let unconscionable enforcement slide. If a cop believes that the effect of judicial involvement will be a net cost to society they should always have the explicit instruction to not enforce the law.
I’m with Windy.
the paperwork and bureaucracy is such that, if a cop feels he can correct the bad behavior without paperwork, it’s a win for everyone. Sometimes, it really is a win, but many times it’s not.
As I said in another thread, yesterday, the ONLY job of LEOs should be investigating the crimes that have been committed, finding the perp who did it and turning over said perp to the prosecution for charges. They’ve NOT been hired to be prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner in addition to investigating/catching/arresting.
And, yes, Nate, they should be fully honoring their oaths to uphold the Constitution by refusing to use unconstitutional methods in their jobs or enforcing unconstitutional laws.
Aww, it’s so cute when newbs ‘get it’. The only reason we ‘respect’ cops is because we were trained to. They did not earn our respect, nor do many deserve it. How many do is tough to say. Cops are NOT your friend, NOT authorities on the law, NOT truthful, NOT trustworthy and NOT who you should call in case of trouble. Unless death is imminent, do NOT call the cops. They will monumentally screw up the situation.
I have to say, for all the fear of cop, I have mostly had very good experiences with them. Whether it was asking for directions, the guy who filled the report when our car was smashed by a stolen hit and run car in the middle of the night, or the guy who closed the case on a stolen credit card because I recognized the guy who brought it into our store. But with the stakes of the high intensity situations they love to get involved in, it only has to go bad once.
I think Balko may have picked a bad choice for guest blogger. If one of his first posts is to wax romantically about how much he loves extrajudicial punishments, he CLEARLY doesn’t understand the audience here.
Stormy – I think having someone who isn’t preaching to the choir is a good thing some times, kinda like Balko going to work for Huffpo. While I don’t think Peter will change any minds here about police abusing their authority, the flow of ideas is what is important; remember he is a former LEO and I don’t think we’ll be able to change him over night based off of this one post.
As a former prosecutor I happen to have a real problem with these officers’ actions. Equally I think that some of the comments are really missing the point here.
Throughout the legal system there are a number of steps that occur before a person is sentenced to a prison term, and at any one of them there is supposed to be an informed dispationate professional who can stop the process in the tracks.
1) The police should have the discretion to decide not to arrest someone if they feel that arrest is not a reasonable option under the circumstances.
2) The DA can stop a case for the same reasons but also because the case lacks enough evidence to convict.
3) The judge can alter, modify, or eliminate cases based upon any number of things (Though often by reducing the charges, or eliminating evidence).
4) The Jury then decides if the facts of the case warrent conviction
5) The judge again has discression to impose the sentence and can be harsh or leniant depending on the facts of the case.
The problem with what these officers did is not that they decided not to book the kids into the system, but that they imposed a judgment on them. This was then compounded by the fact the officers had no justification to arrest them in the first place (according to the linked article).
By contrast (simmilarly to the above comments) if an officer observes a crime he has the option of either a) arrest, b) ignoring the conduct or c) in lieu of arrest arrive at a consentual agreement with the suspect. For instance in New Orleans during Mardi Grass it is common to find people urinating on the street. This is actually a sex crime in Louisiana, and many officers find the criminal effects of that type of charge grosly out of line with the offense. So when officers aproach these people they often offer an option to arrest which is to take off their shirt, clean up the urine, then put their shirt back on. At any time during this process the offender has the option of refusing, and being arrested instead, and booked for the act committed.
To me this is an appropriate behavior for the officer, but only because it is initially premised upon the fact that the suspect has committed a crime, and the officer is simply offering an alternative to arrest. The difference with these cops is that 1) There was no underlying crime the boys had committed. 2) There was no suggestion the kids could have opted instead to have been arrested. 3) The officers then lyed about their behavior.
I think the question mark at the end of the title is to engage discussion on the appropriateness of such discretion. He’s fondly remembering times it works out because sometimes it does indeed work out. I think the thread is doing a decent job of trying to hash out what is and is not appropriate.
There’s a clear distinction between those cases (where it was used to reduce the penalty applied to someone who clearly broke the law) and this case (where it was used to punish someone who clearly hadn’t broken the law but was frustrating the cops).
I think Balko may have picked a bad choice for guest blogger. If one of his first posts is to wax romantically about how much he loves extrajudicial punishments, he CLEARLY doesn’t understand the audience here.
I think it’s good that Radley brought in some people to stir the pot. While I generally disagree with Peter’s post above, I think he raises an interesting point. Further, if you read his article on flogging that Radley posted a few days ago, you should be able to see that Peter’s not some statist idiot. I would have a problem if Radley brought in somebody who was clearly uninformed, but I’m cool with intelligent contrarian viewpoints here.
Intelligent contrarian viewpoints are one thing, but the article linked almost directly contradicts the point he’s trying to make. Cops apparently pick up these kids for nothing that amounts to a crime, grill them for information on drug dealers, and punish them when they don’t produce a perp on a silver platter. When the cops get caught, they’re convicted of a misdemeanor, which seems wildly positive given how this story usually goes, but I’ll be surprised if they even lose their jobs, and jaw-dropping shocked if they’re not cops somewhere in a year.
This is not a shining example of good cops showing restraint. If the story was more along the lines of cops pick up kids vandalizing stuff, take them home, talk to parents, maybe arrange for the kids to fix it up, and leave, I’d be sympathetic. This? Straight up kidnapping.
I’m trying to view this charitably, since I assume he’s not guest blogging for nothing, but that requires I either assume he didn’t even bother to read the linked article, or that he knows something about this that we don’t, and isn’t sharing.
My opinion is the cops were way over the line and deserved a more serious conviction.
I personally have no trouble with a little minor on street justice. Following the kid home and telling the parents their child was stopped for 15 MPH over the speed limit, or dump your beer or go to jail.
I’ve been in a similar situation. Some friends and I were headed to pick some people up one night and we got pulled over by a sheriff while sitting at a stoplight. Next thing we know there were about 10 cop cars behind us that came out of nowhere. They accused us of shooting at someone’s trailer because I was driving a black Mustang, which was the car seen. After they realized that it wasn’t us, they still impounded my car and dropped us off at a White Castle in the middle of the ghetto. Way out of the way from where we lived and where we were going.
I am totally in favour of the “talk to the parents” option. I’ve squashed several incidents, online, which would otherwise have ended with hacking charges against kids. (I’m not a cop, but it definitely ended the problem from our perspective!)
There needs to be something between “let them go” and “charge em”.
Certainly not defending this kind of incident, though.
“Alternative sanctions” do have their place, but cops have no business punishing anybody in any way unless the person has first been convicted of a crime and sentenced to that punishment by a judge. A cop is not a judge.
Cops who are allowed that kind of “discretion” might as well be dictators.