TheAgitator.com
A Good Time for Some Prosecutorial Discretion
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011Ex-drug dealer gets out of prison. Gets his life together. Opens a shoe store. Neighborhood hit with repeated robberies, shootings, and murders. D.C. police can’t protect residents and business owners. Guy’s sister-in-law puts a shotgun in the store for protection. Guy has altercation with customers. Accounts of the altercation differ, but it ends with customers calling the police, who then discover the gun. Guy now faces mandatory minimum three-year prison sentence.
There’s lots to chew on here. Maybe it’s a good idea to bar felons from owning guns, though if so, it should be limited to people convicted of violent felonies. Still, given the circumstances, they didn’t have to charge this guy. And police ineptitude led to him needing the gun in the first place. Post-Heller, the shotgun would have been legal if the guy hadn’t been a felon, but there’s also the question of exactly how residents and business owners in violent neighborhoods like this one are supposed to protect themselves. (Pre-Heller, a D.C. friend of mine once asked his pro-gun ban councilman that very question after a murder in his neighborhood. The councilman recommended my friend wear a whistle around his neck.) And of course this is another example illustrating how D.C.’s decades-old restrictive gun control laws have done little to keep guns away from criminals. Except, I guess, for ex-cons who have opened a business, and are trying to get their lives back together.
Here’s the kicker.
Since Hines’s arrest, there have been some changes at City Beats. Cameras monitor the sales floor. No one works alone in the shop.
But, Hines said, people in the neighborhood know there’s no longer a gun inside. “They gotta have in their mind that if they come in the store, you can’t pull a gun on us,” Hines said. “Without people thinking there’s some repercussions . . . they would definitely try to take advantage.”
On Sunday, his wife, Sherita McLamore-Hines, closed the shop as usual at 5 p.m., then proceeded to review inventory with her son and nephew.
About two hours later, a familiar customer knocked on the shop’s glass door, cash in hand. McLamore-Hines let him in, hoping to make one more sale. But after the man stepped in, three men wearing ski masks came in behind him. One of the men held a gun to McLamore-Hines’s head and cleaned out the cash register as she crouched behind the counter.
Police had not made any arrests in the case.
In other gun news, a battered wife acquitted of shooting her husband with one of his guns (she claimed self-defense) still faces three years for illegally using the gun. Meanwhile, a deputy who peered through a window, mistook a woman holding a cell phone for a man holding a gun, then shot the woman through her own door . . . is being defended by his sheriff.
In reality it is of no practical difference whether we ban felons from owning firearms or not, since ‘prohibiting’ is not the same as ‘preventing’.
“You just shot an unarmed man!”
“Well, he shoulda armed himself.”
The Hines story is such a great example of how bad policies come together in a way that legislators seldom predicted when writing the laws. Without the drug war, Hines isn’t in any trouble for having a gun (and probably never would have gotten into drug dealing); without DC’s draconian gun laws, police and prosecutors aren’t as tempted to treat incidental possession of a firearm as such a serious offense; and without mandatory minimum sentencing laws, the consequences aren’t so dire even if the prosecutor is one of those who only exercises discretion when prosecuting police misconduct.
Really, this is another reason to fight every dumb law so vigorously. There is no way to predict how it may combine with any of a zillion other laws to be even worse.
The Political Class is really, really against letting the peons own guns. Even the so-called Conservatives are skittish about it. Which makes me wonder if there’s a deep dark secret that even the most cynical don’t suspect, and which the Political Elite fear will generate real honest-to-God lynch mobs when it comes out.
Or it could be just the everyday would-be Aristocrat’s awareness that if you keep pushing people around long enough, sooner or later somebody will decide that you are in excess of requirements.
The cop-shooting-through-the-window story is pretty amazing on a number of levels.
“Asked whether Holbrook should have done anything differently, he said: “She could have turned on the lights.””
Once again, a homeowner caught flat-footed is expected to be hyper-aware, analyzing the situation with some sort of clinical, Terminator-esque display outlining exactly what is happening, and what they should do. Meanwhile, the armed ‘trained professional’ instigating the situation is free to remain twitchy and panicky.
The cynical side of me also says turning on the light would’ve just made her easier to shoot. Instead of being lodged in her back, the bullet could well have finished the job.
“They charged Randolph R. Allie, 23, of 123 Holyoke St., Rochester, with harassment and endangering the welfare of a child, Povero said.”
Ah yes. Once again, the ones breaking into a house, firing wildly into the air like Yosemite Sam are quick to cluck their tongues at those they break in on for ‘endangering the children’. I’m reminded of the old joke:
A ship was docked for provisioning. The captain spent the evening enjoying the many bars along the wharf, finally staggering his way back to his ship in the wee hours of the morning. As he lurched his way up the gangway, his evening’s efforts finally caught up with him, and he threw up all over himself.
Without missing a beat, he pointed to the nearest sailor, and bellowed, “Throw that man in the brig for a day for vomiting on his captain!” Two men escorted the hapless sailor away, while a third helped the captain to his quarters.
The next morning, red-eyed and hung over, the captain staggered up. Upon checking the log, he saw the sailor from the night before was being incarcerated for two days, rather than one.
“What’s the meaning of this? I clearly ordered a day in the brig for vomiting on me.”
The first mate replied, “True, sir, but when we got you to your quarters, we found he’d shit in your pants, too.”
A “familiar customer” does a ‘trojan horse’ for a gang of robbers, and then they leave the witness alive, and cameras were rolling? This shouldn’t be a very tough crime to solve.
This is the problem with crime. About 80% of the offenders are “too dumb to deter” in the normal course of the criminal justice system. Only an immediate and overwhelming threat of death or severe bodily injury at the crime scene will prompt them to consider the consequences of their actions.
But if it’s a matter of doing five or ten or fifty or five hundred years in prison starting a few weeks after the fact, they just don’t seem to process it any better than would a dog or a cow. They rob people they know, wearing their ordinary clothes, under rolling surveillance cameras, and leave their prints all over the place.
In the movies, the good guy tells the bad guy “you’ll never get away with this.” Then the bad guy explains his elaborate plan to get away. In real life, the bad guy just doesn’t seem to care. In the end, mass incarceration only “worked” (to the extent it did) as mass incapacitation.
Prosecutorial Discretion
This only comes into play when the suspect is well-connected with the police, mayor, or enough of the media gets involved as to make a big stink about it and possibly embarrass the DA (if that’s possible) into acting like a human being.
Roho @ #4
The account from the newspaper reads: “Based on all the information he had at the time, Deputy Potter believed that he was in imminent risk of deadly physical force when he made a split-second decision to fire.” Now, let’s use our imagination.
The scenario I’m going to describe is not what happened, but I could easily imagine it happening. Suppose you heard what sounded like intruders in your yard, saw someone peering through your window, shining a flashlight, which would obscure who the person was, and the only thing obvious to you was that that person was holding a gun?
Something tells me the Sheriff’s Office wouldn’t be so understanding if you had claimed you considered yourself “in imminent risk of deadly physical force” when you shot the unknown intruder.
So first you argue that guns are good because it makes people scared because they don’t know who might have a gun (ideally far too scared to commit a crime. Then once we have people (civilian and cops alike) on edge and scared because anybody might have a gun, something bad happens (innocent women gets shot) and all of sudden it’s the cops fault for reacting the way he did. I’m all for any idiot who wants to carry a gun getting one but I’m not gonna act shocked or feign outrage when people get shot. I believe the proper libertarian argument is that it is the cost of living in a “free” society…
Thanks for the triple nut-kick.
And I though Radley was getting soft on the nut punches. I audibly groaned, and my coworkers were like WTF?
@Jacob you would be dead wrong on your analysis of it being a proper libertarian argument.
Have you ever heard the term “an armed society is a polite society?” It’s true. When there is an expectation that people are likely to have guns, it makes people less nervous when one is encountered.
As far as the cop that shot the woman through the window, wouldn’t a more reasonable response have been just to duck and roll out of the way? Why is use of force the first reaction instead of the last resort?
Also, when the cop knocked on the door, she should have stated who he was looking for. Though the person inside still had no obligation to open the door.
Preventing felons from owning guns (even violent ones) is useless. They’re going to get guns if they want them and if they get caught with guns, they’re more likely to try to shoot their way out of the situation to avoid going back to jail.
@difster I completely agree with you except for a couple small points, you say:
“’an armed society is a polite society?’ It’s true.”
I don’t think it means what you think it does. The context of the quote is a science fiction story where people would duel whenever they felt insulted, hence people tended not to insult each other. They weren’t polite because they were used to seeing guns.
second
“Why is use of force the first reaction instead of the last resort?”
My answer would be then when your primary tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail. Crying “what if is useless anyways. People just need to suck it up and accept when a gun is used for it’s intended purpose” the end result is someone being shot. Arm yourself and quit yer’ bitchin’.
At the end of the day, the police and politicians want us all either dead or in jail.
That way, the population will be totally controlled, and (if alive) all your production goes to the state. No voting, either, so the vast majority of modern slaves won’t be able to change the law.
As if the police and politicians followed the law.
What country is this, again?
Jacob, If you think cops snooping in peoples homes, then shooting the homeowner in cold blood, and most likely getting away with it consequence free has ANYTHING to do with living in a free society then you need to rethink your premises. Or get a dictionary, because clearly some combination of words have been misconstrued on your part.
One is the story of a (supposedly) free man that has been systematically robbed of his right to self defense (a basic human right IMHO) by local and federal government. The same government that duplicitously refuses to offer him the most basic assurances of any kind of protection, and then punish him for being victimized by afformentioned government policy.
The other story is one of a state agent displaying a complete lack of discression in his use of force against an innocent. His ignorance of the situation did not provide him cause for caution, and instead provoked him to do something wildly dangerous and uncalled for. Of course now that hes injured an innocent person in their own home the wagons have been circled and its doubtfull he will experience any reprecussions for his actions at all.
You could replace the guns with swords in either story and the outrages are the same. Guns in particular don’t factor in at all, in both cases the issue is with the governments lack of respect for even the most basic rights of citizens.
I’m not arguing against guns. I’m just tired of hearing people complain when somebody gets shot. That’s what guns are for. They’d be pretty useless and pointless if they weren’t shooting people.
@16, I’m tempted to respond, but your post is so ridiculous that I’m sure other people will be piling on soon.
Jacob, the only time people complain about people being shot, is when they are shot and shouldn’t be. Some people need to be shot, and you will hear cheers instead of complaints when those people take a bullet.
I would have no problem with certain felons being able to regain their firearms ownership. No reason they shouldn’t be able to at least own a long gun kept in their home or in this case place of business. I know people that are felons from graf writing and mailbox baseball. The should be able to protect their family or business just as anyone else.
Well Jacob, if you ever take a bullet, I hope your last breath says “Fuck it, i’m not gonna bitch about this.”
Guns are for protection. When they aren’t used for protection, I’m gonna get upset. Like when a cop shots someone who didn’t deserve it in any which way.
The courts’ treatment of gun laws post-Heller infuriates me to no end. US Supremes declare possession of firearms (in the home at least) for the purpose of self-defense an _enumerated_ federal constitutional right, and no court will take seriously any challenge to the constitutionality of an absolute ban on gun possession for all felons. This is the first example of the govt being able to take away — absolutely — an enumerated federal constitutional right based solely upon a person’s status as a felon, without any additional showing that the person is otherwise dangerous, etc. Even felons will get their 4th amendment rights back (such as they are) when they are off parole/probation. And voting isn’t an enumerated federal right. (Besides, the 14th Amendment expressly states that prior convictions can be a disqualifier for the right to vote.) Just something to think about even by pro-gun ban people.
Under what circumstances should a free man be denied the right to own a gun? If you can’t trust them with a gun then WHY ARE THEY OUT OF PRISON? The only exceptions I can see would be those who are severely mentally handicapped, but those individuals are generally under a sort of “incarceration” anyway, even though it generally isn’t called “prison”.
This guy served his time, let him have a gun. I’d rather be around an armed Malcolm Hines than an armed police officer. At least the former would face consequences if he shot me.
Something really stinks about that cop-shooting-a-woman-through-the-window story. The officer claims he saw someone running at him with a gun (which, apparently, he can distinguish in the heat of the moment, even though he couldn’t distinguish that she didn’t look at all like the suspect he was after), but she is shot in the back of the shoulder?
I also think Roho makes a good point:
In addition, what struck me about that part of the article is that the sheriff either wasn’t asked or didn’t have a newsworthy answer to the question: What should the officer have done differently?
BTW, I LOLed at that ship’s captain story.
#14 Dante,
The state wants you controlled. You are inconvenient.
Some people feel the need to organize by granted power to a select few…and the results are always the same.
The state doesn’t want anyone to own a gun (who isn’t a state agent). They can’t get THAT law passed, so they pass the ones outlawing guns for everything they can.
“Guns are for protection. When they aren’t used for protection, I’m gonna get upset.”
Wrong, guns are for propelling pieces of metal at high velocities so as to injure or kill. It’s my right to own one and whenever you folks start complaining about guns performing their function it just gives those anti-gun wingnuts more ammunition (so to speak). It’s like the 1st Amendment, it allows both positive and hateful speech. The 2nd does the same we have to accept that in order to maintain our right to carry a weapon sometimes an person is going to get caught in the crossfire (pardon the pun).
#21 | Matt | “Under what circumstances should a free man be denied the right to own a gun?”
I would suggest that by definition a free man cannot be forbidden from owning a gun because those who are thus forbidden are not free.
A person who is legitimately subject to the will of another may be allowed or forbidden to possess arms as that other person sees fit. Thus, parents may legitimately forbid their children from possessing arms until they grow up, a government may legitimately forbid convicted criminals from possessing arms during the term of their sentence, and the overseers of an asylum may legitimately forbid inmates from possessing arms during the term of their care.
Those who are legitimately “not free” may be legitimately disarmed. There is no legitimate power to disarm people, however, except in cases where they may be legitimately made “not free”.
“An armed society is a polite society” is from Heinlein’s _Beyond This Horizon_, and I think there’s some ambiguity in the way he presents it– the armed, dueling utopia of abundance is a bullying society where most people have nothing useful to do. Folks at the research station on one of the outer planets go unarmed.
In _The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_, Heinlein seems to be simply in favor of an armed populace as more likely to have good manners.
I’m inclined to think that courtesy and being armed are independent variables, but would anyone care to throw in some actual experience of different societies?
“It’s my right to own one and whenever you folks start complaining about guns performing their function it just gives those anti-gun wingnuts more ammunition (so to speak).”
We aren’t blaming guns. Reading fail on your part. We’re blaming the shitty cops who are irresponsible. Responsibility, Accountability. Those are things applicable to people, not guns. Nice try though on trying to give cops a free pass on murder.
Seriously, the fact that you aren’t outraged when someone is murdered is fucking disgusting. Just because people have rights to defend themselves doesn’t make it ok to be irresponsible and dangerous to others.
If the government and police were not corrupt they would not be good at anything.
@#6
This is the DC police we’re talking about. Their rate of solved crimes is laughably low, and has been in the 21 years I’ve lived here.
Yep Radley, the world is upside down and it appears that we can neither get off nor fix it.
“Seriously, the fact that you aren’t outraged when someone is murdered is fucking disgusting. Just because people have rights to defend themselves doesn’t make it ok to be irresponsible and dangerous to others.”
If people need to die in order for me to keep my guns then so be it. It’s the price we pay as a society in order to live free. If someone gets killed because they didn’t have a gun or didn’t bother to shoot first then whose fault is that? You’re right we have a right to self defense and if you’re not willing to exercise that right it’s not up to society to babysit you. We’re all adults that should be able to take care of ourselves.
@31 – Thanks for being a poster child as to why an armed society is one where people get shot a fuckload more, and nothing else.
Jacob so long as I have the right to carry I don’t need to carry to protect myself from humans (from bears, yes). If people suspect I likely might be carrying, they will not want to test the question. If people are sure that the people around them aren’t carrying, then that incentive to mind their manners is lost.
Back in my day, we had an old internet saying: “Don’t feed the troll.” It served us well for generations.
Don’t mean to feed it, but Jacob’s trolling is a good demonstration of the utter worthlessness of appeals to “personal responsibility”. Such appeals are always nonstarters at best, utterly fallacious at worst. As easily as one can say “anyone who doesn’t arm themselves is responsible for getting shot”, another can say “people who shoot other people are responsible for being ostracized/disarmed/imprisoned/lynched”. Stripped of any background moral premises, both statements are true as far as they go, which isn’t very far (responsibility in the non-moral sense isn’t particularly interesting; everyone is, in practical terms, partly responsible for everything that happens around and to themselves). Of course the trick is that such appeals are always packed with hidden moral premises that the people making such appeals don’t want examined too closely, let alone questioned.
Also note that societies where people actually do fight and kill each other over insults, accusations, and “honor” tend to turn not into well-mannered libertarian utopias, but rather degenerate into persistent gang warfare (this is a separate issue from whether people are armed, or how they are armed). It’s not an environment that’s particularly healthy for cultural individualism.
The lesson here is that if you’re a battered wife and need to defend yourself from an abusive spouse, use a long gun (shotgun rifle). The five years was for unlawful possession of a handgun. In NY, handguns require a license.
Oops, this is NYC, where *all* firearms require a license. The lawyer was right — if you’re a battered spouse move out of NYC.
@ 26
Nancy Lebovitz – Speaking from personal experience, I find people in TX to be more polite (on the surface, at least) than people in England (where only criminals are allowed to own handguns). There’s less drunken fighting in TX, too, believe it or not!
It’s not necessarily due to fear of being shot, either. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence suggesting that those of us who carry a concealed handgun will go to extra efforts to de-escalate situations and avoid conflict, precisely because we’re aware of the potential for us to end up needing to use it if we don’t.
The truth of the matter is that so many people don’t have common sense. And the truth is if someone even if they are unarmed is trying to kill you or do bodily harm to you have the right to STOP them. And if they should die in the process I would rather be judged by 12 then carried by 6.
“but there’s also the question of exactly how residents and business owners in violent neighborhoods like this one are supposed to protect themselves.”
In a police state – and DC qualifies for that term – there is no question at all. Subjects are to rely on the police for protection regardless of the abilities or priorities of the police. Forget about serve & protect. It’s submit & obey now. The needs of the subjects are subordinated to the will of the police.