I have a new Nashville Byline post up. It’s about the anti-death penalty concert here in Nashville Monday night. Here’s another shot from the show. That’s Lilly Hiatt, John Hiatt, Chris Scruggs, and Gail Davies.
The gay and lesbian community of Minnesota has issued a letter of apology to recently resigned Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch for ruining the institution of marriage and causing her to stray from her husband and engage in an “inappropriate relationship.”
“On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community’s successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage,” reads the letter from John Medeiros. “We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry.”
Maybe there’s a legitimate law enforcement reason to strip a man naked, strap him to a chair, tie a “spit hood” around his mouth, put a hood over his head (see video at the link), and douse him with pepper spray until he dies. That’s what sheriff’s deputies in Lee County, Florida did to 62-year-old Nick Christie two-and-a-half years ago.
I certainly can’t think of any such legitimate reason. But Lee County State’s Attorney Stephen Russell apparently can. Because he cleared the deputies involved of any wrongdoing.
Christie’s family just filed a lawsuit.
Because I’m in a giving, holiday mood.
Roseanne Cash, in Nashville this week.
Today’s revolting defense of a murderous communist regime comes by way of the Times of London.
The State’s founder, Kim Il Sung, claimed that all he wanted for North Korea was to be socialist, and to be left alone. In that regard, the national philosophy of self-reliance known in North Korea as “Juche” is little different from India’s Gandhian version known as “swadeshi”. Just let us get on with it, they said, and without interference, please.
India’s attempt to go it alone failed. So, it seems, has Burma’s. Perhaps inevitably, North Korea’s attempt appears to be tottering. But seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.
That’s prolific author Simon Winchester, standing athwart the tide of history and yelling, “Starve!”
The actual column is behind a paywall. (Via Libertarian Samizdata.)
Andrew Grossman has more on the case against Gibson Guitars:
Gibson’s crime, according to an affidavit supporting the search warrant, was the illegal importation of Indian-grown ebony veneers, intended for use as fret boards. A hardwood prized for its appearance and durability, ebony is sustainably raised by certified growers, and Indian law doesn’t bar its harvesting or export. What Indian law does require is that ebony veneers be finished within the country, by local labor, to a thickness of less than 6 millimeters. Gibson’s wood, it happens, was a bit thicker — nearly a full centimeter.
On that basis, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents invaded Gibson’s facilities, bringing its operations to a standstill.
(*A commenter correctly points out that this was a raid by armed federal agents, but not a SWAT team.)
The Daily Beast and the Center for Investigative Journalism have put out a new report on police militarization, focusing primarily on police departments stockpiling battle gear in the decade since 9/11. There’s some great reporting here, particularly on the absurd Homeland Security outlays to states and police departments across the country. There’s also a cool interactive map. (I love that the feds gave Oklahoma $2 million for port security.)
And while it’s great to see this issue get more coverage, I do have a couple quibbles. First and foremost, there’s no mention at all of the drug war’s role in all of this. The report does give a few examples of botched drug raids carried out by tactical teams sporting military gear (the Jose Guerena and Cheye Calvo raids in particular). But other than briefly noting that those raids were part of drug investigations, the report never revisits the drug war.
It seems odd to leave the drug war out entirely. It’s true that homeland security spending has accelerated the move toward militarization. But things were already moving pretty quickly in that direction. And that’s because of the drug war. The militarization trend began a good 20 years before September 11, when the Reagan administration ramped up the war on drugs both with rhetoric and with specific policies. By 9/11, SWAT teams had already saturated the country, and the number of annual paramilitary raids had soared (from 3,000 in the early 1980s to about 40,000 by the early 2001). And also by 9/11, millions of pieces of military equipment had already been transferred from the Pentagon to local police departments across the country by way of the Defense Department’s surplus giveaway program.
A few more stats, courtesy of criminologist Peter Kraska:
The other reason why the drug war is a critical component of this issue is actually contained in The Daily Beast piece, though you have to look for it. DHS gives out these grants, and local police departments justify all this gear, as part of the war on terror. But as the piece indicates, it’s rather unlikely that Fargo will ever face the sort of Mumbai-style terror attack defenders of these policies say shows why all the battle gear is necessary.
But of course now you have all this stuff. You might as well use it. And so it gets used for far more mundane police operations. Chief among these is the service of drug warrants. (See Calvo.) Using all that cool gear on drug raids is further incentivized by federal anti-drug grants and the possibility of asset forfeiture lucre, whereas keeping the gear idle until there’s an actual terrorist attack or school shooting can get expensive. (Most of this stuff needs to be maintained.) Let’s also not forget that since 9/11, the federal government has gone to great pains to tie drug use and drug distribution to terrorism. Such is why the feds will take a SWAT team to raid a medical marijuana clinic without much pushback. The clinic poses no threat, to the agents or anyone else. You could send a couple bureaucrats with clipboards to shut these down (or you could not shut them down at all!). It’s insane overkill. But we’ve so come to associate SWAT teams with drug raids, the disproportionate use of force barely registers with most of the public. Which is why we’re now seeing SWAT teams used to raid neighborhood poker games, suspected cockfighters, even for regulatory inspections.
The article also quotes and leave unchecked statements from law enforcement officials about criminals armed with war-like weapons, citing school shootings like Virginia Tech, and everyone’s favorite “the criminals have us outgunned” anecdote, the 1997 North Hollywood shootout. I’ve already addressed these arguments in the past (two examples here and here). And in 2007, I asked former LAPD narcotics detective David Doddridge about all of these heavily armed drug dealers:
RB: Police groups say that drug dealers are armed to the teeth. Heavily-armed, military-style SWAT teams are necessary to counter this high-powered weaponry.
Doddridge: I’ve heard that. And it’s just not true. In 21 years at LAPD, I never once saw any assault weapons on a drug raid. Drug dealers prefer handguns, which are easier to conceal. Occasionally you’ll find a shotgun. But having a bunch of high-powered weaponry around is just too much trouble for them. It’s too much for them to worry about.
I’m sure the sentiment isn’t unanimous, but an awful lot of cops I’ve talked to agree.
You could certainly argue that potential terrorists and school shooters are much more likely to be heavily armed. Which is why those are exactly the sorts of situations where SWAT teams are appropriate. But that doesn’t mean such once in a lifetime events justify handing out tanks and APVs to Fargo and Fon du Lac. Prolonged, Mumbai/Beslan/Columbine style attacks are (a) extremely rare, and (b) not how this equipment is used in the vast, vast majority of police agencies across the country. (The SWAT team did show up at Columbine, but they didn’t go in. They determined the scene inside the school was too dangerous.)
Since I’ve spent the bulk of this post poking at the report, I’ll just conclude by emphasizing that this is still really excellent stuff. Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz have added a wealth of important information to this issue. The grant distribution information in particular is really great, and something I’ve been trying to pry out of DHS for about a year. So an envious tip of my journalistic cap to them on that. Learning to navigate over, around, under, and through the FOIA gatekeepers can be a hell of a challenge.
Lilly Hiatt, watching her dad John Hiatt sing on-state in Nashville this week. The two performed together at a benefit for Tennesseans Against the Death Penalty. I’ll have more on the event at Nashville Byline.
So I was looking at that new study showing that 1 in 3 Americans has been arrested by age 23. There’s another study that came out last month showing a big uptick in the number of police officers assigned to patrol school hallways in recent years. I also found lots of stories and activist sites about the alleged school-to-prison pipeline. I’ve also pointed to several stories on this site about arrests of appallingly young children for appalling minor offenses. So I was ready to take all of those bits of evidence and run with a trend piece about how we’re criminalizing childhood.
But while researching the piece, I looked up juvenile arrest data for the U.S. It turns out, juvenile arrests are down over the last 20 years, and pretty significantly. That didn’t make sense. So I went back and looked at those school-to-prison pipeline articles. Yep. Lots of anecdotes, but most all of them lack hard data about school arrests. National statistics for school-based arrests just don’t exist, though there have been some localized studies that suggest there could be a problem.
In any event, the resulting article is a somewhat middling piece, which is now up at Huffington Post. My thesis? Juvenile arrests are down significantly. There may or may not be an increase in arrests on school campuses, which may or may not be caused by bad policies like zero tolerance and assigning cops to patrol in schools. But there’s just not enough evidence to say. (Of course, both could be bad policies regardless of whether they’re leading to an uptick in student arrests.)
That’s a complicated article with a fairly boring premise. (There’s no evidence this is a problem. But it might be!) But it’s one I think was still worth writing. There seems to be a perception out there that there’s been a big surge in juvenile arrests in recent years. I certainly thought that was the case. It turns out it isn’t true.
The real problem I think is that the government creates these programs and pushes policies to address alleged problems before there’s any hard evidence that the problems actually exist. That’s how we got zero tolerance and cops in schools in the first place. (Both were in response to fact-free hysteria over school shootings and “super predators.”)
And at least in the case of zero tolerance and the School Resource Officer program, after the policies were passed, there was no effort to collect more data to gauge their effectiveness or to see if the policies were having unintended negative effects. Now, the government is forging ahead with yet another program to address the alleged bad effects of those policies, again with little evidence that the bad effects are actually happening. All the while, the government continues to push and fund the same policies it’s now attempting to counteract.
And they say we libertarians are crazy.
Dear God, this is funny.
Other candidates get the same treatment here. And yes, Ron Paul will haunt your prostate.
(Via Hit & Run)
John Hiatt, last night in Nashville. I absolutely love this picture. I’m allowed to say that, right?
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, when asked about a recent DOJ report alleging that he has essentially institutionalized mass civil rights violations, says that he is the real victim . . . and the perpetrators are protesters.
“We don’t go after anybody. Actually, they go after me. They’re demonstrating in front of my building, calling me every kind of name. If you want to talk about civil-rights violations, what about that?”
Adam Serwer suggests this bizarre understanding of the law might explain why Arpaio has been known wage criminal investigations against the people who criticize him. More likely: Arpaio is shamelessly posturing.
Apropos of the post below, here’s a ruling from the D.C. Court of Appeals demonstrating just how powerless citizens are when accosted by police officers—even when the cops themselves are clearly in the wrong. What’s most troubling about the ruling is its mundanity. The law is established here. There’s really nothing to debate. It’s just a matter of the government rattling off the appropriate precedents.
The appellant is Terrance Crossland, who is asking the court to overturn his conviction on two counts of assaulting a police officer. Last April, Crossland and his cousin were approached by two D.C. Metro officers on patrol “to gather information about a rash of recent shootings and drug sales in the area.” Crossland was mowing his grass while smoking a cigarette. The police acknowledge that neither Crossland nor is cousin were doing anything unlawful. The two men were told to turn around, put their hands against a fence, and submit to a search. By both accounts, Crossland initially complied, then said, “Fuck this shit. I’m tired of this.”
Police say Crossland then elbowed one officer in the head, at which point he was punched, taken to the ground, kicked several times, and pepper sprayed. Both the trial court, the appeals court, and even the prosecution acknowledge that because Crossland was doing nothing wrong before the incident, it was illegal for the police to stop, detain, and search him. Nevertheless . . .
. . . as the trial court recognized, the APO statute “prohibits forceful resistance even if the officer’s conduct is unlawful.” Dolson v. United States, 948 A.2d 1193, 1202 (D.C. 2008) (explaining that the rationale for this rule is to “deescalate the potential for violence which exists whenever a police officer encounters an individual in the line of duty”) . . .
So even if the police illegally stop you, detain you, and beat you, you aren’t permitted to resist. Just roll over and take it. Submit.
But we aren’t done, here. Crossland, backed by more than one witness, denied at trial that he ever threw the alleged elbow that led to his beating. The trial judge didn’t believe him.
The court specifically credited Officer Baldwin’s testimony, noting that it was corroborated by the testimony of Officer Castan. The court explained that it did not credit appellant’s testimony or that of the witnesses he called because “[a]lmost all of them had a bias” and because it was “not credible . . . that the police were out that day, randomly beating people up for no reason” and that even if they were doing that, it made no sense “that they would beat up [appellant], as opposed to Mr. Wo[]mack, whom they had a history with” and had arrested the week before.
The court also points out that one of the officer could be heard over his radio shouting “Stop resisting,” a phrase that seems to be ingrained in the heads of D.C. Metro cops who want to dish out some punishment.
If you read this site with any regularity, you’re aware of the notion of contempt of cop, a charge that’s usually levied, adjudicated, and punished extra-judicially. It certainly does make sense that the cops would beat Crossland instead of his cousin if it’s true that Crossland said “Fuck this shit. I’m tired of this.” And both sides agree that he did. So to believe Crossland’s account of the altercation, it isn’t necessary to think “police were out that day, randomly beating people up for no reason.” You only need to believe that two cops patrolling a bad neighborhood—who by all accounts had shown themselves willing to violate the rights of the citizens of that neighborhood—were capable of administering excessive force if one of those citizens happened to mouth off. That isn’t so difficult to imagine.
The notion that the witnesses other than Crossland and his cousin are “biased,” but the cops aren’t, is also dubious. If Crossland didn’t throw an elbow, then he was illegally detained, then searched, beaten, and pepper sprayed for nothing more than mouthing off. That’s more than enough to get beyond qualified immunity in a civil rights lawsuit against the two police officers. So yes, they would have a pretty strong incentive to say Crossland did more than swear at them before they began to beat them. (Note: I’m not stating that either side is truth. Only that the biases here aren’t nearly as clear-cut as the court makes them out to be.)
Most importantly, consider what just happened here. The trial court, the appellate court, and the prosecution all concluded that these two cops broke the law, yet still, all three have deemed that the cops’ testimony is more credible than the testimony of Crossland, his cousin, and the other witnesses—none of whom was doing anything wrong before the confrontation. To be fair, the evidence has to be pretty overwhelming for an appeals court to overturn a trial court on witness credibility. But still. Only one party broke the law before the confrontation. But because that party sports a badge and works for the government, they still get the presumption of credibility over the guy who was minding his own business, his cousin, and the other witnesses.
One judge on the appeals court did at least have some sense of the injustice, here. Judge Frank Schwelb wrote a concurrence that begins . . .
I join the judgment and opinion of the court. In my view, however, the patently unconstitutional conduct of the police in this case merits some brief additional comment.
Schwelb then quotes from the trial judge:
I think it’s uncontested that the defendant and Mr. Wo[]mack were not doing anything wrong or illegal at that point [when the police approached them]. And I’ll even agree with the defense that the police did not have any right to go up and start searching them, which is pretty much what they did. They went up and seized them, told them to turn around, and started patting them down. And I wish those officers were in the courtroom today, because there’s a clear violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights.
Sure. All they needed was a good scolding. It’ll never happen again. Promise!
Schwelb then relays a passage from the defense brief which summarizes what happened to Crossland that day.
What is most disturbing about this case is the result: a young man in the community . . . who was engaged in peaceful activities (mowing the lawn, smoking a cigarette) and who the police knew at the time they stopped him was not doing anything unlawful, is approached by aggressive officers engaged in aggressive unconstitutional patrols, and this young man ends up being punched in the face with such force that he receives a black eye, kicked numerous times in the back, thrown on the ground, sprayed in the eyes with pepper spray, and finally, he receives two convictions on his record for assault on a police officer. . . . But for this unconstitutional police policy, appellant Crossland would not have suffered a physical attack on his person and would not have had these convictions on his record. Instead, he would have had a rather ordinary day in his community mowing the lawn and smoking a cigarette, a day he probably wouldn’t even have cause to remember, and it is very disturbing that the police in this case are essentially being rewarded for their unconstitutional behavior and aggressive unconstitutional police policy which was the direct cause of a highly volatile situation which led to this young man’s eventual convictions for assaulting them.
Despite his concerns, Schwelb concludes he has no choice but uphold the convictions.
As Judge Thompson points out in her opinion for the court, we are of course bound by the trial judge’s credibility findings, and I fully agree that Crossland’s convictions must be affirmed. But if anything good is to come from this unfortunate street encounter between the police and a citizen, it should be an end to the unconstitutional police conduct revealed beyond peradventure by this record. If this hope is naive and unrealistic, then to that extent we are less the land of the free than we would otherwise be.
Call me a cynic, but I’m betting on “naive and unrealistic.”
The dreary lesson from this case and the Nicholas Peart op-ed: Police need only the flimsiest of suspicions to stop you on the street, detain you, and search you. But even if they don’t even have that, they aren’t likely to suffer any serious sanction for an illegal search. Nor is a court likely to believe you should you try to complain. If you resist—physically or verbally, whether the search was legal or illegal—they can bring the hammer down, with damn-near impunity. And after the violence, you’ll be the one going to jail.
(Thanks to Alan Gura for sending the case.)
Trolling!
“Inspired by anonymity, the [Inernet] culture is taking on Lord of the Flies undertones.”
One evening in August of 2006, I was celebrating my 18th birthday with my cousin and a friend. We were staying at my sister’s house on 96th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan and decided to walk to a nearby place and get some burgers. It was closed so we sat on benches in the median strip that runs down the middle of Broadway. We were talking, watching the night go by, enjoying the evening when suddenly, and out of nowhere, squad cars surrounded us. A policeman yelled from the window, “Get on the ground!”
I was stunned. And I was scared. Then I was on the ground — with a gun pointed at me. I couldn’t see what was happening but I could feel a policeman’s hand reach into my pocket and remove my wallet. Apparently he looked through and found the ID I kept there. “Happy Birthday,” he said sarcastically. The officers questioned my cousin and friend, asked what they were doing in town, and then said goodnight and left us on the sidewalk.
Less than two years later, in the spring of 2008, N.Y.P.D. officers stopped and frisked me, again. And for no apparent reason. This time I was leaving my grandmother’s home in Flatbush, Brooklyn; a squad car passed me as I walked down East 49th Street to the bus stop. The car backed up. Three officers jumped out. Not again. The officers ordered me to stand, hands against a garage door, fished my wallet out of my pocket and looked at my ID. Then they let me go.
I was stopped again in September of 2010. This time I was just walking home from the gym. It was the same routine: I was stopped, frisked, searched, ID’d and let go . . .
Last May, I was outside my apartment building on my way to the store when two police officers jumped out of an unmarked car and told me to stop and put my hands up against the wall. I complied. Without my permission, they removed my cellphone from my hand, and one of the officers reached into my pockets, and removed my wallet and keys. He looked through my wallet, then handcuffed me. The officers wanted to know if I had just come out of a particular building. No, I told them, I lived next door.
One of the officers asked which of the keys they had removed from my pocket opened my apartment door. Then he entered my building and tried to get into my apartment with my key. My 18-year-old sister was inside with two of our younger siblings; later she told me she had no idea why the police were trying to get into our apartment and was terrified. She tried to call me, but because they had confiscated my phone, I couldn’t answer.
Meanwhile, a white officer put me in the back of the police car. I was still handcuffed. The officer asked if I had any marijuana, and I said no. He removed and searched my shoes and patted down my socks. I asked why they were searching me, and he told me someone in my building complained that a person they believed fit my description had been ringing their bell.
And it’s all perfectly legal (provided the cops include boilerplate language about reasonable suspicion). These stop-and-frisks happen about 50,000 times per year in New York. Someone at Twitter pointed out that if NYPD did stop-and-frisks on Wall Street around lunchtime, they’d probably find more drugs than they could process. That would also probably put an end to the practice in a matter of days.
*MORE: Via the comments, New York criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield writes:
Sorry to be a stickler about stuff like this, but the test in New York comes from People v. DeBour, 40 NY2d 210 (1976), which is more restrictive than Terry.
I appreciate the correction.
Here are the 20 most-read posts of the past year. The first one went viral in both conservative/limited government circles and organic food/locavore circiles. Consequently, it is far and away the most trafficked post of all-time. By a factor of about five. Guest blogger Dave Kruger also cracked the top 20.
Here’s the list:
1. Does Michelle Obama Know About This?
2. We’re Going To Molest You. And Then We’re Going To Make You Pay for It.
3. The Trial of Tiawanda Moore
4. He Won
5. Video of the Pima County SWAT Raid
6. So How Is This Different From Armed Robbery?
7. First Circuit Panel Says There’s a Clear Constitutional Right To Openly Record Cops.
9. Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams Should Be Arrested
10. Ignornace of the Law Is No . . . You Know the Drill.
11. L.A. Teen Charged With “Attempted Lynching” Now Raided by Police
12. It’s His Party, and He’ll Cry If He Wants To
13. MSNBC Marches Ahead With Its Own Set of Facts
14. When Donald Trump Didn’t Need Proof
15. Petty Thuggishness in Rochester
17. Email From a Cop
19. Why Is Rick Perry the Poster Boy for Limited Government?
20. Indiana Court: You have no right to keep cops out of your house
I have a new post at the Nashville blog profiling Manuel, the tailor to the music industry. He has dressed five presidents, is the one who talked Johnny Cash into wearing black, and can claim credit for the Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones (maybe) logos.
His studio is right down the road from me, so I walked over to have a chat with him.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivs 2.5 License.
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