Tag: police

Categories
crime and punishment folly general freedom government transparency

Candid Camera

body cam, body cameras, justice reform, feds, federal agents, U.S. Marshals , police, Common Sense

Support for criminal justice reform, especially the common sense use of body cameras for police, marks a bright spot for the Obama Administration.

Or so I thought.

The president has called on local police to don the video devices. He has even offered $75 million of his own hard-earned money to help communities pay for the cameras. No, wait — turns out that $75M is not his personal stash but rather our tax money.

Oh, well. While I think local taxpayers should fund their own police forces, without federal subsidies, at least President O’s administration supports the right policy. No?

“The Justice Department is publicly urging local police departments to adopt body cameras, saying they are an important tool to improve transparency and trust . . .” reports The Wall Street Journal. “But privately, the department is telling some of its agents they cannot work with officers using such cameras as part of joint task forces . . .”

Weeks ago, the U.S. Marshals “announced that the agency wouldn’t allow any local law-enforcement officers wearing body cameras to serve on Marshals task forces. . . .”

I’m only surprised that I’m surprised. I should have known that while preaching to others to use body cameras, the Obama Administration would completely ignore camera use for federal police agencies. I shouldn’t be shocked that it even failed to establish rules for working with local and state police who might be required to wear cameras, at the administration’s urging.

It’s a very candid snapshot of the utter hypocrisy we’ve come to know and loathe from Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

body cam, body cameras, justice reform, feds, federal agents, U.S. Marshals , police, Common Sense

 

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom too much government

Why Police-State Tactics?

Law Corrupted

What do the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and campaign finance law have in common?

Police-state tactics.

Most folks now understand how the War on Drugs and the War on Terror can erode civil liberties — but how does campaign finance law fit in with the other two?

My weekend Townhall column explains.

Several years ago, Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker sought to tame public unions in his state, and against much opposition — quite a bit of it national — not only succeeded in changing law but beat back a recall vote as well.

So Democratic Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm orchestrated a crack-down on conservative groups supportive of Walker’s reforms, complete with night-time SWAT-team raids on the homes of activists who were, they judged, “on the wrong side.”

The thin rationale was possible campaign finance violations, the idea that citizens and their organizations “coordinating” with the governor to advocate for public policies is somehow illegal.

The police state tactics were used because they were available. And obviously thought to be politically acceptable. That the courts have now ruled the means — indeed, the whole probe by prosecutors — unconstitutional doesn’t negate the terrifying fact that the state used such horrific methods to attack peaceful people.

Clearly, people in government have used understandable fears regarding drugs and terrorism to erode our liberties, even when the “crimes” they fight with such illiberal overkill have nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with drugs or terror.

Except the drug that is — and the terror wielded by — out-of-control government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Law Corrupted

 

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom too much government

Marauding Cops

Out of control cops

Policemen who perpetrate acts like those I am about to describe should be imprisoned.

That’s not an anti-police statement, it’s a pro-law-and-order one. Anybody who vandalizes the property of innocent people and pointlessly terrorizes them, whether flashing a badge as prelude or not, should be arrested, prosecuted, convicted and punished.

Santa Ana police raided a medical-marijuana dispensary, a legal business in California. Why? Solely because it lacked a license.

Techdirt.com, which has videos of the raid, suggests that although “having the proper paperwork in place is important” — and it sure seems to be if not-being-raided is also important to you — the shop was in line to get the license. The process had been bogged down by local politics.

Nevertheless, officers on site “treated this lack of proper paperwork like it was the Zeta Cartel operating under its nose. The video captured by the dispensary’s cameras shows heavily-armed cops — some wearing ski masks — smashing through two doors and yelling at the peaceably-assembled customers to lie on the floor.”

We then see the jolly officers sampling the shop’s foodstuffs, playing darts, and ripping cameras off the wall.

They missed a couple. (Hence Techdirt’s extensive video coverage.)

Motive? It seems apparent that they engaged in all this abusive authority-flaunting just because they could.

And there is no real doubt that they knew what they were doing was wrong, and they knew that we would know. That’s why they went for the cameras.

Just like any gang trying to get away with something.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Out of control cops

 

Categories
folly general freedom government transparency national politics & policies too much government

Safety, Savings and Symbolism

NSA Hydra

How can the U. S. save $2.5 billion a year, reduce the federal workforce by 4,000 hires, and engage in a symbolic act of undoubted patriotism, all at the same time?

Get rid of the Department of Homeland Security.

Matt A. Mayer, a former DHS employee who claims to have “written more on DHS than just about anyone,” writes in Reason that dismantling DHS would increase co-ordination and decrease inefficiencies.

Since DHS was put in place, in 2003, to increase governmental co-ordination in the face of terrorist threats, Mayer’s charge that it serves the opposite cause should . . . give us pause.

Establishing the DHS didn’t get rid of turf wars. Why would it? It increased the turf rather than merely reroute chains of communication and command. All other agencies still exist. Extra turf exacerbates co-ordination difficulty.

And then there’s what state and local law enforcement faces: “the multi-headed hydra.” The federal operation remains fragmented, which “only ensures that key items will fall through the cracks between these departments, whose personnel spend far too much time fighting each other for primacy than they should. Our enemies couldn’t ask for a more fertile environment within which to attack us.”

I added the italics, for emphasis.

Ever since Jimmy Carter ran for the presidency on consolidating bureaucratic departments in the nation’s capital, but delivered, instead, new departments, the “logic” of adding new bureaucracies onto old has proven to be the “easy answer” for insiders. But a transparent failure, for everyone else.

So, start over. Get rid of the inefficient monster.

And take heart: republics don’t have “homelands”; empires do. Let’s stop playing the wrong game.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

NSA Hydra

 

Categories
folly general freedom nannyism

A Spring in Their Step?

Free State

The “Free State” — Maryland — just got a little freer.

Deborah Ramelmeier, Social Services Administration head honcho, has laid forth from her mighty public perch in Maryland’s Department of Human Resources an official directive to the state’s Child Protective Services (CPS).

She finally addressed the issues in the Meitiv case.

You’ll recall that Danielle and Alexander Meitiv allowed their 10-year old son and 6-year old daughter to walk home together, without a parent or guardian or attorney present, from a public park a mile away. Silver Spring police snatched the two children off the street last December and so began a Maryland CPS investigation for neglect.

In April, the Meitiv kids were again caught flagrantly walking home from a park. This time they were held for more than five hours by police, then CPS, before their frantic parents were informed and the family reunited.

In the midst of threats, accusations, and fears, the CPS neglected to do the one sensible thing you’d expect: articulate a policy position defining just when or how or even if ever children are allowed out in public without constant and direct adult supervision.

That smidgen of sanity came last week, in Ms. Ramelmeier’s otherwise boring, bureaucratic 23-page directive. “Children playing outside or walking unsupervised does not meet the criteria for a CPS response absent specific information supporting the conclusion that the child has been harmed or is at substantial risk of harm if they continue to be unsupervised.”

Shazam! Just like that, “playing outside” and “walking unsupervised” are once again legal.

The children won’t be arrested! And their parents won’t be investigated or threatened with losing their little ones!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Free State

 

Categories
crime and punishment

Cops as Robbers

Police Crooks

If there’s anything that cops should not be, it’s robbers.

By “cops” I mean anyone, including prosecutors, charged with protecting us against criminals. The guardians should not become predators themselves.

Thankfully, these two presumptively opposite categories of men have not become wholly indistinguishable — yet. But every day brings more evidence that we’re skating closer to that abyss.

Consider the police raid on the Michigan home of Ginnifer Hency, whose alleged crime was possession of marijuana with “intent to deliver,” i.e., to use it to assuage her own disease-caused pain, as well as that of others for whom she is a registered caregiver. Hency is fully compliant with all state law. A judge has therefore dismissed the charges wrongly brought against her.

At least one official involved in the case, then, has exhibited the respect for rights and justice that all should be exhibiting.

Good.

But questions remain.

Why was her home raided to begin with? Why was she charged? Why did police use the raid to grab loot, everything from TV sets to her kids’ cell phones and iPads?

And why, after the charges were dismissed, did a prosecutor gloat that he didn’t have to return Hency’s belongings, that “I can still beat you in civil court”?

Actually, we don’t need to know the motives of such thugs to know that they must be stopped.

The Michigan House is considering bills that would make this type of legalized robbery harder.

It should also be punishable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Police Crooks

 

Categories
crime and punishment folly general freedom too much government

Police State Blues

Children in a police state

No reason anymore to even feign surprise at today’s police state insanities.

At Townhall yesterday, I bemoaned the six-hour kidnapping of a 10-year-old Maryland boy and his 6-year-old sister for the terrible crime of peacefully walking home from a public park. The children were grabbed just a couple blocks from their home . . .

. . . by police, who held them for over two hours before handing them to Montgomery County Child Protective Services.

It was hours before anyone contacted the panicked parents.

There’s no law prohibiting kids from walking down a public street, but bureaucrats are threatening this poor family over just that.

So, I guess we shouldn’t be shocked that when an 11-year-old boy disagrees with what he’s being taught in school about marijuana, and explains that his mother has used cannabis oil to treat her Crohn’s disease and his mother is not a criminal, (a) he’s going to be detained and grilled by authorities and (b) his mother may soon become a criminal.

A raid on Shonda Banda’s home indeed turned up two ounces of cannabis oil. Ms. Banda could be facing felony drug charges in Kansas, where she now lives, but she used to live in Colorado, where her use of cannabis oil would be legal.

The Washington Post’s Radley Balko identifies the absurdity: “a woman could lose her custody of her child for therapeutically using a drug that’s legal for recreational use an hour to the west.”

Today she has a custody hearing over her son.

The state “protection” being afforded the children in both of these cases isn’t protecting them. It’s terrorizing them.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Children in a police state

 

Categories
crime and punishment

Cause of Death in Utah

Utah is the happiest state in the country — we’re told. Though the state does have high suicide rates, those might be explainable in biochemical terms, neatly enough. So what are we to make of the Beehive State’s disturbing pattern in other-person homicide?

Police shootings dominate the stats:

A Salt Lake Tribune review of nearly 300 homicides, using media reports, state crime statistics, medical-examiner records and court records, shows that use of force by police is the second-most common circumstance under which Utahns kill each other, surpassed only by intimate partner violence.

And, as the Tribune explains: “so far this year, deadly force by police has claimed more lives — 13, including a Saturday shooting in South Jordan — than has violence between spouses and dating partners.”

The article goes on to talk about police training and other important issues surrounding police use of deadly force, but the long-term trends and are not clear.

We know that violent crime is going down in the country. Are police shootings going up, or have they merely remained stable against the rest of the violence?

Such issues were not addressed in the article. And over at Reason, Anthony L. Fisher brings up the fundamental problem: “This article serves as a useful reminder that there is no national database of shootings by police, and save for a few journalists, academics and sports websites, no efforts to create one.”

The issue is vital, for we give a lot of power to police personnel. And power can corrupt them as much as anyone else. But until we have better information, the big picture remains far too fuzzy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom

Police Officer Un-indicted

We’re naturally worried about the potential for police abuse of power — cops who roust people for no good reason, then claim that the other party was “resisting arrest” or some such thing.

But sometimes it’s the person on the other side of the badge who reconstructs history.

Several days ago, a story broke about Django Unchained actress Danièle Watts, who is African-American, being accosted along with her white boyfriend by a police officer who wanted to see their IDs. Both later suggested that they were targeted by police for racial reasons. On her Facebook page, Watts reported that she “was handcuffed and detained by two police officers . . . after refusing to agree that I had done something wrong by showing affection, fully clothed, in a public place.”

But audio of the encounter that has come to light shows an officer politely asking for ID, and explaining that he was responding to a call. (The caller had claimed the couple were having sex in public.) The officer is calm; Watts is persistently histrionic. She brings up race; he says race wasn’t the issue, sexual activity in public was.

We can argue about whether the officer should have handcuffed the actress in response to her recalcitrance. (Apparently, an accusation is all that is required to trigger police power, a demand to “see our papers.” It’s hard not to be on Ms. Watts’s pro-freedom side on that.) But now that this recording is out there, her original version of the encounter just won’t stand.

Enough reason to put video-recording devices onto every police lapel . . . in L.A., in Ferguson, everywhere.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment government transparency

Candid Cameras for Cops

Should policemen be required to wear cameras?

Some already do. The rationale for the proposal is this: when police wear cameras that — with a few carefully defined exceptions — must be on whenever officers are on the job, they do their jobs better.

With respect to the furor in Ferguson, Missouri, a big question is what exactly happened there the day a cop shot and killed Michael Brown.

Officer Darren Wilson claims self-defense; he and eyewitnesses disagree about details.

It would have been helpful to have video of what happened. (We do have video of an immediately preceding incident: of Brown, a large man, robbing cigars from a local store and shoving the protesting store owner, a much smaller man.)

Or consider another case I’ve discussed, that of Eric Garner, the New York City cigarette seller killed by an officer’s chokehold despite Garner’s repeated insistence that he couldn’t breathe. That death was recorded on a bystander’s cell phone. What if it hadn’t been? The shock has spurred renewed calls to begin outfitting NYPD with cameras.

But there’s no reason to limit pilot programs to the Big Apple.

Some police work, like meetings with confidential informants, cannot be recorded without making the work impossible. But cops who are on the beat, entering a home, stopping motorists and the like should be recorded while doing these things. With appropriate safeguards against “malfunction,” the cameras could both prevent unnecessary violence and support officers who are in fact justified in using deadly force.

Until the advent of universal peace and harmony, let’s give the cameras a try.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.