"Don't Resist": The Refrain of Rapists, Police, and Other Degenerates

A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothes and wounded him....

Now by chance three men -- a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan -- came down that same road, and, seeing the man being beaten, joined in on the side of the assailants, for they were emissaries of the divine State. 

The Parable of the Statist Samaritan (offered with the sincerest apologies to the Author of the genuine article). 

Three times each week, 36-year-old Keith Briscoe of Winslow Township, New Jersey would begin his day by going to a nearby Wawa convenience store for soda and cigarettes. Briscoe, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and lived with his parents, went to the local Steininger Behavior Services clinic for treatment, and he would have a smoke outside the store while waiting for the office to open.

As far as anyone in the neighborhood could recall, Briscoe had never bothered anybody. He wasn’t causing trouble on the morning of May 3, 2010, when he had the lethal misfortune of attracting the attention of Winslow Township Police Officer Sean Richards. When Richards demanded to know who he was and what he was doing, Briscoe was cooperative, telling the officer — who had no business bothering one of his betters anyway — that he was waiting to go to the clinic.

"Patients often go up to the Wawa before their sessions to buy coffee [or] cigarettes," a medical professional who worked at the clinic informs Pro Libertate. "The local businesses and police are aware that there are psychiatric patients in the area and know to call Steininger in the event that one of them gets lost or is getting into trouble.  This cop took it upon himself to do what he did without asking anyone in Wawa if there was any problem.  Wawa hadn't called the police to intervene because Mr. Briscoe would frequently go there."

Richards should have left well enough alone, but since he had a gun,  a piece of government-provided jewelry, and an unearned sense of superiority, he didn’t. He demanded that Briscoe get into his police cruiser, supposedly to be given a ride to the clinic. Briscoe wisely turned down the offer.

Richards later admitted that he hadn’t received any complaints about Briscoe’s behavior, and that he did nothing that warranted an arrest. According to the former clinic staffer, Briscoe was known to be "very kind and gentle [and] would never be aggressive." Yet when the harmless and intimidated man refused to get into the police car, Richards committed an act of criminal assault by seizing and attempting to handcuff him.

As Briscoe tried to escape, Richards called for “backup.” He also attacked Briscoe with his Oleoresin Casicum spray, a “non-lethal” chemical weapon that left the victim choking and struggling for breath. 

At this point, three bystanders saw Briscoe struggling with a uniformed assailant, a situation that presented them with the “Tom Joad Test,” which I’ve previously described thus:

“When you see a cop — or, more likely, several of them — beating up on a prone individual, do you instinctively sympathize with the assailant(s) or the victim? Do you assume that the state is entitled to the benefit of the doubt whenever its agents inflict violence on somebody, or do you believe that the individual — any individual — is innocent of wrongdoing until his guilt has been proven?”

The bystanders failed the test. Rather than intervening on behalf of the victim, or simply butting out, these statist Samaritans reflexively gave the uniformed assailant the benefit of the doubt, and joined in the beating. Five more armed tax-feeders, summoned by Richards’s frantic call for “backup,” then arrived to pile on. A few minutes later, Briscoe was dead as a result of “traumatic asphyxia” — that is, he suffocated at the bottom of a thugscrum. The Camden County Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide. But the chief assailant was not charged with a homicide-related offense.

According to the Camden County prosecutor’s office, although Richards had committed an illegal arrest, he couldn’t be prosecuted for homicide because New Jersey “law” doesn’t recognize the unalienable right of innocent people to resist unlawful arrest. This supposedly means that once Briscoe “resisted being taken into custody, police had the right to take actions necessary to restrain him” — up to and including the use of lethal force.

What this means is that in New Jersey -- a state afflicted with some of the most corrupt and abusive police officers this side of Tahrir Square -- someone who survives a murder attempt by a uniformed thug can be prosecuted for "resisting arrest" even if it is proven that the police assault was a criminal act.

In fact, according to one recent ruling from the state Superior Court (State of New Jersey v. Craig Byron Joseph Martin), it is a crime to resist even when a police offer specifically and repeatedly states that the subject is not under arrest. The police officer in that case testified: "I said, `Sir, you're not under arrest. I'm just patting you down for my safety."

The subject was instructed to place his hands on his car. When he removed his hands from the vehicle, the officer told him, "I'm going to handcuff you. You're not under arrest." Eventually the incident degenerated into a "scuffle," in which the officer -- once again, by his own account -- exclaimed: "You're not under arrest; stop resisting arrest!"

Ah, yes: "Stop resisting" -- the refrain of rapists, police, and other violent degenerates.

Richards, who murdered Briscoe for the supposed crime of resisting an illegal arrest, was charged with simple assault and as a result was sentenced to a year on probation and the loss of his job. He also agreed that he would never seek to expunge his record, although it’s not clear how that provision could be enforced.

“This plea ensures that Richards will be forever barred from holding such a position of authority again,” insisted Camden County Prosecutor Warren W. Faulk. Actually, it’s entirely possible that Richards will join the ranks of corrupt, disgraced  “gypsy cops” who invariably find employment elsewhere as members of the coercive caste.

None of the other four police officers who collaborated in the crime has been punished at all. However, all five officers, along with the “Samaritans” who collaborated in the murder of Keith Briscoe, are the subjects of a $25 million civil lawsuit filed on behalf of the victim’s family.

Legal commentator Elie Mystal points out that the “Good Samaritans” in this matter had no reason — apart from a “reflexive trust of police” — to assume that Sean Richards was justified in using force to subdue Briscoe. “They chose the wrong side, and now a man is dead,” Mystal observes. “There should be some kind of punishment for that.”

“And don’t tell me that holding these people accountable will have some kind of  ‘chilling effect’ on the willingness of citizens to help their fellow man,” Mystal continues. “This is America! We are founded on a skepticism of authority. We believe that a person is innocent until proven guilty. It’s entirely consistent with the American experience … [not to assume] that police officers are always right or on the side of good.”

The Mundanes who joined in the assault will most likely end up ruined financially. The same is true of Sean Richards, now that he’s no longer wearing the habiliments of the State’s punitive priesthood. But the others still employed as agents of coercion will probably be spared similar hardship through a settlement worked out in collaboration with the local armed tax-feeders’ union.

And still, somehow we’re supposed to believe that the take-away here is that the lawsuit poses a new threat to “officer safety,” because it will discourage Mundanes from coming to the aid of police next time they assault a helpless individual.

“They saw a cop struggling and they jumped into action,” says Tim Quinlan, the attorney representing Sean Richards, of the Mundanes who helped murder Keith Briscoe. “Now you’re going to have cops getting killed because people are afraid to get involved.”

Somehow that unlikely prospect fails to send a chill down my spine, or leave me prostrate with inconsolable grief.

New Jersey cops appear to specialize in unprovoked assaults on harmless people who suffer from mental illness.

On May 29, 2009, Ronnie Holloway was standing on a street corner near a restaurant when Officers Joseph Rios III and Erica Rivera pulled up in a cop car and berated the 49-year-old man for having his jacket unzipped. As is usually the case in such encounters, things went dramatically downhill in a hurry.

Rios, an Iraq combat veteran, appeared to be on "contact patrol" -- that is, prowling the neighborhood looking for an excuse to throw somebody to the ground. Holloway, an unassuming man on medication for schizophrenia, presented a perfect target of opportunity.

A video recording of the event shows  Holloway meekly zipping up his jacket. As he did so, Rivera exits the vehicle and distracts Holloway while Rios blind-sides him, slamming him to the ground and beating him repeatedly with his fists and baton. After a brief pause, Holloway -- who is clearly terrified, but not putting up any physical resistance -- is able to rise to his feet before being slammed onto the hood of the police car.

Joseph Rios in Tirkit, Iraq.

"I didn't know if I was going to see tomorrow at that point," Holloway later said of the assault, which left him battered and bloody and with a serious injury to one of his eyes.

The beating continued until backup -- in the form of two additional police cars -- arrived to help drag Holloway off to jail.

Despite the fact that he had behaved like a properly docile Mundane, absorbing an unprovoked beating without making any effort to flee or fight back, Holloway was charged with resisting arrest and "wandering," supposedly in search of narcotics.


In filing their official report of the incident, Rios and his partner did what police in such circumstances always do: They committed perjury in the form of "creative writing." Rios claimed that when he and Rivera told Holloway to leave the corner, Holloway "verbally challenged" them. "Step on the sidewalk, you'll see," Holloway supposedly said to Rios, assuming a "fighting stance" as he did so.

Rios had no right or authority to demand that Holloway -- who had done nothing to anybody -- leave the street corner. It's also clear from the video that the beating began before Holloway would have had an opportunity to fling a verbal "challenge" at Rios. Some measure of Rios's reliability as a witness is found in the fact that his Use of Force Report claims that Holloway wasn't injured in the attack.

After the May 29 assault was publicized, the Passaic Police Department "pulled a Mubarak," as it were: They defied public outrage for as long as possible, keeping Rios on active duty, and then suspending both Rios and Rivera (the latter for failing a fraudulent claim of a job-related injury during the incident) when the outrage failed to dissipate.


Owing entirely to public pressure put on the Passaic municipal government, Rios has been charged with aggravated assault and official misconduct. He has entered a plea of "not guilty by virtue of a government-provided wardrobe."

"I did what was proper," lied Rios in a June 2009 press conference. "I did what I was trained to do under circumstances that existed at that time. I stand by my actions."


His attorney, Anthony J. Iacullo, defended the assault as a pre-emptive strike against some unspecified threat posed by an uppity Mundane: "Based upon what Officer Rios feared might happen, and based upon his not submitting to arrest, the actions were taken."

Holloway's "resistance" consisted of cringing and covering up in confusion and terror as Rios rained down punches and baton strikes. In New Jersey -- as is the case elsewhere in the Soyuz -- even such minimal and reflexive attempts to protect one's self from State-sanctified violence is treated as a criminal offense.

Incidentally --

The indispensable news aggregator Cop Block, citing a recent nationwide survey on police misconduct, points out that during the past year "police officers committed sexual assaults at a rate of 79 per 100,000 law enforcement personnel.  That rate is over two times the rate of the general public (28.7 per 100,000)."



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Maywood, RIP: When Police Kill A City

Brent Talmo once lost a job he really enjoyed, but he was eventually able to find a position in the same field, with better pay and greater responsibilities.


Sure, he had been a troubled employee, prone to "bizarre behavior" and casual abuse of those described as his customers, but he was fortunate enough to find a new employer willing to overlook his mistakes.

Now that employer, the Maywood, California Police Department, is being liquidated. In fact, the entire municipal government of Maywood, a Los Angeles suburb of roughly 40,000 people, is being dissolved on account of bankruptcy. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department will provide law enforcement coverage to Maywood, and a rump city council will coordinate delivery of services provided by neighboring Bell. 

In Maywood, as case elsewhere, the economic crash has choked off the tax revenue on which the municipal government subsists. The town is currently facing a $450,000 deficit. But what finally broke the city, reports the Los Angeles Times, was the decision by the California Joint Powers Insurance Authority to terminate "general liability and workers' compensation coverage because the city posed too high a risk."

More specifically, the city was un-insurable because of "a large number of claims filed against the police." This is because the department (which also afflicted the neighboring city of Cudhay) had become the police equivalent of The Island of Misfit Toys -- a sanctuary city for criminals in state-issued costumes.

Ironically, Officer Talmo -- whose career usefully illustrates how difficult it is to be rid of an abusive cop -- was actually one of the less egregious examples among those given refuge by the Maywood PD. 

As an LA County Sheriff's Deputy assigned to the jail, Talmo was a bully given to amusing himself at the expense of others -- and abusing fellow employees who rebuked his misbehavior.

An April 1, 2007 Times report summarizes:

"Talmo poured dirt into the gas tank of a county vehicle; placed a dead gopher in a prisoner's pocket as an apparent prank, then lied about it and tried to get another deputy to lie on his behalf; tipped over the bed of a sleeping prisoner, causing him to fall face first onto the floor and bloodying his nose; and telephoned a fellow jail guard and referred to him as a snitch and used a racial slur." (To be specific, Talmo called his associate a "f*****g n****r.") "When Talmo was fired, then-Sheriff Sherman Block publicly singled him out as `the primary culprit' in a campaign of harassment aimed at prisoners," concludes the Times.

Talmo was fired by the Sheriff's Office in 1986. He appealed to the Civil Service Commission, and three years later a hearing officer  recommended that Talmo be re-instated, with his punishment reduced to a 90-day suspension. The full commission accepted the hearing officer's factual findings, but upheld Talmo's termination. In 1991, after a five-year-legal battle, a three-judge panel from the LA Superior Court upheld the decision.

One would expect that decision to make it impossible for Talmo to find employment as a police officer. One would be wrong: Talmo immediately found a job -- complete with badge, gun, and costume -- with the Los Angeles Housing Authority Police. 

In fact, Talmo and his partner received a commendation in 1992 for "bravery and heroism above and beyond the normal demands of duty." While the cops were dining at a Denny's restaurant, a car smashed through one of the walls. Several customers were trapped under the debris. Talmo and his partner pulled the victims from the rubble and attended to their wounds.

Their actions were commendable, of course -- but it's not as if they had risked life and limb by rescuing a child from a burning high-rise or used their bodies to shield terrified pedestrians from gunfire. Any reasonably able-bodied person is expected to render aid to the wounded in situations like this. Actions of that sort are best described as basic courtesy.


Yet according to their superiors, the actions of Talmo and his partner displayed courage "above and beyond the normal demands of duty." Apparently, the "normal demands of duty" would have been satisfied had the officers simply finished their meal and left it to others to care for the victims.
 

 It's likely that Talmo's commendation -- an award every bit as legitimate as the prizes handed out in the Dodo's Caucus Race from Alice in Wonderland -- helped him secure a position with the Maywood PD in 1998. Of course, he would have been welcome there even if he had left his last job by fleeing the jurisdiction to avoid criminal prosecution. 

Not surprisingly, Talmo found himself named as a defendant in one of the plentiful civil rights lawsuits filed against the Maywood police and city government. 


"The Maywood Police Department has the reputation for being an `agency of last resort' for those who seek employment as a peace officer," explained a March 2009 report compiled by the California Attorney General's Office. "Review of the Maywood Police Department's hiring practices over the past ten years validates this perception." 

The April 2007 investigative report by the Los Angeles Times found that at least one-third of Maywood's officers "had either left other police jobs under a cloud or had brushes with the law while working for Maywood." The department was a full-spectrum kakistocracy: In February 2008, the city council selected as Police Chief an individual named Al Hutchings, who had been convicted of theft and forced to resign from the LAPD. (The man Hutchings replaced had been convicted of domestic abuse while serving as Police Chief.)

As the gathered scum of California's law enforcement culture, the Maywood Police Department met Augustine's precise definition of a government entity: It was a criminal band that achieved legitimacy not by renouncing aggression, but rather by attaining impunity. The department suppurated corruption like a freshly ruptured pustule.

When abuses or criminal conduct could no longer be concealed or explained away, the officer would be permitted to resign instead of being fired. This enhanced the officer's "chances of securing employment as a peace officer elsewhere," noted the report. And he could be quickly replaced by another "troubled" police officer eager to put his past behind him by enlisting in Maywood's merry band of armed plunderers.
 
Beginning in 1999 -- shortly after Talmo joined the force -- and ending in 2007, the Maywood police carried out a vehicle towing and impoundment racket that soaked up huge amounts of money for the city's parasite class. Supposedly begun for the purpose of removing unlicensed drivers from the streets, this was actually a criminal enterprise involving bribes, kickbacks, and other corrupt emoluments. 

The AG report found "a glaring lack of documentation as to [the] rationale for impounding the vehicles that they seized"; it also concluded that the Maywood Police "routinely towed and impounded vehicles in situations that were not warranted" under existing laws and precedents. 


A Maywood PD defector told the AG's investigators that it was well-established practice to conduct traffic stops without reasonable suspicion in order to satisfy the demands of police officials who were "pushing tows"; officers were expected to "get at least two tows per shift." Checkpoints were set up and used to confiscate vehicles or, when possible, to shake down motorists for what amounted to protection money. 

Most of Maywood's population is Latino. In 2005, the city council declared Maywood a "sanctuary city" for illegal immigrants. 

 Although rooted in identity politics, this decision had the effect of expanding the municipal revenue pool, since "undocumented persons" -- or "Mos," derived from "Mojado" -- were preferred targets for vehicle confiscation and other forms of highway robbery. But no motorist was safe in Maywood, particularly those with out-of-state license plates.


The AG report describes an August 2005 case in which a police officer confiscated a vehicle with Oregon license plates. The police officer cited the driver for failing to present a California license, confiscating the man's valid Oregon license as he wrote the citation. 

The cop summoned a partner in crime to tow the vehicle away, where it was impounded for 30 days. The driver was able to get the spurious citation dismissed, but only after paying $1,500 in ransom to retrieve his stolen car. 


Multiply that example by a several thousand, and you begin to get a picture of what went on in Maywood between 1999 and 2007. 


Given the ever-escalating corruption and violence of the state's armed enforcement caste, there are few more dangerous places to be than behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. Many of the cases of criminal police violence described in the AG report grew out of traffic stops conducted in the service of the towing and confiscation racket.


In March 2006, police stopped a driver for trivial infractions (a cracked windshield and a missing front license plate). Without "legal cause or justification, the man was pulled out of the vehicle and handcuffed," narrates the report. "When he was placed in the [police] vehicle, the officers" -- note carefully that it took two tax-devouring heroes to perform this service -- "intentionally pushed his head into the door a couple of times. Without probable cause the officers proceeded to search the vehicle and seized two cell phones, approximately $200 and other miscellaneous items." The car was stolen by the cops and the victim was arrested on a spurious charge of driving without a license. 


About a week later, the victim and his mother went to the police department in an attempt to recover the stolen car. They were unceremoniously ejected from the building. Mistakenly thinking they had left some important documents behind, the mother went back to retrieve them. 

When the car's owner found the papers, he went back into the police station to get his mother. Without warning or cause, he was assaulted by a Maywood cop who shot him with a Taser. While recovering from that attack, the victim "was physically assaulted by a Maywood police officer and taunted with a police dog by another officer," the report continues. "He was arrested for making a terrorist threat and resisting arrest. A charge of resisting and obstructing an officer was subsequently added."


After being kidnapped and falsely imprisoned at the County Jail, the victim was brought before a judge who ordered his release. Rather than being allowed to leave the courtroom, however, he was dragged back to a holding cell, and then escorted out a side entrance. 

When the door opened the man was confronted by the same uniformed thug who had assaulted him with a Taser the previous day. The thug then arrested him a second time on the same charges. This time, the victim was held in jail for five days. Eventually, after the victim dealt with the impound fees and related expenses, all of the charges against him, except the one involving the windshield and front license plate, were dismissed. 


Maywood cops, like too many others in that profession, were eager to deploy their portable electro-shock torture devices whenever a pretext could be found. In June 2006, two young men were waylaid by two of Maywood's, ahem, "Finest," who handcuffed them and then shot one of them in the groin with a Taser. Neither was arrested or charged with a crime. The following month, "several Maywood police officers, without legal cause or justification, used a Taser on an individual and kicked and punched [his] face, head, and body while he was handcuffed." 

The victim, in keeping with standard procedure, was charged with "battery on a police officer, resisting arrest, and obstructing or delaying a police officer." The victim, a college student with limited means, pleaded no contest "in order to get the matter behind him."


In September of that same year, a thugswarm from the Maywood PD "Tased, assaulted and beat a father and son in front of their home." The victims were collateral damage from a separate assault being carried out by the thugswarm across the street. The son, sickened by what he saw, demanded a badge number; as he wrote the number down, one officer attacked him, and the rest of his valiant buddies joined in. Once the kid was handcuffed, he was repeatedly attacked with a Taser.


"At one point," the report observes, "the father exited the home and yelled, `What are you doing to my son?' The father was then attacked and assaulted by several officers. Both men were taken to the hospital for medical treatment. They were charged with battery on a police officer and "resisting and obstructing an officer." Once those cover charges served their purpose -- namely, insulating the assailants from accountability -- they were dismissed. 


Victims of police abuse in Maywood were required to go to police headquarters to obtain official complaint forms. As the March 2006 case described above demonstrates, the police department was a hazardous place to visit unless you were part of the Brotherhood. If they were fortunate, citizens who attempted to file a protest would escape the building after suffering nothing worse than contemptuous verbal abuse from the sergeant in charge of dealing with complaints. 

Eventually federal civil rights lawsuits began to pile up, as did the costs of settling them. The Maywood Police Department literally killed the city government it supposedly served.

When channels of official redress are closed, and physical resistance is impossible or profoundly unwise, what recourse is open to people terrorized by predators in uniform? Maywood's financial collapse suggests one ironically positive aspect of the ongoing depression: It is possible for a police state bubble to collapse, if only in a geographically limited sense. 

(Note: The original version of this essay mistakenly described Brent Talmo as a "plaintiff," rather than a defendant, in a civil rights suit. My thanks to the commenter who caught the error.)

                                                             Video Extra

My apologies for the fact that this video is dominated by the unsightly image of a horse's ass. The equine he's riding is rather pretty, though. 

                                    For those still seeking their daily dose of outrage...

... here ya go. My thanks to the anonymous commenter who tipped me to this story.

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