Pistol-Packing Positivists: Our Enemy in Blue

How would you react if you were waylaid by an armed and bellicose stranger who has the means to kill you and your family and the power to get away with the crime?

Very few of us would react with the self-possession displayed by 28-year-old Jared Massey when his SUV was stopped by John Gardner of the Utah Highway Patrol (UHP) last September 14.

Whether or not Massey was speeding through a construction zone, he was entirely within his rights to demand clarification of his supposed offense before affixing his signature to the traffic ticket. There was no need for Massey's signature.

Had Gardner been interested in enforcing the law rather than asserting his authoritah,* he would simply have scrawled “refuses to sign” on the citation in his no-doubt puerile and illegible hand (as a tax feeder of the thug caste, Gardner is marginally literate at best), handed it to the motorist, and gone about his merry way in pursuit of fresh victims.

But Gardner, most likely motivated by the resentments common to steers that wish they were bulls, just had to order Massey out of the car and place him under arrest – for doing nothing that constitutes a crime.

It is not a crime for a citizen to demand that a police officer justify a traffic stop. Massey, who admitted to driving 68 mph in what he apparently thought was a 65 mph zone, was reasonably cooperative and genuinely puzzled by Gardner's claim that the driver had missed a sign posting a 40 mph construction zone.

Gardner assumed a hostile posture when Massey made his further cooperation contingent on being shown that he had violated the speed limit. Which is to say that Gardner immediately sized up the motorist as an enemy combatant (no other term is adequate) because Massey refused to behave as a cringing, docile serf.

It is not a crime for a motorist to withhold his signature from a traffic ticket, since the signature is unnecessary (refusing to sign means that you won't be charged with a misdemeanor if you don't show up in court). A UHP spokesman has conceded that Gardner's best option was to put the citation in the vehicle "in a professional manner and leave it at that."

And once again, Massey was making an entirely reasonable request: He wanted to be shown the speed limit sign he had supposedly ignored.

At this point, Gardner needlessly escalated the encounter to one of unalloyed violence, ordering Massey from the car and attempting to place him under arrest. Although the regulations of his professional tribe permit this, Gardner had no right or reason to do this, since the ticket had been written and the matter should have been turned over to a court.

But Gardner, like nearly everybody else in his line of work, believes that his job is not to protect the public, but to make it submit to the supposed authority of the State. Which is why, when Massey quite reasonably decided he was no longer going to play the role in which Gardner had cast him, the UHP officer committed the crime of assault with a deadly weapon by shooting Massey with his Taser.

This was done while Massey was walking away from Gardner. His behavior was non-cooperative, but also non-threatening. The UHP's policy governing the use of a Taser does not permit an officer to use it against someone who is merely non-cooperative; the subject must pose some kind of threat to himself, the officer, or innocent bystanders in order for a Taser attack to be justified.

The problem here is that Gardner, a 14-year veteran of the UHP, was about to lose bladder control (an affliction common to geldings), so frightened had he become by Massey's non-threatening behavior.

As the hero explained to a colleague a few minutes later, Massey was “making me nervous as hell” by his insistence on being treated as a reasonable adult, rather than behaving like a timid child. “I was like, nah, we ain't playing this game,” Gardner boasted to the second officer by way of justifying the Taser strike.

“Good,” gloated the second tax-fed parasite. “Good for you.”

Bear in mind here that it was Gardner who was playing a “game” by needlessly escalating an unpleasant situation. If he had been genuinely concerned about his personal safety, why did he order Massey from the car, rather than simply handing him the citation and walking away, when there was no reason for an arrest? Why commit an armed assault on a husband and father in front of his family, and then threatening the wife with arrest for objecting to her husband's treatment?

This was undisguised, needless aggression fueled by an adolescent need on Gardner's part to assert dominance over someone who wasn't part of his club. Which is why his behavior received the immediate and unqualified approval of another member of that gang.

We are incessantly hectored about the supposedly indispensable role played by police in protecting us from the anarchic violence that would prevail in their absence. Yet every single day – thanks, in no small measure, to the advent of on-line video – we see how police themselves have become the most dangerous predators we face.

Through his literary creation Screwtape, C.S. Lewis once warned (I paraphrase) that one of the Devil's most effective tricks is to rivet the public mind on the danger posed by a vice that is the exact opposite of the one currently in vogue. For example, where gluttony is ubiquitous, the Devil tempts people to condemn the vanity of those who strive to remain thin.

In like manner, we are always and ever admonished about the evils of anarchy at a time when the State and its agents are, with ever-increasing brazenness, imposing unalloyed tyranny on our society. We are treated to pious homilies about the need for citizens to respect the law when those exercising government power are becoming entirely emancipated from any restraints on their discretionary use of lethal violence. We are instructed to ruminate on the manifold hypothetical outrages that could be committed in the name of anarchy, even as the very tangible atrocities committed by State agents accumulate.

In his valuable new book A Nation of Sheep, retired federal Judge Andrew Napolitano describes how our society – both the Regime ruling us and far too many of the ruled – has succumbed to positivism, a legal perspective in which “the law is whatever those in power say it is.... Under positivism, whoever or whatever controls the government, whether a majority or a minority, always rules and always gets its way.”

As Napolitano explains, positivism “is perhaps the most primitive legal theory, having evolved only slightly from the sort of justification that could be offered for following the demands of a tribal chieftain or general-turned-dictator. The theory promotes fear rather than respect.... The problem today in America, the greatest and gravest threat to personal freedom in this country, is that the positivists are carrying the day.”

During the 14 years he has been a State Trooper – meaning that he has been cared for at the expense of better people who make an honest living – John Gardner has been deeply marinated in positivism. While he's clearly too dim to expatiate the theoretical concepts, Gardner's behavior indicates that he has an instinctive understanding of positivism in practice. As someone clad in a State-issued costume, given a gun and a Taser and expansive discretion in using those implements of violence, Gardner clearly behaves he doesn't have to play any “games” with those who aren't part of his tribe.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" exclaimed Massey as Gardner, his face contorted with primal rage, threatened him with a Taser.

That's a useful question. A better one is this: What the hell is wrong with the rest of us, that we are willing to live under a system of the sort that rules us?

_____

*authoritah (n.) -- The conceit that people clad in ridiculous State-issued costumes are owed some kind of reflexive deference by the decent, law-abiding citizenry upon whom such tax-feeders inflict themselves.

Dum spiro, pugno!

Submit, Or We'll Kill You

It must never be forgotten that every directive issued by the State and enforced by its agents is coupled with the threat of lethal violence against those who fail to comply. This principle applies to trivial infractions of petty ordinances, such as those dealing with pedestrian conduct and smoking.

Consider the tag-team assault by two policemen on Suren Chukhadzhyan that took place in Pittsburgh a few days ago.

Chukhadzhyan, an Armenian national who resides in Glendale, California, is described as being roughly 6 foot 5 inches in height and weighing in excess of 250 pounds. During a break in a very long bus trip he lit up in what was designated a no-smoking area at a Greyhound bus terminal. This attracted the attention of an employee, who complained to police officer Walter Carlson.

In his report, as related by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Carlson described how he told Chukhadzhyan to move to a designated smoking area. The large man “ignored me and made a cocky smirk to me and was very arrogant,” whined Carlson in his report. “[He] turned away from me an continued to smoke.”

After Carlson ordered him to turn around, Chukhadzhyan did so, blowing smoke “in the direction of the officer” -- hardly a surprising result, since he was now facing that direction. At this point, per the newspaper account, the officer “grabbed the man's arm” -- that is, he caused the situation to escalate to one of physical coercion -- “and said he would be cited.” The Armenian's response – and this is significant – was to de-escalate by extinguishing his cigarette and walking away.

At this point, if Walter Carlson had been a peace officer rather than a juvenile poseur with secret insecurities about the size of his wedding tackle, he would have smiled, shook his head, and walked away. The problem, such as it is, was solved: Chukhadzhyan was no longer smoking in a forbidden zone. That would be the proper reaction of a practicing adult who had chosen to make a living as a peace officer.

Regrettably, nobody fitting that description was on hand at the time. Carlson, like many (quite possibly most) of those now employed by the Homeland Security State, had to assert his Authoritah. He acted on what I've identified as the tacit credo of checkpoint guards and others employed to enforce the State's decrees:

You must show them control.

You must make them submit.

Noticing that Chukhadzhyan had taken a seat inside the terminal and, visibly agitated, was muttering to himself “in what appeared to be Russian,” the officer pursued him inside and “attempted to issue the citation” -- which wasn't necessary to maintain order, and actually created a potential danger to others who hadn't been involved in the matter.

Let's click the pause button on the story at this point to recap and italicize a few things.

Chukhadzhyan's reactions to this point are entirely understandable. He is fifty years old. He was born and lived most of his life in a country ruled by the Soviet secret police. This might explain his contemptuous reaction to Carlson's imperious demand. I know what I would have been thinking: “I lived for decades in the shadow of the KGB, and could have been dragged off to Lubyanka for any of a thousand reasons, and this little gelding thinks he can intimidate me because I'm having a smoke here rather than over there? Well, I'll just take one last drag and then throw the cigarette away; no point in making a big deal out of this.”

I don't know if that's what Chukhadzhyan was thinking, but it would have been in line with his actions, as they were described in Carlson's report.

Chukhadzhyan, confronted by Carlson, walked away peacefully.

By pursuing the matter beyond this point, Carlson is the one who became the aggressor.

That fact is not nullified by the costume he wears or the shiny little shield he was given.

OK – let's hit the “play” button, and resume the Post-Gazette's account:

“Officer Carlson again attempted to issue the citation, but said Mr. Chukhadzhyan stood up suddenly and approached him aggressively. The officer said he pulled out his Taser and warned, `This doesn't have to go this way.'”

Oh, good grief. This guy may not be a “pig,” but he's a Shatner-caliber ham – an honors graduate of the T.J. Hooker Academy for Drama Queens in Blue.

Chukhadzhyan allegedly replied to Carlson's unnecessary threat to use deadly force by saying, “arrest me” and pushing the officer. The Taser was fired by Carlson, but failed to operate because of the Armenian's heavy coat. At this point, according to Carlson, “Chukhadzhyan charged.”

Chad Stevens, an off-duty police officer from out of town, pitched in to help Carlson. Eventually the two of them were able to bull-rush Chukhadzhyan, pinning him against a vending machine, forcing the cuffs on his wrists, and tripping him to the floor. This melee “knocked over seats and sent other travelers scrambling,” notes the paper, offering a rather bland description for a needless episode of violence that placed innocent people at risk. As I noted above, avoiding situations of this sort would be the chief priority of a genuine peace officer.

Chukhadzhyan was placed under arrest for “disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and aggravated assault on Officer Carlson.” How an unarmed man commit “aggravated assault” on a heavily armed individual – who summons his buddy to help him out – is a question that could be profitably pondered by people not hopelessly held hostage by statist assumptions.

He was also reported to the local Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Here's an interesting possibility: If this is treated as a “terrorist” incident, Chukhadzhyan could be held indefinitely, since as a foreign national the habeas corpus guarantee doesn't apply to him as of October 17, 2006 – the day the Bushling signed the Military Commissions Act and the Homeland Security Death Star became fully operational.

Here's something else to consider: Is there any rational reason to doubt that if Carlson the Blue Knight and his equally heroic side-kick hadn't been able to subdue Chukhadzhyan, they would have resorted to lethal force? In fact, given the growing body count racked up by officers using the “non-lethal” Taser, Carlson actually did use potentially lethal force against Chukhadzhyan.

For smoking a cigarette.

After he had put it out and walked away.

And the real outrage is that this episode is not an aberration. This is how law enforcement operates in the era of Homeland Security.

Another beautiful day in the Land of the Free! (Thanks to Infowars.com for the photo.)

Former congressional candidate David Brownlow experienced that reality last December 9 when he and his family (including his 12-year-old daughter) were accosted by Oregon State Trooper Ken Moore and threatened with arrest for the supposed offense of holding up an anti-war protest sign on a sidewalk near a Portland shopping mall.

Brownlow, whose son Jared is serving in Iraq, has described how Trooper Moore was among the motorists who saw the family's sign, which read “Support the Troops – Bring Them Home!” Moore, “visibly agitated,” stomped over to the family, accused them of “breaking the law,” and ordered them to “leave the area immediately.”

Constitution Party of Oregon activist (and suspected Thought Criminal) David Brownlow.

When Brownlow asked politely what law he and his family had broken, Moore bellowed: “When a trooper tells you that you are breaking the law, that's all you need to know,” and that if they didn't move immediately, they would be arrested. Brownlow's wife Suzanne pointed out that they weren't blocking the road or the sidewalk; this prompted the (storm)trooper to jab a finger at her and hiss: “If you do not stop talking, I will arrest both of you for disorderly conduct!”

This would have meant taking into custody the couple's 12-year-old daughter, who by this point was terrified and hiding behind her mother.

The trooper seized the banner – which is to say he stole the family's property at gunpoint – and ordered them to meet him in a nearby parking lot. Once the group had reassembled, the officer – still breathing out various threats to do unpleasant things to the Brownlows – demanded that David produce his driver's license and asked if he was carrying a weapon (he wasn't, despite the fact that he had a concealed carry permit). When Suzanne Brownlow asked where they could “legally” protest if they weren't permitted to do so on a public sidewalk, the officer snarled: “In your front yard.”

At this point, Brownlow recalls, Trooper Moore's rage subsided and he became civil, returning their banner and offering apologies for terrorizing their daughter. “I wondered if this trooper was bipolar or something,” he comments.

While that's a possibility – and an unsettling one at that – I suspect the reason for the officer's change in demeanor is this: He had succeeded in carrying out his mission by controlling the Brownlows and making them submit to his supposed authority.

The Brownlows have filed suit against Trooper Moore, who – like any other armed terrorist – deserves at least to be driven into financial ruin (although his family, if any, would be non-combatants not deserving the same fate).

Thousands or tens of thousands of officious armed bullies like Officer Carlson and Trooper Moore infest our communities. They are not the “local police” who are fondly remembered by many of us (myself emphatically included) with respect and gratitude. Back then, of course, it was possible to find corrupt and abusive police officers, a fact sometimes washed out by the sepia-toned sentimentality that colors our recollections. But we're not dealing with simple corruption, or occasional abuses of power; we confront the product of a social transformation that has taken place over several decades, and that has turned the police into a literal army of occupation.

Law enforcement consultant Tony Cooper, an instructor in terrorism negotiation skills at the University of Texas-Dallas, warned about that transformation more than a decade ago. "I see the formation of a curious crusading mentality among certain law enforcement agencies to stamp out what they see as a threat to government generally,” he told the Washington Post in 1995 “It's an exaggerated concern that they are facing a nationwide conspiracy and that somehow this will get out of control unless it is stamped out at a very early stage."

While Cooper was chiefly concerned with that mindset among federal agents, his students included many state and local officers attached to SWAT teams and other tactical units, who helped propagate that mindset more widely among police units. With the aid of federal subsidies and material aid from the Pentagon, many “local” police agencies are rapidly taking on the traits of occupying armies.

Bad as this situation already is, it can always be made worse by gun-toting adolescents on the State's payroll who are dressed up like Village People wanna-bes and eagerly looking for an opportunity to push people around. What's really alarming is the extent to which that personality type is increasingly over-represented in our Homeland Security Apparatus.

Theater of the Absurd (Updated)

It's difficult to believe that viewing the epic cinematic debacle Troy could be the high point of an evening, but such was the case for two Utah couples on the evening of May 23, 2004.

Harold Curtis and his wife Leslie settled into their seats at a Provo movie theater after paying the extortionate admission price and absorbing a second hit at the concession counter. When the lights went down, they were unsettled to hear a persistent stream of chatter, much of it in Spanish, coming from the row behind them.

This is, of course, the creature that haunts every movie-goer's imagination: The Thing That Won't Shut Up. Most movie patrons have had at least one outing ruined by the incessant, deafening wind blowing out of some nit-wit's gaping skull-cave. As the previews continued, Harold politely but insistently asked the couple sitting behind them – Vanessa Arnold and her boyfriend, Lorenzo Castillo – to quiet down.

Arnold later said that she was translating the previews into Spanish for Castillo, and that the two of them were quiet during the feature presentation. This much was confirmed by an eyewitness. Arnold also claims that Curtis glared at them several times, used a racial slur, and called her a “bitch.”

Following the movie, Curtis reportedly stood up and glared at the couple, and then followed them into the lobby, demanding that they reimburse him and his wife the price of a ticket.

This was a reasonable request made to the wrong party and at the wrong time. If Arnold and Castillo's conduct had robbed Curtis and his wife of their movie experience, Curtis should have complained to the theater management while the film was in progress. The management most likely would have refunded the ticket price or offered the couple a pass to another showing. And they would probably have evicted Arnold and Castillo from the theater, calling the police to do so if necessary.

(And, come to think of it, this was a perfect opportunity to score tickets to a better film -- and just about anything would have been an improvement over Troy.)

Ah, but therein lies the rub: Harold Curtis is a Utah County Deputy Sheriff, and to him this unfortunate episode represented a chance to assert his authoritah.

After Castillo refused to cough up the price of two movie tickets, Curtis flashed his badge and placed him under arrest. Curtis later claimed that this was necessary because Castillo had approached him with clenched fists. According to Arnold's account of the incident, it was Curtis who provoked the confrontation by approaching Castillo and sneering, “Do you want to play?” Betty Jo Searle, a witness who was 15 at the time of the incident, has also testified that Curtis acted as the aggressor.

Curtis insists that he arrested Castillo in order to “defuse” the situation – as if simply stepping off and taking his complaint to the theater management wasn't an option. After Searle and her date asked Curtis what was going on, he showed them his badge and “said we needed to walk away,” the young lady recalled.

Actually, this was a case in which butting in was eminently justifiable and desperately needed.

As Curtis moved to place Castillo under arrest, Arnold lost her composure, reportedly yelling “Don't do this! No, no no – stop it” and throwing herself on him. Arnold is 5'3 and 110 pounds. Curtis is approximately the size of one of the lesser Kuiper Belt Objects, although nowhere near as cool. (Like most members of the not-so-Thin Blue Line, Curtis is obviously not a slave to his conditioning program.) Yet both Curtis and his wife later professed to have been greatly alarmed by this “assault.”

Arnold, predictably, got the worst of it: She was shrugged off and ended up at the bottom of some stairs. She says Curtis threw her there; Searle says Curtis “just dropped her” down the stairs. Leslie Curtis later testified in court that Arnold jumped on her husband's back, wrapping her legs around his waist and putting her hands around his throat.

On cross-examination, it was pointed out that Mrs. Curtis's testimony different significantly from her account in the original police report, which stated only that Arnold had grabbed her husband at the waist. Apparently she had exercised a congressional privilege by “revising and extending” her testimony to make the supposed assault on her husband more dramatic, albeit thoroughly implausible. (For one thing, Curtis has no visible neck, which would make it difficult for a woman Arnold's size to strangle him.)

Leslie Curtis's version of events was largely supported by the testimony of Cheri Wolley, who told the court she had seen “a man and two Hispanics” arguing in the lobby, and that she had seen the Hispanic male “take a swing at the white man.” She didn't volunteer that she had served on the police force for several years, a fact she acknowledged only when it was pried out of her by Arnold's attorney. That fact, of course, doesn't impeach her testimony. The fact that she walked out of court holding hands with Mrs. Curtis, however, does – or at least it appeared to in the eyes of the jurors who noticed that detail.

It's curious as well that Curtis didn't remember Castillo taking a swing at him. The fact that Curtis released Castillo shortly after the arrest, rather than booking him on assault charges, also tends to undermine Wolley's version of events. Castillo later sued Curtis for false arrest, and settled out of court.

Arnold also sued Curtis for using excessive force and sundry violations of her constitutionally protected rights. She claimed significant and lasting injury as a result of her tumble down the stairs. That claim dissolved when the federal jury hearing the case was shown video, taken by a private investigator, of Arnold functioning quite normally despite supposedly debilitating injuries to her head and back.

Stymied by contending narratives that contradicted each other on several key points, the jury took about an hour to determine that the alleged injuries inflicted on Arnold by Curtis didn't “shock the conscience,” and found in favor of the deputy. This appears to be an appropriate end to an entirely contrived lawsuit. But that doesn't mean Curtis is entirely blameless.

Peter Stirba, Curtis's attorney, notes that “Your reputation and the way you serve is a big part of being a police officer.” Curtis went into the case with a troubled reputation, having been sued – unsuccessfully – for alleged abuses committed as a guard at the county jail. However boorish and inexcusable the behavior of Arnold and Castillo, Curtis is, by his own admission, the one who precipitated the altercation, doing so needlessly under the color of his supposed authority.

A ruling issued last August 1 by the US Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals notes that, according to Curtis's narrative, he told Castillo “he could not leave until the matter [of buying replacement tickets] was settled”; it was then, according to Curtis, that Castillo “clenched his fists, and Mr. Curtis understood him to threaten a fight.”

Well ... no, the last assumption doesn't necessarily follow from the first. Clenching one's fist is a reflexive expression of anger; cocking a fist constitutes a threat. More to the point: Curtis was trying to detain Castillo before identifying himself as a police officer.

Castillo's theater etiquette is badly in need of repair, but how was he supposed to react when a corpulent, officious guy who called his date a “bitch” and used a racial slur (a charge, notes the Tenth Circuit Court's ruling, Curtis effectively conceded) threatens to keep him in the theater to “settle” the dispute?

Clearly, on the basis of Curtis's own account, it was he who instigated whatever scuffle took place, as the eyewitness Betty Jo Searle confirmed. And it was after he had done so that Curtis whipped out the chintzy piece of costume jewelry that he apparently thinks elevates him above the rest of us.

That same poisonous assumption was the basis of the federal jury's ruling in Curtis's favor. As Austen Johnson, Arnold's attorney, points out, Curtis “enjoyed a higher legal burden of proof” because he was trying to arrest Castillo. A mere civilian wouldn't be entitled to such deference. And apparently this is the case despite the fact that Curtis was acting as a civilian when he provoked Castillo.

Of course, even if Curtis had identified himself as a police officer before threatening to detain Castillo in the lobby, the proper response would have been to say, “So what?” An officer who is a party to a dispute of this kind cannot in propriety be the officer who intervenes to settle that dispute.

This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened in Utah. Back in August 2006, a Kosovar refugee in Salt Lake City was threatened with arrest after a pick-up basketball game at a Gold's Gym got a little rough. One of the players was an off-duty police officer who wanted to arrest the refugee, on the belief that his aggressive low-post game constituted “assault.”

Armed with a shotgun and supported by some of his buddies, the policeman chased the refugee to his car, prevented him from leaving the parking lot, and treated him to several choruses of profane verbal abuse as he dialed 9-11 and waited for other officers to arrive:

““You want to start something [Oedipal epithet deleted]? What you pulled in there is called an assault... You want to start sh*t right now?... Get out here [Oedipal epithet again deleted]. You're f*****g with the wrong people.... You know what I am?... I will put you under arrest! Get out of the car right now. If you don't get out of the car I will place you under arrest for resisting arrest. Get out of the car right now!”

The officer, Marcus Barrett, later pleaded no contest to a disorderly conduct charge, paid a $200 fine, and left the police force. Given that the entire incident began when he attacked the refugee with his fists, Barrett should have been prosecuted for assault and for false imprisonment. But the most serious charges were dropped, most likely because – once again – as an off-duty police officer Barrett was the beneficiary of “a higher legal burden of proof.”

Here's the real outrage:

Despite being described by one member of Utah's Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) board as “an officer completely out of control” who should not be on the streets, Barrett was not permanently cashiered; instead, he and the Utah POST board agreed on a three-year-suspension last June. That means he should be eligible for reinstatement as early as 2010.

Here's where the outrage deepens:

Utah state senator Chris Buttars (who is – need I even specify as much? -- a Republican) has proposed a measure, SB260, that would “classify a record of formal charges or disciplinary actions against a peace officer as a private record, unless the peace officer consents, in writing, to make the record public.”

If that measure is enacted it would mean that next time an off-duty cop in Utah provokes a melee in a theater lobby, or beats up another player in a pick-up b-ball game and chases the guy into the parking lot with a shotgun, the victims wouldn't be able to learn if the incident was part of a larger pattern of abusive behavior.

Oh, should I even bother to mention that Utah County Sheriff James Tracy said that an internal investigation of Curtis's conduct found that his actions “did not violate office policy”?

It's Footloose gone fascist: Bucket-heads from Utah County SWAT teams attack party-goers at an August 2005 dance party.

That's the same Utah County Sheriff Tracey, of course, who dispatched SWAT teams to break up a peaceful dance party a couple of years ago. And this is the same Utah County, of course, where elderly women can be thrown to the ground and arrested for not watering their lawns.

The next time I hear a sheriff or police chief admit that the bullying, corrupt, needlessly provocative, or abusive behavior of an officer does violate department policy ... will be the first.

UPDATE

"Just what the hell is the matter with the police in this country?"

I'm asked that question constantly, and can't adequately answer it despite the fact that I've studied this issue for literally decades -- including for a stretch waaaaaaaay back in my teen years when I seriously considered a career in law enforcement. I can diagnose the issue in political, demographic, and ideological terms; I describe the insidious influence of federal subsidies, regulations, and blackmail (in the form of litigation, consent decrees, and the like); I can sermonize about the unhappy results when unchecked power is combined with the results of Original Sin....

And even then, I still find myself unable even to begin to explain spectacles like this, or to witness them on video without wanting, at the very least, to track down this power-intoxicated punk-a$$ bully and beat the snot out of him:



Officer Rivieri presents an impressive recital of pseudo-tough-guy mannerisms -- from the affected "Command Voice," to the comically theatrical flaring of non-existent lats, to the swagger-waddle (call it a "swaddle") of supposed authority, to the criminal assault on a skinny, terrified kid. I'm forced to agree with him in one respect, though: He's not a man, nor any part thereof.


Nor should we neglect episodes like this one, in which a group of deputy sheriffs dump a quadriplegic on the floor like so much soiled laundry. This incident, by the way, resulted in one of the very few instances in which a police official -- in this case the Chief Deputy, not the Sheriff himself -- initially refused to defend the actions of the officers:






The emerging homeland security state is the subject of my new book, Liberty in Eclipse, which is on sale now.

Dum spiro, pugno!

The Kitty Genovese Effect: How The Regime Endures (Updated)

By mid-April [1965], the Kitty Genovese story had taken hold and the nation began a lengthy period of analysis and self-deprecation. Why would civilized people turn away from another human being in dire need of assistance? As the details of the killing emerged, it became plain that if any one of the 38 witnesses had simply called the police at the first sign of trouble, the victim could have survived.

From Court TV's account of the 1964 murder of Catherine "Kitty" Genovese

Thirty-eight residents of Kew Gardens, a residential area in Queens, New York, saw or heard at least part of the assault in which 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death. The assailant had time to inflict, seventeen stab wounds in the 5'1", 105 lb. body of the victim.


The attack included a five-minute intermission during which Kitty was able to cry out, "Help me, I'm being murdered! I'm dying! I'm dying!" Mortally wounded, she was still able to drag herself to the rear entrance to her apartment building and attempt to enter before the murderer returned to complete the chore.

The intervention of one armed man -- perhaps even one unarmed man -- may have been enough to save Kitty's life. In fact, it was still possible to save her life after the initial assault, had someone simply let her in the apartment, rendered basic first aid, and called the police. But nobody could be bothered to do even that much on the morning of March 13, 1964, and an innocent woman bled to death because of the torpid indifference of her neighbors.

Why would dozens of people permit an atrocity of this sort to take place? That question was asked repeatedly during the months following Kitty's murder, and embedded in various textbooks on psychology and sociology. What's unfortunate, if predictable, is that most studies of what we could call the "Kitty Genovese Effect" ignore its most common manifestation: The nearly universal acquiescence of the population in routine displays of armed violence against innocent people by agents of the State.

Take, for instance, the beating of Roseland, Indiana City Councilman David Snyder by a uniformed skinhead after Snyder was ejected from a September 14 Council meeting.

What appeared to be a long-standing feud of some kind (Synder, who for all I know is a world-class jerk, has been accused of racketeering, which is just another way of saying he works for government) reached critical mass, and Synder was ejected from the room by Council President Charley Shields.

After collecting the video camera he had brought to document the meeting, Synder walked placidly from the chamber. Synder is tall and very thin; he looks like a cross between NBA immortal Larry Bird and Oscar-winning actor James Cromwell); Town Marshal Jack Tiller, the tonsured thug with a history of excessive force who ushered Synder from the room, looks like Baby Huey with a less impressive physique.

As he left, Snyder hurled an insult over his shoulder at Shields, and then was seen muttering something at Tiller. The officer responds by shoving Snyder in the back; a loud noise indicates that the Councilman had been shoved face-first into the glass doors leading out of the building.

The cameraman, along with more than a dozen people, rushed into the next room. The lens captures the sight of Snyder, sprawled face-first in the parking lot with Snyder's flaccid form splayed across his back and at least two other uniformed heroes prepared to assist.

Tiller, in keeping with what must be the new standard police protocol for conducting beat-downs of unresisting, helpless civilians, is bellowing "Don't resist! Don't resist!" as he repeatedly slugs Synder in the upper body and, apparently, his head.


Nobody moved to prevent or mitigate this assault, which -- thankfully -- proved to be much milder than it could have been (owing, I believe, to the presence of a video camera). In fact, several dutiful citizens are recorded urging others to "let the police handle it." One beefy female vulgarian who had some kind of grudge against Synder can be heard urging Tiller to hit the prone Councilman even harder; she is permitted to come within a few feet of Synder to spit insults in his face as he is hauled away to jail in handcuffs.

Interviewed moments after he had assaulted Snyder, Jack Tiller did what most police do in situations of this kind: He lied.

















Jack Tiller, master of Donut-kwon-Do, waits for the aftershocks to subside in his tremulous form following his heroic blind-side assault on skinny, unresisting, middle-aged City Councilman Dave Snyder.


"It was a fight, and he's going to jail," boasted Tiller, trying to catch his breath after the unfamiliar exertion. The officer claimed that Synder had "hit" him, a charge not validated by the videotape, which shows the cooperative Councilman with his back to the gelatinous gendarme. (An eyewitness claims Snyder threw an elbow, but once again this account doesn't comport with the available video record and what was seen could simply be Snyder jerking his arm away from Tiller.)

For the supposed offense of leaving the Council meeting and receiving an unwarranted beating, Synder was originally charged with a felony.

The "felon" in question, following his release from police custody.

The only happy news to emerge from all of this is that the fiscally challenged Roseland municipal government will apparently begin laying off police officers, despite Tough-guy Tiller's promise that his department won't leave the town "without police protection."

Tiller appears to be as much a stranger to irony as he is to pumping iron. Roseland appears to have fewer than 2,000 residents. Why can't the town rely on the County Sheriff for police "protection"? And given that the Town Marshal feels entitled to throw a City Councilman to the pavement face-first and beat him on camera for no reason, the key question is: Who will protect Roseland residents from the police?

Certainly not the cream of the town's civic culture, who stood inert as a criminal assault took place right in front of them. Any one of them could have intervened, if only to remind Tiller that he was on camera and was liable for administrative or criminal charges. A couple of generations ago, it wouldn't have been unusual for one or more men in such circumstances to attempt a citizen's arrest, which was certainly justified here.

Of course, Tiller had police on hand to "assist" -- and from this fact we can extract a clue as to the real meaning behind the familiar motto, "To Protect and Serve": The other police on the scene were there to "assist" by deterring law-abiding citizens from intervening to prevent Tiller from beating Synder.

















Those silly Iraqis! They can't even have a City Council meeting without it degenerating into armed violence! Why can't they learn to conduct business the way we do in Indiana... Oh, wait....


How does this common police tactic differ from similar tactics employed by other armed gangs?

It should be said that Roseland's municipal politics are exceptionally colorful, and Snyder has plausibly been accused of heavy-handed and corrupt tactics in seeking control of the Council -- including, ironically enough, using the police to punish his political critics. If this is true there may be some ironic symmetry in the fact that it was Snyder who ended up with a boot on his neck, and it might explain why people weren't eager to intervene.

But this doesn't make right what happened to Synder, something principled, freedom-focused people understand. There weren't any to be found at the Roseland City Council meeting last Friday. And that incident, which took place in a small town in middle America, helps illustrate why our society is descending inexorably into the morass of police state tyranny.

(Thanks to Strike The Root for bringing this story to my attention.)

AS IF TO ILLUSTRATE MY POINT....

There was a time, back when this country was relatively free, that a loudmouth (even one asking some pertinent questions in an impertinent fashion) would be given the bum's rush without being swarmed, assaulted, and subjected to electro-shock torture by rented thugs.

Obviously, we live in a different country now:



Notice that, at the time the Taser was used, the agitated student was lying on the ground, immobilized, and surrounded by at least six armed goons -- well, five goons and one goon-ette. Yes, that's right: The less-than-commanding soprano voice demanding that the student stop resisting belongs to a She-Police. (Notice as well how the announcer obliquely frames the incident in a way that makes the victim responsible for being tortured.)

There's no reason why the Kampus Kops couldn't have simply dragged this kid from the auditorium (the right to freedom of speech doesn't extend to hijacking a public event) and barred him from re-entering the event, rather than putting him under arrest. He may have been obnoxious, but he was entirely correct to resist arrest through peaceful, if assertive, non-cooperation.

Ah, but this would have deprived the heroes in blue from asserting their authoritah, and denied at least one of them the sensual thrill of subjecting another human being to a Taser shock.


I hear tell from a hero in the Multnomah Sheriff's Department -- some impotent windsock in a government-issued costume -- that giving someone a blast from a Taser is better than Viagra.


Boys and Girls, it's this simple: Officer Friendly is no more. I mourn his passing for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that his place has been usurped by over-armed (and generally over-fed) sadists who love to hurt helpless human beings and can do so with impunity.

Terrible as it is to say so, we've reached the point where we'd better start learning how to hurt back.

State-authorized violence has become a lethal threat both palpable and capricious. We've reached the point described by Solzhenitsyn, a critical juncture at which decent people either actively resist lawless State violence or resign ourselves to living under the rule of a Terror State, knowing that we deserve everything that will be inflicted on us.


Obviously, I'm not talking about active violence against anybody. I am unconditionally committed to the non-aggression principle. But we must put an end to passive acceptance of State brutality. The incidents described above may have been prevented by just a handful of people willing to interpose themselves between the assailants and the victims, at the potential cost of physical injury and "criminal" charges.

Sometimes in circumstances like this, courage can be contagious.

Will this approach work? I don't know. But it's worth a try. And I promise that I will not permit this kind of thing ever to happen in my presence without doing whatever I can to stop it.


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