Highway Robbery

Anybody old enough to have lived through the 70s, and who avoided the vices that would make remembering that decade difficult, can probably recall the 1975 populist anthem “Convoy” (and perhaps even the 1978 Kris Kristofferson/Ali McGraw film of the same title).

The C.W. McCall ballad described the spontaneous rebellion of long-haul truckers against the national 55 mile-per-hour speed limit. Determined to cross the continental United States without stopping, the truckers collaborated via Citizens Band Radio to warn each other about speed traps and other snares laid by the “Smokies” -- State Police and other revenue-hungry lawmen.

It is an illustration of the perversity of our times that at least some truck drivers are now collaborating with the revenue farmers.

“Some semi-trucks in Kansas are carrying something new – a highway patrol trooper,” reports the Topeka Capital-Journal (free reg. req.) “Troopers are riding in the cab with professional truck drivers as part of the new Trucks on Patrol for Safety [TOPS] program in which troopers witness and report violations of the law by police radio to other troopers on patrol in the area who can stop the vehicle involved...."

The program, modeled after a pilot program in Washington State, will run for six weeks and is expected to harvest hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. Each truck will be fitted with a five-camera system intended to record purported violations. The trucking companies who have decided to “partner” in this effort donate the vehicles and drivers free of charge, no doubt in consideration of certain non-monetary political or regulatory favors to be named later (and behind the scenes).

The first of the corporate Quislings to offer such services was the appropriately named Yellow Transportation of Wichita.

Sniff, sniff -- do we discern the rancid odor of federal pork emanating from this initiative?

Indeed we do: It is funded through the Transportation Department's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, by way of taxes collected at the gas pump.

It is not widely understood that federal “highway safety” bills have been larded with millions of dollars for schemes like TOPS – putative public safety campaigns that actually have the dual purpose of knitting “local” and “state” police to their federal masters, and giving those affiliates of the national Homeland Security State a taste for the easy money to be made through highway robbery.

The August 2005 (take a deep breath) "Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users" law, for example, contained huge caches of federal cash for promoting sobriety checkpoints and roadblocks and for impounding or confiscating vehicles as countermeasures to alcohol-impaired driving. As the watchdogs over at TheNewspaper.com observe, this approach “allows states to fund driving under the influence (DUI)-related confiscation efforts entirely with federal dollars."

The vigilant and principled Karen DeCoster points out another way the Feds have used our gas taxes to build their highway surveillance network.

A June 2005 seat belt use survey was conducted in New Mexico by the Preusser Research Group, under a contract from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “Previous studies found lower nighttime seat belt use rates in Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania,” reported the NHTSA.(.pdf) “This study sought to confirm those findings, using military-grade night-vision technology to collect nighttime belt use data, measuring day and night belt use in both densely and sparsely populated locations throughout New Mexico. AutoGated brand night vision goggles (XR5 image-enhancing tube) were used in tandem with an infrared spotlight to provide adequate illumination of the vehicle occupants without affecting the occupants of the
vehicle....”

According to the AP, as of June 2005, some 13,000 police agencies nationwide were using military-issue night vision goggles to catch seat belt "violators." (No government has the right or constitutional authority to compel drivers or passengers to buckle up.)


This militarization of traffic enforcement – the use of battlefield hardware and surveillance tactics – is carried out in the name of public safety, natch. Would anybody care to bet that it will also be used to identify vehicles suspected of involvement in drug trafficking, as well?

I use that formulation for a specific reason: In the “war on drugs,” it is often the property of a suspect – his car, cash, or other assets – that is found “guilty” and seized by the police. This is called enforcement in rem (“against the thing”), and the process is called “asset forfeiture.”

Here's how this could work:

A late-model SUV with out-of-state license plates is spotted passing a semi-truck on a stretch of I-80 in Dallas County, Iowa. The driver of that vehicle did nothing improper, and gave no indication that he was intoxicated – but the State Trooper in the semi noted that he fit the “profile” of a suspected drug courier. Accordingly, he radios ahead to the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, which intercepts the SUV.

After the officer cites some manufactured rationale for the stop (they can always “find a reason”), the driver is bullied into a “consent search” of the vehicle that finds no narcotics but does uncover a substantial quantity of cash – say, tens of thousands of dollars. The car is impounded, as is the cash.

The driver insists that he's not a drug dealer, but he's not in a position to fight the charge. He is presented with a waiver permitting the Sheriff's Department to declare that the vehicle is “abandoned property”; without much recourse, the driver signs the document. A legal notice is published in the paper inviting people to claim the “abandoned” automobile; if nobody does so within a month, the Department claims the vehicle and can sell it at auction.

I grant that this sounds entirely implausible. And yet between 2002 and 2006, Iowa's Dallas County Sheriff's Department hauled in $1.75 million in cash and vehicles, most of it seized from black and Latino drivers, using the method described above – except for the innovative use of semi trucks as mobile spotter platforms for this scam.

According to the Des Moines Register, the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, along with the Iowa State Patrol and eight local police departments, “have taken in $2.4 million in cash and property from accused criminals in Dallas County [since 2002]. Nearly 90 percent came from a 24-mile stretch of I-80." The figure might be higher, since the details of various seizures don't become public until after court proceedings are finished.



Brian "Light Fingers" Gilbert

Last week, former Dallas County Sheriff Brian Gilbert was found guilty of stealing a duffel bag containing $120,000 in cash “forfeited” from motorists detained at traffic stops. Gilbert declined to testify in his own defense, and the jury took just six hours to convict him. Gilbert's theft was relatively petty, given the federally abetted grand larceny routinely committed along that stretch of I-80.

This is exactly the kind of localized police revenue trap (albeit one created with federal assistance) the fictional truckers immortalized in “Convoy” would have sabotaged. And Gilbert is precisely the kind of wretchedly corrupt lawman one finds enshrined in trucker mythology.

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The Killing of Derek Hale: Death by Police PR Stunt?

Too short a season: Derek with step-children Taylor and Garrett, and wife Elaine (below), shortly before he was killed. (Hale family photos courtesy of Stephen Neuberger.)

Derek J. Hale, Marine veteran of two combat tours in Iraq and (much more importantly) a young husband and father, died in a completely unnecessary police raid that grew out of a cynical public relations campaign.

At least that's the view of Stephen Neuberger, one of several attorneys representing Hale's widow and parents in a lawsuit against the Delaware police officials responsible for the November 6 execution-style killing of Derek in Wilmington.

“Over the past several years, we've represented a lot of police officers, including some from SWAT teams, so it's not as if we're anti-police, even though we consider the State Police [DSP] hierarchy to be corrupt," Neuberger told me.

"We've gone to court on behalf of whistleblowers and officers who have filed civil rights complaints of various kinds. Of the ten lawsuits we've filed, we've either won or successfully settled nine of them. Most of the cases have involved the Delaware State Police, and the DSP's hierarchy has received a lot of negative publicity. I suspect that might be what's behind the raid in which Derek was killed.”

When veteran officer Thomas MacLeish became head of the DSP about two years ago, an early priority was to improve the public perception of the department.

“My view is that Colonel Tom wanted to conduct some big, high-profile investigation that would dispel the negative publicity and generate public support for the DSP,” says Neuberger, who is, admittedly, not a completely unbiased observer. “So they decided to go after the big, bad biker gang” -- the Pagan Motorcycle Club, which Derek joined shortly after getting out of the Marine Corps.

The DSP had been investigating the state chapter of the Pagans for about 18 months before the raid in which Derek was shot to death. Within a few days of the shooting, the DSP arrested 32 Pagans on drug and weapons charges. The 160-count indictment -- the details of which remain secret -- alleged a vast criminal conspiracy that includes drug trafficking, racketeering, and "gang activity."

In late March, two Pagans named in the indictment were offered plea bargains; one of them was offered a year's probation for "maintaining a dwelling for drugs," the other given six months' probation for a misdemeanor charge of third-degree conspiracy. Three others named in the indictment have been placed in "diversion programs" for first-time narcotics offenders.

"What this tells me is that the prosecution's conspiracy case is falling apart," Neuberger told me. "They threw the indictment together after Derek was killed, hoping to justify the raid -- to show the public that there was this huge criminal conspiracy the police were trying to crack. But so far all we see are a few small first-time offenders and a couple of commonplace drug charges."

Michael W. Modica, an attorney representing several of the indicted Pagans, offers a similar assessment.

"I don't think there's any dispute that they rushed the indictment," he told the Wilmington News-Journal. "My sense is, and this is shared by a lot of people, that they rushed the indictment to divert attention from the death of Mr. Hale, and to show that there was legitimate criminal activity going on."

That there was at least some criminal activity going on at the periphery of the Pagan OMC is demonstrated by the plea bargains. But the decision to join a group of that sort can be prompted by motivations other than criminal intent.

The lawsuit (.pdf) filed by the Rutherford Institute on behalf of Hale's survivors emphasizes that Derek joined the Pagans in search of the same kind of "camaraderie" he had experienced as a Marine. I think there are better ways to find it than joining an Outlaw Motorcycle Club -- but then I'm not a 25-year-old recently discharged combat veteran, so I'm not really qualified to second-guess Derek's decisions. Derek's record was clean and he had been given a concealed carry permit by the State of Virginia, where he lived with his wife Elaine and stepchildren Taylor and Garrett.

Derek had gone to Wilmington as part of a charity ride on behalf of Toys for Tots. While there he agreed to house-sit at the home occupied by Sandra Lopez, whose ex-husband (the owner of the house) is a member of the Pagans and was arrested following Derek's death. At some point prior to the shooting, according to the News-Journal, the house -- which Neuberger, who grew up in Wilmington, describes as being in a "bad part of town" -- was searched by the police. Although it was under surveillance, the house hadn't been designated a crime scene when the police showed up on November 6.

Shortly before the police arrived, Sandra and her children, who were moving out of the house, had removed several boxes of possessions. It is possible that the police suspected that they were removing evidence of some sort, and that Derek was acting as a lookout -- rather than simply keeping an eye on a friend's house in a rough neighborhood. Even if such suspicions were accurate, eyewitness accounts demonstrate that the raid was carried out in a criminally irresponsible fashion.

“These guys were not in a standard police uniform,” Neuberger says, citing witness statements. “They were dressed in black and didn't have badges. They didn't identify themselves as police.”

A pack of 8-12 officers surrounded Hale, who had been sitting on the front porch. Sandra and her children -- an 11-year-old and a 6-year-old -- were standing behind him. As the police approached, Derek stood up. He was ordered to remove his hands from the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt, but before he could do so he was hit by a Taser shock – the first of three he received in quick succession.

Repeatedly ordered to remove his hands, Derek protested that he couldn't – which is to be expected, since a Taser hit induces temporary paralysis. He also begged the police to get the kids out of the line of fire, which they didn't. After the second Taser blast, Derek slumped to his side and vomited into a flower bed.

"According to the witnesses, there was a police officer standing in that flower bed when Derek threw up," Neuberger told me. "He was close enough to reach over and handcuff Derek, as were several others. None of them made any effort to do so."

The use of the Taser in such circumstances was unnecessary and forbidden by the Wilmington Police Department's official guidelines, Neuberger observes.

"The manual makes it clear that the Taser is not to be used on a non-resisting suspect," he points out. "Derek wasn't resisting arrest, or resisting in any way. In fact, at this point there had been no attempt to arrest him -- the police hadn't even identified themselves."

After Derek was hit by the Taser for the third time, one of the officers within arm's reach of Derek -- identified in the suit as Wilmington Police Lt. William Browne -- shot Derek three times in the chest with .40-caliber rounds, killing him.


No parent should ever have to bury a child: Derek Hale's mother Connie at the scene of his murder in Wilmington, Delaware.

Following the March 23 press conference announcing the lawsuit (among those in attendance were some of Derek's Pagan buddies), Neuberger, along with Derek's widow Elaine and mother Connie, visited the crime scene. All of them were amazed at the tiny, cramped space in which the shooting took place.

"I'm fairly tall -- I used to play basketball back in the day -- and I could reach from the sidewalk to where Derek was sitting," Neuberger declares. "I can't see how it would have been difficult for 8-12 police officers to seize and arrest Derek without shots being fired, if they had cause to arrest him."

As for Elaine and Derek's stepchildren (he also had a young daughter named Dakota, who lives in North Carolina), "They're just wrecked," Neuberger reports. The same is true of Sandra and her kids, "who saw the whole thing take place right in front of them -- her daughter was right behind Derek."

For Derek's loved ones it didn't help matters at all that the Delaware State Police, in the interests of post-killing spin control, lied to the public about Derek's purported role in the alleged criminal conspiracy, and induced Virginia State Police to conduct a search of the Hale home. This was done as yet another exercise in spin-control growing out of an investigation that may have been little more than a glorified publicity stunt.

Just days before he was killed, Derek and Elaine celebrated their first wedding anniversary in their home in Manassas. Derek's lifeless body now rests in the Quantico National Cemetery, where it was interred with military honors last November.


Sgt. Hale in Iraq with a Marine buddy. (Hale family photo courtesy of Stephen Neuberger.)

And this brings up yet another question: What, if anything, has the Marine Corps done to promote an objective investigation of the unnecessary death of Sergeant Derek J. Hale?




If you want to help ... I've previously mentioned that a legal defense fund has been set up to help pay the incidental costs of the Derek Hale lawsuit (the attorneys have waived their fees):

The Derek Hale Defense Fund
c/o Dr. David Crowe
1736 Broadway
Cape Girardeau, MO 63701

According to Derek's obituary, a separate memorial fund has been established to help Derek's family:

Derek Hale Memorial
c/o Beverly at Alliance Bank
P.O. Box 1458
Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63702.

Don' t forget to visit The Right Source at least once a day -- and make sure to tell your friends!

Get The Kiddie-Cuffs, or Police State Pedagogy (UPDATED)

“Do you think this is the first 6-year-old we've arrested?”

This comment by Avon Park, Florida Police Chief Frank Mercurio to New York Times columnist Bob Herbert easily qualifies as the pull-quote of the day, perhaps of the month. Chief Mercurio was justifying the arrest -- complete with handcuffing, fingerprinting, and a mug-shot – of Desre'e Watson, who was eventually charged with a felony (as well as a few misdemeanors) after disturbing her kindergarten class.

“The student became violent,” Mercurio told Herbert. “She was yelling, screaming – just being uncontrollable. Defiant.” Herbert recalls wondering if he'd somehow materialized inside a “Saturday Night Live” sketch (during one of its better years – say, circa 1981) as Mercurio explained the mechanics of applying police restraints to a tiny child: “You can't handcuff them on their wrists because their wrists are too small, so you have to handcuff them up by their biceps.”

I fully expect that someone in the large and growing community of police state profiteers will recognize this market lacuna and produce a line of Kiddie-Cuffs (tm) – perhaps in an assortment of bright, cheerful colors. The incident involving Desre'e Watson isn't unique, after all.

Chelsea Fraser (center) flanked by a news reporter (l) and her mother, Diana Silva

Last week, 13-year-old Brooklyn middle school student Chelsea Fraser was arrested and dragged away in handcuffs for the purported crime of writing “OK” on her desk. She was seized by four police officers, made to remove her belt, cuffed behind her back, and frog-marched out of the school in front of her friends. Three other students, all boys, were arrested the same day and charged with criminal vandalism for plastering the classroom wall with stickers.

Even if one assumes that the boys were out of control, it seems more than a bit disproportionate to handcuff a student for writing on her desk

Chelsea was taken to the local Precinct station house and detained for three hours, spending most of that time handcuffed to a pole.

Roughly a month ago, seven-year-old Baltimore resident Gerard Mungo Jr. was sitting on his dirt bike (with the motor off) on a sidewalk waiting for his father to come home. He was causing no harm and doing nothing to disrupt the neighborhood. Unfortunately, a policeman wandered by and, faster than you can say “Candygram for Mungo!” the officer grabbed the child by the neck and pulled him off the bike. The seven-year-old was handcuffed and taken downtown for fingerprinting and a mug shot. He was reportedly handcuffed to a bench for two hours.

Despite the fact that the bike's motor wasn't running, Gerard was charged with operating a dirt bike on the city sidewalks.

The story gets worse from here.

A few days after Gerard's arrest, which quickly became a huge local scandal, police arrested his mother, Lakisa Dinkins. Following her son's ordeal, Dinkins vehemently criticized the police in media interviews and began to organize protest rallies. After a rally held the Saturday following Gerard's arrest, Dinkins was visiting her sister's home when her 18-year-old nephew, in a panic, bolted into the house, claiming that he was being chased by a robber.

The armed man turned out to be an undercover narcotics officer, who – with a partner's help – forced his way into the house. One officer held a gun to the head of Dinkins' older son, who is 14. Per her account, Dinkins was seized and arrested once she was identified as Gerard's mother: "I told him to get his hands off.... Once they realized who I was, they took action."

Although the police claimed to have seen Dinkins' nephew participating in a drug deal, no drugs were found in the house – and she was the only one arrested. She was released shortly thereafter, and prosecutors determined that the alleged drug offense had been “abated by arrest,” reported police spokesman Matt Jablow. This means, as the Baltimore Sun helpfully notes, that “police had probable cause to arrest her but that no more jail time was warranted.”

A more honest rendering would be this: Dinkins was arrested and detained for no reason, most likely as an act of petty retaliation for criticizing the police.

How did we become a country in which it's becoming common to treat misbehaving children as if they were hardcore offenders? One reason, I suspect, is the “Overkill” mentality now common to law enforcement, a side-effect of militarizing the police: Much of the rising generation of law enforcement officers see the civilian population as an enemy to be subdued, as opposed to fellow citizens whose rights are to be respected and protected.

A related factor is an attitude displayed to me during an interview with influential criminologist Gene Stephens of the University of South Carolina more than a decade ago.

Stephens, who has been active in the World Future Society, has also helped train both federal and local law enforcement. Speaking to me shortly after the 1994 congressional election, which was seen (incorrectly, alas) as a repudiation of big, intrusive government, he explained to me that the roots of our society's crime problem are found in our cultural antipathy to authority: We don't like having the government tell us what to do, which means that we're all criminals.

“It's not a question of `us versus them'; it's us -- we're all criminals,” Stephens told me. This is because "of the way in which people are socialized in this country. The rite of passage for an adolescent is to break the law, or defy authority. As the last election shows, we don't like government, we don't like authority, and we don't like being told what to do."

There is, of course, a vast and important difference between authority – limited, delegated, revocable power granted for specific purposes – and power; as a statist, Stephens either ignores or simply cannot understand that critical distinction. And any American worthy of the name is going to rebel when government claims the power to tell us “what to do,” since our entire system is based on exactly the opposite premise.

Of course, I could be wrong. There could be some gnostic, cryptic subtext to phrases such as “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it....”

Incidents of the sort recounted above illustrate convincingly that the powers of State coercion are in the hands of people who are not only ignorant but contemptuous of the principles explained in the letter our ancestors sent to King George III in July 1776. Their role, as they see it, is to tell us “what to do,” and make us do it, using whatever force may be necessary – even when it is deployed pitilessly against puzzled and terrified six-year-old children.

UPDATE

In case anyone's interested, you can read the arrest report here.