Ending Property Rights: What "Add the Words" Really Means

New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez was a regular customer of Santa Fe hair stylist Antonio Darden. About two years ago, Darden decided that he would no longer accept the Governor as a client because of her public support for the conventional definition of marriage as a monogamous, heterosexual arrangement. This was a perfectly legitimate exercise of Daren's absolute property right as the owner of his business.

Six years earlier, New Mexico resident Elaine Huguenin, who runs a photography business, declined a request to photograph a commitment ceremony between two women. In doing so, Mrs. Huguenin broke no contract, violated no promise, and didn't defraud anybody. 

Like Darden, Mrs. Huguenin exercised her absolute property right as a business owner, which includes the unqualified freedom to accept or reject clients at her sole discretion. Darden was publicly praised for his decision. Huguenin was prosecuted. 

Rather than simply finding another photographer willing to take their business, the aggrieved women who had contacted Huguenin filed a complaint with a bureaucratic body calling itself the Human Rights Commission, which is more accurately described as the state's Social Relations Soviet. The agency ruled that Huguenin had committed an act of “sexual orientation discrimination” and imposed a fine of nearly $7,000. Part of that sum went to the plaintiffs. By then they had who found another photographer willing to make a record of their ceremony, which was performed by a female cleric in Taos.

The material outcome of that ruling – which was upheld by the New Mexico State Supreme Court – was not only to punish Mrs. Huguenin for peacefully exercising exactly the same right that Mr. Darden had invoked, but to force her to pay for a ceremony that embodied a religious view she does not share. As Thomas Jefferson would summarize the affair, Mrs. Huguenin and her husband (and business partner) were compelled “to furnish contributions of money to pay for the propagation of opinions” that violated their principles, an official action Jefferson described as “sinful and tyrannical.”

Not surprisingly, the Huguenin case may be headed to the US Supreme Court. The petition filed on behalf of her business, Elane Photography, lays great emphasis on the offenses committed by the government of New Mexico against rights supposedly guaranteed by the First Amendment – freedom of speech (including protection against compelled speech) and freedom of religion. 

The elemental question in this case, however, is a question of property rights and equal protection: Why can a gay hairdresser refuse business on the basis of the potential client's views of “same-sex” marriage, while a Christian wedding photographer is punished for using her property rights to withhold approval of that practice?

The answer to that question, in policy terms, is this: Eleven years ago, the State of New Mexico “Added the Words” – that is, it amended its Human Rights Act to include “sexual orientation” among the “protected classes of people” against whom discrimination would not be permitted.

Remember that phrase, “Add the words”; we’ll return to it shortly. 

In September 2006, Vanessa Willock sent an e-mail to Elane Huguenin inquiring about her services:

“We are researching potential photographers for our commitment ceremony.... This is a same-gender ceremony. If you are open to helping us celebrate our day we'd like to receive pricing information.”

Were this a civilized society, that message would have been seen as an invitation that could be accepted or declined at the choice of the recipient. Acting on the mistaken assumption that she was dealing with a peer and potential client, rather than someone assigned to a “specially protected class,” Mrs. Huguenin dispatched a polite reply: “As a company, we photograph traditional weddings, engagements, seniors, and several other things such as political photographs and singer's portfolios.”

“I'm a bit confused,” Willock stated in her follow-up email, somewhat disingenuously. “Are you saying that your company does not offer your photography to same-sex couples?”

“Sorry if our response was a confusing one,” Mrs. Huguenin said in her forthright reply. “Yes, you are correct in saying we do not photograph same-sex weddings, but again, thanks for checking out our site! Have a great day.”

According to Willock, whose sense of privilege appears to be as over-developed as her capacity for pointless drama, Huguenin's candid but friendly response left her “shocked, angered and saddened,” as well as “fearful, because she considered the opposition to same-sex to be so blatant.”  In addition to being alarmed by fact that somebody in New Mexico disagreed with her views, Willock interpreted Hugein's statement – which, it should be noted, said nothing about the reasons for her company's policy – was “an expression of hatred.”

On the basis of nothing she did or said, and motives imputed to her by a stranger who had never met her, Elane Huguenin was designated a Thought Criminal. 

A few weeks later, Willock's partner – following what has become the standard entrapment procedure in “hate crimes” cases of this sort – committed wire fraud by sending a bogus email inquiry to Elane Photography inquiring about services at a traditional wedding. This act of deception was an exercise in privileged malice, and a criminal conspiracy: The intent was to inflict a financial injury on someone who had peacefully exercised her unqualified right to withhold participation in a proposed business relationship.

Under New Mexico's “Human Rights Act” (NMHRA), however, Elane Huguenin supposedly has a legal and moral duty to surrender her property rights when approached by someone who numbered among what the state Supreme Court calls “protected classes of people.” 

In fact, according to the court, the entire purpose of the NMHRA is “to promote the equal rights of people within certain specified classes”; in practice, this nullifies the principle of equal protection for those not clothed in the government's favor. This is why a gay hairdresser can employ the issue of “same-sex marriage” to screen his client list, but a Christian photographer cannot do likewise.

Huguenin's “asserted right not to serve same-sex couples directly conflicts with Willock's right [under the NMHRA] to obtain goods and services from a public accommodation without discrimination on the basis of her sexual orientation,” the court piously pretends. However, there is no conflict, unless we assume that Willock had a property right in Huguenin's service – in other words, that when Willock approached Huguenin, the prospective client had the “right” to compel the photographer to serve her.

Slavery and involuntary servitude aren't identical, but both are prohibited by law in this country. Nevertheless, they are tolerated, and even required, by the Regime when those controlling it consider this to be necessary.

A slave is somebody who has no right to say “no” – to withhold his or her consent to a transaction, or to refuse participation in a proposed undertaking. Slaves do not own themselves or any property they acquire. Everything they are and have may be seized and employed to serve the will of others. This is the ineluctable product of government policies that assign some people to “specially protected classes.” Once that principle is established, any limits on impositions made in its name are provisional and fleeting.

Those who support coercive fine-tuning of social and commercial arrangements assume that rights can be “balanced” by bureaucrats blessed with infinite insight and bottomless wisdom. But the only way rights can actually be balanced is to recognize, and follow, three principles: 1) All rights are property rights; 2) property rights are absolute; and 3) aggression is always morally wrong and cannot be permitted. 

In its continuing campaign to re-indoctrinate wavering statists who are tempted by individualist heresies, Salon recently published an essay assailing libertarian views regarding anti-discrimination measures. In this case, Salon focused on a proposed measure in Kansas (which was subsequently defeated) that would recognize the right of business owners not to accept patronage from homosexual couples. 

The purported defects in this proposal were illustrated by a scenario in which a restaurant owner, offended by a group of customers who gathered to celebrate a same-sex wedding, ordered them to leave. Rather than doing so the celebrants dug in their heels to protest the owner's unacceptable political views. This prompted the owner to call the police, who – in Salon's rendering – were given the choice of either enforcing the owner's prejudices, or protecting the supposed rights of the now-unwelcome customers to be free from “discrimination.”

"Since it is the state that is ultimately tasked to bring out the violent enforcers who effectuate the discriminating intents of public accommodations providers, the state literally cannot get out of the way,” the homily concludes, reverently invoking the prophet of the divine totalitarian state: “As Vladimir Lenin once retorted, the question is not whether you support freedom or not; rather, the question is freedom `for whom? To do what?'”

This is only two-thirds of the Leninist formula, under which the chief political question is: “Freedom for whom to do what to whom.” As long as the “who” in that equation belongs to a “specially protected” class, the “what” is morally inconsequential – whether it is expropriation, the imposition of involuntary servitude, or physical liquidation.

Collectivism is an exercise in identity politics. For those who understand and cherish individual liberty – which means unconditional property rights – matters of identity are immaterial: What is being done, not who is doing it or to whom, is the chief concern. If the “what” is aggression, it is always morally wrong and cannot be countenanced.

In the case described by Salon, customers who ignore a request to leave are trespassing, thereby aggressively violating the business owner's property rights. If they refuse to leave peacefully, the owner is morally entitled to use defensive force to evict them, should this prove necessary. 

If we are going to countenance the existence of a political government, its only legitimate function would be to protect property rights against aggression. This would mean helping the business owner deal with intransigent trespassers, just as it would mean coming to the aid of a gay business owner dealing with a threat to his property rights. 

As I’ve noted before, “anti-discrimination” measures institutionalize criminal aggression against property rights. This is compellingly explained in Our Secret Constitution: How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy, by George P. Fletcher, a Marxist Columbia University School of Law professor who supports this arrangement.

Since the Union’s victory in the War Between the States, Fletcher contends, the reconfigured United States has been ruled through a “secret constitution” that codifies an entirely different “consensus” than the original written document – one rooted in open-ended and, in principle, unlimited government aggression against the citizenry. 

“The heart of the new consensus is that the federal government, victorious in warfare, must continue its aggressive intervention in the lives of its citizens,” writes Fletcher.  In the original concept, individual liberty was protected (at least, in theory) by limiting government involvement in property rights and private life. However, Fletcher insists, “the liberty that comes to the fore in the intended postbellum constitutional order and under the Secret Constitution requires the intervention of government. Liberty is born in the state's assertion of responsibility to oversee and prevent relationships of oppression.” (Emphasis added.) 

This is a precise application of Lenin's “who/whom” dichotomy – and an explicit endorsement of Lenin's ruling formula, under which government exercises “power without limit, resting directly on force.”

The purpose of “Human Rights Acts” like the one used against Elane Huguenin is to define “relationships of oppression” in order to decide who gets to enlist state aggression against whom. If Vanessa Willcock had made her email inquiry to Elane Photography in 2003, and been offended by the reply, she probably would have been able to arrange her commitment ceremony – but she wouldn’t have been able to inflict unconscionable misery on Mrs. Huguenin as punishment for disagreeing with her. That’s because prior to that year, Willcock was not a member of a “specially protected class”; she received that status because the state legislature decided to “add the words.”

Here in Idaho for several years, a well-funded and well-organized pressure campaign calling itself “Add the Words” has been demanding that the Idaho Human Rights Act likewise inscribe “sexual orientation” among the protected categories. Rather than “adding the words,” the legislature should delete the law and reinvigorate the principle of equal protection of property rights. That isn’t going to happen, of course. 

During the current legislative session, protesters from the “Add the Words” movement have thrown tantrums in the State Capitol and held vigils state-wide, where they can bask in their mutually-reinforced, self-absorbed sanctimony while indulging their fantasies of righteous victimhood. Former Republican Governor Phil Batt, who wrote the 1969 Human Rights Act, has endorsed the “Add the Words” campaign.

“I would like to have somebody explain to me who is going to be harmed by adding the words to our civil rights statutes,” Batt groused in an Idaho Statesman op-ed column. “Oh, I forgot – that might hurt the feelings of gay-bashers.”

Elane Huguenin didn’t bash anybody, and the injuries she suffered at the hands of New Mexico’s Tolerance Cheka were much more substantial than mere hurt feelings. But Batt and people of his totalitarian persuasion aren’t interested in hearing from people like Huguenin; they’re the “whom,” rather than the “who,” after all. 

Update: Salon's Casual Totalitarianism 

In the most recent in its continuing series of totalitarian parables, Salon published an essay by Brian Beutler making use of a familiar trope: An American expat creates a colony on an uninhabited island, and decides to "start from scratch." 

Displaying the impoverished imagination that typifies statist thinking, Beutler assumes that the "new" society would inevitably recreate the existing system, which, after all, is a product of irresistible historical forces and embodies the best of all possible worlds. This means that "starting from scratch" must include "government subsidy" for hospitals and schools, and a ruling authority that dispenses "privileges" as it sees fit. And the ruler of this "new" society -- presumably, the reader to whom the parable is directed -- will wind up "balancing" rights and assigning "privileges" according to the state's "compelling interest." This is because the state encompasses all social activity -- or, as Mussolini summarized the matter in his familiar totalitarian formula: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." 

In matters of discrimination, the state will countenance the limited exercise of discretion by people who operate businesses over such matters as customer decorum ("No shoes, no shirt, no service"), or allowing them to refuse to conduct business with members of groups that have earned society's disfavor, such as Klansmen. But this is a privilege to be defined by those operating the state, not a property right exercised by the business owner.

As a result, Beutler informs the reader, "you’ve decided that the state has a compelling interest in protecting LGBT people from discrimination that doesn’t extend to Klansmen or people who go shirtless. You will use state power to remove a Klansman from the store if he won’t leave voluntarily, and simultaneously use state power to make sure you serve the same-sex couple. And there’s no contradiction here" -- because, of course, the question is "who does what to whom," with the state identifying the "who" and "whom" in that equation. 

"Store owners need to have a great deal of control over their properties — otherwise they won’t be able to run their businesses — but they can’t have complete control, or else you’ll be compelled to enforce broadly discriminatory rules, and you won’t do that," Buetler concludes, tacitly -- and, for all I know, ignorantly -- embracing the fascist economic model in which private "ownership" of property is graciously permitted, but only to achieve state-ordained outcomes. 

This little exercise in casual totalitarianism, like everything else Salon has recently published in the subject of individual liberty and discrimination, is intended to reassure wavering believers, not to persuade those who don't belong to the cult of the state.

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Making Cop-Worship Mandatory

  

“Get on the ground! Get on the ground!”

That demand is spat by police into the face of thousands of people every day in this country, many – perhaps most -- of whom have neither been caught in a criminal act nor have been named on an arrest warrant. The refrain is recited by home invaders in paramilitary garb after they have kicked in a door, usually as a follow-up to an attack with a flash-bang grenade. 

It is often performed as a prelude to Taser strikes, baton blows, or other punitive violence used against people who refuse to render immediate and unqualified obedience.

Once the victim is forced to the ground, the familiar liturgy continues as the assailants chant “Stop resisting! Stop resisting!” in counterpoint to punches, kicks, and other varieties of state-licensed criminal violence. 

This exercise, we are told, is carried out in the service of that most important of all considerations, “Officer Safety.” It is true that the use of such methods is of great practical value to the privileged aggressors in government-issued attire.

However, there is a sacramental function being performed here, as well: When a police officer – a carnal emissary of the divine state, an accredited member of its punitive priesthood -- orders a citizen to prostrate himself, he is, quite literally, demanding worship. 

The Greek word translated as “worship” in the New Testament is proskuneo; it is related to such English words as “prostrate” and “prone.” 

The typical gesture referred to by that term involves placing one’s self face-down on the ground: “…. And when I, John, saw these things, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel…. Then saith he unto me, ‘See thou do it not: For I am thy fellowservant…. Worship God.” (Rev. 22:8-9) 

For both Christian and Jewish believers, this act was appropriate only when directed at God. This is why three refractory Hebrew youths in Babylonian captivity refused King Nebuchadnezzar’s command that they “fall to the ground” as an act of worship before an idol of the king’s construction, even when death was prescribed as punishment for this act of resistance (Daniel 3:6). 

Prostration in prayer and worship is widely practiced in many faith traditions today – both Catholic and Protestant Christianity, in addition to Judaism and Islam. For believers, this is done as a display of complete submission and unqualified surrender to the only Being who has the right to require it from us. 

Most people of faith believe that refusal to render such worship is a matter for God to deal with in His good time. This isn’t true for the State’s armed emissaries, who respond to such impiety in much the same way that Nebuchadnezzar did: Refusal to prostrate one’s self at the command of a government functionary is cause for summary punishment, often of the lethal variety. 

Until the late 1980s, it was unusual for police to require such worship from citizens. The 1991 Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department describes how elements of the LAPD had made it a common practice to order black and Hispanic men to “prone out” during ordinary traffic stops and similar encounters.

“The `prone-out’ position is a police control tactic that requires the suspect first to kneel, and then lie flat on his stomach, with his arms spread from his sides or his hands behind his back,” stated the report. “The Commission received numerous accounts of incidents involving African-American or Latino men stopped for traffic infractions, who were `proned-out’ under circumstances that did not present any risk of harm to the officers and that did not involve a warrant.” 

One officer explained to the Commission that the use of the “prone-out” was “pretty routine” as a way of intimidating the targeted public and imposing a proper attitude of contrite submissiveness. According to that officer, “aggression and force are the only things these people understand.” 

This is why such people must be ordered to prostrate themselves before the Holy State and its anointed representatives – and then beaten into submission and caged if they resist. With evangelistic zeal, police have spread this gospel at gunpoint from inner-city neighborhoods in Los Angeles to the farthest reaches of rural and suburban America. 

Recently in the town of Moore, Oklahoma, five of the State’s purveyors of sacred violence ministered so vigorously to a middle-aged man named Luis Rodriguez that he was relieved of this life’s sorry burdens. 

Rodriguez had tried to intercede during a quarrel between his wife and daughter. This was brought to the attention of several police officers who were providing “Security” at the theater. When one of the strangers butted into the affair, Rodriguez politely explained that it was a family matter and ordered the intruder to mind his own business. 

Rather than obeying that lawful order, the officer – aided by three and eventually four of his comrades – escalated the affair, demanding identification, attempting to shackle and detain the innocent man, and finally taking him to the ground and killing him, most likely through prolonged positional asphyxia. 

Rodriguez was never suspected or accused of a crime. He was killed – in a fashion deemed “appropriate” by the local police chief – because he dared to withhold the act of worship-through-submission demanded of him. 

Police command, and expect us to obey, on the assumption that what liberties we enjoy are theirs to dispense, or dispense with, at whim – and that permitting defiance of “lawful” commands would cause society to unravel. 

In his novel Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad captured this mindset by allowing us a glimpse into the thoughts of a Minister of State in Czarist Russia:  “The thought of liberty has never existed in the Act of the Creator. From the multitude of men’s counsel nothing could come but revolt and disorder; and revolt and disorder in a world created for obedience and stability is sin.”

A very similar perspective was presented by an autocratic figure in a more recent work of popular fiction: “It’s the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation…. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.”

There is only One before whom I will ever kneel. Others might eventually succeed in forcing me to the ground, but I’ll never prostrate myself before them of my volition. 

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Chief Mark McBride: The Crime Lord of Idaho Falls

The Idaho Falls Police Department: What we think we do...

“I don’t know why there would be [one],” replied Idaho Falls Police Chief Mark McBride when asked if his department would apologize to Victor and Delosanto Madrigal and their family. “Just because a person is found not guilty doesn’t mean the officers were wrong.”

Actually, Chief McBride, that is precisely what this acquittal means, given that the charges in question were contrived by your officers to justify their own criminal behavior – and the only “evidence” supporting them was police testimony that the jury correctly determined to be entirely implausible, if not outright perjury. 

The Madrigal family, which suffered greatly as a result of the privileged criminality of the IFPD, has filed notice of a $279,500 lawsuit against McBride’s department.

The Madrigal brothers, along with their elderly mother, Maria; a pregnant mother named Letty Hernandez, and a next-door neighbor, were criminally assaulted by members of McBride’s department during a full-fledged police riot last August 31. The police invaded the Madrigal home following a noise complaint called in by a distant neighbor who had a long history of hostility toward the family. This occurred at the end of a child’s birthday party that was held on a Saturday evening during the Labor Day weekend. 

None of the immediate neighbors complained about the noise. Chantal Meek, whose home abuts the Madrigals’ house, later told the local newspaper that she wasn’t at all disturbed by the birthday party. She was severely perturbed, however, after two Idaho Falls Police Officers thrust their way into her home with guns drawn. The officers, who had been summoned by a call for “backup,” went to the wrong address. That home invasion was part of a general mobilization in which at least a dozen police vehicles were dispatched to shut down the entire block.

 

... and what we really do.

All of this happened, once again, because of a noise complaint phoned in by someone who lived a block and a half away. 

Rather than knocking on the Madrigals’ front door and politely requesting that the family hold it down – which is how civilized people behave – McBride’s minions invaded their back yard and needlessly escalated the encounter. 

As a cellphone video of the incident documented, after being informed that he would receive a citation for “disturbing the peace,” Victor complained about his treatment by the local police. Officer Clark Lund, dispensing with any pretense of professionalism, sneered: “If you don’t like it, you know how to leave.”

Victor and his brother Delosanto (also called Dindo) are natives of the Dominican Republic. They are naturalized, and gainfully employed, citizens of the United States. Lund’s taunt had unmistakable undercurrents of ethnic animosity – an attitude that would become overt once the brothers had been taken to jail. 

After flinging that insult at Victor, Lund announced he was leaving – then called for backup and grabbed his Taser. He turned back and demanded that Victor provide identification. That demand was unlawful; it was a deliberate provocation. Yet Victor moved to the house to obtain his driver’s license. A few seconds later, Lund bellowed, “You’re under arrest” and barged into the home, flinging aside a pregnant woman and tasering Dindo in the back before he and two other officers threw an unresisting Victor to the ground. 

While Victor and Dindo were handcuffed, one of the officers shoved their elderly mother. As Victor instinctively rose to protect her, his head brushed against the arm of Eric Rose, one of the officers restraining him. That act was described as “assault on an officer,” a charge that entailed a potential five-year prison term. Victor was also charged with “resisting and obstructing” and disturbing the peace.

Victor (l.) with his son and daughters.

Earlier this month, a jury quickly acquitted Victor on all counts. Shortly thereafter, Idaho Falls City Attorney Randy Fife dropped all charges against Dindo. 

The tort claim filed on behalf of the Madrigal family – hopefully the first of several that will be generated by the IFPD’s rampage – describes how the officers who kidnapped Victor and Dindo collaborated with the Feds to torment them once they were in jail.

“After the incarceration, Officer Rose … [contacted] federal officials asserting that Mr. Madrigal was possibly an undocumented alien and should be considered for deportation,” recounts the tort claim. This subjected Victor to “unfounded suspicion” and an unwarranted “investigation by the federal government.”

More importantly, it was an act of conscious malice rooted in deliberate dishonesty: Victor Madrigal, as the IFPD knew, has an Idaho driver’s license. Lying in official reports appears to be standard operating procedure at Chief McBride’s department.

Officer Rose lied in his report by claiming that Victor had “head-butted” and “grabbed” him. Under oath, all of the witnesses for the prosecution – that is, the officers who collaborated in the assault and abduction – admitted that Victor was handcuffed and couldn’t have assaulted Rose. 

 

Maria Madrigal.

Officer Lund, the instigator of this episode, “testified at trial that Mr. Madrigal had the right to not provide [his] identification and that such [a] choice by Victor did not constitute obstructing or resisting,” continues the claim. He also admitted that Victor “entered his home and sat on his sofa awaiting the resolution of the events” and “did nothing to stop the officers from completing the investigations.”

Those admissions against interest demonstrate that on the night of August 31, Clark Lund became a serial offender. 

Under Idaho statutes (18-703), Lund committed an “illegal arrest,” a misdemeanor. Every subsequent act of violence Lund committed constituted an “unnecessary assault by an officer” (18-706), an offense punishable by a $5,000 fine and a one-year term behind bars. 

By barging into the home without invitation or cause, Lund committed criminal trespass (18-7008). In the melee Lund precipitated, serious damage was done to the family’s furniture; this was “malicious injury to property” (18-7001). 

The tort claim specifies that $2,000 in property damage was inflicted on the Madrigal home; this means that Lund’s actions were a felony punishable by a term of one to five years, and a $1,000 fine. Since Lund’s objective was an unlawful “taking” – that is, the abduction of Victor Madrigal – his forcible entry was an act of burglary (18-1401), which has a prescribed penalty of one to ten years in prison. 

Under Idaho law, Lund’s act of shoving a pregnant woman constitutes aggravated battery (18-907), an act for which he could face  a term of up to 15 years in prison. (He might also be liable to prosecution under the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”) The act of shooting Dindo with a Taser was an assault with a deadly weapon (18-910), another felony with a 15-year prison term attached to it. 

Lund, Rose, and their comrades conspired to commit kidnapping, defined in Idaho law (18-4501) as seizing or confining a person “without authority of law, to be secretly confined or imprisoned within this state”; and false imprisonment (18-2901), “the unlawful violation of the personal liberty of another.” In the course of that conspiracy, Lund and Rose committed perjury (18-5401), for which they should confront a prison term of one to fourteen years. 

The whole affair was a “riot” (18-6401), as defined in the Idaho Code: “[An] action, use of force or violence, or threat thereof, disturbing the public peace … if accompanied by immediate power of execution, by two (2) or more persons acting together, and without authority of law, which results in (a) physical injury to any person; or (b) damage or destruction to public or private property; or (s) a disturbance of the public peace….”

According to Chief McBride, the conduct of his underlings on that evening was the very distillate of sober professionalism. 

After the Idaho Falls Post-Register published a story in which some of the Madrigal family’s neighbors criticized the actions of the IFPD, Chief McBride was given space on the op-ed page to retail anonymous gossip depicting the family as a menace to the “community.” 

That sophomoric little essay recapitulated the conscious lies composed by McBride’s subordinates, adding, as theatrical filigree, the claim that the anonymous accuser “never reported any of [the Madrigals’] parties because of fear of retaliation.”

Because of the assault on their home, and the resulting negative publicity, the Madrigals were nearly evicted by their landlord. This means that they suffered “public hatred, contempt, [and] ridicule” as a result – in part – of McBride’s dishonest published account of the incident. This comports with the definition of “Criminal Libel” in the Idaho State Code (18-4801), an offense that carries a $5,000 fine and a six-month jail sentence. 

If McBride were a conscientious administrator, he would fire Lund, Rose, and probably several other officers, and file charges against them. If he were any part of a man, he would apologize to the Madrigal family and formally retract the defamatory remarks he published about them. Given the opportunity to do so, he retreated into sullen, adolescent petulance, defiantly owning his libel and the legal responsibility for the crimes committed against that family. 

Mark McBride’s formal title is “chief,” but his actions reveal him to be the capo of a criminal syndicate – one whose actions are going to inflict considerable damage on the tax victim population in Idaho Falls. It would be entirely reasonable for other victims – such as Mrs. Hernandez (who was berated and threatened with arrest when she called the IFPD to protest the abuse she suffered) and Chantal Meeks – to file tort claims of their own. Allowing McBride to remain in his position could prove cost-prohibitive for Idaho Falls. 

Since McBride clearly lacks the dangling anatomy to do what is necessary, the onus is on City Attorney Randy Fife to file charges and prosecute the chief and his fellow perpetrators. In a letter to a local resident, Fife – perhaps unwittingly – acknowledged that there are abundant legal grounds for such a prosecution.

Invoking the pernicious doctrine of “qualified immunity,” Fife informed the resident that “Peace officers do have certain privileges and exemptions directly related to lawful execution of their jobs that other citizens do not have (such as being able to utilize force, carry weapons and other equipment not generally available to the public, being able to view or process information not generally available to the public, etc.) Where they step beyond those activities, they are subject to civil and/or criminal liabilities, prosecutions, and punishments.” (Emphasis added.) 

That “privilege,” note carefully, depends on “lawful execution” of a peace officer’s duties. As Clark Lund admitted on the witness stand, he had no lawful cause to enter the Madrigals’ home, let alone assault and abduct Victor and Dindo. Ergo, that invasion and everything done by Lund and his comrades as a result was criminal. As Fife admitted, “There is no particular immunity or special privilege granted to a peace officer in Idaho if he or she were to commit a crime.” 

Attention, Mr. Fife: The foregoing paragraphs offer a template for the necessary indictments. You’re welcome. 

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