There is no situation that cannot be made instantly and
immeasurably worse through police intervention. A splendid illustration of this
principle is found in a recent ruling from the the
Arkansas Court of Appeals.
According to the court, police were entitled to arrest,
taze, and beat a teenager who had done nothing more sinister than speak to his
mother on the street in front of their home. A police officer accosted the
young man – who, as a juvenile, is identified only by the initials “R.R.” -- after
he saw him approaching a woman who was walking a dog.
The officer, who belongs to a social cohort of people who
are distinguished primarily by their timidity, claimed that he was “concerned
for the woman’s safety.” His fears should have been allayed when it was
established that the woman was the teenager’s mother.
If the cop had been an actual peace officer, he would have
tipped his hat and left. But he was a law enforcer – that is, someone through
whose dark ministrations innocent people are transformed into “criminals” – and
so he insisted on detaining and interrogating the entirely harmless youngster. To
that end he sent for “backup,” and a thugscrum soon coalesced around the
puzzled and terrified teen.
As the Court of Appeals summarizes, R.R. was “tasered
several times, removed from the backseat [of a police vehicle], thrown to the
ground, tasered again, kicked, handcuffed, and arrested.” All of this was done
because the young man “moved around and wrestled around while the officers held
him on the ground, making it difficult for the officers to put the cuffs on
him.”
Because he didn’t permit himself to be shackled like a slave
in front of his own home because he had been seen speaking to his mother, the
teenager committed the supposed crime of “refusing to submit to arrest.”
The trial court in the case also acknowledged that the
victim was “a fine young man, an excellent student, and active in sports, clubs
and church activities.” The judge reportedly expressed dismay that “an innocent
situation … just completely got out of hand” – which is, once again, the
familiar and entirely predictable outcome when members of the State’s
enforcement caste materialize. Despite these superficial expressions of regret,
the Judge sentenced the victim to serve one day in detention – thereby leaving
him with a criminal record because he had been on the receiving end of a state-aggravated
assault.
Like most communities in its section of the country, Pope
County, Arkansas, where that incident occurred, is thickly populated with
Evangelical Christians, whose numbers probably include most elected officials,
prosecutors, judges, and police officers. At some point in Sunday School they
probably read the 22nd
chapter of the Book of Acts, which describes how the Apostle Paul, accused of
disturbing the peace, was arrested by Roman occupation soldiers and taken to a
local barracks to be questioned under scourging.
As
the interrogator was preparing to whip the apostle, Paul pointed out to the
centurion in charge that it was illegal to flog a Roman citizen unless he had
been tried and convicted of a crime. This objection caused the interrogator to
desist immediately, and prompted the officer in command to express the fear
that he could face criminal charges because he had chained – that is,
handcuffed – a Roman citizen.
Every
day in this supposedly free country, police commit an act that was impermissible for
their antecedents in imperial Rome: In the name of “officer safety,” they handcuff American citizens who are not criminal
suspects while conducting investigations. Police also routinely inflict summary
punishment – using batons, Tasers, pepper spray, or other means – against those
who resist being detained without cause. Within a few years police will have at
their disposal handcuffs that can impart electrical shocks to detainees.
In
an 1894 essay
published by The Strand
Magazine, Inspector Maurice Moser of Scotland Yard wrote that the
earliest historical mention of handcuffs was in the fourth century B.C., “when
soldiers of a conquering Greek army found among the baggage of the routed
Carthaginians several chariots full of handcuffs, which had been held ready in
confident anticipation of a multitude of prisoners.”
“My
personal experience of handcuffs is small, because I dislike them,” wrote Inspector
Moser of the restraints. He pointed out that in Belgium, which at the time was
the seat of a substantial empire, “the use of handcuffs by police is entirely
forbidden.”
Like
most police officers of his era, Moser was a relatively civilized man who found
the act of shackling another human being to be barbarous and punitive. Handcuffing
a human being certainly doesn’t enhance the safety of the person being
restrained. Nor does it relieve police anxieties about the all-encompassing threat
to that most sacred of considerations, “officer safety.” Witness the large and
ever-growing number of cases in which officers – almost always in the plural,
of course – beat, taze,
pepper-spray,
and even shoot
suspects who have already been handcuffed.
Last
summer, police in Aurora, Colorado indiscriminately handcuffed and
detained scores of people for the space of more than four hours following
an armed robbery at a branch of Wells Fargo bank.
According
to Officer Frank Fania, drivers and passengers in the vicinity “were
handcuffed, then were told what was going on and were asked for permission to search
the car. They all granted permission, and once nothing was found in their cars,
they were un-handcuffed.”
Aurora, Colorado, June 2012. |
Once
the victims were handcuffed, of course, they had no choice but to grant “permission”
for their abductors to paw through their vehicles. What if they had withheld consent?
What if they had refused to endure the indignity and injury of being handcuffed
in the first place?
Fania
insisted that the mass arrests were necessary and justified because it was a
“unique” situation. But it’s more honestly described as mass application of the
standard approach to “protective” detention of individuals who are not criminal
suspects.
Owing
to the semantic deviousness of police and prosecutors, citizens are
increasingly unsure of their status when they are accosted by police: Are they
under arrest, or subject to “investigatory detention”? If the citizen
isn’t formally under arrest, is he free to leave? Can police draw their guns
and threaten a citizen with lethal force if he is not formally under arrest?
That
last question has been addressed in a recent ruling by Louisiana’s Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeal, which held that those circumstances do not constitute
a formal arrest – at least when the legitimacy of that arrest is questioned by
the defendant.
On
June 8, 2010, Robert Carter of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana parked outside a
convenience store. Acting on a tip from a snitch that Carter would soon arrive
at the location to conduct a drug deal, two undercover detectives had kept the
lot under surveillance. After Carter parked his car, the detectives used their
unmarked vehicles to cut off his escape and approached him with guns drawn.
In
a panic, Carter threw his car into reverse, severely damaging the unmarked car
behind him.
During
his bench trial, Carter claimed that the arrival of two armed men – one of whom
admitted in testimony that they didn’t clearly identify themselves as police –
made him fear for his life. After being convicted of felony malicious property
damage, Carter – a second offender – was sentenced to 20 years in prison. On
appeal, Carter insisted that the arrest was unlawful.
In
a remarkable achievement in judicial sophistry, the appeals court ruled that what it called an
“investigative detention” is not an arrest – while insisting that Carter
had no right to leave what the trial judge called “the arrested place [where]
he’s supposed to remain.” In practical terms this means that cops are permitted
to detain any citizen at gunpoint without such an action qualifying as an
“arrest” – and therefore being subject to the restrictions supposedly
guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth amendments. Once the individual is detained,
he can be shackled at the discretion of the officer – and then beaten, jailed,
and prosecuted if he objects.
The
act of handcuffing another human being is a serious injury. When not done to
restrain someone who has actually harmed another human being, handcuffing is a
morally impermissible form of aggressive violence. It is meant to be a tangible
demonstration of superiority that requires the victim to submit to the supposed
authority of the aggressor. It is designed and intended to humiliate the victim.
This is why it is done even to six-year-old
inmates of government
schools who are dragged
away by police officers, nonagenarians
who are abducted at gunpoint for neglecting to pay traffic tickets, or pregnant
female inmates who are chained while giving birth.
This
is also why police who are charged with crimes are often spared being
handcuffed out of “professional courtesy” – which in some cases has
actually imperiled the arresting officer.
In
the American Soyuz, any of us, at the
whim of an armed stranger in a government-issued costume, can find himself
being treated in the same way that the Carthaginians treated captured prisoners
of war. At least Carthaginian soldiers didn’t insult the intelligence of their
victims by insisting that they were being shackled for their own “protection.”
We would be very grateful for anything you can provide to help keep Pro Libertate on-line. Thank you so much!
5 comments:
"Once the victims were handcuffed, of course, they had no choice but to grant “permission” for their abductors to paw through their vehicles. What if they had withheld consent?"
Then they would have met the local magic dog. The four-legged shaman would have preformed a ritual walk around each vehicle before giving the enforcers permission to search. It's possible the enforcers would be extra destructive in their search, to teach the proles a lesson.
"What if they had refused to endure the indignity and injury of being handcuffed in the first place?"
That would be when they meet the electric whip and an eyeful of pepper. Followed by mass arrest for one of the bs charges that translate as 'contempt of cop'. If enough arrestees were respectable-looking types, it may have prompted national outrage and calls for reform. More likely, talking heads on the news would make it sound like a bunch of occupy kids got arrested.
Thank you for your work, Will. Knowledge is power, and if we know how the pigs are behaving, we can act appropriately. I believe that the only way we are going to stop this police abuse is to make it a crime for a cop to arrest or search without a warrant, and then, far more importantly, figure out a way to pry the judges positions out of the hands of the politicians.
One way that I am thinking of is to require all who want to practice law in the state, and who have passed the bar exam, to randomly serve "judge duty". Judge duty would be similar to jury duty, except only lawyers would be subject to it. A lawyer selected (at random as in jury duty) for judge duty would serve a year on the court as a judge, and would receive compensation equivalent to his last year's salary. A judge would only serve one year, and be ineligible to serve for another term of years (four? five?) All judge positions would be filled in this manner. Prosecutors and lawyers who are employed by government would be exempt.
Let's see a cop try to sneak a case like this past a practiced defense attorney who has been randomly chosen to be the judge in this case.
I do hope everyone reading this realizes, it WILL CONTNUE until either WE kill THEM, or WE are dead.
Long past time to retaliate. Our Revolution started over less.
Why?
This is why market anarchists find minarchists naive: you're making up some ptolemaic system to try and get the praetors judged for the illegal acts they commited.
"....Then they would have met the local magic dog"
LOL! That's a keeper. This is that mystical canine gifted with psychic powers and the neural link with the one handling the transmitter leash.
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