Chief Hite at September 17 City Council meeting. |
“We have historically been a paramilitary organization,” observed
Indianapolis Police Chief Rick Hite during a September 17 City Council meeting.
“And we serve whoever sits in that chair, regardless of race, gender, creed, or
political party. I don’t know what we would do if we had to go to battle, and
we had to make a determination, based on past practices, whether or not we
wanted to go into battle. … I am a soldier in an army. We serve you in that way….
We should not be in a position where we’re going to have to decide how we’re
going to police this city.”
Hite spoke those words in a largely empty chamber, to an
audience drawn entirely from Indianapolis’s political class. True, the budget
meeting was open to the public, which could attend in person, monitor a live
broadcast online, or watch
an archived video of the proceedings later. But few, if any, city residents
were likely to endure the two-and-a-half-hour-long barrage of bureaucratese
that provided the prelude to Hite’s candid invocation of fuhrerprinzip – modified, in this case, to express unqualified
loyalty to an oligarchy, rather than a single “leader.”
The Chief’s statement was a rejoinder to Councilor-at-Large
Leroy Robinson, who had defended his vote in opposition to a $29 million
tax increase to expand the ranks of Hite’s “army” by three hundred officers.
Committing the grievous offense of viewing the proposal from the perspective of
the tax victims, Robinson pointed out that the city government over the past
several years has spent $286 million on what he called “pet projects and
development” – such as expanding the city’s entertainment industry and building
new parking garages. A significant portion of that amount – an
estimated $120 million a year – is diverted through the Tax Increment Financing
Commission (TiF), which is an undisguised slush fund for
crony capitalist ventures.
“It’s kind of unfair and disingenuous to the taxpayers of
this city, [since] that public safety tax wasn’t needed,” Robinson insists. “What
is needed is a permanent change in priorities…. We tend to pay for what we want, and we tax the people for what we need….For years, we’ve been gouging the
taxpayers to pay for our pet projects.” That includes $150 million over the
past decade to subsidize the Indiana Pacers NBA franchise, $15 million to build
an auditorium, and – in one of the oddest corporatist ventures to be found in
the American Midwest -- $6 million to build a Cricket field.
“The taxpayers believe that this is their money,” Robinson
said, committing what must have been perceived as a civic blasphemy. “We have
emotionally pleaded for a tax increase” in order to expand the police
department, continued Robinson, while shaking down the tax slave population for
the benefit of politically favored constituencies.
Robinson appears to be a bright and earnest young man whose
mind is still captive to statist fallacies. This is why he doesn’t seem to
understand that the political class will never
make a priority of addressing the needs of the public from whom they wrest
their subsistence. Supplying needs is the job of the market – and this
emphatically includes “public security,” the provision of which is
decidedly not the true mission of law enforcement.
Although Chief Hite invoked his experience as a “thirty-six-year
veteran of law enforcement” in his response to Robinson, the
councilor actually has superior credentials in that field. He holds a degree
in criminal justice and briefly served as a bailiff in the Marion County court
system before becoming a middle school and high school teacher.
Hite began his law enforcement career as an aide to former
Baltimore Mayor Donald Schaefer, and was appointed to the Baltimore PD, where –
purely on the basis of patronage – he was able to retire after 30 years with
the rank of Lt. Colonel. He managed to do all of this without attending a
training academy or receiving formal instruction of any kind. When Hite was appointed
interim police chief in April 2011, he
had to receive a waiver in order to become a certified police officer without
attending the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy.
In the productive sector, credentials matter much less than
ability and performance. In the parasitic sector, credentials matter a great
deal more than competence, but they are not indispensable. Hite was fortunate enough to find favor with a
bureaucracy that isn’t picky about matters of “certification” – and the
circumstances that led to his appointment as chief reveal a great deal about
the institutional character, such as it is, of the “army” over which he now
presides.
Hite was appointed to replace former Chief Paul Ciesielski, who
was forced to resign for misconduct – including what appeared to be deliberate
spoliation of blood test evidence -- in the case of Officer David Bisard,
who killed a motorcyclist while driving under the influence of alcohol.
Bisard
was in pursuit of a narcotics suspect when he plowed his cruiser into two
motorcycles, killing Eric Wells and injuring Kurt Weekly and Mary Mills. In
addition to having a blood alcohol content more than twice the legal limit,
Bisard was typing a personal message into his on-board computer at the time of
the crash.
After Bisard was charged with negligent homicide and drunk
driving, the trial judge ordered the preservation of his blood sample – which was
promptly ruined by being removed from a refrigerated compartment in the
property room at police headquarters, and stored at room temperature.
This was
not the only “irregularity” involved in this homicide investigation. Bisard
couldn’t explain where he had been with the cruiser during a two-hour stretch
on the day of the accident. Despite the fact that he had obviously been
drinking, Bisard was not examined for evidence of intoxication at the crash
site, and he was allowed to remove personal effects, including a black bag, from
the cruiser without supervision. Deputy
Chief Valerie Cunningham admitted that this may have resulted in the loss
of “valuable evidence” from the crime scene.
Bisard was eventually found guilty of nine DUI-related
felonies and sentenced to 16 years in prison, with the prospect of parole after
serving 78 months behind bars.
Last month Bisard
filed a motion for a new trial, contending that Judge John Surbeck “abused
his discretion” by treating “abuse of police power and breech of public trust”
as aggravating factors. A stronger case can be made that Bisard’s identity as a
police officer was an asset, rather than a liability, given that a Mundane
involved in an otherwise identical incident almost certainly would have been
charged with murder.
An aggravating factor not considered by Judge Surbeck in
Bisard’s trial is the fact that he was driving drunk while pursuing an unarmed
individual suspected of a non-violent offense. Terrance Malone, described by
the IMPD as 5’2” and 110 pounds, was being sought on suspicion of “felony marijuana
possession.” At the time of the pursuit Malone was riding a bicycle and was
neither fleeing from the police nor resisting arrest.
“A marijuana warrant isn’t an emergency,” commented
deputy prosecutor Mark Hollingsworth during Bisard’s trial. Yet it was treated as one by the IMPD, which
deployed five officers to run down someone suspected of merely possessing a
prohibited substance. Bisard, who had consumed a prohibitive amount of a
legally permitted intoxicant, volunteered for this engagement in the War on
Drugs because he was a K-9 officer and wanted to help his comrades locate any
contraband found in Malone’s possession.
Bisard’s indecent eagerness to be part of a trivial drug
bust reflects the institutional priorities of the department that employed him
at the time. “Forfeiture” proceeds are among the department’s most important
revenue streams.
Crash scene, August 6, 2010. |
An investigative report published by the Indianapolis Star
in November 2010 – just weeks after Bisard killed Wells – found that police
agencies in Indiana were “deciding
how [confiscated] money is spent, rather than allowing it to go through the
normal local government appropriations process.”
This is done despite the fact
that the
state constitution requires that all proceeds be used to fund the
government-operated school system. The Indianapolis-Marion County Metro
Drug Task Force, which had employed Bisard, receives at least one million
dollars a year directly out of “forfeiture” proceeds.
During the September 17 budget hearing, Indianapolis
Public Safety Director Troy Riggs assured the City Council that the police
would continue to use money confiscated through “forfeiture” as a revenue
source, despite the fact that this is clearly illegal. He also said that he and
his comrades are “trying to be at every conference of major cities” in
Washington, D.C. and “haunting every homeland security subcommittee” in order
to rake in additional federal law enforcement subsidies. None of this would
relieve the burden of the local tax victim population, of course; it would
merely enhance the financial advantages enjoyed by the privileged people who
plunder them.
Indianapolis
does suffer from a shockingly high rate of violent crime, and the added
indignity of a police department that is predictably useless in protecting
persons and property. Local
attorney Gary Welsh trenchantly observes that this is not a problem that
will be solved by extracting more wealth at gunpoint from the afflicted
population.
“What happened to the $90 million a year in new taxes for
public safety in 2007 these lousy bums slapped up with that were supposed to
hire all of those new police officers?” asks
Welsh. “What happened to the $9 million in savings that was supposed to come
from the merger of the IMPD and the Sheriff’s Department [in 2007]?”
Noting that Mayor Ballard is simultaneously demanding a huge
“public safety” tax increase, while boasting about reductions in the crime
rate, Welsh inquires: “If crime is down overall despite the failure to hire
more police officers, how will hiring more police officers reduce crime?”
Welsh is probably too astute an observer to fall prey to the
notion that police departments exist to protect the public. In Indianapolis, as
elsewhere, the police are a paramilitary organization dedicated to serving the
plunderbund, and we should thank Chief Hite for describing that relationship
with such compelling candor.
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Dum spiro, pugno!
4 comments:
The video you link to at the top of the article is now private.
Scott, it should be public now. Thank you for the heads-up.
An Open Letter to the Chief
Dear Chief Dick Hite,
We have historically been a nation of independent, liberty minded individuals.It seems you need to be reminded of whom it is you are to serve. As an oath-bound civil servant your fist duty is to the constituents/tax payers in your community, You are not the commandant of a private paramilitary army in service of the council. Your comments underscore an atmosphere of hostility towards the civilian population already too prevelant in law-enforcement. The sychophantic hand licking of your masters further demonstrates your unfitness for the position you hold. I will be recommending an imediate dismissal from your current position as well as a psychological evaluation and perhaps a civics and US History class taught by a Constitutional scholar, not a marxist.
Richard R Deaver
IF, IF, he had to "go to battle" he'd have a wet spot on his pants. Or he'd just send his shaved head morons.
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