Police Create Their Own Problems
"There’s selective enforcement against Mr. Albers, in a situation where we have now seen at least a dozen officers in the selected photos having their rifles raised. This situation of 30 seconds in a 20-year career has literally ruined his life."
It is easy enough to wallow in schadenfreude when the lawyer representing a police officer facing disciplinary action complains of selective enforcement. After all, selective enforcement is part of the way in which police departments nationwide have earned and maintained the scorn of so many citizens. It is at the heart of the circumstances derisively described as "DWB", or "Driving While Black", and nearly everybody has occasion to wonder who will ever write a police officer a ticket for speeding, running a red light, or general reckless driving.
Barth's complaint, however, is problematic, and reflects lazy rhetoric so common in our society today. Just as politicians pretend they can't tell the difference, so does the attorney for Ray Albers, a former police lieutenant from St. Ann, a small city infamous for police corruption. In August, 2014, Albers was captured on camera, threatening to murder protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of a police shooting so dubious the state had to throw the grand jury investigation:
Albers was a lieutenant in the city of St. Ann, a city near Ferguson best known for an infamous and lucrative speed trap. On Aug. 19, 2014, Albers was part of a disorganized police response to protesters, one that involved officers from a number of agencies. During that confrontation, he pointed his weapon at people in a crowd and said "I will fucking kill you" and "Go fuck yourselves" when they asked for his name.
Another officer from the St. Louis County Police Department had to come over and calm Albers down and lower his weapon. Later, when a Huffington Post reporter took photos of Albers from the sidewalk, he said "Get that camera out of my fucking face.” Videos of Albers’ threats spread online, and his career in St. Ann quickly came to an end.
(]Stewart↱)
Even granting that selective enforcement is in practice a scourge against society, it seems self-evident that getting caught on camera threatening to murder people under color of law is about as solid a selection criterion as society could ask. Ms. Barth's complaint is very nearly comical; that is, it would be funny if the situation wasn't so morbid.
Still, though, let us grant Barth a benefit of the doubt:
If selective enforcement is wrong,
then selective enforcement is wrong. And
if selective enforcement is wrong,
then it always has been.
If the disgraced former lieutenant, Mr. Albers, should be excused for his actions because selective enforcement is wrong,
then anyone who was ever ticketed, arrested, or convicted because of selective enforcement needs to see the actions against them overturned. And from there, the states will be paying out massive penalties, because subsequent crimes by those convicts need to be retried; illegal arrests and convictions continue to devastate the rest of these people's lives, long after their penal experience is over, and some never escape the penal system.
If selective enforcement is wrong,
then every cop who ever used it needs to be prosecuted, convicted. And equal protection requires that they be treated like any other convict; that would be hell, for instance, in
Nevada↱, where prison guards routinely shoot prisoners for the sake of convenience.
There is, of course, a problem with that outcome; some assertion of
ex post facto will apply, and the way our justice system works, all you need is a prior note from a department lawyer saying your illegal behavior is actually legal, and then you have the cover of such a presumption of good faith that police can get caught lying, and prosecutors see no reason to prosecute the perjury.
This will only further aggravate public frustration with police departments, because the result is an acute and living manifestation of a common behavioral and rhetorical question. It's one thing to preface by saying, "If we strip out labels like 'Democrat' and 'Republican'", because historically the behavior and concomitant rhetoric are more often invoked from a "conservative" standpoint, and the most visible examples in our society come from politics where such labels apply. Nancy Reagan rolled on stem cells after watching her husband fade away; could that research have saved him? Former Vice President Dick Cheney rolled on gay rights when he had to countenance the fact of homosexuals in his family; Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, as well.
In this case, the question is selective enforcement, and if Barth's argument prevails, will the practice be prohibited generally, or just not allowed against police? If the latter, does that mean every cop who fudges a detail in a police report should be prosecuted for perjury? Or does that mean getting caught on camera committing a felony is insufficient? If the former, the question remains:
Why do they only change their minds when it is one of their own?
Indeed, the question sort of stands out, anyway. That is to say, the objection to selective enforcement only comes when it's one of their own. You know:
Now it's wrong; not all those other times in the past.
Ms. Barth complains of
"a situation where we have now seen at least a dozen officers in the selected photos having their rifles raised"; the next question she needs to answer is how many of those officers were caught on camera
threatening to murder people. As it is, she would seem to pretend she is incapable of discerning the difference.
It is easy enough to wallow in schadenfreude, but it is also problematic. And this is, after all, Missouri, where the Attorney General is known to act as a defense attorney for police facing grand jury investigation, and his deputies are known to deliberately misinform the jurors. We might think the case against Albers is pretty straightforward:
He got caught on video, not in a stillshot, threatening to murder people under color of law.
The implications of Brandi Barth's assertions on her client's behalf are simply
dangerous.
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Notes:
Liebelson, Dana. "The Shooting Gallery". Highline. 2015. Highline.HuffingtonPost.com. 18 December 2015. http://huff.to/1ZfYY0t
Stewart, Mariah. "Cop Who Threatened To Kill Ferguson Protesters Says His Life Is 'Ruined'". 17 December 2015. HuffingtonPost.com. 18 December 2015. http://huff.to/1ZfYY0t