"I am the law, you don't f--k around no more ..."
Respect the badge - he earned it with his blood
Fear the gun - your sentence may be death because...
I AM THE LAW!
And you won't fuck around no more - I AM THE LAW
I judge the rich, I judge the poor - I AM THE LAW
Commit a crime I'll lock the door - I AM THE LAW
Because in Mega-City... I AM THE LAW
(Anthrax, I Am the Law)
I live in Seattle, Washington, where our police are so far above the law it's not even funny. For instance, the
Roberts shooting. It's a sticky local case, because the dead black man was, in fact in the wrong. But as the article notes:
King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng yesterday announced that he won't pursue further legal action against the Seattle police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Aaron Roberts, agreeing with an internal police review, also released yesterday, that found the shooting entirely justified.
Neither decision came as any surprise to the officers or the family of Aaron Roberts, especially since an inquest jury this month unanimously agreed with the police version of the shooting.
"This kind of completes the circle of public inquiry and answers any questions the public might still have about whether this shooting was justified or not," said Lisa Marchese, a lawyer for Officers Greg Neubert and Craig Price. "Now everyone can really heal from this and put it past them and move on."
Roberts died May 31 after Price shot him once as Roberts drove away from a traffic stop in the Central Area. The officers said Price fired to protect Neubert, who was being dragged down the street by Roberts' car.
I just want to point out a couple of things:
• As the attorney for the officers notes, this ends the public inquiry; to be specific, we'll note that the public crimefighting body of the King County Prosecutor's Office and the public crimefighting body of the Seattle Police Department have both justified the shooting. This is no surprise.
• And, as the article notes, Officer Price fired because he felt his partner was being dragged down the street by the fleeing car.
• My question:
Why did the other officer not simply let go of the car?
Now, just hold onto that one for just a second .... Okay, now check
this story about a
stolen police car.
I mean, it reads like a
Mack Sennett script:
The officers chased the stolen police car north to the Eastlake area. But they lost sight of the fleeing cruiser, which had its lights and siren engaged, before they reached a hillcrest at East Roanoke Street and Harvard Avenue East on Capitol Hill.
When they topped the hill, the officers saw another patrol car, which turned out to be a lone officer from the East Precinct. But they thought it was the suspect. They rammed him with their car.
The East Precinct officer, in turn, thought he was being rammed by the police imposter. He fired at the other patrol car. The officers in that car fired back. Luckily, police said, every shot missed.
Kerlikowske defended the officers saying they had a right to defend themselves. The department will hold a firearms review. Meantime, the officers have been taken off patrol and given administrative duties.
Even as the police were shooting at each other, the man in the stolen police car was driving north on Interstate 5, back to the North Precinct to return the car. Davis was arrested while walking away from it, police said.
As
Goofyfish's tales point out: shooting lessons. Three officers with no clue what's happening, not knowing who the hell they're shooting at, missing 20+ rounds. To protect and serve? Well, it would appear that the last resort of deadly force comes well ahead of common sense. Seriously: two cop cars stopped and staring each other down in the street might look ridiculous, but the presumption was that the thief was armed and dangerous, despite no reports of violence or bad driving. So instead of figuring out who is in the other car, it seems the SOP is to simply ram the vehicle.
In other words, shouldn't the cops at least confirm the
hostility of the suspected target?
Or, perhaps, the danger of the target? It seems that any lawbreaking warrants death. Police in Seattle took heat for the shooting; the article notes that the suspect "lunged". Unfortunately, a cursory attempt has failed to produce the video mentioned in the article. Is my word good enough to assure you that 25 feet between the gun and the suspect when he suddenly turns around does not constitute so immediate a danger that you have to kill someone. Death is the great equalizer in this town: break the law, and we'll shoot you. Toward the notion of the police being above the law:
Marchers seek accountability in police shooting:
March organizers said police could have used nonlethal means to subdue David John Walker, an African-American man with a history of mental illness, who skipped and meandered down the street wielding a knife and gun after robbing a store.
They said police could have shot Walker with rubber bullets, or tear-gassed or tranquilized him rather than killing him.
Some in the group said the protest was about racism; others said it was about police brutality. The Rev. Robert Jeffrey, who spoke to the crowd, called it more a protest of the way police routinely deny society's most vulnerable citizens their legal due process. He said the time has come to demand the formation of an independent citizen-review board.
"This about how police treat the powerless in society who have no redress," he said.
As a side note, while seeking th 48-second video of Walker's shooting by police, I came across this particular article. When this happened, a friend of mine was arrested in the manhunt after being caught with over a pound of dope. At the time, the police department told the public they were seeking an African-American male suspect. My friend is white, and what's stranger is that another friend of mine who looks quite like Cruz in the picture was not harassed by the manhunt at all despite being in the same area at the time. I just thought it worth pointing out that a friend of mine, whose only crime was possessing dope, had his Constitutional rights violated up and down while the police department lied to the public and the courts endorse this kind of behavior by our law enforcement. What was the point of telling the people the shooter was black? Just to stir up the evening? And why such a wide crackdown? Somebody, please, show me a picture of this convicted shooter looking like a white rastafarian. A tragedy occurred, and the police used it to sweep the streets.. Effing ridiculous.
Our police have been ordered by the courts to cease certain investigative procedures, including 2-hour "routine traffic stops"; our officers have been noted in the growing, nationwide scandal implicating racism among police in traffic and other enforcement duties. Our police department has been busted as a
theft ring.
One of the ones that hurts badly is the King County Sheriff's department; the sheriff is a friend of a friend. "Dancin' Dave" Reichert has, in fact, made several wise decisions in his term that lead me to have greater faith in local law enforcement. Including the firing of a deputy who was videotaped at WTO attacking a woman who was
already down on the street, and also attacking two women with pepper spray at the edge of the combat zone. My friend told me to rejoice when Reichert was elected sheriff, and with his rescaling of the local drug war, I'm impressed. And this: he
tried to do the right thing.
Another WTO story describes video footage contributing to some of the prosecutions of WTO-related crimes. As a
Seattle Times editorial points out:
The reinstatement of King County Sheriff's Deputy John Vanderwalker by a labor arbitrator raises the question: What does a police officer have to do in this town in order to be fired?
During the WTO protests of 1999, when hundreds of police acted professionally under the law, Vanderwalker was videotaped doing two outrageous acts.
In one incident, he asked two women in a parked car to roll down the window, then sprayed them in the face with pepper spray, temporarily blinding them. The women sued, and the county agreed to pay them $100,000.
Yet, the arbitrator decided that spraying them was "neither excessive nor unnecessary," because the women had been asked to leave and hadn't gone.
In the second incident, which the arbitrator allowed was "excessive" but not "unnecessary," Vanderwalker was videotaped coming up to a woman who had a first-aid kit and kicking her from behind. Vanderwalker said he had no memory of doing this. His boss, Sheriff Dave Reichert, dismissed that statement as incredible.
Reichert admitted to Vandewalker's attorney that if there hadn't have been a lie, Vanderwalker wouldn't have been fired. After that, the only real issue was the lie, and because Reichert couldn't prove it - maybe the whole incident had fallen out of the unfortunate deputy's brain - Vanderwalker was reinstated with back pay.
And you know what else, our police are not so much
above the law as they are
directly protected by it. Consider the story of
officers who filed a lawsuit against a bank robber:
The lawsuit, filed by six members of the Puget Sound Violent Crime Task Force in Thurston County Superior Court last week, alleges "extreme and outrageous" behavior by the robbers - a reference to the shootout.
"In the course of attempting to evade capture, defendants attempted to murder, maim and-or seriously wound plaintiffs," says the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages.
Seattle attorney Lincoln Sieler, who is representing the plaintiffs, would not name his clients and said they were not ready to comment.
State law says law officers can file claims for injuries resulting from "a willful criminal assault occurring after the officer arrived at the scene of a disturbance," Sieler said.
The lawsuit names Scurlock's parents, William and Mary Jane Scurlock of Olympia, the executors of his estate, and Biggins and Meyers.
The end result of the lawlessness and absolutely shameful sniveling by our police department (we won't go into the Mardi Gras disaster, where the cops willfully allowed a bad situation to get violent, resulting in the murder of a young man). Note two points form the Scurlock article that are macabre enough to make me laugh:
•
A shot was heard as police closed in, and Scurlock was dead when officers reached him.
•
Scurlock fled before Meyers and Biggins were wounded and captured. Scurlock hid overnight in a small camper but was spotted the next day by two sons of the camper's owner. Police surrounded the camper and riddled it with bullets. An autopsy, however, revealed Scurlock had taken his own life.
It's worse than a Sennett comedy up here. Cops shooting at each other, shooting at dead people, sweeping the streets, allowing and, in some cases, provoking riots. Stealing from corpses.
What really pisses me off, though, is that even if one is completely warranted in defending themselves against a truly errant police officer, they will most likely go to prison anyway. The benefit of truth is given to whatever recycled hack job the police cough up.
And, yes, the whole of this is melodramatic, but that's pretty much the point. We hear about our brave officers defending our lives every day. Well, in many cases, they simply screw up and have the benefit of racketeers to cover their asses. Police are, indeed, a higher degree of citizenship, invested with greater rights and more protections than other people. Were officers conscripted, I might accept this notion, but the simple fact is that people choose to join police forces. I might remind anyone who is familiar with "The Gas" and other syndicated sports call-in shows (e.g the postgame show for your local baseball team, for instance) that Seattle City, King County, and Port of Seattle law enforcement
all recruit during these shows. Seriously, the most widespread recruiting adverts I've ever come across for law enforcement have some strange connection in this town to sports events. Bear that in mind; it does, in fact, speak much of the situation in its own right.
But for the counterpoint, I submit to you our local newsweekly
The Stranger and its
Police Beat column.
One of my favorites:
Fondling Self/Ballard/Wed Dec 12/5:10 pm: Detective Dale Williams writes: "The subject approached me. She said her name was Venus. I noted that she was Asian. She had long dark hair that was loose. She had earrings on. She had a small mark or mole on the right side of her nose. She wore a piece that was shiny and had some red-white-and-blue strips. Between her belly-button and the top of her bottoms, she had a dimple about the size of a silver dollar. She said she did not like it. She pointed out two dimples on her backside; she said she wished the dimples were on her facial cheeks. She also had white stockings on that came up to the tops of her knees. She also had high heels on. She told me she had just bought the outfit and it was bringing her luck because she had just started work and already had a customer. She offered a lap dance. I said, 'Yes.' The lap dance did not comply with the city codes (she revealed her vaginal area, rubbed my genital area, fondled herself). When done, I gave her $40 and left the club.
"I request that charges be brought against Venus."
And on that note, I'll bring this ramble to an end.
thanx all,
Tiassa
