Author: harry p.

Chief Art Acedevo of the Austin Police Department is like a figure from Roman history – in one of the worst ways imaginable. To be specific, his view of the privileges of the coercive elite, and the deferential gratitude they’re supposedly owed by the plebian class, summon memories of Cicero’s description of the aspiring ruler Marcus Antonius. In fact, Acevedo’s dismissive comments about the unjustified arrest and abuse of a female jogger displayed a tyrannical insouciance that Antonius might have considered a bit excessive.

After Cicero delivered the first of fourteen philippicsagainst Antonius in the Senate, the general invited public applause for the forbearance he displayed by allowing the orator to live. Cicero devoted a lengthy section of his second philippic to demolishing the would-be dictator’s pretense of magnanimity:

“That, senators, is what a favor from gangsters amounts to – they refrain from murdering someone, and then they boast of their kindness…. What sort of kindness is it, to have abstained from committing a horrible evil? To me, it doesn’t appear so much a favor as a burden, to know that it was within your power to do such a thing with impunity. But I grant that it was a favor, such no greater kindness can be expected from a robber.”

Like every other notable municipal police chief, Acevedo presides over a department that is notorious for committing acts of capricious violence against innocent people –and almost without exception he defends such crimes as suitable exercises of discretion by the punitive caste.

Women tend to be preferred targets in the ongoing APD crime wave. One suitable example was the case of Vanessa Price, who was unlawfully “detained” outside her home by Officer Jermaine Hopkins, and then brutally assaulted by him after she used her cell phone to call her husband for help. Hopkins then charged the victim – who had been observing a police encounter with an unruly house guest from a distance of roughly thirty feet — with “interference” and “resisting arrest.” The charges were dropped, and Hopkins – rather than being prosecuted for aggravated armed assault – was given a trivial suspension. Mrs. Price had to endure two months of expensive physical therapy to recover from the unprovoked attack.

Insisting that his conduct was exemplary, Hopkins appealed his suspension. He had the support of the local police union, the Austin Police Association. Sgt. Wayne Vincent, the APA’s spokesliar, insisted that Mrs. Price’s refusal to put down the phone constituted an impermissible threat to the “safety of the officer,” before which all considerations must yield.

Viewed in the context of the Austin PD’s established standards, the actions of the officers who assaulted and abducted jogger Amanda Jo Stephen as summary punishment for “contempt of cop” were comparatively mild. This is an indictment of the state-licensed gang over which Acedevo presides, not an endorsement of the behavior of this specific group of costumed kidnappers.

Blogger Chris Quintero, who captured the abduction on video, reports that the female victim had been jogging when members of the local slave patrol detained her and demanded that she present a “pass” from her master. The officers were carrying out a tax-farming operation at a busy intersection to mulct students for the supposed offense of “jaywalking,” and were feasting heartily on their victims when Stephen – who was listening to music while exercising — happened by.

When one of the officers laid hands on Stephen, the young woman — not knowing that corpulent stranger was a cop — jerked her arm away. After Stephen, who wasn’t operating a motor vehicle and wasn’t under arrest, refused to give her name, her captors illegally arrested her for the supposed offense of “failure to identify.” She was then shackled and hauled off screaming by a phalanx of well-nourished tax-feeders.

The public reaction to this crime was sufficiently vehement to provoke an effort at damage control by Acevedo, who used that opportunity to put on a display of contemptuous hostility toward the offended public. Indulging in the kind of stilted sarcasm we would expect from a spoiled adolescent, Acevedo suggested that Stephen should be abjectly grateful that she was spared being raped or killed by her uniformed betters:

“Thank you, Lord, that it’s a controversy in Austin Texas that we had the audacity to touch somebody by the arm and tell them, `Oh, my goodness, Austin Police – we’re trying to get your attention.’ In other cities, cops are actually committing sexual assaults on duty.”

Of course, if a Mundane “had the audacity to touch” a cop on the arm, this act of desecration would be described as “aggravated assault on an officer,” and the offender would most likely be tasered and beaten bloody. In this case, from Acedevo’s perspective, the female Mundane committed a crime when she shrugged off a physical advance from a member of the exalted brotherhood of official coercion: “Quite frankly, she wasn’t charged with resisting and she’s lucky I wasn’t the arresting officer because I wouldn’t have been as generous.”

A very similar view was expressed by Officer Adam Skweres of the Pittsburgh Police Department, a serial predator who was arrested and prosecuted for sexually assaulting a woman in her home. Skweres, who had attempted to violate at least three other victims, told one of them that if she put up a struggle, he could arrest her for “resisting.” That point of view isn’t limited to obvious sociopaths like Skweres. During oral arguments before the Michigan supreme court in October 2011, Gregory J. Babbitt, an assistant DA for Michigan’s Ottawa County, acknowledged that a woman who fought off a sexual assault committed by a state-privileged attacker could be prosecuted under the state’s “resisting and obstructing” statute.

Magdalena Mol, a young wife and mother, was detained without cause in the incongruously named village of Justice, Illinois on the night of May 5, 2012 by Officer Carmen Scardine.

At the time, Mol was waiting for a taxi to take her home after visiting a friend.

Scardine invited her into his car and demanded identification. When the cab arrived, the officer ordered the driver to leave. Scardine then drove Mol to a secluded spot and raped her. The assailant didn’t charge Mol with an offense – a gesture Chief Acevedo would probably treat as an act of regal generosity.

Acevedo was eventually compelled to issue an apology for his remarks, which he described as a “poor analogy.” In fact, Acevedo committed a “gaffe,” as that term was defined by Michael Kinsley – that is, the unwitting disclosure of an uncomfortable truth by a public official. Acevedo’s apology most likely reflected his regret for offending his comrades, rather than any remorse for mocking Amanda Jo Stephen and the outraged public.

Writing of the era in which Rome succumbed to undisguised tyranny, historian Edward Gibbon observed: “A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression.”

Strangely enough, that was the same message Chief Acevedo sent, even if it wasn’t the one he had intended. If it were received and properly understood, Acevedo not only would lose his job, he would be run out of town – unless the population he addressed is worthy of the contempt he expressed.

It goes without saying that’s all gone now. Cops are a menacing omnipresence – and when they deal with us, it is usually order barking Command Voice style. You do not discuss, much less dispute. You Submit and Obey. Or else.The least recalcitrance – merely to question anything – is often sufficient to bring down a Fallujah-style escalation. People are routinely dragged out of their cars, roughly thrown to the ground, pummeled, kicked – and much worse than that. Often, over trivial things. Police even in small towns have become indistinguishable from soldiers.

It is out of hand – obviously so – and if left unchecked will grow much worse, much sooner as the vortex picks up speed. What was inconceivable 20 years ago is routine today. What will be routine 20 years from today?

We face a choice: Either we accept being treated as “indigs” by an army of occupation that accepts no limits to its authority and which regards us as disposable as themselves as untouchable. Or we step back from the abyss before it’s too late. We recover our senses. We no longer accept the unacceptable.

Here’s how, in a few simple steps:

* Cops must be bound by the law –

As citizens, we are told that ignorance of the law is no excuse. That it is our obligation to know the law. Surely, the same ought to apply to those charged with enforcing it. Yet cops routinely ignore the law, even when it is pointed out to them in literal black and white. Many states, for example, have open carry laws. It is legal to wear a gun in plain view in public. Yet cops will often waylay at gunpoint, detain, disarm and question individuals who have done nothing in violation of any law – who are merely open carrying in full compliance with the letter of the law. They will justify this illegal assault by referencing “concerns” – either their own or those expressed by some unnamed person who “called in.”

http://youtu.be/wLmrTENZwDA

Similarly, cops now routinely abuse people for lawfully taking video/audio in public. They will back each other up, too.

A cop must be as willing to defend legal action as he is prepared to defend against illegal action. This includes intervening against fellow officers when he knows they’ve committed a crime or are acting in a way that does not comport with the law. If it is intolerable for a citizen to break the law, it is doubly so when a cop does – because he may do so with relative impunity.

Until the doctrine is established and respected that the law applies equally to everyone, including cops, there will be increasingly less and less respect for cops – who increasingly hold themselves above the law.

And us in contempt.

* The Right to Resist –

Self-defense is perhaps the most basic human right, without which other rights are largely meaningless. One of the worst abuses of our era is the denial of this elemental right when a physical assault is perpetrated by a person acting under color of law. If a cop does not have the legal right to lay hands on a citizen, to violate his personal space (including his personal property) then the citizen has every ethical right to resist. To walk  away – and to defend himself against aggression if he is aggressed against.

His legal right to resist must be acknowledged in law.

That means if a SWAT team got the wrong house number and executes a no-knock raid in the middle of the night, the sleeping (and innocent) citizen should be considered within his rights to defend his home and himself, even if it results in the unfortunate death of a cop.

The burden is on the cops who got it wrong – not the citizen who acted out of justifiable fear for his life.

If a cop attempts to seize your person or things without legal cause, you ought to be able – legally – to defend yourself to the extent necessary. If citizens witness out-of-control cops administering a beat-down, they have the same right to intervene that would obtain if they witnessed a gang of thugs beating on an innocent.

Special costumes and badges should not render the wearer  a member of a privileged caste whose person may not be touched even when they have crossed the line and committed an act that if committed by any other person would be defined as criminal.

This business of demanding supine submission to every barked order is unworthy of a free society. It is in fact a mortal threat to a free society.

Cops must be reminded they’re not special. That our “safety” is just as valuable to us as their “safety” is to them. And that if they go after someone physically, they’d better have good – defensible – cause. And if they do not, that their victim has every legal right to defend himself – and will not be punished for having done so.

This doctrine, once established, would re-establish a balance that has been lost – and which must be recovered.

* Personal Liability –

Ordinary citizens are vulnerable to civil suits when their reckless or criminal actions result in harm/damage to others or their property. They are personally liable. This acts as a strong incentive to be prudent, to act responsibly. The same incentives are vitally necessary to assure police restraint, curb the worst abuses – and effectively deal with those who do abuse their authority.

As things stand, the reverse is true.

Cops have every incentive to not behave prudently, to act recklessly – since they know that any consequences will probably not be born by them directly. They will not lose their house, have their wages garnished for the next 20 years. If there is a lawsuit, the county  – the taxpayers – will pay. The cop may not even lose his job. And if he does, there will be probably be a new job in another county, another state.

This cannot continue.

All police must be held personally liable for gross misconduct. Knowing that violating someone’s rights could lead to the loss of everything is just what’s needed to keep cops from violating people’s rights. Anything that insulates police from being held personally accountable is an open invitation to ever-greater escapades of abuse. We expect much more in terms of personal accountability from airline pilots – whose careers can be ended at a stroke if the faintest whiff of alcohol is detected on their breath.Doctors have to self-insure against malpractice – and may be sued into ruin if they botch an operation. Surely, those entrusted with lethal weapons and legal power to use them ought to be held to a comparable level of personal accountability.

Most of us manage to behave ourselves – and never find ourselves on the wrong end of a civil suit. Surely, it is not asking too much to ask cops to behave with similar restraint – and to be held personally accountable when they do not.

As cops so often advise us: If they haven’t done anything wrong, then they’ve got nothing to worry about.

* Higher standard for use of deadly force –

It is an awesome responsibility to carry a gun. To threaten its use even more so – and to actually use it, an irrevocable act that is acceptable only in the most extreme circumstances and which ought to be subject to rigorous scrutiny afterward.This is the standard applied to civilians.

Why should it not apply to police?

Cops ought to be held to a standard at least as high as that expected of ordinary citizens – and arguably, to a much higher standard. This in fact used to be the case. Unholstering a gun was regarded as a major escalation requiring objective justification – as in, an imminent lethal threat. Cops today have become all too trigger-happy (as evidenced by the recent case of cops blasting away at a van full of kids because the mother/driver fled a traffic stop).

“Officer Safety” cannot be a license to kill. Cops must relearn restraint. And when they cannot restrain themselves, the law must restrain them as fully, as completely as any mere citizen.

No more double standards.

No more “special rights.”

It would be a start.

Throw it in the Woods?

Original HERE.

http://thestrangestbrew.com/