From the Stating the Obvious Department:
In an open revolt, more than 100 Seattle police officers suing to block new use-of-force polices assert that high-level city, police and union officials privately agree with their contention that the court-ordered changes put them and the public in danger.
But the officers who filed the suit aren’t naming those high-level officials, saying only that the officials told them they won’t seek to alter the policies because of the “politics” of the situation and the “perceived inability” to fight federally mandated reforms, the officers allege in newly filed court papers.
“This means that the City is now knowingly and willingly playing politics with Plaintiffs’ lives and the lives of the law-abiding citizens of Seattle,” the officers wrote in a 34-page amended complaint filed late Wednesday with U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman.
While I don’t think the court will view this complaint with much credence (“Evidence of police injuries is mounting,” the complaint says, without providing a scrap of, you know, evidence), I think this “playing politics” charge does provide a window into a fundamental misconception underlying many police abuses: some officers seem to have forgotten who is actually in charge.
See, it’s our democratically elected civilian government that writes the rules, not the guys with the guns and the pepper spray and the scary demeanor. And politics is the process through which democratic governments craft and enact policy. So of course the City is playing politics with the use of force of guidelines. That’s how city governments work.
Is it the perfect method for crafting and enacting policy? No. The perfect method would be to appoint me benevolent dictator. But alas, in a democratic republic, we’ll just have to rely on politics to get public policy done as best we can.
Ironically, by filing this complaint and giving it to the press, the rebel SPD officers are playing politics too. Which is fine. But the fundamental assertion implicit in their complaint—that it is the officers who should write the use of force rules, not their civilian overseers—is downright disturbing:
In the complaint, the officers allege the use-of-force policies do not reflect the work of department members who were asked to develop them and instead were hijacked by Bobb and the Justice Department.
“Those personnel will testify that the UF policy they wrote was altered almost in its entirety and replaced with specific language provided, and required, by the Monitor,” the complaint says, referring to the overall use-of-force policy.
“This supports,” the officers wrote, the “contention that DOJ, in partnership with Mr. Bobb, intends to use consent decrees in Seattle, as well as other jurisdictions, to rewrite longstanding constitutional law and principles intended to protect officer safety, and eliminate reasonable police practices, with which they — from the comfort and safety of their desks and with no experience facing dangerous threats — disagree or find distasteful.”
This is were some police officers go wrong. It is the officer’s job to enforce the law, not write it. And if these rebel officers truly harbor such arrogant disrespect for civilian authority, then I’m not sure we should feel comfortable arming them to the teeth and trusting them to patrol our streets.
“I’m not sure we should feel comfortable arming them to the teeth and trusting them to patrol our streets.”
That was my reaction, too, when I posted about this article yesterday. The power of their badges and guns doesn’t belong to them, it belongs to the state, which belongs to the people, therefore to us. We have the absolute right, through our elected representatives, to tell them how it is to be used. Those are the terms and conditions of their employment, and if they disagree, they are free to seek other employment.
This is the nature of the state force privilege, Goldy. They do not work for us. Not really. Never have, never will.
A little-understand aspect of this issue is that different legal standards apply to civilians and cops.
The rule of self-defense for civilians is deadly force may be used to protect oneself from an imminent risk of death or grave bodily harm.
That rule also applies to cops, but in addition, many states have enacted “fleeing felon” statutes that allow cops to use deadly force to prevent a person who has committed a felony from escaping, following a 1985 SCOTUS decision (Garner v. Tennessee) that mostly abrogated the common law rule to the same effect.
It is under such a statute that Darren Wilson is likely to get off for the shooting of Michael Brown. His lawyers will argue Brown became a felon when he assaulted Wilson, became a “fleeing felon” when he ran from Wilson, and at that point Wilson not only had a right but a duty to shoot him.
This CNN article has more: http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/28/.....?hpt=hp_t3
Roger Rabbit Commentary: A question for we citizens is whether we want our legislatures to revisit these statutes where they’re in place. Such laws greatly broaden the authority of cops to take human life. There will always be a boundary between shoot and no-shoot, and cops will always have to exercise judgment in borderline cases, but the much greater leeway cops have under a “fleeing felon” law enables them to push the envelope in terms of shooting virtually anyone who “resists” an officer (i.e., fails to comply with any command by an officer).
A separate category of cop shootings is where a cop subjectively feels threatened but isn’t. These cases include the TV remote control “mistaken” for a gun (how can any reasonable person look at a TV remote and think he sees a gun?) and the kid with a toy gun. Here again, a cop’s judgment is questioned after the fact, and the cop’s argument invariably is “I thought I was in danger”; the question of we citizens is, how far should we let them go with that? My answer is, not very far; when cops make life-and-death decisions, we should hold them to an objective standard, and not allowed them to take human life according to their personal feelings.
The situation we currently have is something like, “shoot ’em all, and sort it out later.” If the cop was wrong, the city pays a judgment to the survivors. That’s unacceptable, because it doesn’t bring back the innocent lives taken, nor should we support a system that confers a power of summary execution on cops for trivial offenses like shoplifting or jaywalking.
But that’s the kind of power Darren Wilson’s supporters want cops to have (especially over black people, who in the eyes of some, are automatically threatening simply because they’re black), and that’s the kind of power these 100 Seattle cops assert they have by constitutional right. They don’t; they shouldn’t; and we shouldn’t give it to them by statute or ordinance. In our society, you don’t get to shoot people for glaring at you or giving you lip. That’s an attribute of police states ruled by thug dictators. We don’t want to go there.
What Puddy likes is how HA DUMMOCRETIN libtards are now screaming about how the police are becoming their own rogue vigilante and army forces. You fail to comprehend that Obummer has allowed this to happen through selective actions documented on this blog since 2009. You scream and shout about how “rebel SPD officers” are acting… but they are following their commander and thief’s actions.
You get what you voted for and now the chickens are coming home to roost. It really must suck to see how Obummer is destroying this country and you can’t do anything but look into the mirror and say “______, DUMMOCRETIN blew it when I voted for Obummer”!
Sux to be y’all
What a bunch of BULLSHITTIUM But that’s the kind of power Darren Wilson’s supporters want cops to have (especially over black people, who in the eyes of some, are automatically threatening simply because they’re black)Statistically more blacks die from the hands of other blacks than they do from cops.
You are just so full of BULLSHITTIUM Roger NoBalls IDIOT Wabbit, the smell reeks through the computer! Puddy was in a cab last night in NYC with a Haitian driver. He even admitted blacks off each other at a much higher rate than cops do.
Sheese IDIOT Wabbit, you are a real ASShole! Butt then again you admit to it!
5 I never said they didn’t. But this is a free country, and you have a constitutional right to be a moron.
From their ‘updated’ filing:
27. Since Plaintiffs have filed this lawsuit, they have been accused of being “fringe” or “rouge” cops and dismissed as reflexively ‘anti-reform.’
‘Rouge’??? Obviously their spellcheck would not have caught this, but I don’t think that is quite the word they were looking for!
Perhaps they should divert some of their paychecks toward getting competent legal advice on this turd they keep trying to polish.
@5 “Wabbit, you are a real ASShole! Butt then again you admit to it!”
Absolutely. I’m honest about what I am. A liberal asshole, that’s me, in proud stripes! If you were expecting a cuddly lap rabbit, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m picky about who picks me up and pets me, ya know? Always have been. If I don’t like you, I’ll scratch your eyes out and rip your fucking throat out. So you should be more careful about how you talk to me.
@7 “Perhaps they should divert some of their paychecks toward getting competent legal advice on this turd they keep trying to polish.”
As the Seattle Times pointed out, these cops are self-represented because no lawyer will touch this turd of a lawsuit.