Arizona law protects police, not people

In September a new Arizona law will go into effect:

Under the law, it is illegal for someone to record law enforcement officers if the person is within eight feet of an area where the person knows, or should “reasonably” know, that law enforcement activity is occurring, or if they receive a verbal warning from an officer about the rule.

Law enforcement activity could include questioning a “suspicious” person, conducting an arrest or handling a disorderly person, according to the text of the bill. A violation is a misdemeanor offense, with a potential penalty of up to 30 days in jail and fines of up to $500.

There are exceptions for people on private property, in a vehicle stopped by the police, or those who are the subjects of police contact, as long as they do not interfere with officers’ actions. There are no exceptions for journalists.

Why was this law enacted?

State Representative John Kavanagh, the bill’s sponsor, said that there was little reason for bystanders to be within eight feet of an on-duty police officer and that the law would protect people from getting close to dangerous situations and prevent them from interfering from police work.

So according to the sponsor of the bill, the law is to protect people.

Then why doesn't it just call for people to stay eight feet away from police unless they're directly involved?

Why does the law limit its scope to recording police activity?

What is it about watching and recording police activity that constitutes interference with that activity?

These are rhetorical questions, of course, because we all know the answers.

This law isn't about protecting citizens, it's about protecting cops — from accountability.

Rep. Kavanagh, you and the other legislators who voted for this bill, and Gov. Ducey, are full of it.

Chad Wolf protesteth too much

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf took offense at characterizations of the abusive federal officers in Portland, Oregon as "stormtroopers" and "Gestapo".

Wolf also defended the re-assignment of immigration officers and pushed back on accusations the officers were acting without proper oversight.

“These officers are not stormtroopers,” Wolf said. “They’re not the Gestapo, as some have described them. That description is offensive and hyperbolic, and it’s dishonest."

Most police officers in the United States work in uniform, not camouflage; the uniforms identify their departments. They operate in marked vehicles. Officers in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles display their badges and identifications when they have to take official action. They don't accost civilians without identifying themselves as police officers, and if they restrict a civilian's movements it's because they've placed that person under arrest.

The anonymous armed men lacking name tags or large, visible insignia on their camouflage-style uniforms, who assaulted peaceful protesters and heightened tensions with the local populace, who took peaceful protesters into their dubious custody and whisked them away in unmarked vehicles for interrogation without placing them under arrest — they don't operate like any reputable police force in this country. To the contrary, they sure as hell are reminiscent of the brutal thugs who worked for Hitler as far as I'm concerned.

How is the ordinary person supposed to know these unidentified men with no obvious affiliation with any recognized law enforcement agency aren't some extralegal, self-proclaimed "militia" that has decided to take "law and order" into their own hands? White supremacist groups have done that before. Come to think of it, that's how Hitler's Brownshirts started.

(Incidentally, federal police dressed in camouflage so outraged retired Army Lt. General Russel Honoré that he exploded on live TV: "What kind of bullshit is this?!" He demanded the Trump administration stop letting these federal police wear camouflage, forcefully noting that camouflage clothing has a specific purpose that is completely unrelated to the supposed mission in Portland. His obvious subtext was that police personnel have no business playing at being soldiers, and he's right.)

It would surprise me if Wolf knew what "Gestapo" actually meant. It's a German abbreviation for what translates in English to "Secret State Police". That, too, sounds like the amped-up, militarized thugs we've all seen in action in Portland.

So Chad, if you're offended by others calling your pets "stormtroopers" and "Gestapo", good. The rest of us are more than offended by your deployment of goons in camouflage where the local authorities are united in not wanting them, and where every indication is that those goons are worsening tensions.

Of course, fomenting a crisis — creating a shiny, made-for-Fox-News flashpoint of civilian-Gestapo strife — is probably exactly the order you got from your boss, the domestic Dear Leader. He badly needs a distraction from the more than 140,000 dead from CoViD-19 on his incompetent watch.

So I strongly doubt your outrage is genuine.

But ours is. And we will not forget your despicable aiding and abetting of this lawless "president", your ready acquiescence to his worst autocratic instincts. I, for one, am wondering if your actions warrant criminal investigation for abuse of power.

A little word of advice, then, Chad: better keep reminding the boss you've risked criminal charges for him and are counting on being included in his long list of pardons whenever he heads out the door.

Just understand that, pardon or no, you will go down in the history books as an authoritarian enabler, as egregious a lawbreaker and kingly sycophant as Bill Barr. No pardon will rehabilitate your terrible reputation.

Buffalo police not trustworthy

You might have heard that a 75-year-old-man was seriously injured Thursday night by Buffalo (NY) police. The man had been attempting to speak to officers when one pushed him in the chest hard enough to send him stumbling backwards and then to the ground. As he fell he hit his head on the pavement and blood came rushing out.

After a video of the incident went viral two officers were suspended without pay while the matter is being investigated. The suspension apparently angered the other members of the special emergency response team to which the suspended officers belonged.

"Fifty-seven resigned in disgust because of the treatment of two of their members, who were simply executing orders," Buffalo Police Benevolent Association president John Evans told WGRZ on Friday. WKBW also reported news of the resignations.

Buffalo mayor Byron Brown defended the suspended officers by asserting that the victim shouldn't have been there.

Speaking of the injured man, the mayor said, "He was asked to leave numerous times last night."

Police felt that it was important to clear the area before fights broke out among the protesters, the mayor said. He stressed that the instructions from the police managers to officers was to be careful, protect residents and use common sense.

Hey, Mr. Evans, president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, I have some questions for you:

Is it part of Buffalo PD training and policy to shove a nonviolent, unarmed civilian to the ground hard enough to crack his skull open?

Were the officers unable to arrest a nonviolent, unarmed civilian, or simply unwilling to break their nice straight advancing line?

Are you claiming that inflicting a life-threatening injury on a nonviolent, unarmed civilian constitutes "simply executing orders"?

Mr. Evans, the suspended officers' actions don't make your benevolent association look benevolent. Neither do your "just following orders" remarks.

Either your members really did receive orders to hurt nonviolent, unarmed civilians — which I leave to you to prove if you can — or you are full of shit.

And Mayor Brown, "he was asked to leave multiple times" is a reason to have arrested the victim, not to have cracked his skull open. You'd better not be trying to claim otherwise.

To Mr. Evans and Mayor Brown and the officers involved, including the 57 who resigned from the emergency response team, you are proving protesters' point: police violence is out of control.

As not just police officers (or elected officials) but as members of the community, you have got to realize that.

You have got to stop seeing civilians as "other", as mere entities to be corralled and controlled by police.

You have got to see that the behavior of the two suspended officers was deeply disturbing and problematic.

Police around the country have been injured during these protests. However, that's not an excuse for police to hurt nonviolent, unarmed civilians preemptively.

Police are the ones with legally sanctioned weapons and powers of arrest. They have to be trained that with those powers come responsibilities. Chief among them is, or damned well ought to be, not harming nonviolent, unarmed civilians.

Police officers will make mistakes in the heat of the moment. Maybe, contrary to all the evidence I've seen, that will turn out to be the case here with the 75-year-old victim.

But Mr. Evans, and Mayor Brown, and you 57 Buffalo PD officers who resigned from the emergency response team, your words and actions can't be excused as mistakes made in the heat of the moment. You've all had time to digest what happened.

Your willingness to excuse the inexcusable suggests the Buffalo Police Department has a seriously twisted and sick culture, one that can't be tolerated by the civilians you are supposed to serve.

Rudy, shut up

Per the New York Times, Rudy Giuliani on Sunday's "Face the Nation":

“When you say black lives matter, that’s inherently racist,” Mr. Giuliani said in an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Black lives matter. White lives matter. Asian lives matter. Hispanic lives matter. That’s anti-American, and it’s racist.”

If only Giuliani really had to face the nation.

Look, Rudy, I'm asking this in the kindest possible spirit, really.

Could you please shut the fuck up?

Really, just shut the fuck up.

Shut the fuck up and listen for a change.

Start by listening to yourself.

“They sing rap songs about killing police officers, and they talk about killing police officers, and they yell it out at their rallies and the police officers hear it,” he said.

This is the same stuff you said twenty years ago. You're kind of a broken record.

Now, try listening to the rest of the country. Listen, and open your eyes.

What the rest of America is slowly waking up to is, blacks didn't start the bloodshed. Blacks are reacting in a totally understandable way to institutionalized racism so deep, so broad, that you haven't seen it (because as a white man, things seem just fine as they are). That racism extends to how some police officers across the country are treating black suspects.

The bottom line is, black men and women are dying at the hands of the police way more often than they should be — way more often than anyone with a conscience can stand.

That doesn't excuse five police officers dying at the hands of a disturbed black man in Dallas — but it sure as hell explains why they did. It wasn't fucking rap lyrics that drove Micah Johnson.

Yes, you can tritely say "all lives matter", but to do so you must willfully ignore the fact that blacks are dying at the hands of the police more often than anybody else.

Really, Rudy, you have to get out of your own head. You can't ever really understand the anguish and stress of being black, but you have to start respecting blacks. They're not just making this shit up! You have to realize that being black carries stigmas in this country that no other minority status does.

Nothing that comes out of your mouth is helping. Nothing that has come out of your mouth for a long time has helped.

So please, shut up and listen for a change.

Sandra Bland

I saw the name "Sandra Bland" for a week before I knew anything about her. I admit, I avoided reading anything about her because I suspected I'd be depressed and angered by the story of another black person who died after getting mixed up with the police.

Larry Wilmore ran the dashcam video of Bland's initial encounter with Texas state trooper Brian Encinia. I was right. I'm depressed and angry.

Like Jamelle Boule in Slate, I blame the police for what happened. Specifically, I blame Encinia, and whoever failed to train him to do, and/or should have been checking that he was properly doing, his job, because Sandra Bland should never have been in police custody.

I respect cops. They go into situations I won't. I'm grateful for that. When one has stopped me on the road, I've tried to remember that he doesn't know what he's walking into; that for all he knows, I could be a hitherto unknown serial killer. I try not to make his job harder.

But if I did make his job harder by complaining when he stopped me, I would expect him to deal with it. Arguing is not an arrestable offense.

Yet that's how Encinia treated Bland's initial complaint. Encinia acted like he was a king whose dictates could not be defied without consequences. It's altogether too easy to imagine he wanted to put an "uppity" black woman in her place.

Racism? Sexism? An unhealthy affection for power? All of the above? We'll probably never know. Any way I look at it, though, he didn't exercise self-control and he didn't act like a trained law-enforcement officer. He acted like a bully.

His apologists say that anyone, irrespective of skin color or gender, should comply completely and without hesitation with any police order.

That is a dangerously supine attitude. It fosters an unhealthy arrogance among police, especially among those drawn to the job because it feeds their need to lord it over others.

I'm not saying we should defy cops willy-nilly. They have a dangerous but necessary job to do and we owe it to them not to make that job harder than it already is. But in the average traffic stop, the cop is in an unquestionably superior position, physically and psychologically. We become nervous and instinctively go on the defensive, even if we don't know what we've done wrong. Moreover, society deliberately gives him certain advantages over civilians. He's armed; we're not. This is an ordinary part of his day; this is an entirely unexpected and unwelcome disruption of ours. Most of all, he has been trained for this; we haven't.

Pulling me over for a traffic violation is a cop's right. But along with that right goes the responsibility of comporting himself with a minimum level of professionalism. That may include taking a certain amount of harmless verbal flak and letting it roll off his back.

I repeat: arguing is not an arrestable offense. At least, it shouldn't be.

It's possible Encinia is a good cop who was having a (horrendously) bad day. If you believe that, though, you also have to accept the possibility that Bland was a good person who was having a bad day when Encinia stopped her (for what seemed to her no good reason).

Any way you look at it, Encinia escalated what should have been a trivial traffic stop into ... whatever you call this tragedy.

The responsibility for this episode spinning out of control rests largely with Encinia. He should never have let his temper (or arrogance) get the better of him. He should never have let this traffic stop turn into an arrest.

I don't know what happened after the arrest. Maybe other officers, actively or passively, contributed to Sandra Bland's death. But she wouldn't have been in police custody at all if Encinia had done his job professionally. No, I'm not a cop, but you don't need to be a cop to interpret that dashcam video. He let that encounter get completely out of hand.