Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

I really should read my own blog.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

I was promised a recession.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Criminal Justice / Shitty Cops / I Swear It Was in Self Defense

I Swear It Was in Self Defense

by | 57 Comments

This post is in: 

Bad Sheriffs are everywhere. In Baton Rouge  (via Atrios):

According to a special report from theBaton Rouge Advocate, the Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office is conducting stings to find men willing to have consensual gay sex and arresting them for crimes against nature. No money is discussed in these exchanges; the men are being targeted and humiliated under the state’s sodomy law, which has been unconstitutional since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling.

At least a dozen of these arrests have taken place since 2011, with the most recent taking place July 18. District Attorney Hillar Moore III said that none of these cases have been prosecuted because no crime occurred, but these men are still being arrested, temporarily jailed, and fined merely for agreeing to private sexual activity. […]

And in Buffalo:

Has anyone else managed to wrap their head around the fact that Erie County Sheriff Tim Howard isn’t just opposed to the NY SAFE Act, but has pledged to not honor or enforce it in any way? The power of the sheriff is not law selection – to pick and choose which laws to enforce – it is, instead, law enforcement.

The SAFE act is New York’s new gun control law.

Reader Interactions

57Comments

  2. 2.

    Chris

    I love it when they tell us that “dude, gay people are totally free to do as they please in this country – it’s just that we don’t want the sacred institution of MARRIAGE…” Then something like this happens.

  3. 3.

    Belafon

    The power of the sheriffpresident is not law selection – to pick and choose which laws to enforce – it is, instead, law enforcement.

    I blame Obama.

  4. 4.

    PaulW

    I blame the entire collapse of accountability in our nation. Nobody has to own up to to anything, unless they’ve been shoved into jail already on flimsy evidence or shot at for Walking While Black/Hispanic/Other.

  5. 5.

    Loretta Jackson

    They’re being arrested, jailed and fined even though there was no crime. (1) how can someone be fined for not committing a crime and (2) Isn’t this a law suit just waiting to happen?

  6. 6.

    the Conster

    You sorta have to admire the angry old white guys – they won’t take NO for an answer. Too bad white male privilege can’t be harvested and used as an alternative fuel source.

  7. 7.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    Nice extortion racket they’ve got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

    @Loretta Jackson:

    Isn’t this a law suit just waiting to happen?

    Gotta find someone willing to publicly admit that he was trawling for sex in that park.

  9. 9.

    aimai

    What about the local sherriff who was filmed firing off guns and proclaiming holy war against liberals? It boggles my mind that there appears to be nothing the federal government can do when clearly uncontrollable, crazy, people get elected to local office and begin threatening other people publicly. You’d think the scrutiny that we waste on the homeless and on gay people and union organizers might be better put to work cleaning up the crazy in actual officeholders whose actual actions in office are given so much protection.

  11. 11.

    El Caganer

    @aimai: That’s the police chief of East Bumfuck or whatever the little town is here in PA. He apparently has succeeded in convincing the sheriff in that area that he’s completely nuts. I suspect he’s going to get a visit from the feds in the none-too-distant future for various threats (all in good fun, of course) against national figures.

  12. 12.

    gelfling545

    There’s more than that with Howard. He’s been involved with serious abuses at the holding center that brought a lawsuit from the DOJ & he held out against making basic safety corrections to life threatening conditions for quite some time. Unfortunately, none of the likely candidates for the office seem any better.

  18. 18.

    Belafon

    @Villago Delenda Est: There’s a reason tv shows and movies have been made about abusive local cops. This is not new. Just like any other thing, though, these people just have a bigger audience.

  20. 20.

    Penus

    As long as the real important Tim Howard continues his “save act,” I’m cool.

    WORDPLAY!

  21. 21.

    cleek

    not enforce the laws? scoundrels.

    b.t.w., isn’t that exactly what many people say Obama should do w/r/t drug laws? (i tease, i tease)

  24. 24.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @01jack: That’s the only way you’ll get someone willing to sue. I’d think the odds are against the usual visitors to the park being willing to come forward. We gotta live here, destroy my career, get me fired, etc., etc. That’s why it’s extortion.

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    The name of the Great Lake (and the canal) may be Erie, but the county ought to buy another vowel and make it Eerie.

  26. 26.

    Another Halocene Human

    OT: I feel the need to defend myself, although given posting times the person who called me out is not going to see it. I have never heard of that terrible Chuck Knipp person until today. I didn’t google too hard but the youtube videos of his act are from 2009. “How YOU durrrrn?” is a catchphrase from the 2007 (see, 2007 is less than 2009) Eddie Murphy movie NORBIT. I picked up that phrase from coworkers who picked it up from Eddie Murphy. Despite being in the South we are all quite far away culturally and physically from NOLA–as I said in the relevant thread, we don’t even get the same hurricanes. I’m pretty sure none of us were aware that this clown in blackface was ripping off Eddie Murphy routines.

    Btw, Eddie Murphy was considered a trailblazer in Black comedy a generation ago because he was one of the first Black comedians to break into what had been a white genre–impressions. The Black comedic genre didn’t really include impression in the 1970s, but here was Eddie Murphy becoming all these other personas, like Red Skelton or somebody like that. Whoopie Goldberg broke onto the scene doing impressions a decade later. So there’s a certain irony to this dude stealing Murphy’s act.

  27. 27.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @El Caganer: Got any more scoop on the Sheriff and the Chief?

    @Omnes Omnibus: If only the DA could get the idiots to stop arresting people, but I suspect fear of a 1983 action is not persuasive with those true believers.

  29. 29.

    Another Halocene Human

    Also OT: I was just watching MADEA GOES TO JAIL until my stupid Apple crappy hardware choked halfway through the dvd, once again frustrating my attempt to do the right thing and NOT pirate everything everywhere. I’m pretty sure Tyler Perry tossed off at least one “How YOU doin’?” in the first half. (But if not, Madea certainly expressed the same attitude: I said ‘Go to hell,’ he said ‘Go to jail’.)

  30. 30.

    The Moar You Know

    Ever read The Mangler by Stephen King?

    @Belafon: When I was ten. Took me years to get over thinking that large pieces of industrial equipment might come alive and kill us all.

    Awesome story.

  31. 31.

    RSA

    @aimai:

    It boggles my mind that there appears to be nothing the federal government can do when clearly uncontrollable, crazy, people get elected to local office and begin threatening other people publicly.

    I wonder about that, too. I’d also think that the local voters would eventually get upset. For example, Joe Arpaio has cost his county more than $50 million in court costs and yet he gets elected year after year. That’s some expensive craziness.

  32. 32.

    Amir Khalid

    A sheriff’s office “enforcing” an unenforceable law, and one refusing to enforce a law the sheriff doesn’t like, both sound like they’re just asking to be sued. I hope someone is preparing to grant them their heart’s desire.

  33. 33.

    piratedan

    wonder what the number of unsolved burglaries and sexual assaults are in their jurisdictions, that is what is apparently making headway against Sheriff Joe now, the fact that while he was on these immigrant sweeps he was ignoring actual crimes by devoting resources to these PR stunts and not actually doing his job.

  36. 36.

    black onion

    Let’s not leave out the deputies.

    Deputies in Florida’s Escambia County have some explaining to do after they allegedly shot an unarmed man for grabbing a box of cigarettes out of his own car outside his own house.

    Roy Middleton was returning home from work early Saturday morning, when he stopped by the car he and his mother share to grab some cigarettes.

    A neighbor who didn’t recognize Middleton phoned the local sheriff’s office to report a possible burglary.

    Deputies dispatched to the scene found Middleton inside the vehicle and ordered him to back away with his hands in the air. As he was doing so, Middleton says he turned to face the deputies.

    “It was like a firing squad,” he later recalled from his hospital bed. “Bullets were flying everywhere.”

    http://gawker.com/unarmed-man-shot-by-deputies-inside-his-own-car-outside-949237195

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne

    @black onion:

    Based on how these cases go here in Los Angeles, even in fatal shootings, this is my guess:

    The deputies will claim they thought the pack/carton of cigarettes in the guy’s hand was a gun. The police commission/internal affairs will agree with them that it was totally rational to mistake cigarettes for a gun, and they will be back at work within a couple of weeks. The victim will have to fight for years to get any compensation because it was a “good shooting,” so he has no grounds for a complaint about, you know, being shot for getting something out of his own car.

  38. 38.

    Shakezula

    @MakeMeAnOffer: I’m on my neighborhood’s listserv and it is fascinating to watch the pants wetters discuss suspicious behavior and what can be done to keep us safe. One constant source of angst is the dread unknown male walking the streets late at night.

    Except, this is right outside a university so we have lots of unknown males walking the streets late at night. But they never express anxiety about the college kids who are overwhelmingly white. A darkish male or males walking around is cause for ape-shittiness and they don’t even realize it.

  39. 39.

    MakeMeAnOffer

    @Shakezula:

    Agree with this.

    I hate to sound like the “get-off-my-lawn” type especially since I was in college only a few years ago, but our area has a lot of colleges and the city area has lots of pubs where drunken idiots scream/sing/piss at 2 or 3 in the morning, yet very few calls to the police are made and if they are made the police just tells the drunken idiot to move along.

    Of course the majority of the drunken idiots are white college kids whom the police aren’t seemingly threatened by and no matter how drunk or belligerent the college kid(s) is/are, the police seemingly never feel the need to draw their gun or taser anyone.

  40. 40.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Another Halocene Human: Wow, what did I miss?

    I don’t associate “How YOU doin'” with Eddie Murphy at all. I would think Joey Tribbiani, who considerably predated NORBIT.

  42. 42.

    Shakezula

    @MakeMeAnOffer: Our neighborhood watch dud’s advice for dealing with rowdy college twits (who often roam in packs) was to first go out and “engage” them and try to get them to quiet down. If that didn’t work, then call the police.

    Yes, because there’s nothing a woman wants more than to scamper out of bed and into the streets at 1 a.m. to try to reason with a bunch of intoxicated young ‘uns. Based on the scoffing and laughter this suggestion garnered, guys aren’t too keen on the idea either.

    But if a man or men fell into the “suspicious character” definition CALL THE POLICE.

  43. 43.

    burnspbesq

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):

    I suspect fear of a 1983 action is not persuasive with those true believers.

    That could change if the local DA were to opine that they were not acting within the scope of their duties, and would therefore be personally liable for any damages or 1988 fee awards.

  44. 44.

    Flatlander

    Well, rouge my baton.

    You can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride.

    Someone ought to publish the name of that deputy. Sounds like his sexual curiosity is proving too much for his job.

  46. 46.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @FlipYrWhig: Dunno. I never paid that much attention to the show. (I had to look up the character’s name. :P )

    But there was a supergroup on my City of Heroes server whose members were all characters from Friends. I ran a lot of task forces with “Joey” and will never forget that “battle cry”. :D

  47. 47.

    burnspbesq

    OT, but this is a BFD.

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has ruled that a private equity fund is engaged in a trade or business for purposes of the ERISA “termination liability” rules for collectively bargained pension plans. This would make it prohibitively expensive to raid some pension funds of acquired companies.

    The case is Sun Capital Partners III, LP v. New England Teamsters & Trucking Industry Pension Fund.

  50. 50.

    StringOnAStick

    @burnspbesq: Making it expensive to raid pension funds would be seriously unpopular with those firms of the Bain Capital bent. Please let it be upheld!

  51. 51.

    Xenos

    Which managing-partner genius hired K&E to defend against the Teamsters in the First Circuit? They don’t even have an office in the First Circuit.

    And why did K&E not warn their clients that if the private placement memos boast about the funds active management that might not be a bit damning to their claims that they were really passive investors?

    Those of us who never worked in BigLaw are often left speechless at this sort of thing.

  52. 52.

    gelfling545

    @mainmati: I believe that comment refers to the police chief who made the youtube video, not the Sheriff of Erie County (NY) who is a different kind of loony.

  53. 53.

    burnspbesq

    @StringOnAStick:

    Game’s far from over. The First Circuit reversed a grant of summary judgment to the funds by the District Court, so the case goes back down for trial (assuming it doesn’t settle).

    @Xenos:

    The likelihood that a tax or ERISA lawyer ever got a look at a draft of that language before it was finalized by the securities lawyers is infinitesimally small. Specialization has both benefits and drawbacks. Also too, hindsight is 20/20, and given the state of the case law prior to this decision, any warning about that possible outcome would likely have been prefaced with a comment like “this is theoretically possible, but I don’t think you should lose any sleep over it.”

  54. 54.

    Xenos

    @burnspbesq: I will certainly grant you that point on the 20/20 hindsight. From what I have seen of that industry the deals can be so big and complex that nobody really knows everything they need to know. That makes me worry about systemic risk. This decision is pretty sweet, though.

    No wingnut judges on the panel, btw. People who get down on the Democrats for failing to get a lot done should appreciate the work by this one Clinton judge and two Obama judges.

  55. 55.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    @Shakezula: there’s this town near where I live called Atherton, and the “police blotter” stories about it that appear in the newspaper are something else. Gawker had something about it a while back.

  56. 56.

    Glocksman

    The NY Sheriff is either taking a poltically popular position in his county or just grandstanding a la Sheriff Joe in AZ.

    Either way, the reality is that all LE departments have limited resources and if gun law violations are lower on the ‘must enforce’ list than say robbery or murder laws, he should have simply come out and said ‘due to limited resources, SAFE violations are not very high on my department’s priority list’.

    Though I would point out to that county’s residents that the NYSP or municipal police departments may place the law higher on the list than the county Sheriff. :)

    As for the asshat in LA enforcing laws that have been ruled unconstitutional, aren’t there Federal civil rights laws about that sort of thing?

  57. 57.

    Glocksman

    Added: I don’t know what it’s like in NY, but locally most gun law violations I read about on the news are ‘lesser included’ charges tacked on to more serious ones, and often seem to be plea bargained away.

    It’s rare indeed that I read about someone locally getting busted solely for state gun law violations.
    Federal ones, yes (it’s unbelievable how many idiots file down the sears on semi autos), but seldom state ones.

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