The general topic of police (or other agencies acting as police) misbehavior has been on my mind in fits and starts of late. To pick only a few:
- There have been multiple incidents on Curmie’s campus of the University Police Department doing outrageous things; no repercussions, of course.
- There was the anniversary of the shootings at Kent State, already significant in Curmie’s life and made more so by his attendance at an NEH-funded institute on that campus a few years ago.
- There was the Derek Chauvin trial: whether or not what he did was murder, whether or not it resulted from racism, it was certainly a cop more interested in being “in charge” than in doing the right thing.
- In the BLM-related protests that followed George Floyd’s death, much of the violence was actually instigated by law enforcement.
- In Curmie’s Irish Theatre and Culture course, we’ve had recent discussions of two “Bloody Sunday” incidents in Ireland: one in Dublin in 1913 during the most significant labor dispute in that city’s history, the other in Derry in 1972, in which 13 people were killed and the incident immediately covered up by the authorities. I was going to say the truth finally came out some 38 years after the event, but that’s not quite true. Everyone already knew the truth; the truth was officially confirmed in 2010.
So now we come to another incident. No one died, thankfully. But the entitlement of the officer involved and the eagerness of his superiors to defend him, even outright lie for him, is staggering. Alas, it is not, however, at all surprising. It’s precisely what has happened time and again in this country and indeed around the world. A cop does something demonstrably stupid, demonstrably illegal, demonstrably evil, and his superiors scurry to cover it up, blatantly lie for him, and hope it will all go away.
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| Trooper Dunn’s handiwork: Curmie bets his mama is proud. |
Ms. Harper then did precisely what she was supposed to do, according to the Arkansas Driver License Study Guide: “Pull over to the right side of the road-- activate your turn signal or emergency flashers to indicate to the officer that you are seeking a safe place to stop.” She pulls over to the right lane, slows down to about 60 mph, and looks for a safe place to pull over… but the shoulder is too narrow, so she continues down the highway, planning to pull over at the next exit, about a mile away.
This isn’t satisfactory in the testosterone-poisoned universe of Trooper Dunn, however. He proceeds to implement what is euphemistically termed a “precision immobilization technique,” or PIT. This is a manoeuvre whereby a cop intentionally rams another vehicle, causing it to go out of control. This technique has caused literally dozens of deaths in the past five years; in one case an infant was thrown from an SUV. Most police forces have sense enough not to try to endanger someone’s life for speeding. The Arkansas State Police apparently do not rise to this level of understanding, which, after all, would require intelligence exceeding that of a kumquat.
According to Rick Giovengo, a former law enforcement officer who taught the appropriate use of PITs at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, “The speed, the people in the car, the crime that’s been committed, those are things that all have to be taken into consideration by the responding officer before they do the pit.” Let’s see… The speed: slowing down. The people in the car: It was dark, so Dunn had no idea; could’ve been kids, could have been Harper’s grandmother. The crime that’s been committed: Speeding. Seriously? The “tak[ing] into consideration”: never happened.
Predictably, Harper’s vehicle went out of control and
flipped. Ms. Harper was seriously injured,
but she was more concerned about her unborn child (who, by virtue of luck alone,
is now several months old and apparently devoid of ill effects from the incident). Dunn insists that she should have pulled over
immediately. Harper said, correctly,
that it didn’t appear to be safe to do so, and that she thought she was doing
the right thing. Had she, in fact, pulled onto the narrow shoulder, she would have been endangering Dunn’s life, not so much her own.
She was 100% correct, of course. How do we know? Because that what the Asshole Dunn’s dashcam shows!
Police spokesperson Col. Bill Bryant responded, sort of. He wouldn’t address the specific incident at hand, but rather issued a generic statement, which included this:
Over the past five years, Arkansas State Troopers have documented a 52 percent increase in incidents of drivers making a conscious choice to ignore traffic stops initiated by the troopers. Instead of stopping, the drivers try to flee.... The fleeing drivers pull away at a high rate of speed, wildly driving, dangerously passing other vehicles, showing no regard for the safety of other motorists, creating an imminent threat to the public.
Hey, wait a minute, Colonel. I know you want to lie to get your guy out of trouble, but does your disregard for truth have to be quite so obvious? In this case, it’s clear to anyone who can out-think a dead ‘possum that Ms. Harper was not trying to flee. If she were, she’d have speeded up instead of slowing down. (Is Curmie the only one who remembers the famous O.J. Simpson low-speed chase? And that was for a murder suspect, not someone going a little over the speed limit.) Ms. Harper was specifically not “pull[ing] away at a high rate of speed.” As “for showing no regard for the safety of other motorists, creating an imminent threat to the public,” that was your guy, the one who intentionally put another person at risk of life and limb.
Oh, but the prevaricating prat Bryant isn’t done. In a classic example of inserting a comment into a “no comment” response, he intones (well, it’s a written statement, since he’s too chickenshit to actually have to answer questions, so he didn’t literally intone), “In every case a state trooper has used a PIT maneuver, the fleeing driver could have chosen to end the pursuit by doing what all law-abiding citizens do every day when a police officer turns on the blue lights – they pull over and stop.”
Bullshit. We know this statement to be untrue, because we’ve now seen the video. Ms. Harper did things precisely by the book. And if you’re willing to tell a bald-faced lie about this one incident, you’re willing to do so any other time one of your guys gets caught doing something outrageous.
The only good new here is that a photo of Dunn on the ASP’s Facebook page has been pretty well savaged. Curmie doesn’t normally endorse this kind of behavior. Dunn and the ASP deserve it, though.
In a just universe, Dunn would be fired without pension and arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, reckless endangerment, and assholitude in the first degree. Bryant would also be fired without pension, and with the proviso that he could never work in law enforcement again. Harper would be awarded pots of money: enough that the people of Arkansas would rise up against the legislators whose Old West sensibilities and machismo machinations in not outlawing this dangerous manoeuvre (except, perhaps, if the driver is suspected of a violent felony as opposed to driving a little too fast) allowed this to happen.
Does this look like a just universe to you, Gentle Reader?
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