Grammar Nazism with a Twist

Curmie hasn’t written a blog piece in over 20 months, and at first glance, at least, this seems an odd choice of topic with which to break silence.  But there’s a twist coming; hear me out, OK?

One of those internet riddles has been circulating for a while now; Curmie’s seen it three or four times.  There are a couple of variations, but the essential elements remain the same.  One version goes like this:

OK math versus English people, and everyone else… Here you go:

The battle of Mathematics and English. Let’s see who can get it right 🧐

Question:

1 rabbit saw 9 elephants while going to the river. Every elephant saw 3 monkeys going to the river. Each monkey had 1 tortoise in each hand.

How many animals are going to the river?

The question inevitably leads to a host of “wrong” answers because, you see, “you need to read really carefully,” quoth one of Curmie’s friends who posted it.  If you, Gentle Reader, don’t want to know “the answer,” stop here.

OK, so the “correct” answer is 10.  (Or at least that’s what was counted as correct on a friend’s Facebook page; Curmie wouldn’t be surprised if someone else decided 0 is the correct answer; see four paragraphs down.)  There’s the rabbit who sees the elephants while going to the river.  There are three monkeys “going to the river,” carrying two tortoises apiece (presuming that the correct nomenclature for simian appendages would be two hands and two legs).  The elephants aren’t necessarily going to the river, and they all could have seen the same three monkeys.  So: 1 rabbit + 3 monkeys + 6 tortoises = 10 animals.

Except, Dear Reader, if you’ll pardon the expression, that’s bullshit.  Notice the key words in the explanation: “necessarily,” “could have.”  The elephants might well have also been going to the river; the set-up doesn’t say they aren’t, it just doesn’t say they are.  Rabbits are pretty quick; the rabbit might have passed them.  In an exercise that purports to be about close reading, it’s pretty sloppy to say the rabbit merely saw the elephants.  He (I’m making the rabbit male for pronoun purposes) could have “met” them if the intention was to exclude them from the tally: in this case they’d be either stationary or moving away from the river.

Similarly, there’s nothing to indicate that the elephants were grouped together, so it’s perfectly possible that the monkeys each one saw were all different.  They could have been the same, but we don’t know that.  In other words, there might have been 1 rabbit + 9 elephants + 27 monkeys + 54 tortoises = 91 animals all going to the river.

Moreover, the question isn’t how many of these animals are going to the river.  It’s how many animals.  What about the zebras and the kangaroos and the tigers?  (Let’s make this a truly international zoological exercise!)  The fact that we don’t know about them doesn’t mean they don’t exist, just as Juneteenth was celebrated before POTUS knew of its existence and people infected by COVID-19 have the virus whether or not they’ve been diagnosed.  So there may be hundreds, even thousands, of animals going to the river.  The question wasn’t “what is the minimum number of animals going to the river?” or “how many of these animals do we know are going to the river?”

But—as they say on the late-night infomercials—wait, there’s more!  Notice the tense shift.  The descriptions are all in the past tense: “saw” (twice) and “had.”  But the question is in the present tense: “are going.”  All of the specifically mentioned animals may indeed still be going to the river, or they might have gone to the river and are already home watching Netflix.  The monkeys may have been seen carrying the tortoises at some point in the past but decided that was too much work and put them down.  Etc.  In other words, the only really correct answer to the question is WE DON’T KNOW.

But what Curmie realized upon waking up in the middle of the night was not his own Grammar Nazism; that’s hardly news.  Rather, the failure of this riddle as an exercise in close reading or logic may make it an ideal metaphor for contemporary events.  What if each animal represents a Person of Color (no, Curmie isn’t saying that POCs are animals: this is for analogy purposes only), and “going to the river” means being beaten, choked, shot, or otherwise brutalized by the police?

That makes George Floyd, for example, the rabbit.  He was unquestionably “going to the river,” as were many of the others whose names have been invoked of late: Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, et al.  Of particular interest here are the elephants, who, for the sake of this analogy, might be said to represent those who have been assaulted by police but we don't know the circumstances (let's be fair: police do have the right to legitimate force in self-defense, for example).  Because we don’t know whether they’re going to the river, the “correct” answer assumes that they aren’t.  In terms of the riddle, it’s an unspoken rule to exclude “irrelevant” details.  But in real life, we have those unspoken rules, too.  We’ve been acculturated to believe absence of evidence is evidence of absence, that “going to the river” only happens when we’re certain: when there’s a video, for example.  But now more than ever, we need to examine the assumptions upon which our conclusions are based.  Such is the essence of epic theatre and of engaged citizenship alike.  Are one or more of those elephants, in other words, actually going to the river?  Silence in this case borders on willful ignorance, and does not merely fail to reveal the truth, but actively conceals it.

Even more telling is the omission of other animals—the zebras, kangaroos, and tigers I mentioned—who were also going to the river, but whose stories aren’t even deemed worthy of mention: those for whom “going to the river” is so much a part of daily life that it doesn’t bear mentioning.  Perhaps they are heading not to the river per se, but to a stream that feeds it: not violence, in the terms of our analogy, but “stop and search,” inappropriate interrogation, or slow response times.

Of course, if what’s really important about the riddle is the tense shift, the fact is that we don’t know where any of those animals are going now.  Maybe now the elephants are going to the river and the rabbit isn’t.  Maybe the monkeys have been to the river, returned, and are going back again.  We can be sure, however, that the past does indeed impact the present; pretending that all incidents of river-going are in the past is not merely naïve, but reckless.

Finally, of course, there’s the realization that wherever our little scenario plays out—in the jungle, the grasslands, or the tundra—virtually every animal will sooner or later go to the river, or at least to one of its tributaries.  Here is where we can but pray our analogy breaks down.  

But we all know it doesn’t.

On Cops and Pets (sort of)

Curmie is proud of being an educator and therefore hosts the Curmie Award for the teacher or administrator who most embarrasses the profession. Similarly, he acknowledges that there are thousands of selfless, hard-working and compassionate police officers—unfortunately, I got to see a couple of them perform a particularly grim duty last week—but that makes it all the more important to remember that wearing a badge and a gun doesn’t make one a good policeman (or –woman) any more than standing in front of a classroom makes one a good teacher.

So…

There have been a lot of disturbing stories of late about overly testosteronic cops and pets (well, one of the stories isn’t about pets per se, but about partially-domesticated kittens. Close enough for jazz). What’s newsworthy and disturbing about these incidents isn’t necessarily directly linked to the animals involved, but that motif does give us an opportunity to examine some of the worst (we hope) in police behavior over the past few weeks. I’m even skipping two cases from California: the shooting of five caged (but at least aggressive) pit bulls by a Selma cop in January and the recent incident in Hawthorne in which the police were certainly at fault for escalating what needn’t have been a tense situation, but may indeed have ultimately acted appropriately (considering the position they had put themselves in) in shooting and killing an 80-pound Rottweiler.

We start, then, with a story out of Miami in late May. Police assaulted, handcuffed, and choked a 14-year-old boy with little if any provocation. The boy, Tremaine McMillian, had apparently been “roughhousing” with friends. Although they quickly realized “there was no sort of altercation or fight going on,” police nonetheless wanted to talk to McMillian’s parents.

But that’s when things turned bad, and when descriptions begin to diverge: he was walking away, or he was leading police to his mother, who was nearby. I’m going to pretend for a moment that I believe a single word of the police description: if for no other reason than that my raised eyebrow of skepticism might be interpreted as a “de-humanizing stare,” which is apparently enough to get you slammed to the ground and choked by a gaggle of over-stimulated jackasses working on their machismo merit badge. Well, of course, young Mr. McMillian has, shall we say, a darker complexion than I, so I might have been fine.

Anyway, the police don’t seem to dispute the claim that the teenager was carrying his six-week-old puppy in one hand and was bottle-feeding it with the other. The best they can do is argue that after police “[grabbed] him,” McMillian’s “body language, of stiffening up, closing the fist, flaring his hands, trying to pull away, well, now, you’re resisting an officer at that point.” Presumably, this is intended to constitute a defense of the officers’ stupidity and brutality. “At this point, we’re not dealing with, or concerned with the puppy,” quoth Prevaricator in Charge Detective Alvaro Zabaleta, “what we’re concerned about is the immediate threat to the officers.” Seriously, he said that.

Here’s the best-case scenario for the police account. McMillian was doing nothing illegal and the police were being a little over-officious. They then grabbed him, although he had committed no offense and was under no obligation to cooperate with them. He shrugged them off, telling them not to “touch [him] like [he’s] done something,” all the while holding the puppy. While doing so, he apparently sprouted another set of appendages, complete with clenched fists and flaring arms (whatever the hell that means), and constituted an “immediate threat” because… um… well, he did. Seriously, if a 14-year-old kid holding a puppy in both arms makes a police officer afraid in any way, maybe we ought to be looking for some cops with backbones made of sterner stuff than overcooked linguini.

Oh, wait. I forgot about the “de-humanizing stares.” Snort. These people should be writing trashy novels. They sure as hell shouldn’t be cops.

We move now to North Ridgeville, Ohio, where a police-attached Human Officer reporting to the Police Department shot and killed a litter of kittens in the presence of a group of children, and the idiot Police Chief decided there was no problem. Move along. Nothin’ to see here.

There seems to be little dispute about the facts. A homeowner called the police to see if they could do something about a litter of feral kittens that had taken up residence in a woodpile behind her house. Enter one Barry Accorti, retired police sergeant and current part-time Humane Officer (yes, Gentle Reader, Curmie is aware of the irony of the job title). According to WKYC television,

He allegedly told the homeowner that shelters were full and that the cats would be going to kitty heaven. He then pulled out his gun and shot to death the five, 8- to 10-week-old kittens.

Accorti allegedly told the homeowner that he isn't supposed to do this, but it was justifiable. The woman ran into the house to shield her children who were screaming and crying.

There are some minor discrepancies with the details, but what isn’t in dispute is that Accorti used a gun to “euthanize” kittens no more than 10 weeks old. Interestingly, the police department’s defense of Accorti’s stupidity and arrogance cites the proximity of the woodpile to the house and presence of children in the home as reasons why the kittens would have to be killed to begin with. Presumably, it never occurred to him that firing a gun into a woodpile is inherently unsafe (lots of opportunities for ricochets in a residential area) and that traumatizing children might not be the best available option. No, correct that, he just didn’t care. He’s been carrying this gun around for a while and hasn’t had the chance to show off what a tough guy he is by firing it to the admiration of all. After all, nothing says “manly” like shooting a kitten.

Here’s the deal. He’s got cages, heavy gloves, catch-poles, all that stuff available to him. These are kittens. The fact that they hissed at someone doesn’t mean they’re dangerous. And he’s supposed to be a professional. Assuming it’s true that euthanasia was the only (or best) option—hardly a given, by the way—then there are a lot of safer, more humane means of dealing with the situation… not to mention avoiding the possibility virtual certainty of giving those kids nightmares for months.

Most disturbingly, nothing a cop ever does seems to be questioned by those in authority, whether it’s pepper-spraying innocent people or doing something transcendently stupid like firing a gun in a residential neighborhood to deal with a feral cat problem. (Note: the photo at left purports to be of the kittens in question, meaning a). they're partially domesticated and b). the alleged complaints about a chronic problem are either fabricated or disingenuous.)

Here are the key sections of the official police statement by Chief Mike Freeman:

Research and other animal organizations accept shooting as an acceptable means of euthanasia.

After visiting the scene, talking with the responding officer and re-interviewing the complainant, I have decided his actions were appropriate and have decided not to impose any disciplinary measures for the incident.

OK, Chief. So show me that research and at least two (you used the plural, after all) “other animal organizations” that consider using a handgun an acceptable means of euthanasia. I’d suggest that you not start with the Ohio SPCA, however. Here’s the statement on their Facebook page:

No HUMANE organization would recommend that non-threatening animals be shot as a method of euthanasia. The use of gunshot to end an animal's life should only be used when an animal is attacking or has been injured so seriously that ending suffering must be immediate. The 8 to 10 week-old kittens posed no immediate threat to anyone. Trap, Neuter, and Release Programs (TNR) have been in place in a multitude of cities and towns throughout Ohio and the United States for years. Humane societies and shelters not choosing TNR as an option, should only be using Euthanasia by Injection (EBI).

Karen Minton, Ohio director of the Humane Society of the United States, agrees: “it is hard to fathom any circumstance where fatally shooting young kittens is necessary or justified.” So—given the pretty strong dissenting statements from representatives of the two universally recognized “animal organizations” in the country, the SPCA and the HSUS—please produce anyone with a quarter as much credibility. Or admit that you’re a lying asshole and resign. Your choice.

Later, Freeman defended Accorti’s actions as legal: “there were no children present outside the home when this occurred.” Oh, well, that’s all right then. As long as they were looking out the window instead of… you know… there, then everything is just peachy. And besides, behaving stupidly, arrogantly, recklessly and probably dishonestly is just fine as long as it’s legal. I doubt that what Officer Accorti did actually was legal, although it might have been. But it’s certainly grounds for firing. The idiot police chief and the pompous and disingenuous mayor ought to be on the unemployment line, too.

Note: it is now being touted as a silver lining that the city has revised their policies, will no longer kill cats, and will form an alliance with the Friendship Animal Protection League to develop new procedures. Of course, this move is founded more on petulance than on pragmatism: the police will now do nothing to help. You see, if they can’t go around firing pistols at kittens, this game just isn’t any fun anymore.

And so we move on to South Holland, Illinois. This incident took place nearly a year ago, but a related lawsuit is moving through the system now, so it’s making news again. Last July, Randy Green’s dog, Grady, somehow popped his chain and apparently ran around the neighborhood for a while before settling down on the front porch of the Green residence.

Here’s what happened, at least according to the lawsuit (I’m tightening up some of the paragraphing):

Upon information and belief, a caller had identified the dog at large as ‘a big old gray dog runnin' around.’ The caller made no mention of the dog being dangerous, vicious, or aggressive....

The two South Holland officers arrived while plaintiff Randy Green and his family were asleep inside of their home, and where Mr. Green’s Cane Corso dog, Grady, was sitting on the front porch. Upon information and belief, the chain holding Grady in the Green family backyard had popped, allowing Grady to be off leash on and around Mr. Green's residence.

Both South Holland officers were equipped with dog-catching poles in the trunks of their vehicles, but neither attempted to use the dog-catching poles to capture the purported dog at large. South Holland officer Chad Barden stood, with his gun drawn, near the Green family home while the dog Grady sat on the front porch. The accompanying South Holland officer stood, leaning against his own police vehicle, approximately 100 feet away from Officer Chad Barden.

The dog Grady walked past both officers on more than one occasion without incident, thereafter lazily returning to the front porch of the Green residence. At no time did the dog Grady make physical contact with either officer.

The South Holland police officers stood outside the Green family home for approximately twenty minutes. At this time, the dog Grady approached Officer Barden again as he was standing nearest the Green family home. Shortly thereafter, Officer Barden shot the dog Grady three times for no reason.

OK, so far it sounds like Mr. Green is behaving a little defensively: surely his beloved canine wouldn’t act threateningly, right? Trouble is, he says he’s got an expert report on video evidence.

"…video surveillance footage from the Green family residence revealed the absence of any charging, lunging or showing of teeth by the dog Grady and instead showed the dog Grady seeking ‘greater distance between the officer and himself,’ displaying ‘calming [body] signals’ by ‘looking away from the officers and showing his [Grady's] flank,’ and moving in a ‘trot.’ (Brackets in complaint.)

You see, the thing is, no lawyer would make, or let her client make, claims that can’t be backed up. The chances are really, really good that the video shows exactly what the plaintiffs in this case claim it shows: a lazy, smug, self-entitled cop shooting a harmless dog because he can. I can find no evidence that Barden or his partner were as much as given a private scolding. And then, of course, the assholes at the police station, a month later, charged Green with having a “dangerous dog.” Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on that one.

Finally—I’m sure there are dozens more cases to choose from, but I’m already over 2000 words—there’s this case from El Monte, California in which a policewoman shot a German shepherd and then—based on all the available evidence—lied about the details.

Police were an hour late to a scheduled meeting with Cathy Luu and her husband Chi Nguyen at their home. They claim to have followed procedure for entering premises where dogs might be present, but they sort of neglected to think through the possibility that people who can afford to live in that neighborhood just might have their own security cameras, which back up their claim that the cops just barged into the enclosed yard area without either calling the house to announce their arrival or making any reasonable attempt to determine if there were dogs about. That huge orange-on-black “Beware of Dog” sign smack in the middle of the damned gate shown in the photo at left might have been regarded as cautionary by an average person. Not by El Monte’s finest, apparently.

And then there is the usual chicken-shit “no choice” justification. Barking is barking. Attacking is attacking. They’re different. It’s impossible to tell from the evidence available to us which was the case here. As in the Hawthorne case mentioned in passing earlier, there are two separate questions to be answered: could this situation have been prevented by more competent police work? And, in the moment it happened, was shooting a large, potentially aggressive dog justified? The answers in both cases are “yes” to question #1 and “maybe” to question #2. So why write about this one instead of the other? Because in the Hawthorne case, the police are only probably lying (about the cause for the arrest of the dog’s owner), whereas in this case the video footage apparently indicates clearly (“beyond reasonable doubt” and all that) that the officers didn’t follow procedure (their jackass boss, of course, believes them rather than the actual evidence, but no one else does). If they’re willing to lie about X, they’re willing to lie about Y.

The good news is that, unlike in the Ohio kitten-shooting incident, at least the mayor in question seems to have some sense, even if the police power structure doesn’t:

[Mayor Andre] Quintero reached out to the family to talk about working something out to find them another German shepherd or other type of dog, even offering to pay for vaccinations, sterilization and any other fees associated with getting a new dog.

“There is no question, we cannot replace Kiki. We know that,” Quintero said as he read a statement during Tuesday night's City Council meeting. “But we would like to do what we can to help fill the void that has been left by the death of this family's pet.”

Quintero called for a “quick and appropriate solution” to the internal investigation into the incident.

“Our community and the Luu/Nguyen family deserve answers and closure quickly,” Quintero added.

You see, this is a good man, or at least an intelligent enough politician to understand that spending a few hundred dollars that might avert a law suit is probably a good idea.

So what do all of these incidents indicate? Well, certainly a handful of cases across a country this size don’t indicate much of anything. But there’s a troubling undertone emerging:

• a lot of cops really like to shoot things and beat people up

• police chiefs and captains and such will lie to cover up for their idiot underlings

• whereas “animal rights” proponents often go too far, they’re right about most of this kind of cases

• there are far too many police who think their job is to swagger around with a gun

• even female officers seem to have testosterone poisoning

But enough of that. Time to scritch my cats’ ears.

4th Amendment? It was here a minute ago...

A disconcerting number of stories over the past few months concern abuses by police: whether it’s showing up en masse in riot gear and spraying military grade pepper spray against peaceful demonstrators in New York, Chicago, UC-Davis, and elsewhere, or escalating New York City’s stop and frisk policies that generally result in nothing more than completely innocent (89%... and the majority of the arrests that were made were of the rather squishy disturbing the peace variety) non-white (91%) people getting hassled by a collection of euphemistically-termed “peace officers” strutting around showing each other how tough they are, with little if any concern for actually preventing or punishing honest-to-God criminal behavior.

In 2003, about 1 in 266 of these stops resulted in actually finding a gun. That rate of return would lead any sane person to discontinue the policy, even apart from other concerns. New York City Resident Idiot Blowhard Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of course, doubled down, actually encouraging more of the tactic, complete with its attendant constitutional issues and racial overtones. By last year, with over three times as many stops, the “success rate” (if we can call it that) plummeted to 1 in 879.

Bloomberg defends this clearly problematic practice by claiming, disingenuously at best, that some 560,000 murders have been prevented by these goon tactics. To say that this figure is absurdly inflated is, of course, obvious, although one suspects that there has been some positive benefit to creating a situation in which to be young (ages 14-24), male, and black or Hispanic is to be an automatic suspect: people who meet all three of those criteria represent less than 5% of the population, but they account for nearly 42% of stop-and-frisk episodes.

Yes, such people are disproportionately likely to commit crimes, too, but the essence of the American legal system and (wait for it) one of the signature tenets of western conservative philosophy is that individuals ought to be considered as such rather than as representatives of groups: not all urban 18-year-olds named Enrique are criminals, and they shouldn’t be treated as if they are.

More to the point: I. Don’t. Care.

If you search literally everybody without any provocation, chances are pretty good you’ll catch someone with a gun or drugs or an outstanding warrant. But the price is too high except in the McCarthyite universe inhabited by arrogant buffoons like Mike Bloomberg. Really, if the price of “law and order” is a state in which the authorities can do whatever the hell they want, I’ll take a little risk.

We are not yet at a point at which I, as a law-abiding citizen, have more to fear from the police, the TSA, US Immigration and similar agencies than I do from random felons. As long as I’m a good little boy and don’t do something outrageous like exercise my 1st amendment rights, I’m probably OK. But my chances of facing unprovoked hassling from someone in uniform are actually considerably higher now than when I was a long-haired post-adolescent with a draft card I hadn't yet decided what to do about. (Luckily, that decision was made for me.)

In short, the attacks on 4th Amendment injunctions against unreasonable search and seizure are even more profound than those on 1st Amendment guarantees of freedom of assembly. This was never more apparent than a recent case in Aurora, Colorado. Aurora, you may recall, is where they charged a six-year-old with sexual harassment for quoting from the lyrics to a popular song. They do grow ‘em stupid there, apparently.

This time, the police held over 40 people for over two hours because they had information—a “virtual certainty” in the words of Moron in Charge Police Chief Dan Oates—that an armed bank robber was in one of twenty or so vehicles stopped at a red light. So, naturally, the cops stopped everyone. But, as they say in the late-night infomercials, that’s not all. Let Officer Frank Fania tell it: “Most of the adults were handcuffed, then were told what was going on and were asked for permission to search the car. They all granted permission, and once nothing was found in their cars, they were un-handcuffed.”

Permission. Yeah, you’ve been handcuffed for no good reason, prior to being told what the hell is going on, by a police force that has just demonstrated that they don’t think they have to follow any rules. You know that you’ve been held up already for two hours while the cops strut their ability to hold ordinary law-abiding citizens without cause. Despite police bungling, you may yet be able to salvage your job, catch your flight, make it to your kid’s concert if you don’t do your shopping first, as you’d planned to do. You’re not really likely to make a reasoned decision about whether to stand on the part of your 4th-amendment rights that haven’t already been violated. You just want this stupidity to end. Notice also that “un-handcuffed” is different from “apologized to and told they were free to go.” A sloppier operation would be difficult to imagine.

When the case first made news, that bizarre quote from Chief Oates caught my attention. How could there be a “virtual certainty” if there was no description of the suspect? In other words, if the suspect is a 45-year-old white male, then I can understand a brief detention of white men who might be 45-ish. But all adults, for two hours? Not a chance.

Later, it came to light that the tip was actually in the form of a tracking device. This, of course, makes the situation even worse. It means that the police could simply have followed the suspect to his destination, which would have almost certainly been less crowded and, by extension, less dangerous for the public.

The smug declaration by police Officer Fania that “The result of the whole ordeal is that it paid off. We have arrested and charged a suspect” misses the point altogether. I don’t know whether Fania is that stupid or that disingenuous, but the fact that no one was hurt and the suspect was apprehended in this case was simply luck, not the product of effective police work.

The constitutional catastrophe, it turns out, was promptly pointed out. Jim Miller, described in the TV piece as a “legal expert” (whatever that means) points out that the “officers… who were involved involved couldn’t point to any of these people they stopped and say, ‘here’s my articulable suspicion for believing that you did something wrong.’”

Justin Marceau, who teaches law at Denver University, amplifies the point, noting that any detention of a person beyond a minute or two means the person has been seized:

What if the tip had been that the robber lived on my block– no other information? Could they detain and handcuff everyone who lives on my block in the hope of catching one bank robber? No, they couldn’t. The Fourth Amendment is pretty clear. I don’t have a problem saying the police violated these people’s Fourth Amendment rights.

Marceau also points out that none of the initial statements from the police expressed any particular interest in public safety. By this observation, neither he nor I, I’m sure, mean to suggest the police weren’t concerned about safety issues, but rather that the detention of dozens of people they knew to be innocent (they just didn’t know which one might not have been) was not prompted by safety concerns. This becomes relevant because it therefore does not allow an exception to normal constitutional protection the way random roadblocks to catch drunk drivers would. (I think that should be illegal, too, but I do see the argument.)

They said they did it to catch a bank robber. If their purpose was to catch a criminal then they need probable cause or reasonable suspicion for each person they detain. If 19 people were detained to catch one, then a one in nineteen chance that a person might be a criminal is not reasonable suspicion. Under settled law, this went way beyond what police are allowed to do.

Of course, the city attorney and “numerous other attorneys” think everything is just peachy. Apparently one becomes city attorney in Aurora when one is too stupid to be an elementary school principal.

Eugene Volokh, the constitutional specialist whose Volokh Conspiracy blog is on my blogroll, also weighed in on this case, noting that “Handcuffing someone generally requires probable cause to believe that they are guilty of a crime, or—in the context of a brief investigative stop—‘particularized suspicion’ to believe that the person is dangerous to the investigators.” He cites legal precedent—Manzanares v. Higdon and Ybarra v. Illinois, for those of you keeping score at home—and concludes

…even if the 5% chance that any particular driver was an armed and dangerous bank robber (1/19, even assuming that the tip was seen as having a 100% chance of being accurate) sufficed to provide enough “individualized suspicion” for a brief investigatory stop—perhaps, depending on the circumstances, including a patdown for weapons—I don’t think it would justify keeping all the innocent people handcuffed for an hour and a half.

It therefore sounds to me like the police might be facing 19 lawsuits (one in which the jury might not be that sympathetic to the plaintiff, and 18 in which they will likely be much more sympathetic), as well as one likely pretty solid suppression-of-evidence motion. I should hope that the police department and its elected superiors will also face some political blowback. Protecting the public from armed bank robbers is certainly very important; but handcuffing dozens of innocent people—in a situation where it was certain that the great bulk of the people were indeed innocent—for over an hour as part of this sort of blanket seizure strikes me as much too high a price to pay for this sort of law enforcement.

Yeah. What he said.

So, anyway, I thought this was going to be the “can you freaking believe this?” episode for the week. Then, between starting and finishing this piece, I read about the guy who had a diabetic seizure on his way home from Bible study, crashed his car, and was pepper-sprayed, clubbed and Tasered by police. To death. If these allegations are proven to be even within hailing distance of the truth, I take back what I said earlier about not yet being at the point where we have more to fear from the police (in the broad sense of that term) than we do from random criminality. We’re there. Enjoy the view.

Pepper Spray and the Erosion of Legitimacy

It seems hard to believe now, but it wasn’t that long ago that pepper spray was a sort of anachronism—a remnant of a time when altercations between protesters and authorities really might have resulted in injuries to the latter. But that was before pepper spray became the new Taser: a toy to be employed by police and police wannabes who lack the skill, training, intelligence, human compassion, or (apparently) penis size to do otherwise.

The turning point was probably the moment when creep-with-a-badge Anthony Bologna sprayed a group of already-confined female protesters at an #Occupy event in New York in September. The women posed no threat to him or anyone else, but that wasn’t enough to a keep a prick like Bologna from summoning his inner sadist. And he probably figured that the idiots up the food chain from him—Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg—would let him get away with it. He was right: a Staten Island resident, Bologna was (ahem) punished by losing some vacation days and being transferred to a post that shortens his commute. A more appropriate punishment would be to fire his sorry ass and charge him with multiple counts of assault.

Anyway, Bologna immediately started playing the victim, fabricating a story the video doesn’t come close to supporting (he even got a pseudo-journalist or two to take his side), and generally representing in a single man everything that made a lot of folks in my generation refer to the police as “pigs.” Actually, if Tony Baloney is what a $150K a year cop looks like, we owe an apology to our porcine friends for comparing them to such a creature.

Of course, Bologna was just the warm-up act. There were other incidents, too, of course, but the next big step-up in police (or pseudo-police) arrogance and malice came in November on the campus of the University of California at Davis, where campus cop Lieutenant John Pike became a household name—and subject of an Internet meme—for all the wrong reasons by pepper spraying over a dozen student protesters with the same body language one would use to spray weed-killer into the cracks in the driveway. Pike is, of course, the quintessential CamPo idiot, with a self-importance to sensibility ratio that’s off the charts. This week, the Task Force charged with investigating the incident released its report. It ain’t pretty.

The report begins, “Our overriding conclusion can be stated briefly and explicitly. The pepper spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented.” [emphasis in original] The litany of screw-ups from the Chancellor on down takes nearly 200 pages to spell out. Here are just a few snippets from the table of contents: “failure to investigate,” “ineffectively communicated,” “confusion as to legal basis,” “decision-making process was ineffective,” “Notwithstanding the deficiencies in the operations plan, the incident was not managed according to the plan.”

And then we get to essence: “The decision to use pepper spray was not supported by objective evidence and was not authorized by policy” and “The pepper spray used, the MK-9, First Aerosol Projector, was not an authorized weapon for use by the UCDPD.” And… finally… “Lt. Pike bears primary responsibility for the objectively unreasonable decision to use pepper spray on the students sitting in a line and for the manner in which the pepper spray was used.”

Frankly, all of this was pretty much self-evident at the time; the report merely confirms what we already knew: that the whole incident could have been avoided if any of a handful of people had done their damned jobs, and that John Pike is—or at the very least was, for a telling moment—an amoral bully… and a rather stupid one, at that. Last I could figure out, he was still on paid leave: maybe the report will at least lead to his firing, and/or that of erstwhile Campus Police Chief Annette Spicuzza, also on “administrative leave.” Of course, for the report’s evisceration of Pike to be perceived as having merit, Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi would have to acknowledge that her conduct, too, was blameworthy. They’re all culpable, they’re all incompetent, and they’re all liars. Doesn’t matter. Chances are, all three will be at Davis as long as their little hearts desire. Because California has plenty of money to pay these three buffoons six-figure salaries apiece, after all, right?

Oh, how I wish we had reached the nadir of common sense as regards pepper spray with the events at UC-Davis. Alas, there’s one more step. So far.

A “School Resource Officer” (don’t worry, I don’t know what that is, either--this might help) subsequently identified as Anthony Brown sprayed down a hallway at Jack Robey Junior High (!) in Pine Bluff, Arkansas because the kids weren’t getting to class fast enough. Three students were hospitalized; over a dozen more left school early.

I mean, seriously, how freaking stupid can you get? The list of things transcendently stupid about this tactic would stretch from here to Ashtabula. The National Association of School Resource Officers describes one of the functions of SROs as to “provide a visible and positive image for law enforcement.” Yeah, well, no.

The provocation was miniscule enough as is, but if, as one report suggested, the problem was that students were obstructing the hallway, then the logical surmise is that some of those caught in the logjam might actually be trying to get to class. In other words, innocent people were going to be harmed by the precipitous and bone-headed act. Rather than risk the health and well-being of innocent bystanders, the military and the police will often allow the most heinous of miscreants to escape. This idiot is willing to send people to the hospital (or worse) because somebody else was late for pre-algebra.

Ah, well, but according to the Doofus in Charge Superintendent Jerry Payne, the canister was pointed downward, not directly at the students. Like Jonathan Turley and Jack Marshall, I’m more than a little unimpressed. For one thing, as Turley points out, “The idea of spraying a painful caustic substance into a hall as a crowd motivator is the definition of not just negligence but assault and battery.” For another: if this is the damage caused by pointing the spray away from students, what the hell is in there, and what kind of damage could it do if, like the women in New York or the students at Davis, someone were actually to catch this right in the nose or eyes? Student Faith Forney says she “walked right into it.” And what assurance do we have that similar circumstances wouldn’t lead to someone catching this junk square in the face?

There are serious problems here. What the hell is an SRO doing with spray this potent? Who authorized it, either for the police or for the school district? Who hired this idiot? And—assuming (safely, I suspect) the blame doesn’t all fall to Officer Brown—who was responsible for training people carrying this grade of pepper spray around as to why, when, and how to use it appropriately? And why wasn’t that person fired, along with Brown and Payne?

Three disturbing trends present themselves with respect to the three incidents I just described. First, the officers in question—those with access to this hideous stuff—are increasingly less important: we go from a Deputy Inspector for a major city police force to a lieutenant for a UPD, to a School Resource Officer. The victims went from adults to college students to junior high kids. And the provocation went from yelling at armed policemen to organized passive resistance to walking too slowly. By all three of these taxonomies, then, the situations keep getting more egregious. And that’s after acknowledging that Bologna’s actions were appalling and indefensible.

Another source of some concern is that we, as a culture, seem to be developing a tolerance for this sort of misbehavior by the authorities. The Pine Bluff incident wouldn’t have shown up on my radar screen if I hadn’t read about it on the Ethics Alarms blog. Maybe it wasn’t as “sexy” because it couldn’t be linked to the #Occupy movement, which the media had a grand time covering (as usual) simultaneously too much and too little. But it sure as hell should be a major story: after all, the right likes to blame schools for society’s woes; the left likes to blame the police. Here’s the intersection of both: everybody wins!

Seriously, though, there needs to be some uproar over this stuff. Because the next step in the progression is crossing guards’ pepper spraying kindergartners for wearing mismatched socks.

[The post was edited slightly on 4/15 to clarify that Chief Spicuzza of the UCDPD has also been on administrative leave since shortly after the incident there.]