The
Houston Chronicle reports on what I hope is
not the end of a horrific story of the literal rape of a driver on the side of
the road by a Texas DPS officer (state trooper) conducting a drug search.
The
driver and her friend were pulled over. Some alleged suspicion (not confirmed)
of drugs was had by the trooper’s supervisor, and the trooper was told to do a
cavity search on the side of the road. That everyone involved was a woman
doesn’t matter. An officer, with no warrant, and without the driver’s consent,
digitally raped – rape by a finger - a woman on the side of the road in Texas.
The
news today is that not only did the officer not get indicted, she has been
reinstated as a DPS officer. Let me break that down. A grand jury
was presented the case and declined to indict her. A grand jury isn’t so
grand. It was created centuries ago to investigate crimes. Now, it
is a dozen people drafted for six months to review evidence presented by the DA
and decide if the charges should be pressed. Why doesn’t the DA just
press charges himself? Why does the grand jury still exist? For
cases that are politically charged. Here, where the facts aren’t in
dispute (they’re on a trooper dash-cam), the DA is literally saying to 12
people, “Are you cool with this? Would another jury convict or am I going to be
wasting my time and look like a fool to bring this case?” Apparently 12
people in Brazoria County, Texas are cool with digital rape of motorists on the
side of the road.
And
now the Texas DPS has hired the trooper back on, because the grand jury didn’t
indict, and because the officer was told to do the search (commit the rape) by
her boss. She used the Nuremburg
defense. Would that work if she’d shot a fleeing suspect in the
back. How about if she’d stolen money from a crime scene? But, rape
is different? How?
And
how in God’s name did we get here? We’ve gotten to the point where some
members of the police seem to feel they can do what they want to, and the
public has gotten the feeling that the police can use whatever means they want
in fighting perceived crimes. How have we been conditioned by the drug
wars and crime wars to allow this? Maybe it is the overuse of SWAT Teams.
SWAT teams are necessary in any society that allows citizens to have and use
military-style weapons and ammunition, whose only purpose is to shoot another
human, or go sport shooting, so the officers aren’t out-gunned. I get
that. But, when SWAT teams are used to bust up small time poker games,
it’s gone too far. Radley Balko has an entire book on this, which I am not going to try
to duplicate.
Maybe
it’s when we don’t throw police in prison for stealing money from motorists in
“civil forfeiture” cases. See Walter Olson at Cato at Liberty and Sarah Stillman in The New Yorker, on the whole
sorry mess of “civil forfeiture” done through criminal law actors – law
enforcement.
What
we can ask, legitimately, is who is serving whom here? Are the troopers
serving the citizens and protecting us, or are they committing crimes. And when
they do, and are not held accountable, they are surely not serving citizens
anymore. We’re not cool with that. When the evil of criminals is found
wearing the uniform of the law that is supposed to serve and protect, it is
evil doubled down.
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