You're not a victim, and neither am I

by von

I urge you to watch the following video, with the following warnings:  It's disturbing.  And it's not safe for work.

(From Radley Balko, via Andrew Sullivan.) 

Put aside the wisdom or morality of the drug war.  Balko and Sullivan both pivot that way.  I want to talk about something different.  Something a bit larger.  Folks talk about the banality of evil.  It's one of those cliches that you hear from time time.  But I don't think that folks stop very often to think about what that phrase means.  Or what it looks like in action.  Evil becomes banal when people -- good people -- stop recognizing it, stop appreciating it, and come to accept it as normal.  When evil becomes so routine that good people accept it as the way of doing business.

I am not comparing the cops in the video to Nazis (whence the phrase comes).  But it's hard for me to see their actions, here, as anything other than evil.  Maybe I'm overly influenced by having kids; maybe I'm not thinking straight.  But my reaction to watching these cops, dressed to kill, bashing down a door and shooting two dogs (a pit bull and a corgi) in front of a seven year old child all because his father had a little bit of pot ... well, my initial reaction was shock.  This video literally took my breath away.  Followed, quickly, by anger.  This kid could easily have been killed for nothing; he certainly will be scarred. 

The second greatest trick the Devil ever played was to convince folks that being good, and having good intentions, means that you can't do evil.  That is bullshit.  These cops are likely good people who do a lot of good in their community. But this was a cheorographed raid.  They had overwhelming force.  There was no resistance.  This wasn't a war.  They weren't being shot at.  The target was clear.  Their acts were premeditated.  This wasn't stupidity, or error, or chance.  No conceivable hypothetical -- no matter how outlandish -- justifies the behavior of these men. There was no ticking time bomb.  (They were simply looking for "a large amount of marijuana at the location." Which wasn't there.)

This is what evil looks like.  On this night, these cops decided to be thugs.

(And, yes, I'm back.)

UPDATE:  Fixed video.

UPDATE 2:  I should clarify one thought.  And then add another, different thought.

First, the clarification:  I wrote, "They were simply looking for "a large amount of marijuana at the location. Which wasn't there."  I meant literally that:  a "large amount of marijuana" wasn't located at the residence, but a small amount of pot, plus a pipe and other items, was present.  I realized in retrospect that my statement could mislead people to think that these officers completely f'ed up, i.e., there was no pot in the house.  In fact, they almost completely f'ed up.  If that matters.  It still would have taken only one of those bullets misdirected to kill a seven year old kid (instead of a pet).

Now, the other, different thought -- and one that is admittedly off topic:  The concept that evil is perpetrated, in the main, by good people is a idea that I've always found best expressed in Christianity.  It really is the nub of Christian belief, in my view, and why Christianity is worth (including, in these times, the Catholic Church).  That doesn't necessarily make be a believer, mind you.  I never wanted something to believe in.  But it does make me sympathetic, and deeply so.  (The modern phrase to use here is "spiritual," -- which I will refuse to use on ground that it is complete and utter bullshit.  Either believe or don't.)

So that's my ramble, on reflection.  I tend to think that a truly jarring event should produce a ramble.  It needs processing.  And this is jarring.  Doubtless, tomorrow I'll have a different spin to bore y'all with (if I choose to share it).  Doubtless, by tomorrow, someone would have dug up some dirt on Mr. Dime-bag to try to justify the above, and I might even reconsider my views. 

But not tonight.

UPDATE 3:  Like a moron, I misspelled Balko's name.  Sorry, Radley; fixed now.

Comments

[John Thullen]

Agreed.

Welcome back.

[m]

a lot of vampire weekend these days, von?

[nous]

Agreed. This is a product of America's growing militarism fetish. We have serious problems with our self-image as it relates to the use of force. The state of exception is rapidly ceasing to be much of an exception at all.

This fits right along side the discussion of Miranda rights.

[Eric Martin]

was going to say the same thing. but that is my favorite track of the second album.

[Turbulence]

Just so I'm clear on the banality of evil: if this video represents the banality of evil, does the Iraq War count? I mean, starting a war over nothing that kills a million people and creates 4 million refugees seems pretty evil, right? So shouldn't there be some acknowledgment of that and maybe contrition by former war supporters? Or are Arab lives so cheap that we can just pretend like those million people never died?

Come to think of it, US soldiers in Iraq have done plenty of crazy house raids without even a warrant and have killed or wrongly imprisoned plenty of people in the process. Were they evil in the same way as these cops? Or is that not evil because they were only following orders?

[elm]

*This* is why it's important that every person accused of a crime in the U.S. have access to counsel and other Fifth Amendment rights.

When the police had an easy escape clause -- charging the victims with terrorism/child pornography/drug smuggling -- that stripped them of their rights then the police do abuse that power to cover up their own excesses.

[KCinDC]

Another of the many such cases that got some attention (and created an anti-drug-war activist) was the 2008 raid on the home of Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, in which he and his family were humiliated and terrorized and their two dogs killed. Since he had the advantages of being completely innocent of involvement with drugs and being a mayor his case didn't join the innumerable ignored ones, even though there's no video. Balko reported on it, of course. Still hasn't resulted in any meaningful reaction from the police.

[cleek]

nothing can be done. we can only accept that we are a nation of cowards who demand rough action from rough men in order to protect us from our own imaginary demons.

[JanieM]

OT -- cleek, is your comment filter still available, and if so, where can I find it?

[Harald Korneliussen]

> The second greatest trick the Devil ever played was to convince folks that being good, and having good intentions, means that you can't do evil.

... and the greatest was convincing you that you ARE good, and HAVE good intentions.

[cleek]

JanieM : here it is

[JanieM]

Thanks, cleek.

[wonkie]

I'm glad I read your post, von, before watching the vidoe. I don't want to watdh it.

You are right, dead right, on both counts. People who do evil things rarley acknowledge it to themsleves. They ahve it all rationalized in their heads about how their behavior is Ok. Those cops wouuld probably be appalled by a stroy about cops in Russia or somewhere else doing a home invasion and killing the family pets.

[McKinneyTexas]

The 5th amendment doesn't do much in this situation. Where the problem lies is the minimal level of proof of probable cause required to do a drug search, particularly when the hearsay source of the probable cause evidence is a "reliable, but anonymous informant". The victims here have no remedy. The police felt free to shoot family pets. In other cases, they ransack homes only to find nothing, and the victims have no recourse. Cleek says nothing can be done. Maybe. Probably so. But it seems to me that there's a gray area, particularly in the drug arena, where if the only result of a raid like this is a misdemeanor amount of pot or nothing at all, the jurisdiction sponsoring the raid has to make good on the damage. Maybe after a few check writing ceremonies, police agencies will back off the chickens%*t and focus on the real crime. There's enough of that out there.

[Peter]

My favourite part is when the cops charge the parents with child endangerment. 'Cause you know, the parents had pot in the house. Unlike the cops, who had the child's safety and best interests in mind when they broke down the door and started shooting the kid's pets.

By "favourite", I of course mean "most horrifying".

[russell]

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Arendt's "Banality of Evil" has this discussion of her analysis of Eichmann:

He operated unthinkingly, following orders, efficiently carrying them out, with no consideration of their effects upon those he targeted. The human dimension of these activities were not entertained, so the extermination of the Jews became indistinguishable from any other bureaucratically assigned and discharged responsibility for Eichmann and his cohorts.

The equation of drug trafficing with war is wrong. The erosion of civil liberties in the name of a War On Drugs is wrong. The militarization of domestic police forces is wrong.

What pushes it from wrong to evil is our aquiescence.

Every person reading this who is a citizen of the US has input into, and control over, whether this continues or not, even if only to a small degree.

The War On Drugs means some guy with a bong is going to be the target of a military raid. It means teenagers are going to spend years and years of their lives incarcerated in violent hellholes because they like to get high. It means your tax dollars and mine are going to fund fascists in other countries who are going to terrorize their own populations in the name of "drug eradication".

All of that happens right now, every day.

It's freaking wrong, and accepting it because we don't see it every day and/or it's happening to somebody else is evil.

if this video represents the banality of evil, does the Iraq War count?

Yes, it does.

[Jacob Davies]

The drug war is the single most insane aspect of contemporary society. I mean it is insane like declaring that on Wednesdays you have to wear your underpants on your head and paint yourself purple would be insane. It is absolutely crazy. You smash down this guy's door and assault him, shoot his dogs in front of his kids, and HE'S THE ONE COMMITTING A CRIME?

You're the ones shooting guns and breaking down doors! You're the ones terrorizing his kids in the middle of the night! What the hell is wrong with these people?

These acts are illegal, by natural law and by the 4th Amendment which recognizes that natural law, whatever the temporal authority of the Supreme Court has to say on the matter. You don't kick down people's doors unless their house is burning down or they're about to kill someone. End of story.

[Phil]

I agree unequivocally with both von's and McKinneyTexas's posts so far. Especially the latter -- when I served on the county grand jury, we heard case after case after case of drug defendants whose prosecutions originated with CRI (confidential, reliable information) who told vice cops that he or she could buy pot or heroin or oxycontin or whatever from the defendant.

So we constantly had to waste county time, money and court resources on rotating these idiots through the system for fifth-degree felonies, with half of them probably becoming CRIs themselves, making the whole thing a boondoggle of Sisyphean proportions.

Also what nous said about militarism. When you've convinced local police forces from coast to coast that they need a SWAT team for everything from Jeff Spicoli to Pablo Escobar, and bestowed upon them DOJ and DHS grants to buy all sorts of high-tech toys, this is what you're going to get.

[jrudkis]

You would think that criminals would be smart enough to not video tape themselves in the commission of a crime.

Do you think that any court would accept that knocking for 15 seconds in the middle of the night counts for properly executing a warrant (distinguished from a "no knock warrant"? If so, the problem is not just the cops.

[Phil]

PS: "Randy Balko" should be "Radley Balko" in the attribution under the video.

[Brett Bellmore]

The evil done in the war on drugs is inseparable from the evil OF the war on drugs. When you're trying to enforce victimless crime laws, you lack the key element necessary to non-abusive enforcement of the law; Somebody involved in the crime who didn't want it to happen.

Lacking that, conventional enforcement is futile, and you either give up on enforcement, (which leads to one sort of corruption.) or switch to non-conventional enforcement, a different sort of corruption.

Non-convention enforcement, to be less vague, means routine violations of peoples' rights, and excessive brutality in order to make people who doubt you can convict them live in fear. The less chance you can actually enforce the law conventionally, the worse the abuses must be to give the police any chance of non-conventional enforcement working.

In short, this sort of thing isn't separable from having a war on drugs. It's part and parcel of having one. Just like the BATF's abuses were part and parcel of the war on guns it was waging. (And, to listen closely, will probably be waging again soon.)

[efgoldman]

@ russell
What pushes it from wrong to evil is our aquiescence.

Yes, exactly. Thank you.

[von]

a lot of vampire weekend these days, von?

I figured that if I went out on one line from Taxi, I should come back on another.

[von]

Thanks, Phil. Fixed now.

[Ugh]

Definition of a Conservative: a liberal who has been mugged.

Definition of a liberal: a conservative who has been arrested.

The focus on police officer safety needs to be removed from the constitutional analysis of individual rights, IMHO. One has nothing to do with the other.

[Jacob Davies]

Ugh, can you clarify that point a bit more?

Brett, I agree with you 100%.

[RepubAnon]

Imagine if this raid had been carried out on a Tea Partier's house - or a gun rights person's home...

Police safety only matters on drug raids - at Waco, not so much...

[russell]

It's part and parcel of having one. Just like the BATF's abuses were part and parcel of the war on guns it was waging.

I've been trying to understand for the last 20 years why a mongrel agency like BATF even exists.

Best as I can make out, it was created to enforce the Volstead Act and just never went away after Prohibition ended. Instead, it just accumulated more stuff to do.

Seems to me that between the FBI, the Treasury, and local law enforcement, we'd be all set.

They apparently run a good forensic fire research lab and did good work on the first WTC bombing. That said, they always seem like a solution in search of a problem, to me.

[Chris J]

As a Quaker, I see the evil as being in the institutional structures that make it difficult or impossible for those caught up in them to listen to the good within themselves and recognize the good, the Light, in other humans. This awful incident is an example of that.

[russell]

As a Quaker, I see the evil as being in the institutional structures that make it difficult or impossible for those caught up in them to listen to the good within themselves

I sincerely appreciate what you're saying here, and recognize the reality of the influence of social institutions and structures.

But "institutional structures" per se have no agency. We can't lay the blame on them. It's like blaming people's actions on something like the weather. The responsibility, and therefore the good or evil, lies with people, with conscious human actors.

With us.

That's my thought about it.

[Chris J]

Russell:

Institutional structures have no agency, true, but they are human constructs. And we (well, not me and you, but us generically) have constructed one in this case that more or less forces people to do evil things. That's my point. We made these structures, and we can change them. I guess I've seen too many examples of people who, when given the chance, defy expectations and do the right thing to believe otherwise. But then I'm an optimist.

[bobbyp]

I've been trying to understand for the last 20 years why a mongrel agency like BATF even exists.

Somebody has to chase moonshiners, collect cigarette taxes, corral the more out of control gun nuts, but with the onset of the War on Scary Nouns, the ATF now has a higher mission (see wikki). I don't know if this is mission creep or just a creepy mission.

[John Thullen]

"Just like the BATF's were part and parcel of the war on guns ..."

Abolish the BATF for all I care, but could we qualify "guns" here. I don't believe the BATF showed up to investigate Dick Cheney's face-shooting incident with a "gun", nor do I believe they sit in Ted Nugent's mosh pit to watch him masturbate on stage with heavy weaponry .. though I'd enjoy it from a reality T.V. point of view.

Not to take anything away from Von's important post, but I thought the tasering of the kid on the baseball field was another example of dumbshit, Barney Fife, beergut, pasty-faced, slow, machismo, sadistic American assholes being over-weaponed, deputized martinets.

Whether its Lyndi whats-her-face at Abu Graib, these shithead cops shooting bullets at dogs over a 7-year-olds head, or zapping a slightly drunk dope (they never tasered Morgana that I recall back in the day) having an all-American gallop across America's pastimes' venue, we're out of control.

We'll shoot or cause pain to anybody, just for yucks.

At least the murderous jackass in Times Square, the shoe bomber, and the underpants bomber has a little skin in the game.

[John Thullen]

"had"

[Fraud Guy]

We are all our own jailers
We are all our own cons
We all serve our own sentence
We all lock our own bars

Who then watches the watchmen
When we all now carry the key
When we watch from the shadow
Waiting for us to leave

Our world then is the prison
We are jailers in our own cell
Beaten by the guards in turn
And beating then anon

All evil takes to flourish
Is a good man thinking it’s good
A paycheck or a promotion
A reason justified learned

And those who give us our orders
Themselves convinced of our crime
And turning locked now within us
Humanity inhumanity yearned

We are all our on jailers
Convicted of our own crimes
Receiving each other’s sentence
And locking everyone’s cell

What a crappy way to break my writer's block.

[Fraud Guy]

My wife and I have no children. Instead, we have our dogs and cats. They are our children, and if they were attacked or threatened, we would react as if they were our children, and would likely be shot or tasered as we tried to defend them.

They look like Gestapo, they act like jackboots, I counted less than 5 seconds from the first knock to the door being knocked down.

In the middle of the night, it takes me several minutes to realize someone is at the door.

Sorry, I am having a visceral reaction to this beyond the value of my contribution.

The logic that the the police actions here are not prohibited and/or allowed by the letter of the law is the same as that that leads to unethical, but legal behavior on the part of corporations. It is not doing what we should, but what we can get away with.

As a law-abiding citizen, I should not be afraid of the police, but between actions like this and the abuse of tasers, I am. This is overkill.

I am reminded of the Chappelle bit a few years ago, where he switched the handling of white collar criminals with that evinced in this video. If the treatment is based on the harm done by the criminal, then the roles should be reversed. But this should not be done to anyone.

[Brett Bellmore]

"I've been trying to understand for the last 20 years why a mongrel agency like BATF even exists."

The way I hear it, they've several times been on the verge of dissolving the agency, and run into a dilemma: There's apparently some kind of law of physics that you can't just lay off government employees when you get rid of their agency, the way things happen in the private sector. But when they propose to parcel the employees out among the other federal police agencies, those agencies object loudly to having that bunch of incompetent loons foisted on them.

So the BATF goes on, as an asylum for it's own employees.

Heard the latest proposal? The usual suspects want anybody who gets on the No Fly or Terrorist Watch lists to be barred from gun ownership.

[Awesom0]

At what point do decent citizens have the right to treat police like a hostile force and respond accordingly?

I've known a couple of SWAT guys and they absolutely get their rocks-off to these kinds of raids. Many of them are not good people doing what they think is right, many are nothing more than thugs given authority to murder by the state.

The biggest threats to America currently lie within. Watching this video makes me seethe with rage.

Watch this and then think about all the proposals currently floating around to strip suspected terrorists of all rights. Pretty scary stuff.

[Phil]

Imagine if this raid had been carried out on a Tea Partier's house - or a gun rights person's home...

We don't have to imagine. The last time that happened, we got Oklahoma City out of it.

The focus on police officer safety needs to be removed from the constitutional analysis of individual rights, IMHO. One has nothing to do with the other.

Yeah, I've had this discussion a few times with a very close friend, a police chief. Mostly in the context of the military, but the same applies -- he's very focused on "The #1 job of my men is to come home safely at the end of their shifts." Whereas I feel that the #1 job is to protect innocent citizens, and his men have to be willing to be hurt or killed in the carrying out of their duties.

(Granted, his attitude is tempered somewhat by having lost an officer to a shooting two years ago -- the first officer ever killed in the line of duty in the history of his city's police force.)

[jack]

pigs suck

[efgoldman]

@Fraud Guy
Sorry, I am having a visceral reaction to this beyond the value of my contribution.

Not true. Your reaction, and your contribution are equally valuable and way up the scale.

As [mostly] liberals on this blog, we take pride in reasoned, logical responses and solutions. But the video and its aftermath is meant to provoke a visceral reaction, first.

[Awesom0]

But the video and its aftermath is meant to provoke a visceral reaction, first.

Exactly, hence my previous, extremely angry post.

[JanieM]

Awesom0: At what point do decent citizens have the right to treat police like a hostile force and respond accordingly?

Ask http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Maye>Cory Maye.

Googling around to find this reference, because I couldn't remember Cory Maye's name, I found other things http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/drug-war-victim/>here and http://www.wikijustice.org/?section=interaction&action=readstory&storyID=703>here, in case anyone wants to get even more depressed. I don't know how reliable these are. As so often happens at this time of day I'm in a rush to get out of here and these are the first things Google found.

The Cory Maye story was widely mentioned on blogs at one time; I'm pretty sure Radley Balko has written a lot about it.

[JanieM]

Link fixed (I hope): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Maye>Cory Maye.

[Mike]

"This is what tyranny looks like."

It has been claimed.

Thoughts?

[A Smith]

Two unaggressive dogs are shot and killed by aggressive and violent pigs, and no charges are filed.

And yet, if an aggressive an violent "K9" dog owned by the pigs attacked an innocent bystander without provocation, and if the innocent civilian killed the pig's dog in self-defence, the civilian would be charged with murder, as if he had killed another human being.

And then people wonder why I laugh when I see pigs getting killed.

If your response to that is "You'll change your attitude when you need their help," you're an idiot. I've seen and dealt with pigs; I have no confidence in them and wouldn't call for their "help". They are a street gang with legal immunity. There is no "law" on the street.

Similarly, if your response to that is "You have no respect for the law," you are again an idiot. I have plenty of respect for the law and other people; that's why I don't break the law and look out for other people. I just don't have any respect for pigs and I laugh each time one is sent to the abattoir.

Understand something important: The pigs are not the law. The pigs are not above the law.

[John Thullen]

I think if you make the no-fly list, the government should award you one weapon.

If you hit the jackpot and join the Terrorist Watch List, you get two weapons, a lifetime supply of ammo, a night in the Lincoln bedroom, and an upgrade to first class on your next ten flights.

However, if you actually carry out a terrorist act, Carmen Miranda should come to your house and confiscate the fruits of your loom.

[Col Umbia]

A penance suggestion for all the 'officers', their direct superiors and the incompetent judge who signed off on this shameful home invasion:

The spouses, children and extended families of each of them . . . and the best friend each one has . . . should be brought into a small theatre and forced to watch the video of this violent home invasion so that they will all understand that they are friends with, children of, or married to . . . violent, angry pieces of human garbage who should never again be permitted to bring harm upon anyone's community. Then again, most of the officers involved probably brutalize their wives and children on a regular basis anyway . . . so they are already living in a nightmare . . . and maybe this would actually cause them more harm than good. Never mind.

[Labrys]

What a bunch of freaking "heroes" those cops must think they are...telling the wife and kid "You're alright" after shooting the family pet (and badly, needing to do it again to silence its agonized screams). And demanding the guy's name? WTF, you're telling me the name isn't on their damned search warrant?

Morons. Honestly, picking on little guys they know can't give them grief instead of going after real bad men. Yeah, all that Homeland Security money....no idea how to really protect their neighborhoods from the much vaunted terrorists, but holy crap, lets all look like SWAT cops, ok?

[Phil]

Can we not have people calling police "pigs" on this thread, maybe? Even the bad cops?

[Slartibartfast]

Can we not have people calling police "pigs" on this thread, maybe? Even the bad cops?

Good point, Phil. I hadn't been following this thread.

Please, people, let's tone down that sort of thing, shall we? It is completely unnecessary to the end of making your point.

[wj]

As [mostly] liberals on this blog, we take pride in reasoned, logical responses and solutions. But the video and its aftermath is meant to provoke a visceral reaction, first. @ efgoldman

You will notice that the conservatives on this blog are every bit as unhappy with what happened as you are. And, from what I can see, every bit as clear that the War on Drugs is an insanity that inevitably produces this sort of event. But perhaps we conservatives who come here are closet leftists merely sane.

[pasithea]

It always bothers me how news articles like the one listed above give the person's name, address, etc when they are an alleged offender, charged but not convicted. Innocent until proven guilty.

But no. Reports like this, to me, seem like they are designed to convict the alleged in the public eye, make their neighbors gossip about them and ostracize them.

It smacks of witch hunt. Especially when they never reveal the names and addresses of the police in these actions.

What a great country we live in. :/

[Jesurgislac]

And the NRA bans guns at the NRA Convention. Apparently it's considered kinda dangerous to have hundreds of gun nuts wandering around a gun convention getting drunk and carrying loaded guns. Someone could get shot!

Fortunately, that's what gun control is for, and where the safety of its members is concerned, the NRA feels that comes first.

[John Thullen]

It's tough to get criminal cowards like Sarah Death Palin and Newt Gingrich to speak in front of a rough crowd like the NRA that would have such a clear shot.

Must have been a lot of cold dead hands in attendance.