Poor People and Minorities Are Victimized by “Predatory Cities”

One week ago, I wrote about how the welfare state creates high implicit marginal tax rates, thus making it difficult for low-income people to climb out of poverty and dependence.

But that’s not the only way that poor people are victimized by big government.

Another very serious problem is the way local and state governments impose a plethora of fees, fines and charges that can wreck the lives of the less fortunate.

In a column for the New York Times, Professor Bernadette Atahuene of the Chicago-Kent College of Law opines on the problem of greedy local governments.

I coined the term “predatory cities” to describe urban areas where public officials systematically take property from residents and transfer it to public coffers… Ferguson, Mo., is one well-known predatory city. As a 2015 Department of Justice report showed, the police in Ferguson systematically targeted African-Americans and subjected them to excessive fines and fees. …local courts issued arrest warrants for unpaid fines and fees… Minor offenses, like parking infractions, resulted in jail time… The Ferguson Police Department and courts prioritized revenue raising over public safety, transforming Ferguson into a predatory city.

Professor Atahuene cites the pernicious policies of New Orleans and Washington, D.C. (and note that asset forfeiture is one of the problems).

New Orleans is another. …Orleans Parish Criminal District Court’s primary source of funding was the fines and fees it collected. This created a structural incentive for judges to aggressively and erroneously pursue payment from those with no ability to pay, turning New Orleans into a predatory city. Washington, D.C., is yet another predatory city. While civil asset forfeiture laws allow the police to seize property that they suspect was involved in a crime, in Washington, D.C., property owners had to post bonds of up to $2,500 in order to challenge the seizure. If the owner could not raise money in time, the D.C. Police Department sold the property, and the money went into its annual budget. In a two-year period, the Police Department made $4.8 million in profit by seizing money from over 8,500 people as well as seizing 339 vehicles.

Every decent human being should get upset about the grotesque way that politicians are mistreating their residents.

Especially since poor people are being disproportionately victimized.

By the way, it appears that Professor Atahuene is not a libertarian. She wants Congress to approve a big bailout, based on the theory that state and local politicians will be less likely to engage in what I’ve called “rapacious revenue-raising tactics” if they get big buckets of money from Uncle Sam.

Needless to say, I think that would be a mistake.

But I don’t think someone needs to agree with me on everything, or even most things, if we can periodically find common ground on proposals that would improve the lives of people (not just on the need to curtail greedy local governments, but also on issues such as over-criminalization and police unions).

P.S. I wonder if there would be fewer petty fines, fees, and charges if they were levied on the ability to pay, thus making higher-income people more sensitive to the problem?

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If We Want Better Policing, Eliminate Qualified Immunity

Yesterday’s column focused on how police unions protect the bad apples who misbehave and therefore cause some people to resent law enforcement, especially in the minority community.

Curtailing the role of those unions would be an important step to create better bonds between the police and the citizenry.

Today’s column will explain the need to repeal or substantially curtail the doctrine of “qualified immunity,” which was created by courts to protect cops who trample on people’s rights.

It’s not a complete answer, just as fixing the union problem isn’t a complete answer. But getting rid of the doctrine at least will give citizens the opportunity to bring lawsuits when cops disregard their civil liberties. This tweet is a good summary for those who don’t have time to dig into the topic.

But hopefully you do have time to investigate this issue.

Here are excerpts from four articles about problems with qualified immunity.

This is not a new issue for libertarians and principled conservatives. Glenn Reynolds pointed out the injustice of the doctrine back in 2013 in a column for USA Today.

And David French condemned the practice in a piece for National Review in 2018.

Judges created qualified immunity, and they can end it. It’s past time to impose true accountability on public servants who violate citizens’ constitutional rights. First, some background. Since 1871, federal law has permitted Americans to file lawsuits against public officials who violate their constitutional rights. It’s a powerful tool that essentially deputizes members of the public to defend their own liberties. …However, after generations of judges have interpreted the statute, the phrase “shall be liable” has come to mean “may occasionally be liable.” …In 1982, …the law changed. In a case called Harlow v. Fitzgerald, the Supreme Court concocted the modern doctrine of qualified immunity. …As the doctrine developed, to prove that a right is clearly established, the plaintiff generally had to find and cite a remarkably similar case, with nearly identical facts, decided by a court of controlling jurisdiction. …the entire notion of “clearly established law” rests on a series of absurd, fantastical premises. Are we really to believe that a police officer doesn’t know he shouldn’t pound on the wrong door and blow away the innocent occupant unless a court said so in a case, say, five years before?

Writing for Reason, Professor Ilya Somin explains how fixing this bad bit of judge-made law could improve policing.

…there is much that can be done to curb police abuses. …The problem is not that police officers are unusually bad people. It’s that they have bad incentives, under which they are rarely held accountable for abuses. Those incentives can and should be altered. An important first step would be to get rid of the legal doctrine of “qualified immunity,” under which law enforcement officers are immune from suits for violating citizens’ constitutional rights… The Supreme Court interprets the term “clearly established” so narrowly that officers routinely get away with horrendous abuses… Qualified immunity is not required by the Constitution or even by a federal statute. It is a purely judge-made doctrine made up by the Supreme Court itself in a misguided effort to protect law enforcement officers from excessive litigation. …Both Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court’s most conservative member, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the most liberal, have been severely critical of qualified immunity. There is a real chance they can persuade at least three of their colleagues to take the same view. …state and local governments might respond by indemnifying police officers for the damages they have to pay in such cases. But even if that happens, it would still be a step in the right direction. Indemnification costs money that many local governments will be loathe to pay. They will therefore have an incentive to crack down on abusive officers, particularly repeat offenders who routinely force authorities to pay out large sums…

Thank goodness for Clarence Thomas. Not only is he one of the leaders in trying to address qualified immunity, he’s also a leader in the campaign to get rid of the odious practice of asset forfeiture, which effectively creates an incentive for government to steal private property.

Writing for the Bulwark, Clark Neilly adds his two cents to the discussion.

In determining the relationship between government and governed, one of the most important decisions a society can make is how accountable those who wield official power must be to those against whom that power is wielded. Congress made a clear choice in that regard when it passed the Enforcement Act of 1871, which we now call “Section 1983”… Simply put, Section 1983 creates a standard of strict liability by providing that state actors “shall be liable to the party injured” for “the deprivation of any rights.” Thus, if a police officer walks up to your house and peeks inside one of your windows without a warrant—a clear violation of your Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches—he is liable to you for the violation of that right. …many conservatives…abandon their stated commitment to textualism and embrace an “interpretation” of Section 1983 that is utterly divorced from its text. The vehicle for this…“living statutory interpretivism” is the Supreme Court’s qualified immunity doctrine, which judicially amends Section 1983 to provide that the standard for liability will no longer be the deprivation of “any rights”—as Congress expressly provided—but rather the deprivation of any “clearly established” rights. …the only avenue of accountability for most victims of police misconduct is a civil rights lawsuit that they themselves can initiate without the largesse of some prosecutor or citizen review board.

Last but not least, in a new column for USA Today, Patrick Jaicomo and Anya Bidwell of the Institute for Justice explain some of the legal issues.

The Supreme Court created qualified immunity in 1982. With that novel invention, the court granted all government officials immunity for violating constitutional and civil rights… Although innocuous sounding, the clearly established test is a legal obstacle nearly impossible to overcome. It requires a victim to identify an earlier decision by the Supreme Court, or a federal appeals court in the same jurisdiction holding that precisely the same conduct under the same circumstances is illegal or unconstitutional. If none exists, the official is immune. …When the Supreme Court conceived qualified immunity, it promised that the rule would not provide a “license to lawless conduct” for government officials. Plainly, it has.

And here are some examples they cite.

And let’s not forget the examples of misbehavior I’ve cited in the past (examples here, here, here, here, here, and here).

The point of this column is not to criticize or condemn cops as a group, but to highlight a bad policy that causes citizens to feel hostility against (what I assume to be) the vast majority of cops who do their jobs the right way.

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If We Want Better Policing, We Need to Curtail Police Unions

Since I’m a “right libertarian” according to the political compass test, it’s no surprise that I’m generally sympathetic to cops (notwithstanding my undesired encounters).

But with important caveats.

• I want fewer foolish laws so police can concentrate on protecting life, liberty, and property.
• I favor oversight so that good cops aren’t tarnished by the behavior of bad cops.
• I want local governments to control budgets so cops aren’t pressured to generate revenue.
• I favor civil disobedience and jury nullification as safety valves to guard against bad behavior.
• I want to get rid of horrific policies such as asset forfeiture that incentivize bad behavior.

And it goes without saying that I want a range of reactions – from scorn to punishment – when individual police officers make dumb choices (examples here, here, here, here, here, and here).

But there’s one issue that I haven’t addressed, and it’s very relevant considering the civil unrest and rioting caused by George Floyd’s death in Minnesota – and that issues is the degree to which overly powerful police unions enable bad behavior.

Professor Alex Tabarrok explains how police officers who misbehave get special privileges not available to the rest of us.

…union contracts and Law Officer “Bill of Rights” give police legal privileges that regular people don’t get. In 50 cities and 13 states, for example, union contracts “restrict interrogations by limiting how long an officer can be interrogated, who can interrogate them, the types of questions that can be asked, and when an interrogation can take place.” In Virginia police officers have a right to at least a five-day delay before being interrogated. In Louisiana police officers have up to 30 days during which no questioning is allowed and they cannot be questioned for sustained periods of time or without breaks. In some cities, police officers can only be interrogated during work hours. Regular people do not get these privileges. …how do you think complainants feel knowing that the police officer they are complaining about “must be informed of the names of all complainants.” I respect and admire police officers but frankly I think this rule is dangerous. …In the United States if you are arrested–even for a misdemeanor or minor crime, even if the charges are dropped, even if you are found not guilty–you will likely be burdened with an arrest record that can increase the difficulty of getting a job, an occupational license, or housing. But even in the unlikely event that a police officer is officially reprimanded many states and cities require that such information is automatically erased after a year or two. The automatic erasure of complaints makes it difficult to identify problem officers or a pattern of abuse.

In an article for National Review, Theodore Kupfer has a searing indictment of police unions.

Public-sector employees who belong to unions are used to special treatment, and police officers, apparently, are no different. There are little or no private alternatives to the services schoolteachers, air-traffic controllers, police officers, and prison guards provide. Their unions negotiate directly with politicians, and can demand policies that benefit them — if not the taxpayers who foot the bill — because no elected official wants to risk a catastrophic strike. The result is a tacit, unsavory bargain in which politicians and civil servants join together to direct public funding and exclusive privileges to the most favored of all interest groups: politicians and civil servants. …This is a shame. Law-enforcement unions shape our criminal-justice policies for the worse and encourage irresponsible public spending to achieve their own ends. …police unions…insist that their members have special “bills of rights” that shield them from accountability for misconduct. With a voting base that traditionally respects first responders, such concessions can be a political winner for Republicans. But they also have pernicious effects which ought to worry conservatives not comfortable with increasing the power of the state at the expense of the citizenry. …Researchers at the University of Chicago have even found that allowing law-enforcement officials collective-bargaining rights increases the risk of misconduct.

Let’s look at an astounding example of how powerful police unions generate absurd results.

This tweet tells you everything you need to know.

Great moments in public employee unionism. https://t.co/vrln9wy31x

— Walter Olson 😷 (@walterolson) May 14, 2020

If you want more information about that tragic debacle, Robby Soave is a must-read writer for Reason, and here’s some of what he wrote about the reactions of law enforcement.

It’s the story of catastrophic failure at every level of law enforcement, beginning with a corrupt and incompetent sheriff’s office warned on multiple occasions about the specific threat posed by Cruz. The Broward County sheriff’s office received at least 18 tips between 2008 and 2017 concerning Cruz. A November 2017 caller described him as a “school shooter in the making.” Despite knowing that Cruz was in possession of a cache of weapons, the sheriff’s office passed the buck… On the day of the shooting, …Officer Scot Peterson, an employee of the sheriff’s office, refused to enter the school and confront Cruz, as did three Broward County Sheriff’s deputies who had arrived on scene. These were stunning indictments of Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, a man who responded to accusations of corruption by comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King. …law enforcement’s spectacular failure before, during, and after the Parkland shooting should be a more pressing topic of discussion. …many of these agencies prove themselves to be wildly incompetent for reasons ranging from arrogant leadership and individual cowardice, to toxic workplace culture and shoddy internal systems.

In other words, the problem was government, not a lack of gun control.

But I’m digressing.

Let’s close with a final observation about the perverse effect of collective bargaining for cops.

I disapprove when police unions conspire with local politicians to get excessive pay and special protections (a very common outcome for other types of government employees).

And I definitely don’t like it when cops are turned into overly aggressive deputy tax collectors because of greedy local governments.

But it’s presumably far worse for society when police officers use excessive force against citizens like George Floyd and Eric Garner because unions shield them from adverse consequences.

P.S. My limited collection of police-related humor can be found here, here, and here.

P.P.S. Here’s my two cents on how to most effectively protest for better police behavior.

P.P.P.S. And here’s my quiz to gauge everyone’s reaction to a unique form of protest.

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Some Unsolicited Advice for Colin Kaepernick and the NFL Players

I’m a fan of college football rather than the NFL, so I haven’t paid much attention to the controversy over players protesting against police misbehavior during the national anthem.

However, the topic is now trending. The 2018 season’s about to start and Colin Kaepernick is being featured in a new ad campaign for Nike, so I figure why not insert myself into the discussion.

The bottom line is that Kaepernick and the other players have identified a very real and very important issue.

I’ve written on many occasions about the need for better policing.

Though I don’t think the problem is systemic racism or pervasive brutality.

Some of that exists, of course, but I assume the vast majority of cops want to do a good job and treat people fairly (except when giving me traffic tickets).

The real problem is that politicians have enacted far too many laws, many of which don’t make sense or don’t have any victims, and then they expect the police to use those laws to generate more revenue.

This is a recipe for more Eric Garner tragedies.

That being said, NFL players are not going to win the hearts of middle America by actions that can be portrayed as being anti-flag, anti-police, anti-military, and/or anti-country. Heck, they’re playing into Trump’s hands with that approach.

The players would have much more success (both in terms of the issue and with respect to their own popularity) if they portrayed their cause as one that affirms and extends American ideals.

NFL players should come up with some inclusive pro-America slogan about “The Constitution Protects Everyone” or “The Principles of the Founding Fathers Apply to All Americans.” And then they should be ostentatiously patriotic (in the proper sense), standing for the national anthem, with one hand over their hearts and one hand holding both an American flag and some sort or symbol of their campaign.

Trump would have a hard time attacking that kind of approach.

More important, I’m guessing a lot of Americans who heretofore have been rejecting the message of Kaepernick, et al, may start paying attention. And that would be the ideal outcome. After all, the goal should be to change policy, not generate noise and controversy.

For all intents and purposes, I’m suggesting the football players adopt the strategy Martin Luther King used when fighting Jim Crow laws. Dr. King explained that equality of law was an American principle. He embraced the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, even though slavery and other sins meant America was grossly imperfect at that point.

But he wanted an inclusive message. I hope that today’s NFL players copy that approach. Assuming, of course, they actually want better policing and a better America.

P.S. Until and unless there’s a better strategy, Nike will probably suffer the same adverse consequences as Dick’s, which lost customers after kowtowing to the anti-gun crowd. Irritating a big chunk of the buying public is not a wise idea.

P.P.S. I believe in a tough-on-crime approach, but only if laws are just.

P.P.P.S. If you want some cop-related humor, click here, here, and here.

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Fiscal Arson from Firefighters, Fiscal Crime from Cops

I wrote just yesterday that it’s tough to be a libertarian because “public choice” means never-ending pressure for bigger government.

But the good part of working in public policy as a libertarian is that I never lack for topics. Simply stated, governments do so many foolish things (not just in Washington, but also overseas, as well as state governments and local governments) that I have a target-rich environment for analysis and commentary.

But sometimes there’s a personal motivation. I’m a resident of Fairfax County in Virginia, and my profligate local government levies a very onerous property tax on my house.

And what do I get in exchange? The lion’s share of the county budget goes to government schools, but that doesn’t benefit me since I found those institutions inadequate and put my kids in private schools.

The other major line item in the budget is police and fire protection. I’ve been fortunate to never need those services, but I recognize that they have value. But this still leaves the question of whether I’m overpaying or underpaying for the theoretical benefits I’m receiving.

If this story from the Washington Post is any indication, it’s the former rather than the latter.

One Fairfax County firefighter tripled his salary to more than $270,000 with overtime pay. A county police officer took home $175,000… A fire captain pocketed $163,000 in additional compensation, more than many of his colleagues make in a year. The eye-popping figures have prompted Fairfax County supervisors to review overtime pay and other compensation for employees as the county faces a budget squeeze. …more than 1,700 county employees who are not department heads earned more than $100,000 in 2016, according to county figures.

Needless to say, the unions representing these bureaucrats pushed back.

Public safety unions and officials strongly pushed back against the idea that overtime pay might be excessive, saying that some employees must work extra hours because of staffing shortages… Some were also rankled because many public safety employees have endured pay freezes in recent years and earn far less than many residents in one of the nation’s most expensive counties. “They are complaining about guys who are working overtime trying to make the median income for the jurisdiction,” said Joseph Woloszyn, president of the Fairfax County chapter of the Police Benevolent Association.

It’s certainly true that Fairfax is a rich county, driven in large part by the overpaid federal workforce, along with the various contractors, lobbyists, cronyists, and other insiders who have their snouts comfortably buried in the federal trough.

Given how all this unearned wealth distorts the local labor market, I have no problem with the idea that cops and firefighters presumably need to be paid more than the national average. After all, employers should pay what’s necessary to attract a sufficient number of qualified individuals to fill appropriate jobs.

This doesn’t mean, however, that 1,700 bureaucrats should be getting six-figure salaries. Or that police and fire departments are the right size.

Though I admit that this excerpt makes me wonder.

…the Fairfax County fire chief…said his department has been dealing with a chronic shortage of firefighters. Currently, he said, the department has 56 vacancies, forcing some to work shifts as long as 48 hours or be recalled to work each day.

In any event, I should count my lucky stars that I don’t live in Orange County, California, where the average firefighter is obscenely overpaid.

The bottom line is that firefighters and cops do real jobs and those jobs involve some danger. But that doesn’t mean they should be over-compensated.

P.S. And if you want good nationwide data on firefighters, here are some jaw-dropping numbers.

…vehicle fires declined 64 percent from 1980 to 2013. Building fires fell 54 percent during that time. When they break out, sprinkler systems almost always extinguish the flames before firefighters can turn on a hose. …as the number of fires has dropped, the ranks of firefighters have continued to grow — significantly. There are half as many fires as there were 30 years ago, but about 50 percent more people are paid to fight them. …Firefighters responded to 487,500 structure fires across the United States in 2013, which means each of the nation’s 30,000 fire departments saw just one every 22 days, on average. And yet, taxpayers are paying more people to staff these departments 24-7. As a result, the amount of money shelled out for local fire services more than doubled from 1987 to 2011, to $44.8 billion, accounting for inflation.

For what it’s worth, I very much suspect that the numbers in Fairfax County would match the nationwide data.

So it’s likely that firefighters (and cops) in Fairfax are overpaid. But it’s even more likely that there are too many of them given the possible dangers.

P.P.S. If you think libertarians are doctrinaire and impractical about firefighting, you’ll like this picture.

P.P.P.S. If you think firefighters are overpaid, you’ll like this video.

P.P.P.P.S. I don’t want to neglect police officers, so here’s some humor about a compassionate Pennsylvania cop and a Texas police exam. And here’s what to do if you need cops in a hurry.

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When Local Governments Are Greedy and Corrupt, Don’t Expect Honest and Efficient Law Enforcement

While I’m a big fan of federalism, this isn’t because I have a starry-eyed view of non-Washington politicians. Of course there is plenty of grotesque misbehavior by state and local governments.

And it’s most troubling when it involves law enforcement and the legal system.

David French of National Review has a very powerful and compelling article about thuggery at the local level.

…my experience with small-town government…pushed me in a libertarian direction before I even knew what a libertarian was. The public schools were dreadful. Focused on patronage more than education, the school system was a public jobs program… Our local government’s core mission was dispensing favors. If you were part of the local elite, the normal rules of life simply didn’t apply. Speeding tickets? No problem. You need a conditional use permit? You got it! …if you were poor or lacked connections, “the rules” applied to you with a vengeance. After all, someone had to pay the city’s bills. There was no escaping speeding tickets, zoning officials were ruthless, and each interaction with the unyielding authorities carried with it the threat of immediate escalation, sometimes without justification.

Some of the folks who protest police mistreatment see the issue through the prism of race, but maybe the real problem is that cops are expected to generate revenue for local politicians.

…It is entirely possible to believe (as I do) that the evidence indicates that “hands up, don’t shoot” is a fiction, even a malicious fiction, while also believing that the evidence indicates that Ferguson’s government was corrupt in exactly the way that government is typically corrupt.  We often take for granted the rule of law. If you are blessed to live in a town where the officials are relatively clean, or if you’re among the class of people that officials fear to cross, then public institutions seem benign — helpful, even. But there are millions of our fellow citizens who live a different reality, under the authority of different kinds of public officials — officials who view them as virtual ATMs, regardless of their ability to pay. And when the government imposes that mindset on police officers, forcing men and women who are trained to respond to (and anticipate) the most violent incidents to essentially become the armed tax collectors of a corrupt system, then that government is unjust.

Amen. Eric garner is dead today because New York City has cops act as deputy tax collectors.

Speaking of mistreatment and abuse, Debra Saunders has a must-read account of California’s immoral system for pillaging drivers.

California is filled with people who are one traffic ticket away from losing their means of independent transportation. They get a ticket for a busted tail light or a small-change moving violation. On paper, the fine is $100, but with surcharges, it’s more like $490. People who cannot pay often do not show up in court — which drives up the cost. According to the Judicial Council of California, about 612,000 Californians have suspended driver’s licenses because they didn’t pay fines. In 2013, more people — 510,811 — had their licenses suspended for not paying fines than the 150,366 who lost their licenses for drunken driving. “For a lot of people, the car is the only asset they own in this whole damn world,” noted Mike Herald of the Western Center on Law and Poverty. …“We’ve turned too many of the police into tax collectors and wonder why they don’t have strong relations with the community,” Norquist said.

This is disgusting, particularly because of how the system is a nightmare for poor people.

I’m about as far from an advocate of class warfare as is possible, but I can’t help but be sympathetic to the notion that traffic fines should be tied to income. Maybe if the middle class and the rich had to pay fines that confiscated huge chunks of their disposable income, there would be pressure to fix this horrid system.

And what’s really outrageous is how the government adds all sorts of fees to the cost of a ticket.

It’s deceptive advertising: a $100 fine fronts for an extra $390 in add-ons. The price tag can grow exponentially if unpaid and lead to losing one’s license. The penalty is harsh and crushing on the poor, but these fees also are undeserved for the middle class. If Sacramento wants to levy a $490 fine for moving violations, let lawmakers put honest numbers on their legislation — instead of pretending that the fine is $100. Alas, the Legislature has found that hidden fees are a handy way to finance the court system without voting to raise tax revenue. …If a private corporation advertised a $100 payment for something that really cost $500, California Attorney General Kamala Harris probably would go after the corporation for false advertising. If a credit card company boosted its fees the way the courts do, activists would call those practices usury. If the police yanked people’s driver’s licenses because they didn’t pay a $100 fine, the public would regard such a harsh penalty as excessive force. Yet Sacramento has codified a system that commits all three sins and it’s perfectly legal. Really, is there anything more brutal than government.

The good news is that the state is offering an amnesty, allowing some drivers the ability to clean up their record at a reduced cost.

But there’s a catch. You have to pay a hidden fee!

…there is a $50 amnesty program fee. That’s right — if you want to pay off unpaid traffic fines that have ballooned because of hidden fees, first you have to pay another…hidden fee.

I guess coughing up $50 is a good deal if that can reduce other fines by a greater amount, but isn’t this typical of government. Making you give them some money in order to give them more money.

Low-income communities also bear the brunt of dubious police tactics.

The Washington Post has an in-depth report on how cops are conducting raids against residences even in the absence of any evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Sallie Taylor was sitting in her apartment in Northeast Washington one evening in January 2015 watching “Bible Talk” when…D.C. police officers smashed through her door, a shotgun was pointed at her face and she was ordered to the floor. …Taylor, a soft-spoken 63-year-old grandmother who was dressed in a white nightgown and said she has never had even a speeding ticket. The heavily armed squad thought they were searching the residence of a woman arrested two miles away the previous night for carrying a half-ounce vial of PCP. …The search warrant executed at Taylor’s apartment cited no evidence of criminal activity there. Instead, in an affidavit to a judge, police argued that they should be able to search for drugs there based on their “training and experience” investigating the drug trade. They relied on an address they found in a court-records system for the woman arrested with PCP.

In other words, the government can bust into someone’s home, notwithstanding the lack of any evidence, simply because some cop has a hunch based on “training and experience’?

I suspect America’s Founding Fathers would not be pleased with this reinterpretation of the Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects citizens from “unreasonable searches,” generally requiring government agents to obtain a warrant from a judge by showing they have probable cause to think that they will find a specific item at a specific location. In recent decades, police have been given wide latitude by the courts… Attorney Alec Karakatsanis, of the nonprofit group D.C.-based Equal Justice Under Law, said warrants that rely on training and experience as justification for a search subject the black community to abusive police intrusion based on flimsy investigative work.

To make matters worse, the government oftentimes doesn’t bother to confirm addresses before launching these raids.

Failure to properly verify an address led police to the home of Patricia Dandridge on Jan. 27, 2015. She returned from work to find her apartment in Southeast ransacked. The door was beaten in and her bed frame was broken, she said. Clothes and personal papers were strewn across the floor. “I thought I’d been robbed, but my neighbor told me it was the police,” said Dandridge, 45. …Three officers had forced their way in to look for firearms. They left empty-handed. The warrant was based on a drug complaint at a housing complex in Southeast more than five miles from Dandridge’s apartment, according to the affidavit police used to justify the search. …Palmer lived down the hall with his parents in Apartment 103. Dandridge lives in 102. “103 does not look like 102,” Dandridge said. The apartments are on opposite ends of the building.

Last but not least, Kevin Williamson weighs in at National Review with a withering look at police misconduct and corruption.

Is it really so difficult to believe that there is widespread wrongdoing, and widespread lying about it, among U.S. law-enforcement agencies, particularly those in big, Democrat-run cities infamous for the corruption of their other municipal institutions? Why do conservatives find it so plausible — obvious, even — that the IRS and the EPA and the Atlanta public schools are corrupt and self-serving, but somehow believe that the Baltimore police department isn’t?

He has lots of examples.

There are a great many investigations of police misconduct in Baltimore, where the local police behave more like the militia of a third-world warlord than a police agency. …Today, it is the Los Angeles sheriff. Before that, it was the Los Angeles Police Department, whose anti-gang task force became a rolling crime wave of its own, with 70 officers eventually implicated in unlawful shootings, bank robbery, drug dealing, theft, planting false evidence, framing suspects, destroying evidence of their wrongdoing and the usual perjury, perjury, and perjury. Then came Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, NYPD detectives convicted in 2006 on a raft of charges — racketeering, extortion, drug-dealing, murder and conspiracy to commit murder, running an illegal gambling ring, obstruction of justice — as part of a 20-year crime spree that ranged from New York to Las Vegas. …In Fairview, Tenn., a new police detective was just fired after responding to a prostitution ad. An NYPD officer was awarded $15 million in damages for being kidnapped and beaten inside his own home by other NYPD officers with a score to settle. Honolulu announced that in 2015 it fired a record number of officers for misconduct.

Corruption, malfeasance, and misbehavior seem to be a natural part of the system.

…facts suggest that our police departments have the same problems as our other government agencies, exacerbated by the fact that police are, inevitably, in the business of violence. It isn’t a few scattered misdeeds when it’s the NYPD, the LAPD, the Baltimore PD, the Los Angeles sheriff’s department, and more. That’s not a few bad apples — that’s the orchard. And it needs pruning.

Kevin’s argument is very compelling, particularly his appeal to conservatives about being skeptical of all parts of government at all times.

This is similar to the argument I made that it’s especially important to monitor and resist government wrongdoing when “the good guys” are in power.

In other words, calling for the elimination of the Department of Education or the Department of Housing and Urban Development while Obama is in office is (or should be) the easy part.

By contrast, fighting against such wasteful programs when Bush was in the White House was much harder. Many supposed fiscal conservatives suddenly went silent, and that sin of omission helps to explain why the burden of federal spending increased so rapidly.

Yes, police protection is a legitimate function of government, so the issue isn’t whether police forces should be abolished (though Camden, New Jersey, got good results by doing exactly that). But skepticism of police budgets and police behavior is still very appropriate. Indeed, one obvious takeaway from Kevin’s article is that it’s especially important for “law and order” conservatives to be vigilant to make sure police forces operate honestly and efficiently (thus making life easier for the majority of cops who simply want to do a good job and protect their communities).

And that also means getting rid of laws that don’t make sense.

Just as defense hawks should be the ones most critical of wasteful spending by the Pentagon or misguided military commitments by politicians.

P.S. You can enjoy some police-related humor here, here, and here.

P.P.S. And don’t forget cops generally are on the right side on guns.

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There Are some Bad Cops, but the Real Problem Is Bad Laws

It’s probably not a fun time to be a police officer. The deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York have led some – including the Mayor of New York City – to explicitly or implicitly accuse cops of systemic racism.

And then you have folks like me, who grouse about cops for reprehensible abuse of citizens as part of the drug war, as well as disgusting examples of theft using civil asset forfeiture.

Heck, any decent person should get upset about some of the ways law enforcement officials abuse their powers. Consider these excerpts from a nightmarish story out of Houston.

Chad Chadwick has something many citizens can only covet – a spotless record. …But on the night of September 27th, 2011 Chadwick’s commitment to living within the law did him no good at all. It started when a friend concerned for Chadwick’s emotional well-being called Missouri City police to Chad’s Sienna apartment where he’d been distraught, drinking and unknown to anyone, had gone to sleep in the bathtub. A SWAT team was summoned.

I’m not sure why a SWAT team was needed in this case, but that’s not the horrific part of the story.

Here’s what then happened.

“They told a judge I had hostages. They lied to a judge and told him I had hostages in my apartment and they needed to enter,” said Chadwick. …Chadwick’s firearm possession apparently prompted SWAT to kick in his door, launch a stun grenade into the bathroom and storm in, according to Chadwick, without announcing their identity. “While I had my hands up naked in the shower they shot me with a 40 millimeter non-lethal round,” said Chadwick. A second stun grenade soon followed. “I turned away, the explosion went off, I opened my eyes the lights are out and here comes a shield with four or five guys behind it. They pinned me against the wall and proceeded to beat the crap out of me,” said Chadwick. That’s when officers shot the unarmed Chadwick in the back of the head with a Taser at point blank range. …And it wasn’t over. “They grabbed me by my the one hand that was out of the shower and grabbed me by my testicles slammed me on my face on the floor and proceeded to beat me more,” said Chadwick. Chadwick, who hadn’t broken a single law when SWAT burst through his door, was taken to the Ft. Bend County Jail with a fractured nose, bruised ribs and what’s proven to be permanent hearing loss. He was held in an isolation cell for two full days.

Did Mr. Chadwick then get a profuse apology when it was determined that he hadn’t broken any laws?

Not exactly.

Ft. Bend County District Attorney John Healy sought to indict Chadwick on two felony counts of assaulting a police officer, but a Grand Jury said no law was broken. …but Healy’s prosecutors tried misdemeanor charges of resisting arrest, calling more than a dozen officers to testify. Those charges were dropped as well.

The government eventually did figure out a way to get Mr. Chadwick into court, but it didn’t turn out so well.

A month ago, three years after the SWAT raid, a jury found Chad Chadwick not guilty of interfering with police. With tears in their eyes members of the jury offered the exonerated defendant comforting hugs. “They tried to make me a convict. It broke me financially, bankrupted me. I used my life savings, not to mention, I lost my kids,” said Chadwick.

This is one of these cases where I hope Mr. Chadwick sues and gets generously compensated (and I would want any damages to be financed out of the budgets of the officials who misbehaved).

Defenders of the police will argue, quite correctly, that we shouldn’t smear entire police forces or the overall justice system simply because there are some bad cops and unethical prosecutors.

That’s certainly the right attitude, though it’s worth noting that sometimes the “culture” of a police force can get so poisonous that wholesale dismissal is the only way to get better performance.

Here are some passages from a New York Times report about a city in New Jersey that got far better results by firing its entire police force.

It has been 16 months since Camden took the unusual step of eliminating its police force and replacing it with a new one run by the county. …the old force had all but given up responding to some types of crimes. Dispensing with expensive work rules, the new force hired more officers within the same budget — 411, up from about 250. It hired civilians to use crime-fighting technology it had never had the staff for. …Average response time is now 4.4 minutes, down from more than 60 minutes, and about half the average in many other cities. …In June and July, the city went 40 days without a homicide — unheard-of in a Camden summer. …And while the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., has drawn attention to long-simmering hostilities between police departments and minority communities, Camden is becoming an example of the opposite. “We’re not going to do this by militarizing streets,” Chief Thomson said. Instead, he sent officers to knock on doors and ask residents their concerns. He lets community leaders monitor surveillance cameras from their home computers to help watch for developing crime.

 An even more dramatic example comes from Georgia, a country of 5 million people wedged between Russia and Turkey.

As part of a series of reforms to create free markets and honest government, all 15,000 cops from the State Traffic Inspection Office were fired.

Georgian authorities chose a radical method of reforming the police structures which were not working. …The State Traffic Inspection was one of the most corrupt units in the Georgian government. It was almost totally self-financed, fleecing both local and foreign drivers as they traveled Georgian roadways. According to estimates, 80 percent of the money extorted from drivers was distributed along the chain of command all the way up to the minister. …In early summer of 2004, Merabishvili eliminated the State Traffic Inspection, firing all fifteen thousand employees in a single day! Two months later, in August 2004, the force was replaced by competitive hiring of employees for the newly formed US-style highway patrol. During the two-month transition period there was no policing of the roads, and yet the number of car accidents did not increase. There were no riots.

The part about nothing bad happening when there were no cops is especially revealing.

Sort of like how nothing bad happened during the sequester, even though President Obama warned of terrible consequences (humorously captured by these cartoons).

Or when we got welfare reform in the 1990s and poverty went down instead of increasing as the left predicted.

But now let’s defend cops, who actually help fulfill one of the few legitimate functions of government. And there are two reasons they deserve defending.

First, the vast majority of them almost certainly are good and decent people who simply want to help others by fighting and deterring crime. That’s a real value.

Second, almost all of the bad stories about cops exist because politicians have enacted bad laws. I’ve made this point about the drug war. I’ve made this point about asset forfeiture. And I’ve made this point in the case of Eric Garner.

If politicians didn’t criminalize victimless behavior, most horror stories would disappear.

And if politicians didn’t treat police departments as backdoor vehicles for taking money from citizens, there would be no need for some of the unfortunate interactions that now occur between cops and citizens.

Now let’s defend the police from a very incendiary charge. Are cops racists, as some protesters (and government officials) would like us to believe?

Well, I’m sure there are some racist cops (of all colors), just as there are racist accountants, truck drivers, bureaucrats, and even economists. But the real issue is whether racism is a pervasive problem.

And when looking at one of today’s hot-button issues, the answer seems to be no. Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute has some compelling evidence that the police do not disproportionately kill blacks.

…understanding the relationship between African-American communities and law enforcement requires a deeper analysis than a single headline… One simple way to check for bias is to see whether the number of violent crimes needed to explain one police-related death is different depending on one’s race. …We divide the number of violent crimes by the arrest-related deaths for each race. The quotient tells us, on average, how many violent crimes it takes, by race, to produce one arrest-related death. If police are unambiguously racist, then it should take fewer violent crimes to induce one death in the African-American community. As the chart shows, according to our data, African Americans and white Americans have roughly the same proportion of violent crimes to police-related deaths. …These numbers are strikingly similar. The difference between them is small, and not statistically significant. …police appear to be treating the races the same.

But that hasn’t stopped the Obama Administration from subsidizing a group that produced a video that seemingly condones cop killing.

The Obama administration’s Justice Department funneled at least $1.5 million in grants to a New York legal-aid group featured in a new rap video that depicts two young black men aiming handguns at a white police officer. …The video for  “Hands Up,” which also shows a white police officer gunning down a black motorist wearing a hoodie, contains lyrics suggesting revenge for much-publicized deaths of black men in confrontations with police. …The organization, which was founded in 1997 and boasts some high-powered corporate lawyers on its board, has enjoyed a steady flow of taxpayer dollars since President Obama took office in 2009.

This is disgusting.

Accusing cops of systemic racism without evidence is bad enough, but to subsidize a group that glorifies cop killing is downright evil.

But the bottom of line of this post is that our main problem is too many laws that are either designed to collect revenue or to dictate private behavior.

That’s where reforms should focus, not on vilifying the average cop.

P.S. I can’t resist sharing an amusing anecdote about cops. Several years ago, I spoke at the Liberty Forum in New Hampshire, a conference connected with the Free State Project. Many of the participants were avid practitioners of “open carry,” which meant they had handguns strapped to their sides. At one point, I was riding with several of these folks down the elevator at the conference hotel and a family got in. A young boy noticed all their weapons and asked “Are you guys cops?” One of them cheerfully responded, “No, we’re the good guys.”

P.P.S. On the other hand, I also have a less-than-amusing anecdote.

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A Good Joke about Cops

Every so often, I’ll be critical of cops. Usually it’s because they’re tasked with the unenviable responsibility of enforcing bad laws, but sometimes they do things that are needlessly wrong.

• Busting two kids for throwing snowballs.
• Cops issuing summonses to people for lawfully sitting in a park.
• Arresting a woman for standing on her own porch.
• Fining two men for rescuing an injured deer.
• Arresting a homeowner for the crime of self-defense.

But these are rare examples of bone-headed behavior by individual cops. I’m much more concerned about bad laws issued by politicians, such as asset forfeiture laws that give cops incentives to harass people who aren’t a threat to society.

Having made a semi-serious point, now let’s enjoy a good joke about cops.

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HOW TO CALL THE POLICE WHEN YOU WANT RESULTS

George Phillips , an elderly man, from Meridian, Mississippi, was going up to bed, when his wife told him that he’d left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.

He phoned the police, who asked “Is someone in your house?”

He said “No,” but some people are breaking into my garden shed and stealing from me.

Then the police dispatcher said “All patrols are busy. You should lock your doors and an officer will be along when one is available.”

George said, “Okay.”

He hung up the phone and counted to 30.

Then he phoned the police again.

“Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people stealing things from my shed. Well, you don’t have to worry about them now because I just shot them.” and he hung up.

Within five minutes, six Police Cars, a SWAT Team, a Helicopter, two Fire Trucks, a Paramedic, and an Ambulance showed up at the Phillips’ residence, and caught the burglars red-handed.

One of the Policemen said to George, “I thought you said that you’d shot them!”

George said, “I thought you said there was nobody available!”

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For those of you who appreciate police humor, you’ll enjoy this Texas police exam and this example of compassionate state troopers.

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In Semi-Defense of OWS Protesters

Even though I’ve expressed a small bit of sympathy for their motives, I’m not a fan of the OWS protesters. But other than sharing some jokes about the movement (see here, here, here, here, here, and here), I haven’t had much to say.

But this video showing a clash with police at UC Davis is rather troubling.

I realize that I don’t know the context, but the police reaction seems rather excessive. Two questions spring to mind.

1. Why does anyone care that they’re blocking a sidewalk? I can understand that the police have to act if protesters decide to block a street,but why was there a need to have a big confrontation (one that the protesters obviously wanted) to clear a sidewalk? My instinct would be to leave them alone.

2. Why did they use mace? Surely there ought to be some rule of proportionality. If a bunch of protesters are smashing windows or overturning cars, then a more aggressive response obviously is needed. But why use pepper spray on some college kids sitting on a sidewalk?

I consider myself a tough-on-crime conservative, but mixed with a strong libertarian belief in individual rights. As I said in an earlier post, the real key is to make sure laws are just.

That’s why I’ve criticized abuses of police power, in cases such as asset forfeiture, the destructive war on drugs, videotaping of public officials, and persecution of victimless crime.

Is this video another example of a government doing the wrong thing? Again, we don’t know the context, but this doesn’t seem right.

I assume the cops are just following orders, so the real issue is decision making by local politicians or university administrators.

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Giving Cops Bad Incentives to Harass Victimless Behavior

The Washington Post has an interesting report about the huge amount of money that Fairfax County spends to go after gambling. The story cites critics who ask “why law enforcement spends valuable time and money on combating sports gambling. The answer is obvious – and explicit in the story: “…police in Virginia are allowed to keep 100 percent of the assets they seize in state gambling cases.” In other words, harassing the gambling business is a profit-making endeavor for police. And it also can be deadly since cops killed an optometrist during a SWAT arrest. The Institute for Justice has a powerful video on the dangers of “policing for profit,” and Fairfax County is just one bad example of how this lures cops into misallocating resources to fight behaviors that shouldn’t even be illegal.

It’s football season, and for millions of Americans that means betting season. …It’s a crime that Fairfax County police take seriously. So seriously that in one recent gambling investigation, they spent — and lost — more than $300,000 in cash to take down a Las Vegas-based online bookie and his group of Fairfax-based associates. …Police critics have long wondered why law enforcement spends valuable time and money on combating sports gambling. In Fairfax, the police rarely publicize their arrests, and the details of their investigations are little known outside the small corps of detectives in the money laundering unit. Unlike drug cases, police in Virginia are allowed to keep 100 percent of the assets they seize in state gambling cases, so other agencies or divisions receive no benefit. And the vast majority of those arrested are placed on probation. “What a waste,” said Nicholas Beltrante, founder of the Virginia Citizens Coalition for Police Accountability, a group formed earlier this year in part to combat unnecessary police spending. “The police should be utilizing their resources for more serious crimes.” Fairfax’s most notorious gambling investigation ended in disaster. In 2006, an undercover detective lost more than $5,000 while betting on NFL games with optometrist Salvatore J. Culosi — and when the detective called in a SWAT team to make the arrest, an officer shot Culosi once in the heart and killed him. …Since 2004, the squad has seized about $1 million in cash and assets annually, but some of those cases landed in federal court, where money is divided among various agencies, Schaible said. …One case from 2006, that of admitted bookmaker Kyle Peters, resulted in police seizing and keeping $566,940 from his bank accounts. Schaible said such funds are recycled “back into investigating cases. It’s helping us resolve these and fight further crime.”

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Cops Arrest Homeowner for Crime of Self-Defense

A man in New York recently scared off some gang members by firing a couple of warning shots into the ground. When the cops arrived, did they congratulate the man for protecting his family and start looking for the thugs? That’s what would happen in a logical and just society, but the anti-gun mentality in New York is so pervasive that the cops actually arrested the homeowner. Needless to say, I can’t imagine this happening in Georgia or Wyoming – places where both the law and cops seem to be more rational. Some day, I hope to be on a jury and have a case like this so I can vote not guilty and engage in the noble tradition of jury nullification. Here’s an excerpt from the story I saw on Drudge.

He was arrested for protecting his property and family. But it’s how the Long Island man did it that police say crossed the line. …George Grier said he had to use his rifle on Sunday night to stop what he thought was going to be an invasion of his Uniondale home by a gang he thought might have been the vicious “MS-13.” He said the whole deal happened as he was about to drive his cousin home. “I went around and went into the house, ran upstairs and told my wife to call the police. I get the gun and I go outside and I come into the doorway and now, by this time, they are in the driveway, back here near the house. I tell them, you know, ‘Can you please leave?’ Grier said. Grier said the five men dared him to use the gun; and that their shouts brought another larger group of gang members in front of his house. “He starts threatening my family, my life. ‘Oh you’re dead. I’m gonna kill your family and your babies. You’re dead.’ So when he says that, 20 others guys come rushing around the corner. And so I fired four warning shots into the grass,” Grier said. …You may think a person has the right to defend their home. But the law says you can only use physical force to deter physical force. Grier said he never saw anyone pull out a gun, so a court would have to decide on firing the gun. Police determined Grier had the gun legally. He has no criminal record. And so he was not charged for the weapon.

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