Doctor Cleveland's picture

    Do We Have a Constitution, Officer?

    A country is only as democratic as its police, and Constitutional rights are only as real as its police treat them. The fight over police work in America is ultimately a fight over whether or not the United States Constitution is real.

    The Constitution plainly states that no person "shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." It could not be clearer. It could not be more essential. But in 2015 we hear apologists for police misconduct, across our country, loudly advocating a civil order where the police can punish any citizen who does not comply swiftly enough to please the police officer, where police can arrest citizens without cause, where police officers can kill unarmed citizens with impunity to guard against hypothetical and thoroughly imaginary dangers. There is no due process of law. You have no rights.

    Officer Michael Brelo, recently acquitted of manslaughter in Cleveland, stood on the hood of two unarmed citizens' car and shot fifteen bullets into their windshield. Brelo had already shot 32 other bullets at that car. In fact, Brelo and his fellow officers, who shot 137 bullets at those two unarmed citizens, were also shooting at each other, because they had surrounded the car and were shooting into a circle. Brelo, the only one prosecuted for shooting, was standing on the hood of the victims' car because, even if they had had a gun, Brelo knew they were no longer in condition to return fire.

    Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams's lives were taken, by paid agents of the state, without due process. There was no trial. There was no judicial process, and there are no consequences. Nor was there ever any danger to any police officer except from other police officers. The chase (which involved more than a hundred cops) began because Russell and Williams's car had backfired and a jumpy police officer, hearing an engine backfire, decided that he was being shot at.

    The police can take two citizens' life in response to their own fantasies. They go free after doing it. The Constitution is not in force. We do not live in the country we say we do.

    In Baltimore, Freddie Gray was arrested for no reason that the police themselves can explain. He was arrested without committing a crime; he had looked at a police officer, and then he had run. Baltimore police officers punished these non-crimes by arresting Gray, and by beating him; he was limping on his way into the police van. He was dead when he came out. But other citizens put into Baltimore police vans have come out with broken bones, concussions, and spinal damage: the Baltimore cops' way of dispensing "justice" without any judge, without any chance for the citizen to defend or explain himself, without any law needing to be broken at all.

    Did they mean to kill Freddie Gray? Or did they just mean to punish him by doing him bodily harm, without due process of law? Either way, there is no Constitution in Baltimore. This is not the America we talk about.

    Police officers in Cleveland, in Baltimore, and across the country, consider themselves entitled to beat citizens who don't cooperate as the police officers see fit, to beat citizens who say something a police officer doesn't like, to beat citizens who make the police officers run. They see this as their right and their privilege. They don't ask a judge. They don't bother with the law. Your rights in the Constitution are not your rights, because the police don't bother with them.

    People who excuse or encourage this behavior, who say that you're in no danger if you obey a police officer, should be up front about what they believe. They believe in abolishing the Constitution. They trust the police, any specific police officer on any given day, more than they trust the Founders. If your Constitutional rights can be voided whenever a cop, any cop, in any mood, decides to give you an order, then you have no Constitutional rights. The Founders deliberately decided that no one in our system, not even George Washington himself, could be trusted with unchecked power. Allowing police to dole out any punishment they see fit to anyone who disobeys any order, even unlawful orders, is a mockery and misunderstanding of everything our system was meant to be.

    I am from a family of police officers. I grew up around police officers, including many, many officers I love and admire. I know lots of good cops. But I have never known a cop who was not a human being, with human failings. I have never met a police officer who should be allowed to do anything he or she wants without accountability. Thomas Jefferson mocked the idea of "angels sent as kings," by divine right; certainly, a system that requires all police to be angels, because they are empowered to do whatever they want, is even worse.

    Yesterday Cleveland agreed to Justice Department oversight for the Cleveland Police. That oversight includes things like not beating suspects who are already in custody and in handcuffs. But that is not a new rule. That was always the rule. The Cleveland police knew that rule and disobeyed it. That Cleveland police officers did that, time and again, shows that they have routinely ignored the law, that they consider themselves above the law and can not be held accountable. The New York Police Department forbids its officers to use chokeholds on suspects, and has forbidden that for years, but for years its officers routinely did it anyway. The six Baltimore police officers who took Freddie Gray on his fatal ride all told their superiors the same story, a story that did not match video evidence. Lying and falsifying reports has become routine. Standing orders are routinely ignored. It is clear that in many police departments, the rules that are written down are not actually obeyed, and the focus is on protecting one's fellow officers from oversight.

    Every cop is not bad. But when police are not properly supervised and held accountable, then the bad cops are put in charge and the good ones have to follow their lead. When the police avoid the authority of the laws, then there are no laws but the police.

    If the police are not answerable for what they do, then nothing else matters. If they are beyond the law, then none of us are safe from them. If the police need not answer for what they do to us, then the police become, in the most literal way, irresponsible. And then the Constitution is just some words on paper, no more real or meaningful than the beautiful and high-minded constitutions of every other police state.

    Michael Brelo was acquitted because the judge said no one could prove that Michael Brelo's shots killed the two unarmed people who had committed no crime. After all, by the time Brelo was standing on the hood of the car, both of those victims were probably already dead. But that means Brelo was standing there, pouring fifteen more bullets into two defenseless human bodies, to make sure that neither of them survived. Think about that when you go to sleep tonight, and try to pretend that you have any rights.

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    Comments

    Thanks for this. The Cleveland PD hired an officer felt incompetent in handling firearms by a smaller police force. Part of the DOJ agreement says Cleveland PD has to read the resumes of officers they hire. Common sense is lacking at Cleveland PD. That hired officer killed 12-year old Tamir Rice within seconds of arriving on the scene. Months after the homicide, there has been no decision made as to whether the child's death is considered part of the accepted actions of a Cleveland police officer. Will they find that the officers did nothing wrong.

    We have seen evidence of police lying about events in their official police reports. Carry a toy gun sold by Walmart in the Walmart and you can legally be shot dead by police. We told him to put the gun down as we started shooting. No harm, no foul.  Be suspected of selling loose cigarettes in NYC and you can have your death at the hands of police recorded on video. Your death will be considered legal. You can be forced to live with a legal system rigged to target your community to fill the city's coffers as in Ferguson. 

    If you object to police abuse, police will respond by telling you that they will no longer protect your community. You are told by police that you have to give up some of your rights to gain a little security. The Mafia offers the same deal.

    The courts are addressing massive data collection. The courts have failed to act in most cases when it comes to police abuse.


    The reason most of the black community gets upset when mostly inner city blacks are abused by police is that we are all the same to the police. You don't belong in that car and that neighborhood, they enjoy harassing you. It does not matter if the officer is white, black, or polka dot, they enjoy getting in your face because they know they can. They will break the spine of a suspect. They will pull a Harvard Professor off of his porch. They are an occupying army. When they feel the desire, they provide protection. You are their subject. If you object to police abuse, you are called a supporter of criminals. Question their actions, and they will do a job slowdown. They lie on their police reports and generally face no repercussions. If they have been found to have abused their power, the police union fights to put them back on the street. 

    We have never heard of a case when a so-called good cop intervened when a bad cop got out of control. We have seen a black cop support a white cop who shot an unarmed man in the back and remain silent when the white officer planted evidence next to the dead man. We have seen police offer no help as Eric Garner lay dying. The police have lost my trust.


    For years, the line has been exactly as you say -- if the police confront you, you obey.  If you are falsely accused, falsely arrested, inconvenienced, detained or insulted, you just put up with it.  If you feel strongly about it later, you can complain to a civilian review board or hire a lawyer to pursue justice.  Of course, that only works if you're not dead.

    It also doesn't really work.  Winning a case against an officer who will claim to have acted with the best of intentions is nearly impossible.  Any award you get will be paid from public coffers.  In NYC and elsewhere, officers who face civil suits that are settled do not lose their jobs.  Even if the city admits liability, the officer goes on thinking they are righteous and were let down by a corrupt or fearful local government.

    Of course, most people hassled by the police will never get to court. These are people who cannot miss work to pursue legal action and lawyers are rarely free and rarely willing to take on cases that seem unwinnable.

    A lot of the solution is more and better training, more accountability and easier access to justice for those wrongly accused, confronted or arrested. I think a bigger part of the solution would be for us to examine our laws and to recognize that every encounter between the police and citizens is a potential tragedy.  Perhaps we can reduce the number of encounters by reducing the number of petty offenses out there and narrowing the scope of when an officer can confront a citizen,  Maybe "furtive movements" is just too broad category of potentially instigating events.


    DOJ to Cleveland PD:"We double-dog dare you to beat up shackled suspects! "

    Waiting to hear what happens to the Cleveland cop who murdered the 12 year old in a 2 second one sided shoot-out, then cuffed the sister as the kid expired.


    Baltimore police to black citizens, "You want to claim persecution and sainthood,  go ahead and police yourselves" "Protecting your communities. isn't worth the risk".

    The perception: Whether you're a citizen or a cop, you're  more likely to suffer a violent crime at the hands of a black offender. 

    "Let  Ms Mosby keep you safe." 

    It's a lot less risk to investigate a murder, than to proactively intervene in communities, who hate the police and spread mistrust   

    To the police, it will no longer be "damned if they do and dammed if they don't". 

    It'll be a lot safer for the officers, just to clean up after the crimes 

    Message to the citizens: Better start carrying your own self protection; as granted by the Second Amendment. 


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