No, It’s not what you think, but there is a correlation if not an interrelated, causal relationship between the three issues that deserves a conversation. It is my opinion that we can not alleviate the appalling rate of police brutality in Colorado, without honestly admitting to and actually dealing with the affects of recently relaxed gun and liquor laws, because they in turn, effects the attitudes, policies, and conduct of law enforcement. This post is a bit of a read, but there was no other way for me to make the point. Sorry.
Guns
In 2004, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act expired. It once imposed a ten-year, federal ban on assault weapons such as AK-47s, Uzis, Tec-9s, and 16 other military-type assault weapons. Why was the law not renewed? Because the GOP ran the whole show in 2004 and Wayne LaPierre and his NRA, lobbied heavily (bought off or otherwise threatened politicians) for the ban to be lifted. It was allowed to expire, even though national police organizations such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, and the Fraternal Order of Police all supported the renewal of the ban, and President Bush said he would sign such a bill if Congress passed it.
So, for the last six years, it has been open season on the sale, trade, and use of assault weapons. The spineless Democrats did nothing to bring back the ban, when they had the chance in 2008. They remembered losing their majority in the House over passing the original bill in 1993 and got scared.
Those of you who can still remember way back to January of 2011 may recall that the 32-round clip, psycho-conspiracy-theorist Jarred Loughner used to kill and maim so many people in seconds, was perfectly legal to buy, and that he bought it at the local Wal-Mart. It was perfectly legal, because the Brady Law had expired. In response to the Tucson Tucson
Criminal background checks supposedly still exist, and sort of work, unless it involves a gun show, or someone is trading, say, a truck, for 40 Kalashnikovs, or the seller just doesn’t cotton to the inconvenience of making an American citizen wait an hour, or a day, or even three days, to make sure that he’s not a convicted felon, or recently released from a mental ward, or is part of a terrorist organization, or is under a restraining order for stalking and beating his wife, or is a gang member.
Recent ATF reports of hundreds if not thousands, of assault weapons legally sold in the U.S. somehow ending up in the hands of the Mexican Drug cartels, should not surprise you in the least. A straw purchase is where a legally entitled person agrees to buy weapons for a not-so-legally entitled person and it happens every day in every town in the U.S. Columbine High School
But these weapons don’t just end up in the hands of individual psychos or otherwise illegally emigrate to morally challenged entrepreneurs in Mexico ALF ), the Army of God, the Aryan Nations, the Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord, the Earth Liberation Front, the Jewish Defense League, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Phineas Priesthood. I may have mentioned these righteous patriots in my post on March 11, 2011 .
In 2010, the State of Colorado Colorado
On, March 15, 2011. the Tea/GOP/NRA folks in our legislature began pushing through House Bill 1205, which will allow anyone who passes an insta-criminal-background- check, to conceal and carry a handgun. No permit necessary! The proponents aver that $ 152.50, is just too much to pay for a permit, when gun owners can already wear their weapons, Tombstone
So when some deranged nut or patriot-org, or upset, upstanding citizen, or dumbass college student decides to say, shoot up a Safeway, or an abortion doctor, or a liberal talk-show host, or a rival gang member, or their spouse, or a frat party, or their boss, or their professor, guess who has the impossible job of somehow preventing the crime? And when the inevitable happens, who has to respond to the hostage situation, to the rapid-fire, multiple bullets flying everywhere, to the horrific aftermath of mass carnage? You guessed it. Your local police force, that’s who. And police officers know full well that just one assailant can cap off 32 lethal rounds in just a few seconds before reloading and an equal number after reloading in the time it takes for him to shout “you’ll never take me alive, Copper!”
Just how much harder are we going to make it for the police to tell the good guys from the bad? The already improbable focus necessary for the average police officer to maintain has now increased exponentially. And, now, with no CCW registry, an officer has absolutely no way of ascertaining whether a suspect is even likely to be carrying a weapon, until actual physical contact is made. Now everybody from college kids to state legislators are potential Uzi-packing loonies. And we have just made it legal to put more troubled minds with an assault weapons in every car, on every street, and behind every door, to where the police are called to respond. Think about that for a moment.
Liquor
In January of 2008, in the form of Senate Bill 82,Colorado repealed their Blue Law, which meant in common parlance, that liquor, beer and wine was free to be sold seven days a week, from that day forward. The repeal also allowed grocery stores to sell beer and wine as well. As of today’s date, March 15, 2011, the GOP house is proposing aother bill, which will allow every convenience store in the state to sell full strength beer. With that addition, all residents will have absolutely unfetterred access to alcohol, within walking distance of every home, school, church, and playground. Rest assurred, the already staggering number of alcohol-related violent crimes will increase.
After daily practice for over 22 years in the criminal justice system as a deputy Colorado State Public Defender, I have been able to estimate that about 80% of the serious felonies I handled and at least 90% of the violent crimes, were alcohol-related. I defended addicted clients, self-medicating, mentally ill clients, binge-drinkers, young drinkers, old drinkers, itinerant drinkers, and novice drinkers and they had one thing in common. Their brains went to hell on alcohol and they did some of the most unimaginable, unspeakable things after their primal pump was…uh…primed, by alcohol. Most of these people weren’t bad folks when they were sober, but they had no business drinking, and it was cheap and it was easy to get, and their parents and brothers and sisters and wives and aunts and uncles all drank, before, during, and after their felony offenses.
And I have to laugh at politicians who yammer about the evils of marijuana. In 22 years, not a single one of my 5,000 or so clients committed a violent crime, or even a very serious crime, while solely under the influence of pot. Although my mentally ill clients frequently used pot to self-medicate clinical depressive and bipolar conditions, it was alcohol or methamphetamine (a close second), or crack-cocaine, or a combination, that gave them that extra little push to a long stretch in the joint. Pot smokers stay at home, eat, and watch a lot of T.V. and doze off.Alcohol drinkers drive into and over innocent people, duct-tape, beat and rape women, and punch, kick, pummel, cut, slash, stab, gut, and shoot strangers, neighbors, friends, loversand the occasional animal.
And when you put alcohol and guns together, the combination is almost always lethal. I’ll give you one guess who has to deal with all of those drunken, insanely violent, assault weapon-toting, perpetrators, witnesses, and bystanders at the crime scene.You guessed it. Your local police department.
Police Brutality
In 2010, Denver Atlanta New Orleans Fort Worth Louisville Jacksonville
In 2010,
My only surprise was that these numbers were not higher. In my former employment as a deputy Public Defender, serving both a major metropolitan jurisdiction as well as a small town, I saw a minimum of one client per week at the jail who would look like his face had been put through a meat grinder. The booking photo would more resemble that of an autopsy.
The police reports on the case would often involve hospital records concerning the serious bodily injury sustained by my client at the hands of the police and, wouldn’t you know it, my client was always charged with resisting arrest, or obstruction, or even assault on an officer, especially if one or more of the cops scraped their knuckles or tore a rotator cuff, from beating my client into unconsciousness.
And almost all of my clients would tell me a surprisingly similar version of the same thing: “…and I tried to tell the cop…blah, blah, blah…” and then the inexorable clash of an irresistible force (police force) with a highly movable object (my client).
Did some of my mentally ill, drunken, drug-addled, or otherwise violence-prone clients have it coming? Probably, I must admit. But, over the years I developed a fairly accurate method of deciphering which of my clients and cases fit the “he had it coming” profile and which didn’t, and which cops seemed to beat up my clients over and over and over again, with no response from their superiors except a promotion. There were far too many clients with little or no criminal history, far too many cases where no drugs or alcohol were involved, far too many scenarios where a simple misunderstanding seemed to spontaneously explode into a full-fledged beat-down, before my client could figure out which end was up. And I could see the expressions of genuine fright and confusion in their blackened eyes, the tears of disbelief running down their bruised and battered faces. And again, the same cops, over and over and over, until they made detective.
My beaten down clients were routinely charged with various offenses where the officers were cast as victims or heroes. These charges were filed as a matter of course by prosecutors in order to shield the cops and, in effect, the County, against any eventual civil liability. Usually, my client, even if strongly believing that he was a victim of police brutality, would eventually feel compelled to plead to a much more minor charge in order to get out of jail and back to work.
In Colorado, if an officer gets scratched or is spat upon by an arrestee, and the latter is convicted of that offense, he or she is looking at a felony that carries a mandatory five to sixteen years in prison, with no possibility of probation. The pressure to plead down to a “time served” misdemeanor and a probationary sentence is overwhelming. My clients didn’t usually start concentrating on the police brutality part, until the hospital bills came due and they suddenly discovered (yeah, I told them already) that they had about a zero percent chance at prevailing in a civil suit because they pled to a crime, incident to arrest.
If we count one beaten down client per week, this adds up to approximately 50 per year. Even if we assume that 90% deserved or even partially deserved to be punched, choked, kicked, bones broken, spleens ruptured etc., this leaves five of my clients, on average per year who were more than likely true victims of police brutality. Since none of my clients were able to successfully sue the police or the county over their injuries, we can add their numbers to the recorded statistical figures above. There are approximately 335 deputy Colorado State Public Defenders in
As for cops like Officer Devin Sparks? He was the cop who was caught on video, walking all the way across the street to confront and beat and tackle and severely injure a young man named Michael DeHerrera, whose only crime was talking on his cell phone to his dad, an El Paso County Sheriff’s deputy, about the police brutality he was witnessing. Officer Sparks should be fired for the gratuitous brutality and for lying about it on his reports and to the official agency conducting the investigation. He should also be charged with assault. And what about the “fellow officer” who was the original police-thug Mr. DeHerrera was watching? He also lied on his report, lied for Officer Sparks, took young DeHerrera’s cell phone (which was evidence), put it in an evidence bag and then,…uh,…“lost” it? He should be fired as well.
And the five Denver Sheriff’s deputies who sat on 56 year old, 150 LB., Marvin Booker in the Denver jail until he stopped breathing and then “high-fived” each other and left Mr. Booker to die on the floor? The old man was afraid of losing his shoes and they sat on Mr. Booker and killed him because he insisted on attempting to pick up his shoes. There is no place in law enforcement for these five violent unrepentant criminals either. They do belong in the jail…on the inside.
I cannot include the other reported cases. Although I am no stranger to gore, or pathos, having attended more than a dozen autopsies during my former employment, just reading about case after case after case of truly brutal acts of criminals-with-badges against helpless human beings, made me physically sick and I had to stop. Suffice it to say that, in my opinion, none of the officers involved in these cases should still be on the force, all should do jail time, and none should ever, ever be authorized to carry a firearm again.
So, What’s My Point?
Do I have a really clever answer to any or all of these three issues? The short answers, myopic and totally unrealistic ones, are to reinstate the Brady Act, re-legislate Prohibition, and require all police officers to have advanced degrees, undergo yearly, intense, psychological testing, and then institute a zero tolerance policy for all police brutality. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of me, not holding my breath.
I can just picture the resulting bedlam after getting the NRA and the Mausers, and the Liquor lobby and the Bar Lobby and the 7-11 lobby and the Police Union and criminal defense attorneys all into the same room. They are all advocates for their individual constituencies. It is not their job to craft sound public policy. They are not interested in hearing about the obvious linkage, because an acknowledgement of the interrelationship would necessarily call for a compromise solution.
But sound public policy (by that, I mean a rational compromise) should be the goal of our elected officials and I have just a few compromises for them to kick around:
I can just picture the resulting bedlam after getting the NRA and the Mausers, and the Liquor lobby and the Bar Lobby and the 7-11 lobby and the Police Union and criminal defense attorneys all into the same room. They are all advocates for their individual constituencies. It is not their job to craft sound public policy. They are not interested in hearing about the obvious linkage, because an acknowledgement of the interrelationship would necessarily call for a compromise solution.
But sound public policy (by that, I mean a rational compromise) should be the goal of our elected officials and I have just a few compromises for them to kick around:
1. Reinstate just the part of the Brady Gun Act that bans extended ammunition clips. That way, gun nuts could still buy their Uzis, but the clips would only hold 10 rounds. None of my hunting friends use an AK-47 to bag an elk and any homeowner who has to cap off more than 10 rounds in “self defense,” poses an unacceptable danger to his neighbors and to himself. If you have to fire more than 10 rounds to hit center-mass of an intruder at close range, you are already dead anyway.
2. Get guns the hell away from college campuses. Holy Mother of God! Scientists have shown that kids’ brains don’t gel until they hit about 23 YOA, and we parents are aware of at least some of what our sons and daughters actually do when they go away to college. That is scary enough, without adding concealed guns to the all-night orgies, inevitably (and illegally) fueled by copious amounts of alcohol and drugs.
3. No guns in bars, ever. Ever. Guns + alcohol + enclosed space = death. Simple.
4. No sale of alcohol in stores after Store owners will just have to live with the compromise.Many lives will be saved, and the state will save millions in criminal justice-related costs.
5. No sale of alcohol in bars after . Tough noogies, dancers, sports fans and yuppies. Get over it. Bars can still serve food after . That way, bars can still make a buck, the food will absorb the alcohol, and dram-shop laws will be relegated to the past.
6. If you pass compromises 1-5 above, the shift of every police force in Colorado
But we must also face the fact that we have simultaneously and unjustly conferred both deity and demon status on our members of law enforcement and it is high time that we concede the obvious. They are only human. No more and no less. There are only a small number of folks who are willing to take on the risks and a still smaller number who are actually suited for the job. Yes, we need to take serious steps to make our streets safer for our citizens and for law enforcement, but the simple fact is that some police officers should not be carrying guns and patrolling our streets and we all need to buck up and admit it..
After the passage of the above legislation, the Police Union ought to just shut up and take it, when our Manager of Safety fires each and every officer who beats the crap out of someone for no good reason, or lies in his or her report about it, or covers up for the gross misconduct or illegal activity of a fellow officer. You want comparative discipline? You got it. First time and you are looking for a new job that does not allow you to carry a firearm. Every officer gets a fair hearing to determine the facts and every officer adjudged to have committed any or all of the above gets exactly the same punishment as the last criminal-cop.
J. Brandeis Sperandeo
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