Here’s a great quote from Ta-Nehisi Coates that really speaks to the subtleties of how police arrogance continues to damage the relationship with law enforcement representatives and the people they (are supposed to) serve while explaining why he is reluctant to call the police in many situations:

“I think the source of a lot my reasoning is the cop’s own response to Gates. A lot of us here believe that is possible that Gates was, at least, rude. We also aren’t sure what — if any — role race played in all this. That said, the cop not only thinks Gates was rude to him but he handled the situation exactly right. Given that dude thinks police should be arresting citizens for rudeness, he is not the guy I’d want dealing with the kids in my neighborhood — even the ones who need to be in custody.”

It really blows my mind, though it shouldn’t at this point, that police are defending the right to arrest people for being rude to them and failing to grasp how this thoroughly damages their social contract with the public. Who wants somebody with that poor sense of proportion to be around their children? It teaches children a dangerous lesson — that personal offense is an acceptable reason for retribution under the color of authority.

Here is an utterly horrifying response from David Holway, president of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers: “What we don’t need is public safety officials across the country second-guessing themselves.” If public safety officials are considering arresting people for being rude to them then yes, actually, we really, really do need public safety officials second-guessing themselves.

P.S. If you’re the kind of libertarian who thrives on having smart arguments presented by non-libertarians to hone your views, I can’t recommend reading Coates’ blog enough. He comes from the left and writes about race issues, but with a deft grasp of how racism plays out in the real world, with a sense of personal humility, and without excusing anybody’s behavior on any side. He has a great knack for calling out racist statements and actions without resorting to the shrill, mind-numbing tactics of those who have made a career of being victims. If you need a guy to (figuratively) smack you aside the head when you say somethng stupid and explain why rather than trying to lay a collegiate jargon-laden guilt trip on you, he’s the one. Also, he has some of the best commenters on the Web. And he plays World of Warcraft.

Scott Shackford

Editing to add: Jacob Sullum over at Reason has an analysis of how disorderly conduct laws are written and how they easily allow for police abuse.

Thinking about hosting a summer BBQ? Fine. Thinking about inviting 15 friends? That’s cool. Put up an announcement on Facebook? Here come the SWAT teams.

Brit Andrew Poole organised a simple barbeque to celebrate his 30th birthday party. He expected a total of 17 guests, so he bought a lot of burgers, rented a marquee and put some batteries into the portable MP3 player, as anyone with an impending significant birthday and an unused BBQ stove would. But his first mistake was to create an events page on Facebook. His second was to send out invitations to join the BBQ in a Devon field owned by a friend.

However, Minority Report became real when when eight police officers, some dressed in body armour, swooped in via a helicopter and a riot van. Police claimed they received reports a “large-scale” dance rave organised via something called the Internet. Police said local residents had tipped them off about a possible rave, which suggests that the “red ball” in this case was the people Poole is connected to on Facebook who tipped off the authorities.

Said Poole: “The thing (the helicopter) hovered over us for about 25 minutes, watching 15 people eat. They told us to take down the sound system and said everybody has got to leave. It was 4pm and we had not plugged in the music. What effectively police did was to stop 15 people eating burgers.”

More on this ridiculous story of police “anticipating crime” here.

The budget crunch is making the law enforcement pursuit of “low-hanging fruit” in order to justify their taxpayer burden an even bigger source of fear for the average resident.

Over the weekend, two very strange police raids — one on a gay bar in Texas and one due to a noise complaint at a political fund-raiser in California — made me wonder what if an already bad authority abuse trend is going to get even worse over the hot summer.

Here in Barstow, we got a press release from the city over a weekend raid and roundup of parolees, et cetera. (they’ve promised regular sweeps throughout the summer). They even kindly provided the names of all the folks they’ve arrested (more than 20 of which appear to live in the same apartment complex). However, when my reporter started looking up names in the county’s arrest tracker, she can only find evidence that three of these guys were actually charged with anything. Don’t know the details of the rest yet. There could be a perfectly logical explanation.

Right before I sat down to write this, we had a homeless resident come in to ask if we’d do a profile of him. I took down his name and number of out of politeness and went back to work. A few minutes later, the sales staff informed me that the police stopped by (nobody here called them) and picked the guy up, leaving his belongings, and apparently his dog, on the sidewalk right outside our office. We have no idea why they took him. His dog is sitting here right outside the door waiting for him to come back. We’re giving him water, as it’s supposed to get up to 108 degrees out here today.

Again, could be a perfectly logical explanation, but it’s a bit disconcerting. Why am I more concerned about what the police in my neighborhood are doing than I am the drug dealers?

Scott Shackford