This week, a deputy from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office shot and killed a husband-wife couple in their Dublin, California, home using his service revolver. For 12 hours, the 24-year-old rookie was the subject of a manhunt; according to the press, he fled to the Central Valley before calling the police to turn himself in.
The reasons behind the deputy’s act have everyone theorizing. The police say it was the result of mental stress. Others, that it was an act of violence inspired by some sort of personal relationship with the people he killed. All that anyone really knows about the alleged shooter’s background is that he failed the field training program for the Stockton Police Department. But the reason why is not public information.
No one keeps official statistics on how many law enforcement officers commit crimes off-duty, not even the most serious crimes like murder. But the stories are harrowing. In 2013, Baltimore City police arrived at the home of Kendra Diggs in response to a domestic violence call. As the police stood in front of Diggs’ home talking to her, her partner James Smith – a 27-year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department – fired a gun from the second-floor window, killing her. As Professor Leigh Goodmark wrote in a 2015 article: “[I]ntimate partner abuse by police officers is a systemic, structural problem created and fueled by the ways in which police officers are socialized and instructed.” In other words, law enforcement officers are a threat off-duty – at home – as well as on patrol.
Unlike most people accused of a crime, police officers generally receive the benefit of the doubt even when their crimes are unrelated to their position. Former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean in his apartment on her way home from work. (She was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.) Immediately after Guyger shot and killed Jean with her service revolver, she met with Dallas Police Association President Mike Mata and spoke with him privately. (Mata was investigated for evidence tampering, but was not indicted.) Mata claims their discussion was covered by attorney-client privilege and, thus, instructed a police sergeant to turn off the car-recording system so they could speak in the patrol car.
At Guyger’s trial, the judge focused on whether Mata had given the responding sergeant a direct order (Mata is also a sergeant). Not at issue in the criminal trial was whether or not law enforcement officers are systemically given the opportunity for defenses and protections that non-police are not – but I suspect she already knew the answer to that.
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In Alabama, a pregnant woman was held for at least three months as a way to “protect her fetus” from marijuana. The 23-year-old was arrested with a small amount of pot and an unlicensed handgun in Etowah County. Instead of being released on bond, she was forced to wait in jail until she agreed to a “drug rehabilitation” program. Of course, since she didn’t need drug rehab, she ended up sleeping on the floor of the jail for months until a judge finally ordered her released to community corrections. According to advocacy groups, she’s not alone – the county has started to require all pregnant women who are arrested on drug charges to enter drug rehab and pay $10,000, which means the jail now holds more pregnant women. How this is better than a little reefer for the fetuses goes unmentioned, but the fetal personhood movement was never really about the health of the fetuses anyhow.
Sheriff’s deputies in northern California were dispatched to steal a goat raised by a young girl for her 4-H program. The child became attached to the goat – named “Cedar” – and tried to withdraw her from the county fair, where Cedar was to be sold as meat. When fair officials refused, Cedar was moved out of the county – only to be tracked down by cops who did not have a valid warrant. The insistent buyer? State Senator Brian Dahle, who unsuccessfully ran for California governor. A lawyer representing the family said that “he believed Cedar might have ended up at a barbecue organized by another young farmers’ group, the National FFA Organization, the next day, but he did not know for sure.”
The Marshall Project published an analysis of American Rescue Plan Act funding that went to law enforcement agencies and criminal courts. Basically, it’s more welfare for the police.
Love how the "authorities" are more interested in allowing murderers, Fentanyl suppliers, Corporate- owned child abusers, a criminally-liable government actively fomenting violence, and shop lifters go free while the American people are being intentionally murdered by vaccines, Fentanyl, and a failed society. And suffering an invasion actively promoted by their "leaders." There ought to be a law!