This week, a Los Angeles grand jury indicted an LASD deputy for the sexual assaults of four girls between 7 and 13, according to the district attorney’s office. He was “like a father” to them, one man said. These are crimes I read about all-too-often – instances where law enforcement officers abuse their position of power and their ability to use violence with impunity in order to harass, rape, and assault others, often women and girls. They get away with it because people are afraid to come forward and when they do, they are often not believed and face a gigantic propaganda machine that seeks to persuade the public that these are not “crimes,” but in fact aberrations. Yet, this is an expected result of the militarization and complete impunity of law enforcement.
In writing about domestic violence and law enforcement officer, University of Maryland Law Professor Leigh Goodmark wrote:
The power and training provided to police officers by the state makes them significantly more dangerous as abusers… intimate partner abuse by police officers is a systemic, structural problem created and fueled by the ways in which police officers are socialized and instructed. The state has a serious stake in this conversation, not only because it trains and arms abusers, but because it depends upon these same abusers to enforce the very laws that they are violating in their own relationships.
ICYMI
This week I wrote about the FBI.
Correction: I was a bit sloppy in describing the Ruby Ridge incident. Randy Weaver was actually the subject of an ATF sting for the illegal firearms. The initial stakeout and standoff were conducted by the U.S. Marshals Service (the federal agency tasked with seeking “fugitives”), which resulted in a firefight that killed Sammy Weaver and a deputy U.S. Marshal. The FBI Hostage Rescue Team was called for the remainder of the standoff because the Weavers barricaded themselves in their home. An FBI sniper shot and killed Weaver’s wife. (I recommend Jess Walter’s book.)
I appeared on The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast to talk about constitutional sheriffs and voting investigations.
Josie Duffy Rice called out my substack on What a Day. She is also starting her own substack, which I have no doubt will be amazing and thoughtful.
Readings
Jane Mayer wrote about the far-right radicalization of state legislatures thanks to dark money and planned gerrymandering.
Loving County, Texas, is the least-populous county in the nation, yet also oddly fascinating. There’s an ongoing problem there with people claiming residency for the purposes of voting who are not residents (but maybe their cows are?). There, the sheriff barred a deputy from entering the sheriff’s building — only that deputy was also the part-time custodial staff. OOPS. (Also, why does Loving County need constables AND a sheriff’s office?) From a recent New York Times article: “For some in Loving County, the serial arrests provided a cautionary example of how law enforcement in a remote corner of rural America can be used to achieve political ends.”
Related to “political ends,” some candidates for local office have come forward to say Wayne Ivey bullies and bribes people to drop out of elections. More on Wayne Ivey here.
The Philadelphia sheriff’s office wants to sell off land that is being used for a community garden.
The Republican candidate for Buncombe County (North Carolina) sheriff has a son who was found guilty of assaulting a man at a traffic stop. But, he says, don’t judge him.