Rights & Paramilitary Raids

November 26, 2006

I’m not a fan of the paramilitary-style police raids that are increasingly being used against non-violent offenders and their mistaken neighbors. It creates hostility, panic, fear, and irrationality in a situation that could otherwise be diffused rather quietly. These tactics present ripe opportunities for criminals to mimic police tactics and terrorize law-abiding citizens. But mostly, I think that using violence to suppress non-violence is morally indefensible.

I’ve been somewhat-following the Kathryn Johnson incident via Radley Balko’s blog. Increasingly, I’m becoming less and less tolerant of such situations - I’m tired of reading about them. I’m tired of suffering the same outrage, tired of thinking the same thoughts, and tired of seeing policies and procedures seemingly etched in stone fail to change, and I’m tired of seeing the utter lack of accountability. But the show must go on. Balko notes that defenders of such police tactics will usually fall back to a position like, “if the warrant was legal, the police had the right to be at the home. And if the police had the right to be at the home, Johnston — or anyone else in a similar position — has no right to defend their home from them.”

I think this is probably a fairly accurate representation of that position. But I think it’s terribly inconsistent, and dangerous position to hold. Look: Even if it were OK to say that the police had the “right” to be in Ms. Johnson’s home, we’d still have a very, very big problem.

So let’s assume for a moment that through some magical moral wormhole, the police officers have acquired the “right” to be in Ms. Johnson’s home. Ms Johnson believes that her rights (i.e., to her property) remain inviolate. Alas, this is not the case. The treatment of this, and other similar situations suggests that in such instances, the homeowner or tenant no longer has rights to his property whatsoever, and instead, the police have total rights over him and his property. This presents its own problems, because, from the principle of equality of rights, we would never reasonably presume that people can either lose or gain rights. But this conundrum aside, in either event, no constructive notice has been served to Ms Johnson.

We have here a situation where rights are in conflict. The homeowners have seemingly “lost” their rights, but they have no reason to think this and have not been made aware of this very important fact; and we have law-enforcement agents who have usurped these very same rights, acting with all the impunity of ownership of these rights. In short we have a significant disparity in both power, and in rights - where each party involved believes itself to be in the superior position. It is no wonder that these situations end in catastrophe. The unresolved question that is begging to be answered is this:

How can any reasonable person, anywhere, maintain the position that Ms. Johnson was aware of the transference or severance of her right to her property?

When state agents engage in aggressive tactics that produce stimuli such as fear, panic, and confusion, we cannot hold the respondents responsible for their reactions. They are reacting as they ought to, and as any reasonable person should expect them to act. Their moral position remains untarnished, despite the fact that they end up imprisoned on death row like Cory Maye, or dead like Kathryn Johnson. The agents of the state, on the other hand, retain their legal position. I’ll let you figure out for yourselves what I think of their moral position.

There has got to be a better way.


Posted in: Potpourri

Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. KipEsquire November 27, 2006 9:52 am

    My concern is that people often confuse “the police” with “the government.”

    If you’re the beat cop, or the undercover cop, or even the paramilitary SWAT member, then you didn’t pass the drug laws, you didn’t target the address, you didn’t sign the warrant. You’re just doing your job. And then someone starts shooting at you. So you shoot back. To which I say: damn right and good job!

    We’re getting a little too close to the modern-day equivalent of shouting “Baby Killers!” to Vietnam vets (i.e., people who are simply not the problem, but only a symbol of the true problem).

    Get angry at the politicians; leave the police alone.

  2. doinkicarus November 27, 2006 11:28 am

    The problem is that, especially the paramilitary SWAT teams, are intentionally putting themselves in positions where normal people are pretty much forced into responding to what appears to be criminal force. The absence of any objectively reasonable means for identification all but assures these outcomes will continue to occur.

    With regards to the “just doing their jobs” argument, that defense didn’t work in Nüremburg, and we should be loathe to tolerate it in our own backyard.

    I’ll have a more well-thought out response later.

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