When there are major incidents like the Boston marathon bombing or the demonstrations in Ferguson we get treated to graphic scenes of mass police action employing the latest war toys that they have received from the feds. People rightly become concerned about the militarization of law enforcement. However, the trends are deeper and more pervasive than that. When incidents such as the killing of unarmed black men or mentally ill people hit the threshold of public attention the ensuing calls for police accountability consistently make something clear. The use of police violence is not a matter of an occasional rogue cop. It is a clearly and explicitly stated policy and procedure. The basic premise is when in doubt aim to kill.
In a recent NYT op-ed Erwin Chermerinsky, Dean of the UC Irwin school of law provides a useful a trail of the Supreme Court decisions that steadily strengthened the protections provided to police that shield them from public accountability.
How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops
In recent years, the court has made it very difficult, and often impossible, to hold police officers and the governments that employ them accountable for civil rights violations. This undermines the ability to deter illegal police behavior and leaves victims without compensation. When the police kill or injure innocent people, the victims rarely have recourse.
The most recent court ruling that favored the police was Plumhoff v. Rickard, decided on May 27, which found that even egregious police conduct is not “excessive force” in violation of the Constitution. Police officers in West Memphis, Ark., pulled over a white Honda Accord because the car had only one operating headlight. Rather than comply with an officer’s request to get out of the car, the driver made the unfortunate decision to speed away. The police chased the car for more than five minutes, reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour. Eventually, officers fired 15 shots into the car, killing both the driver and a passenger.
The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and ruled unanimously in favor of the police. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that the driver’s conduct posed a “grave public safety risk” and that the police were justified in shooting at the car to stop it. The court said it “stands to reason that, if police officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, the officers need not stop shooting until the threat has ended.”
This is deeply disturbing. The Supreme Court now has said that whenever there is a high-speed chase that could injure others — and that would seem to be true of virtually all high-speed chases — the police can shoot at the vehicle and keep shooting until the chase ends. Obvious alternatives could include shooting out the car’s tires, or even taking the license plate number and tracking the driver down later.
It is important to note here that this was a unanimous decision. It wasn't just the five conservatives on the court. He goes on to detail several other recent decisions that all clearly contribute to this trend. He ends with this statement.
Taken together, these rulings have a powerful effect. They mean that the officer who shot Michael Brown and the City of Ferguson will most likely never be held accountable in court. How many more deaths and how many more riots will it take before the Supreme Court changes course?
Regrettably the killing of Michael Brown was not really very unusual. I am forced to share his pessimism about the prospects of holding anybody legally accountable for it. There are multiple forces pushing our society in this direction. It is not a trend that is going to be reversed by intermittent protest.