Like many Kossacks, I have posted about Michael Brown and Ferguson. Like Jon Stewart, I was left speechless by the Grand Jury decision about Eric Garner, briefly. I have since found my words, and I would like to share.
Nothing encapsulates America better than the phrase "Presumed innocent". I say this because I think of the preamble to the Constitution of the United States as a "how to". The first thing it says we need to do is "establish justice". When we are wronged we can seek redress. When we are victims of crimes, the perpetrators get punished.
We had rebelled against a Monarchy, and the king's word was law. Our founders recognized the trappings of power, and were suspicious of it. The Wrong like to say that Americans don't trust government. This is false, what we don't trust is power. As Jon Stewart might write, "America, meet me below the fold."
We mostly pay lip service to the presumption of innocence today. Sure, we all believe in it, but how often have you heard someone say, "They must have done something wrong, why were they arrested?" Personally, I look at the reactions to the spate of unarmed black people killed by police. Eric Garner was selling "Loosies" Michael Brown stole cigarillos.
It would be funny if it were not so tragic that people who claim to distrust government so much that they showed up with assault rifles to defend a man who owed us (he was using OUR land) $1 million, against government officials trying to collect, also think it is okay for government officials (the police are government officials) to kill a guy for selling loose cigarettes without paying the taxes.
And by the way he WASN'T selling "Loosies". Why do I say that? Because he is Presumed to be innocent until he is proven guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." That finding of guilt never happened. What's more, the presumption of innocence was always meant to go beyond the courtroom. The District Attorneys who try to convict people of crimes are supposed to give them that same benefit of the doubt. Instead, they often want to win so badly that they withhold exculpatory evidence.
Police often deal with the victims of crime. Being human, they respond to the suffering they see with emotion. This can result in them directing anger at the persons that they suspect of having inflicted pain on the victims they serve. Without the presumption of innocence, they might act on that anger directly or indirectly, pressuring witnesses into lying for example.
Some trolls will say that I am naive, that I may hamstring effective policing. I have 11 (eleven) months of data. New York had an issue with its "stop and frisk" policy. You may have heard about it. Police were stopping and frisking people they suspected of suspicious behavior, and it was declared unconstitutional. Um, not exactly.
What was declared unconstitutional was the policy that said being black was suspicious behavior. Stop and frisk activity is down over the past eleven months, but so is crime. So the first year of a fairer policy will still set a record for lower crime rates in big bad New York.
You can say what you want about Trayvon Martin having been suspended from school for smoking pot, and Michael Brown having pot in his system when he was killed, and Eric Garner selling "Loosies", but if you truly believe in "Presumed Innocent" they should be alive. If I become a victim of a crime as a result of this so be it, but these unarmed young men would be alive today. I'd make that trade.