Impunity

Less than a half hour ago San Fran­cis­co Police Depart­ment cruis­er #576 was parked in front of the fire hydrant at the cor­ner of 22^nd and Ten­nessee. While the hair on the back of my neck stood up at the thought that law enforce­ment offi­cers are basi­cal­ly exempt from the laws they are sworn to uphold, I calmed myself down by remind­ing myself that it was very pos­si­ble that the cruis­er was there respond­ing to some call, and that the offi­cers had parked the cruis­er there as part of their duty.

Half a block lat­er, there were the two uni­formed offi­cers sit­ting at a table and hav­ing a meal at Mabel’s Just For You Café, a pop­u­lar break­fast and lunch spot on 22^nd Street. The offi­cers were not tak­ing notes or ques­tion­ing wit­ness­es, they were hav­ing their lunch break. I shook my head and kept walking.

This both­ers me. Why should offi­cers of the law be above the law? Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m cer­tain that if I called the SF Depart­ment of Traf­fic and Trans­porta­tion that the police cruis­er would not be towed or tick­et­ed. If the offi­cers had parked there in the line of duty, I’m hap­py to see excep­tions made, but to flout the law for some scram­bled eggs is just throw­ing it in our faces that they are not sub­ject to the same restric­tions us civil­ians are, that they are in fact a supe­ri­or, priv­i­leged class.

I believe it’s a shame when­ev­er shod­dy police work per­mits crim­i­nals to go free, when search­es are made with­out war­rants or prob­a­ble cause and evi­dence of a crime is deemed inad­mis­si­ble in court. I’ve recent­ly heard argu­ments that evi­dence should be admis­si­ble regard­less of the legal­i­ty of the means by which it was obtained. I have to admit, some of the anec­do­tal cas­es cit­ed where crim­i­nals go free on the slight­est of tech­ni­cal­i­ties, such as William Jef­fer­son­’s bribery case where charges were dropped after the courts deter­mined that the wrong kind of war­rant was issued for the search. This is a sad mis­car­riage of justice.

But what oth­er recourse have we to pre­vent the more com­mon­place cas­es where offi­cers don’t even show due dili­gence to obtain a war­rant? If a cop busts down my door for no rea­son, there are no reper­cus­sions that fall back on him or her. The only ways I see to pre­vent mis­use of police pow­er are to either pun­ish police the same way a civil­ian would be pun­ished for sim­i­lar actions or else take away the prof­it motive for dis­re­gard­ing the law. If an offi­cer knows that ille­gal­ly obtained evi­dence will be admis­si­ble and that noth­ing will hap­pen if they go about col­lect­ing evi­dence ille­gal­ly, why would they even think twice about it?

The oth­er option is very dif­fi­cult to enforce. The grey areas of Prob­a­ble Cause make for very tricky judg­ment calls, and I rec­og­nize that a peace offi­cer should not be pun­ished for a mar­gin­al judg­ment call in the line of duty. But con­sid­er this: if each police offi­cer who con­duct­ed a search or seizure that was deemed on lat­er inves­ti­ga­tion to have been war­rant­less and with­out prob­a­ble cause were charged with break­ing and enter­ing, bur­glary, false impris­on­ment, et cetera, how often do you think we’d see tru­ly ille­gal searches?

The truth is that we have ille­gal search­es and seizures pri­mar­i­ly because our peace offi­cers have been grant­ed spe­cial immu­ni­ty, both offi­cial­ly and unof­fi­cial­ly. Police are at the very least hes­i­tant to arrest their own. I’ve per­son­al­ly been in a car dri­ven by a high­ly intox­i­cat­ed offi­cer of the law, and upon being stopped for dri­ving errat­i­cal­ly, this offi­cer pro­duced his dri­vers’ license, which was con­ve­nient­ly kept with his badge. What should have been a DUI charge turned into a friend­ly admo­ni­tion to “dri­ve more care­ful­ly.” I’ve been in the car to see this hap­pen not just once, but twice. The offi­cer in ques­tion was our des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver on our drunk­en binges for exact­ly this reason.

If a clear­ly drunk dri­ver will get sent back on the roads by virtue of being a cop, why should one offi­cer fear any reper­cus­sion for break­ing in to a sus­pec­t’s house on no more than a hunch?

With­out changes to the legal sys­tem to make the crim­i­nals who dis­grace the uni­forms of our police depart­ments account­able for their crimes, I see no alter­na­tive but to keep removed the prof­it motive asso­ci­at­ed with ille­gal means of gath­er­ing evidence.