BLACK AND BLUE

 BLACK AND BLUE

One of my law enforcement buddies posted an article yesterday about the lawsuit filed by a Texas man against the City of Saraland. The facts of the case are interesting enough, but the responses from the other law enforcement officers were interesting on their own. 

The federal lawsuit that was filed against the City and two of its officers involved their handling of a routine traffic stop, the basis of which was "improper lane usage". The vehicle contained five persons, three adults, and two minors, the wife of the owner of the vehicle in the last months of her pregnancy. All US citizens.

So far, so good. The officer stopped the vehicle, did a check of the driver's license, and issued a traffic warning. But that was not the end of it. He engaged in what appears to be a profile stop. The officer frisked the driver, and proceeded to what the lawsuit seems to fairly characterize as a "prolonged and coercive roadside detention without lawful justification". 

A request to a consent to a search refused, the officer deployed a canine unit. The occupants resisted that also and were threatened; if they didn't get out of the vehicle, they would send the canine in there anyway. 

Their property - cell phones, tablets, and all of their personal effects - were confiscated. They were interrogated as to their connection to Mexico, even though the only connection they had was cultural. They were asked about travels to Mexico, sending money to Mexico, many suspicious questions and innuendos, all based on the basis of a routine traffic stop. 

No drugs, contraband or evidence of any criminal activity was found. The owner of the vehicle was a former Texas Trooper, he told them. He now owned a fairly prosperous welding business and was on his way to pick up a vehicle he had purchased. He provided documentary proof, showing them the receipts, literally; bank withdrawals, the currency in bank envelopes., and at some point the officers actually thought the explanations "checked out" and "made sense". 

Notwithstanding that, after being put through the ordeal of this search and this stop, they were taken to DHS headquarters, interrogated further, and had their money confiscated. The US Customs and Border Patrol Protection issued a formal notice of seizure. It went to the US Attorney's Office where the matter was dismissed but not before the expenditure of time and legal fees. 

We knew very little of that yesterday. And, yet, in rushing to defend their comrades, the brothers in blue  engaged - not in exploring the facts or explaining why this had happened -  but in the very sentiments that lead to racial profiling and what is, if even half of these allegations are true, at root cause here. "Why did he leave the Troopers?", one asked. A challenge as to the materiality of that question by another poster was met with a serious beatdown based on the authority of his "twenty years of interdiction work". A free-ranging flow of ad hominem, non sequiturs and kettle logic was used to excuse what was at that point merely prima facie accusations without a semblance of nuance. Questioning something, the details of which none of use knew much about (and that apparently NEVER happen) was seen as running counter to just good ole common sense policing, playing the law of averages, blah, blah, blah, and yes, just more "Democrat bullshit". 

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