I learned of this story through a Washington Post report written by staff writer Robert Barnes. The tale is based in Kentucky, much later in the report we are told this took place in Lexington. The first paragraph tells us that the police were following a man who had just sold drugs to an undercover informant. We are not told that the police knew this man, he is only identified as ‘a man’.
I’m going over this story trying to make some sense out of it and I am not having any luck without jumping to conclusion, much in the same way the story is being told. The story leaves me with unanswered questions. And that does not bode well for the reporter. There are too many holes and leaps of conclusion that no well-written story should have. This reason I am focusing on this aspect of this story ahead of the subject is because this type of sloppy reporting is becoming all too common in today’s main stream media. One can expect this from what these so-called professionals refer to as street reporters. But I have read many street reporters who do a much more thorough job than Robert Barnes.
Anyway, I will try to wade through this mess and along the way I will point out the inadequacies of this reporter’s writing style.
Still in the first paragraph, we are told that the police entered a breezeway and heard a door slam and that they now had two choices. So far I am lead to believe that the police don’t know which door slammed or if it was even slammed by the as yet to be identified man they were following.
The second paragraph informs us that behind door number one (leap of faith, because how do they know which door he was behind since they only ‘heard’ a door slam?) and behind door number two is another person named Hollis King along with two people smoking marijuana.
Paragraph three tells us that after smelling ‘the drug’ (are we still talking about marijuana or some other drug?) they banged loudly on King’s apartment door and identified themselves as police and after hearing what they thought was evidence being destroyed they kicked the door down. Several questions arise here, since they are pursuing the dealer and they ‘know’ he is behind door number one, why are they pounding on door number two? Are they abandoning the pursuit of the guy who they have hard evidence against? Plus, by yelling out that they are police didn’t the dealer just become alerted and most likely did get rid of evidence? This sounds all very rookie-ish to me.
In the fourth paragraph the reporter has abandoned any reference to the dealer the police were pursuing. Instead he states that King was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Kentucky Assistant Attorney General Joshua Farley backed the police decision to kick down the door. Of course he would. And this is part of the problem. He claims to believe the story from his officers that they ‘heard noises’ that led them to believe ‘evidence was being destroyed’. I have to laugh at this claim. What ‘noises’ did they hear, a toilet being flushed? A match being struck to burn the evidence? This is beyond the realm of ridiculous. I cannot for the life of me imagine what ‘evidence being destroyed’ in this situation would sound like. They chose to use this lame excuse because of the three reasons for entering without a warrant this is the only one that they had a half-assed chance of getting away with. There was not a life being endangered, they were not concerned with the suspect escaping because as we read in this stellar report these were not even the guys they were chasing.
This Assistant Attorney General Joshua Farley should be ashamed of himself for using such a flimsy basis for taking this case to trial in the first place. By doing this only shows me that he along with many other legal system lackeys are emboldened by what the police are allowed to get away with.
The point of this Washington Post report is that the U.S. Supreme Court heard this case on Jan 12, 2011 and is in the process of deciding whether or not police can abandon the Fourth Amendment and kick down a door because the police claim they smelled marijuana.
I am in agreement with justices Ginsberg, Kagan and Sotomayor on this that police would indeed roam the halls and sniff for ‘reasons’ to kick in a door. Justice Scalia said the police did nothing wrong and that the occupants could have told police they could not enter without a warrant. Where has this guy been living? He is clearly out of touch with what law enforcement has been getting away with.
Police departments all across this nation have a growing reputation for abusing the ‘probable cause’ tenet. Therefore, I see this as a good opportunity for the Supreme Court to finally define police powers in similar situations. However, I realize that given the current atmosphere of law and order in this country, chances are good that the police will be given a free ride on this issue.
I must say here that I am in complete agreement that the illegal drug issue needs to be addressed. Drug abuse in this country has cost Americans untold billions of dollars in lost productivity and tax revenue, years of freedom in the ridiculously unbalanced and unfair prosecution, and the waste of lives alone should make this issue a top priority.
I admit I am being hard on the police. They need to do things the right way. If, as Justice Scalia says, criminals are stupid, they will eventually be caught at their illegal activity. There have been many instances where police have busted down the wrong door. In some of those cases innocent law-abiding citizens have been terrorized and killed. Given this environment, of course people are going to panic when they hear that thunderous pounding on their door followed by “Open Up”, “Police.”
Listen, drugs need to be removed from our streets. Criminals need to be punished. I object to the citizenry becoming victims due to over-zealous police forces who would rather bust heads and let God sort it out.
Oh, and as far as this reporter goes, how about giving us some hard facts and stop leaving out information like what happened to the dealer the police were originally pursuing.
No comments:
Post a Comment