“There’s just no accountability today,”
complains Sheriff Michael Lewis of Maryland’s Wicomico County. Sheriff
Lewis was not expressing concerns over the institutionalized impunity of
law enforcement officers, but rather disgust over public criticism of
police by “defiant” people who “hate law enforcement,” and the fact that
some school-age kids are allowed to watch TV and play video games late
on school nights.
“I think there’s a complete lack of accountability with this generation that’s coming up today,” Sheriff Lewis groused to Fox News host Leland Vittert in a recent interview. “You can go into a home at 2:30, 3:00 in the morning, on a weeknight and there are kids awake and watching TV, playing video games, eating snacks out of bags on a sofa, knowing they have to be in school in a few hours,” the sheriff elaborated, his face contorted in disgust.
(Video courtesy of Radley Balko.)
Bad habits of that kind on the part of teenagers may be deplorable, but the kind of police behavior to which Lewis alludes is typical of totalitarian states and much more troublesome than school-age kids wasting their time in front of game consoles.
Despite the fortunate fact that there have been fewer on-duty violent deaths of police officers so far this year than there had been at this time in 2014, Lewis retailed the idea that law enforcement officers face unprecedented deadly dangers on the job – and off-duty, as well. He informed Vittert that he had sent an e-mail to all employees of the Wicomico Sheriff’s Office instructing them to avoid wearing badges or other identifiers while off duty “to protect themselves, to protect their families.”
“I’ve never seen it like this, Leland,” Lewis intoned. “It’s a scary, scary time for law enforcement in this country.”
In addition to teenage delinquents who play videogames at scandalous hours of the early morning, Lewis added the “violent” rhetoric of police critics such as the Black Lives Matter movement to the list.
While most of the public reflexively supports the police, Lewis observed, there is “a certain segment of society that are defiant – they hate law enforcement.”
If law enforcement were a service industry, rather than an enterprise in unaccountable state coercion, the situation Lewis describes would be treated as an indictment of those who provide the service, and significant institutional changes would result. Like others in what we could call the “Only Blue Lives Really Matter” movement, however, Lewis treats expressions of “customer” dissatisfaction as evidence of criminal intent and a threat to that most important of all things, “officer safety.”
Like sheriffs Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County and David Clarke of Wisconsin’s Milwaukee County, Sheriff Lewis (who is also a sergeant in the Maryland State Police) has become a national media celebrity by exploiting every opportunity to defend police against criticism and denounce critics of police abuse for supposedly endangering the lives of officers. While there is no evidence of a coordinated “war” on American law enforcement officers, Lewis – who never misses an opportunity to promote that dangerously misleading view – has been waging war against property rights and individual liberties for decades as part of an “imperial mission” to suppress narcotics commerce – or rather, to profit from the pretense that it can be suppressed.
Read the rest Here
“I think there’s a complete lack of accountability with this generation that’s coming up today,” Sheriff Lewis groused to Fox News host Leland Vittert in a recent interview. “You can go into a home at 2:30, 3:00 in the morning, on a weeknight and there are kids awake and watching TV, playing video games, eating snacks out of bags on a sofa, knowing they have to be in school in a few hours,” the sheriff elaborated, his face contorted in disgust.
(Video courtesy of Radley Balko.)
Bad habits of that kind on the part of teenagers may be deplorable, but the kind of police behavior to which Lewis alludes is typical of totalitarian states and much more troublesome than school-age kids wasting their time in front of game consoles.
Despite the fortunate fact that there have been fewer on-duty violent deaths of police officers so far this year than there had been at this time in 2014, Lewis retailed the idea that law enforcement officers face unprecedented deadly dangers on the job – and off-duty, as well. He informed Vittert that he had sent an e-mail to all employees of the Wicomico Sheriff’s Office instructing them to avoid wearing badges or other identifiers while off duty “to protect themselves, to protect their families.”
“I’ve never seen it like this, Leland,” Lewis intoned. “It’s a scary, scary time for law enforcement in this country.”
In addition to teenage delinquents who play videogames at scandalous hours of the early morning, Lewis added the “violent” rhetoric of police critics such as the Black Lives Matter movement to the list.
While most of the public reflexively supports the police, Lewis observed, there is “a certain segment of society that are defiant – they hate law enforcement.”
If law enforcement were a service industry, rather than an enterprise in unaccountable state coercion, the situation Lewis describes would be treated as an indictment of those who provide the service, and significant institutional changes would result. Like others in what we could call the “Only Blue Lives Really Matter” movement, however, Lewis treats expressions of “customer” dissatisfaction as evidence of criminal intent and a threat to that most important of all things, “officer safety.”
Like sheriffs Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County and David Clarke of Wisconsin’s Milwaukee County, Sheriff Lewis (who is also a sergeant in the Maryland State Police) has become a national media celebrity by exploiting every opportunity to defend police against criticism and denounce critics of police abuse for supposedly endangering the lives of officers. While there is no evidence of a coordinated “war” on American law enforcement officers, Lewis – who never misses an opportunity to promote that dangerously misleading view – has been waging war against property rights and individual liberties for decades as part of an “imperial mission” to suppress narcotics commerce – or rather, to profit from the pretense that it can be suppressed.
Read the rest Here
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