This Week In Law Enforcement

In which we learn that you can't tell the cops from the cops any more.
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This has not been a good week for American law enforcement. Walter Scott was laid to rest in South Carolina, while it seems that the man who killed him, Officer Michael Slager, is belatedly having extenuating circumstances laid upon him for his defense, which now looks like an easier sell than it was a few weeks ago. Then there is the monumental idiocy of what went down in Tulsa.

Video of Eric Courtney Harris' final moments on April 2 -- following an undercover weapons sting and a foot chase -- shows Tulsa County Reserve Deputy Robert Bates announcing he is going to deploy his Taser but then shooting Harris in the back with a handgun. Bates immediately apologizes, saying, "I shot him. I'm sorry." Harris, who is bleeding, calls out. He's been shot and didn't do anything, he says. An officer yells at him, "You f**king ran! Shut the f**k up!" "Oh my God, I'm losing my breath," Harris cries as a deputy's knee pins his head to the asphalt.

Who in the name of Christamighty on a brontosaurus gives a 73-year-old honorary cop a firearm and sends him out on an undercover gun sting? Why haven't 50 people in this department been fired already, starting with this clown?

Sheriff Stanley Glanz this morning described Reserve Deputy Robert Charles "Bob" Bates as a longtime friend who made "an error" last week when he fatally shot an unarmed man trying to flee deputies during an undercover operation to retrieve stolen guns. Glanz also said he had no plans to change the deputy reserve program but that it will be looked as part of the Sheriff's Department routine review of operations.

One suggestion: give all the "reserve deputies" who are over 70-years-old a gold fking watch and send them to the fking dogtrack. Jesus.

According to the Sheriff's Office, Bates had intended to use a Taser on Eric Courtney Harris as Harris was being subdued during an undercover gun buy but instead pulled his gun and fired one shot. "He made an error," Glanz said. "How many errors are made in an operating room every week?"


An investigator retained by the Sheriff's Office found that Bates violated no policies.

I detect a larger problem here. How about you?

The case is now in the hands of the District Attorney's Office. Asked if he thought the shooting was justified, Glanz said, "That is a hard word for me to answer."

How about "incompetent" or "reckless"? Can you handle those?

Glanz's said he has been friends with Bates for about 50 years and that Bates has been his insurance agent. He dismissed the notion that their friendship had led to Bates' receiving special treatment, noting that many people have given their time and purchased equipment, including cars, for the Sheriff's Office."We have a lot of people giving themselves to the community," he said. Glanz responded to critics who have said Bates, 73, was too old to be a reserve deputy. The Sheriff's Office once had an 81-year-old deputy, Glanz said. "I am 72 years old, and I think I am still active," the sheriff said.

Mother of god. Somewhere there are politicians to whom this all makes sense.

Something has gone permanently squirrelly with law-enforcement in this country. There is the change in attitude by which police increasingly feel and behave like an occupying army in American cities. There is the preposterous increase in available armament. On a wider scale, there is the triumph at all levels of government of an attitude that we will not tax ourselves, ever, for anything, even our own safety. So we wind up with traffic cops who look on, ahem, certain citizens as resources to be pillaged, or we wind up with septuagenarian insurance salesmen empowered to shoot people in the street under color of law, because they were willing to buy guns and ammo privately for a public purpose. This is Kafka rewritten by Grover Norquist and Bozo The Clown. You get what you pay for, and we're not willing to pay for anything any more.

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