When Radley Balko mentioned the video of Collinsville Police Officer Michael Reichert conducting a manipulative baseless search of nerd Terrance Huff, it fit into a sort of funny, sadly mundane sort of paradigm. Another cop stopping a guy for nothing, playing the game, coming up empty other than to find his name smeared on the internet for reducing constitutional rights to a joke doing his job.
But the Collinsville Chief of Police, Scott Williams, was feeling a bit butthurt from the Radley’s HuffPo commentary, and did the one thing no top cop ought to do. He responded.
“There is no evidence of wrongdoing on this video,” Williams said. “This officer did not do anything incorrect or illegal. While some people may think it’s distasteful, it’s clearly not illegal.”
This is an important quote in our ongoing effort to better understand our brothers in blue. In a hypertechnical sense, Chief Williams is likely correct, that Reichert did not do anything illegal. He did do something unlawful. He stopped a nerd who had a right to go on his nerdy way without being stopped. He detained him needlessly, baselessly, because he could. He used his shield to override this nerd’s free will by instilling the implicit fear that failure to comply, to acquiesce, would be unpleasant. Reichert played the Constitution for his own benefit at the expense of Huff’s right to be left alone.
And Police Chief Williams can’t see “anything incorrect or illegal” in it.
Some will see the monster of police oppression in this statement. Then again, some see that monster everywhere. I subscribe to the notion that venal motives not be ascribed when mere stupidity will suffice. Williams doesn’t see a problem.
This goes to the root of the relationship between cops and non-cops. We (meaning non-cops) believe that our right to be left alone is paramount. They (meaning cops) believe that their authority to screw with us as part of their effort to stop crime, and part of their effort to just screw with us, is paramount. It’s just a matter of perspective.
Williams said that “in the interest of due diligence,” he turned the video over to the both the Madison County and the Illinois State’s Attorney Offices for opinions on whether the police officer did anything questionable. He said they did not find any misconduct.
“These cases are prosecuted on what we’re doing,” Williams said. “If we were doing anything illegal or inappropriate, (the state and county Attorney’s Office) wouldn’t prosecute these cases.”
It’s a nice little circle of a reason, that if the prosecutors will prosecute, then it can’t be wrong. Chief Williams would not have said this to a reporter for public dissemination, especially in response to Balko’s scathing post, if he didn’t sincerely belief it was this clear and simple. And Williams is right, provided you see the world through the duty, the authority, the power, of the shield.
It’s like using a completely different dictionary, where all the same words exist but are given entirely different meanings. Rights? They’re things you circumvent. Power? It’s the thing you seize immediately, before the other guy grabs it. Dignity? It’s what you feel when the pin a medal on your chest for making some mutt suck on taser darts.
To the extent a guy like Radley, or me, might suggest that Chief Williams is doing it wrong, we’re not going to get very far. You see, the Illinois State’s Attorney’s opinion weighs more heavily than ours, and Chief Williams is all in favor of due diligence. He sought approval. He got it. He’s totally on the up and up, as the prosecutor said so.
Chief Williams is probably a really good guy, and a well-intended fellow. He doesn’t mean to create misery or interfere with anyone’s constitutional rights. He just wants to do his job and keep us safe. He tries to make sure he’s not overstepping his bounds or doing anything incorrect. If Reichert was doing anything illegal, he would not hesitate to deal with it.
But as the Chief said, there is no evidence of wrongdoing. That’s how it looks from behind the wheel of a police cruiser.
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Of course cops also know that they would never be subject to this kind of oppressive and abusive action, so what the hell. No big deal, right?
And if somebody with the authority to make them squirm ever does come down on them, well, they’re just liberal whiners who don’t know how hard the job is, blah, blah, blah.
Long ago, in the Salem Witch-Burnings, they would submerge a suspected witch in a pool of water to test if she was, in fact, a witch. If she drowned, she was not a witch. Good news that her name was cleared, but what a price to pay.
Today, we have the Collinsville Police doing basically the same thing. I’m sure the Salem witch-drowners didn’t see anything wrong with their activities, either.
As the exclusionary rule continues to be scaled back per Hudson’s (right case) cost-benie analysis, this new paradigm will increase in presence and perceived importance. I don’t think we are too far from the point in US history where we start saying that section 1983 is the primary legal guaranty of 4a rights for the peeps.
Cops will only have themselves to blame when the unwashed finally figure out that they are an army of occupation, not a constabulary.
A couple years ago I was pulled over in Colorado while driving to Alabama from Las Vegas.
Like in this video, I was pulled over by a K-9 unit (the officer’s shirt said so). And, like in this video, the officer thought there was some suspicious nervousness.
That’s the end of the similarities. My cop asked me why I seemed nervous, a reasonable question as I was nervous. I said I’m not used to getting pulled over (I hadn’t been in over 5 years). I could see he immediately understood, who the hell likes getting a ticket, right?
He explained that I was speeding, and I was. I was going about 80 in a 70. He then said he wasn’t going to ticket me, because I wasn’t really speeding that much, but that I needed to be careful because further down the highway there were canyons, and speeding through there as opposed to a straight stretch of fly-over highway is dangerous.
Very nice officer. Pulled me over for a completely valid reason, didn’t hassle me at all, and actually seemed concerned about reducing road fatalities. Knowing what a decent person does in the same situation makes it clear just how big of a douchenozzle Commander Reichert is.
I’m glad you wrote this, because it’s all too easy to forget that sometimes we do something that makes us deserve to be stopped. Not every cops do is wrong. Not everything we do is right. It’s not that simple or clear cut.
I think it’s interesting the Chief doesn’t say that the DA would prosecute the police if they did anything illegal or inappropriate. He only says the cases they generate in such a way wouldn’t be prosecuted.
I doubt his assertion, given the paucity of disciplinary actions taken against prosecutors across the country when Brady violations or other misconduct is uncovered. It’s nice to live in a self-affirming circle…