Meet Officer Michael Reichert: Professional Liar, Pride of the Collinsville PD

A liar at work: Officer Michael Reichert (back to camera) harasses Terrance Huff.

“Cops lie. Most of them lie a couple of times per shift, atleast.”

This assessment was offered not by an embittered critic ofthe police, but by Norm Stamper, former Chief of the Seattle Police Department,in his 2005 memoir Breaking Rank(page 129, to be precise). Stamper supports the use of tactical dishonesty indealing with certain kinds of violent suspects, but he has no tolerance for thecasual mendacity that is ubiquitous in the profession of law enforcement. 

 Police consultant and former prosecutor Val Van Brocklinoffers a similarly blunt perspective. “Police lie. It’s part of theirjob,” she wrote Val Van Brocklin in an essay entitled “Training Cops to Lie,”which was published in the November16, 2009 edition of the online journal Officer.com. 

 Habitual lying cost Officer Michael Reichert of theCollinsville, Illinois Police Department his job nearly a decade ago. With the helpof the police union, he was able to get it back -- at which point he resumedhis career of officially sanctioned perjury. In January 2011,Reichert, who is now assigned to K-9 patrol, was one of four Collinsvilleofficers given the “Chief’s Award of Merit” for performance “exceptional innature or above and beyond normal performance.” 

 In April, Reichertwas singled out again for his exceptional work by being named “Officer of theMonth.” The department lauded Reichert for reflecting “the proactive andinnovative philosophy of law enforcement prescribed to [sic] by theCollinsville Police Department. He has demonstrated this by his aggressiveapproach to drug trafficking in the area.”

“Officer Reichert had 166 total incidents with 6 arrests and7 citations in 13 working days,” continued the department’s report. “Inaddition to this he had 3 self initiated significant incidents that is veryworthy of praise [sic.]”

Reichert (left) receiving "Award of Merit."

  To someone who doesn’t belong to the coercive caste, a totalof 6 arrests out of 166 “total incidents” isn’t an impressive ratio. Theconcept of a “self-initiated significant incident” seems downright ominous.This is the portrait of a government-licensed bully bent on manufacturingcases, rather than a peace officer devoted to protection of persons andproperty. A brief examination of Reichert’s past supplies that portrait withadditional detail.

In 2006, Reichert was fired by the Collinsville PD “after afederal judge ruled he lied during a drug trial,” reportedthe April 19, 2009 edition of StLtoday.com. “They also cited a convictionon federal charges that he sold knockoff designer sunglasses." Irrespective of the merits of the federal case, Reichart was consciouslydefrauding consumers. 

 With the help of his union, Reichert appealed that ruling,and was he was reinstated in March 2009. However, about a month later theCollinsville Police and Fire Board suspended him without pay after “federalprosecutors … raised new concerns against Reichert again questioning histrustworthiness.” 

Despite his track record as a proven perjurer and conartist, Reichert was re-hired by the Collinsville PD. He was promptly assignedto counter-narcotics duty once again – and he immediately resumed the sametactics that had resulted in his well-deserved but tragically temporaryunemployment.

 Officer Reichert’s routine is described at length in aNovember 2005 ruling by U.S. District Judge Michael J. Reagan in the case U.S. v. Zambrana.The defendant was one of two suspects arrested on narcotics charges by Reichertduring a traffic stop in 2002. Zambrana filed a motion to suppress the resultsof a canine-assisted narcotics search, insisting that Reichert didn’t haveprobable cause to conduct the search.

Judge Reagan keyed on “Reichert’s lack of credibility as awitness,” describing him as a “polished performer” – a term not intended as acompliment.

 “One reason this Court rejected Reichert’s testimony as notcredible was because it was so rehearsed, coached and robotic as to be rote,”observed Judge Reagan. “It was a generic, almost default performance notdependent upon the facts of this case, but suitable for any case in whichReichert might testify to having found `reasonable suspicion. When questioningrequired him to temporarily stray from this rehearsed script, away from thesecurity of his default testimony, he was caught off-guard.”

When required to deal with “objective verifiable facts” –events captured in audio or video recordings, for instance – Reichert wasequivocal and self-contradictory. He was clear and emphatic, however, regardingmatters that “were not objectively verifiable” – such as his “conclusions fromreading body language `thrown off’ involuntarily from people `trafficking innarcotics.’” Judge Reagan astringently referred to this as Reichert’s conceitthat he could behave as a “human polygraph” – an approach that “is whollysubjective and fraught with potential for guess, speculation, conjecture, andeven deceit.”

“Reichert made clear that he understands what a Judge mightfind persuasive in making a reasonable suspicion determination,” Reagancontinued, noting that “he teaches this principle in his classes.” That’sright: Reichert is not only a professional liar, he also tutors other policeofficers in his methods of mendacity. 

At this point, it’s useful to remember Ms. Van Brocklin’sobservation: “Cops lie. It’s part of their job.”

 “By simply adding up `suspicious’ factors while ignoringnon-suspicious or mitigating factors [in the Zambrana traffic stop], Reichertmisused the `totality of circumstances’ principle as a sword to unjustly pierceZambrana’s cloak of Fourth Amendment protection,” concluded Judge Reagan.

Reichert claimed that Zambrana came to his attention when henoticed the driver’s rental car – with out-of-state plates – “crossing thewhite divider line.” However, he also used the expression “hit” to describethis entirely trivial infraction. He claimed to have become suspicious whenZambrana “continued down the highway in a completely normal manner,” notbothering even to make eye contact with Reichert after the officer pulledalongside him in a police cruiser. This prompted him to pull Zambrana over.

 Once the pretext stop was made, Reichert claimed thatZambrana and his passenger appeared “nervous” – which is an entirelyunderstandable reaction to the presence of an armed stranger who considershimself entitled to kill you at his discretion. He then barraged them with whatJudge Reagan called a series of “rolling no” questions. This is a tacticdesigned to elicit permission to search the vehicle. After inquiring aboutdrugs, weapons, or cash, and getting negative responses, the officer will posesome variation of this question:  “Hey,this will only take a minute – do you mind if I just take a look before lettingyou go?” 

 Regardless of Reichert’s perception “that Zambrana’s repliesand lack of eye contact during this questioning were `suspicious,’ Reichert’ssubsequent actions indicate that he knew that he still had no `reasonablesuspicion’ to search Zambrana’s car,” notes Judge Reagan. “At that point,rather than simply informing Zambrana that he would be searching his car,Reichert requested Zambrana’s permission to conduct a search. Inexplicably(yet, not surprising to this Court, Reichert viewed Zambrana’s denial as `suspicious’and advised Zambrana that he was detaining his car for a canine search.” 

Narcotics were found, and both Zambrana and his passenger, aman named Babar Shah, were maneuvered into a plea bargain. Despite Reichert’sobvious and documented dishonesty, those convictions stuck.

 Last December, Reichertfollowed exactly the same modus operandi in conducting a pretext stop – and illegalsearch – of a vehicle driven by Terrence Huff and John Seaton of Hamilton, Ohio.Huff and Seton had traveled to the St. Louis Science Center to attend a StarTrek exhibit. Their return trip, unfortunately, included a stretch along I-70that was polluted by Officer Reichert, who was loitering in the median attaxpayer expense awaiting his next victim. The sight of two men in an SUV without-of-state plates proved irresistible, so Reichert pulled out behind them andpaced them for a few miles before pulling them over. 

Once the pretext stop was made, Reichert – following exactlythe same script described by Judge Reagan – claimed to have noticed anotherwise undetectable traffic infraction. He obtained Huff’s driver’s licenseand asked the passenger for ID. When he ran Huff’s license, he found a recordof a previous arrest (without conviction). 

“That mother****r,” sneered Reichert as he reviewed theinformation on his computer terminal. After calling for backup and resuming hispretense of professionalism, Reichert told Huff that he would let him off witha “warning” – and then began the “rolling no” routine. 

“This highway, we have a major problem with people runningguns and drugs and illegal stuff up and down the highway,” Reichert told Huff. “Youguys don’t have anything like that in your car, do you?

“No,” replied Huff, adding, “I could show you the photos wetook at the Star Trek convention. We’re not drug runners. It’s my birthday.”

“There wouldn’t be any marijuana in there right now?”Reichert persisted.

“No,” Huff responded.

“No cocaine in there?”

“No.”

“Any heroin?”

“No.”

“Any guns in there?”

“No.”

“How about any large amounts of U.S. currency?” Reichertprobed, thereby revealing the true purpose of the stop: He was trawling forassets subject to confiscation in the name of “asset forfeiture.” If Huff orhis friend had been carrying cash, Reichert – assisted by the second officerwho had materialized during the questioning – would have stolen it, and mostlikely the car, as well.

When Huff pointed out that all he was carrying was a creditcard, Reichert moved to close the deal:

 

“Would you have any objection to us searching the car realquick to make sure that there’s nothing illegal inside the car?”

Reichert had neither probable cause nor “reasonablesuspicion” to conduct a search. If Huff and objected, however, Reichert wouldhave arrested him – and then stolen his car. 

When Huff briefly hesitated,Reichert deployed yet another lie:

“Now, let me tell you something, OK? I’m not overlyconcerned about personal amounts or stuff like that. If you have a little bit …I’m not worried about that, OK?” 

Remember that line; we’ll revisit it shortly.

“There are no drugs in the car, and I’d just like to go onmy way, if I could,” Huff said in the forlorn hope that he would be set free.

“Well, I don’t have a problem with that,” Reichert lied onceagain. “I’m just a little 

apprehensive about how your buddy’s acting, he’s alittle bit nervous.”

“I’ve got a canine in the car,” Reichert continued. “What I’mgoing to do is detain the car long enough to run the dog around it.” He madethat announcement in a tone intended to convey the impression that this was amere formality – if not an actual favor he was doing on Huff’s behalf.

“That’s fine,” Huff – an unarmed man confronting two armedand thoroughly amoral strangers – conceded. 

“If the dog alerts, I will search your car,” Reichertadmitted, now that Huff had been manipulated into consenting. “And anything illegalI find I will charge you with.”

“Anything” would include the “personal amounts of marijuanaor cocaine” to which Reichert had referred so dismissively just seconds earlier.

When Huff pointed out that Reichert had lied about thereason for the traffic stop – a point he did not contest - -the uniformed liarabandoned the façade of professionalism: 

“I’m asking for your consent to search the car,” he toldHuff. “If your answer is `no,’ I’m going to detain the car long enough to runthe dog around it. I can get you a ride” – an invitation that, in context, hasto be considered an ill-disguised threat to arrest Huff and his friend (videthe foregoing business about “personal amounts”).

“If I’m free to go, can I go?” Huff asked.

“Not in the car,” Reichert curtly replied.

In other words: Huff was under arrest. He was entirely atthe mercy of a cynical, impenitent liar armed with a gun and clothed inimpunity.

Reichert retrieved his dog, and – with the practiced guile ofa veteran con artist – went through his charade, tapping and prompting theanimal to “alert” as if the vehicle were containing contraband. Once at thefront of Huff’s car – which concealed his actions from the dashcam – Reichert claimedthat the dog had “indicated” that there was something in the vehicle. 

He informed Huff that the dog – which “is trained to smellmarijuana, cocaine, heroin, and meth” – had “started scratching” at the frontof the car. “I am going to search your car,” he continued. That search wasutterly futile. Reichert, who appears to be a mucosal personality composed of unctuous malicet, emitted one last lie to cover up his criminal misconduct.

 “Inside your car, under your seat and under the back seat, there’sshake – marijuana shake,” lied Collinsville, Illinois’s April 2011 Officer ofthe Month. “A little bit all over the car. That’s probably what the dog’salerting to.”

Of course, there was nothing of the sort to be found – in fact,Huff’s vehicle didn’t even have a back seat. 

Despite the devoted obstruction of the Collinsville PD, Huff-- who owns a small, independent film production company called T-MinusEntertainment-- obtained the dashcam video of the episode. He used it toproduce "Breakfast in Collinsville," a brief and thoroughly infuriating documentary of Reichert’s attemptedcarjacking and extortion:

“I am usually rather suspicious of authority, and this wassomething of a reality check,” Huff told ProLibertate in a telephone interview. “It’s pretty clear that what Reichertis doing is generating revenue for his department. This kind of thing ishappening all over the place – federal, state, county, or city, they’re allusing asset forfeiture to collect revenue.”

Although he has been contacted by lawyers and civilliberties activists who want to help him mount legal action against Reichertand his department, Huff simply wants to use the video to “expose this abuseand get people to look at what’s happening in this country.”  

 Huff is too busy doing work for paying clients to invest thetime, money, and frustration that a legal battle with Reichert and the policeunion would require. Unless the officer’s superiors can be shamed into firinghim permanently – an unlikely outcome, given previous performance – Officer Michael“Third” Reichert will continue to prey on the innocent and perjure himself, andteach the relevant skills to other cops. After all, as his awards andcommendations attest, Reichert is the pride of the Collinsville PD. 

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The Death-Dealing "Divinity" in the White House

“I could be well moved, if I were as you
But I am constant as the Northern Star,
Of whose true fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks;
They are all fire, and every one doth shine.
But there's one in all doth hold his place.
So in the world: 'tis furnished well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive.
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds onto his rank,
Unshaked of motion; and that I am he....”

 

Shakespeare placed those wordsin the mouth of Julius Caesar as the dictator arrogantly dismissed a plea topardon Publius Cimber, who had been exiled from Rome. The merits of thatrequest mattered not at all; the only issue, where Caesar was concerned, washis primacy and the need to display resolution in all things, to “show it, evenin this: That I was constant Cimber should be banished, and constant do remainto keep him so.”

Caesar, in hisown view, wasn't a servant of Rome; he was Rome. He wasn't subordinateto the law; the law was an emanation of his sovereign will. He wasself-enraptured, self-fixated, megalomaniacal – in a word, presidential.

Barack Obama rarely indulges in public displays of dictatorialarrogance. He leaves it to underlings like Eric Holder, Leon Panetta, FBI DirectorRobert Mueller, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In testimony beforeseparate congressional committees on the same day (March 7), Panetta andMueller made clear the president’s view that his power to kill people is notsubject to congressional checks or legal restraints of any kind. 

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretaryof Defense Leon Panetta pointedly refused to recognize that Congress, not thepresident, has the constitutional authority to commit the United Statesmilitary to war overseas. Panetta provoked outrage among conservatives byclaiming that the UN Security Council or NATO could authorize militaryintervention abroad. However, less attention was paid to the fact thatPanetta’s formulation cut Congress out of this matter entirely – a logical andpredictable extension of the Bush administration’s claim that the president, inhis role as Grand and Glorious Decider, has plenary authority to wage warwherever he chooses, against whatever target he selects. 

On the same day, FBI Director Robert Mueller was asked aboutHolder’s claim – made before an audience of law students at NorthwesternUniversity a few days earlier -- that the president can order the execution ofAmerican citizens without trial or due process of any kind. Mueller wasspecifically asked if that applies to Americans living at home, as well asabroad. Heartlessly ducked the question by claiming he would “have to go back” andcheck if that was addressed in administration policy. 

The president has not been granted the authority to orderthe assassination of anyone, of course. Doing so is (in descending order of seriousness)an act of criminal homicide and an impeachable offense. Or at least it would beconsidered as much by anybody other than those who subscribe to the perverseidea that the president is a figure who transcends the law, who “unassailableholds onto his rank,” irrespective of the moral nature of his actions.

This was the essence of Eric Holder’s detestable claim that apresidential kill order, made in secret on the recommendation of an anonymous, unaccountable panel of underlings, satisfies the requirement of “due process.” That vilenotion was reiterated by SenateMajority Leader Reid in a March 11 CNN interview.

Correspondent Candy Crowley, after reviewing Holder’sspurious distinction between “due process” and “judicial process,” asked Reid: “Doyou understand what that means?”

“No I don’t – but I do know this – the American citizens whowere killed overseas were terrorists, and if anybody in the world deserved tobe killed, those three did,” Reid said, his eyes bright with the murderous fanaticismthat burns away all critical thought. After all, if Reid retained the capacityfor skepticism he would wonder if 16-year-old U.S. citizen Abdulraham Al-Awlakireally “deserved” to be murdered while enjoying a barbecue at the home of afriend.

Evangelist for the Leader Principle: Harry Reid.

 Crowley, to her credit, persisted:

“Are you slightly uncomfortable with the idea that the UnitedStates President – whoever it may be – can decide that this or that U.S.citizen living abroad is a threat to U.S. security, and kill them?”

“Well, I don’t know what the Attorney General meant by theterm – I’d have to study it,” Reid said in a moment of equivocation before thecult conditioning re-asserted itself. “But I think the process is in place, Ithink it is one … we can live with….”

“Do you think the president should be able to make thatdecision … without going to court, without going to you all, without anything?”Crowley asked in one last attempt extract a clear answer from Reid.

“There is a war going on,” Reid recited, his face drawninto a sanctimonious smirk. “There is no question about that. He is theCommander-in-Chief, and there have been guidelines set. If he follows those, Ithink he should be able to do it."

At least some of Obama’s Republican critics are genuinelyhorrified by these assertions of unrestricted presidential power; some haveeven called for Obama’s impeachment, which would be an entirely appropriatecourse of action. 

It should be acknowledged, however, that with the honorableexception of Ron Paul (and perhaps Rep. Walter Jones), no congressionalRepublican who served during George W. Bush’s administration has standing tocriticize Obama’s dictatorial abuses of power. The same is true of theGOP-aligned conservative punditocracy, particularly its talk radio auxiliary. Theneo-totalitarian tendencies that took root during the reign of Bush the Dumberwere lavishly fertilized by the diaper filling emitted relentlessly by thelikes of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Mark Levin and the glossyherd-poisoners at Fox “News.” They cultivated the seeds from which blossomedObama’s nettlesome regime.

Bless me, Dear Leader: A True Believer prays to Obama.

 Harry Reid’s nauseating praisefor presidential despotism is the same paean to Leader-worship sung by Bush’schorus pitched in a slightly different key. In fact, some of Bush’s morepassionate adherents considered him to be an adjunct member of the Trinity – a delusionhe occasionally seemed to share.

During a campaignstop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania prior to the 2004 election, Bush told theaudience: ''I trust God speaks through me.” Some of Bush’s acolytes regardedthat self-description to be too modest.

 "I've votedRepublican from the very first time I could vote,'' Gary Walby, a retiredjeweler from Destin, Florida, during a campaign appearance. ''And I also wantto say this is the very first time that I have felt that God was in the WhiteHouse.” A New York Times Magazineaccount of that exchange records: “Bush simply said 'thank you' as a wave ofraucous applause rose from the assembled.” 

 Every U.S.President since the abhorrent Woodrow Wilson has used the media to create a senseof “institutionalized awe.” One illustration of the Bush administration’seffort to propagate a global Leader cult was offered by an English-language textbookused by 16-year-old Pakistani students, which contained an anonymous poementitled “The Leader.”The poem's rhyming couplets, which extolled a transcendent figure whopersonifies every virtue, formed an acrostic for “President George W. Bush”:

Patient and steady with all hemust bear,
Ready to meet every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.
Isn't afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn't conform to the usual mould,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won't do,
Never backs down when he sees what is true,
Tells it all straight, and means it all too.
Going forward and knowing he's right,
Even when doubted for why he would fight,
Over and over he makes his case clear,
Reaching to touch the ones who won't hear.
Growing in strength he won't be unnerved,
Ever assuring he'll stand by his word.
Wanting the world to join his firm stand,
Bracing for war, but praying for peace,
Using his power so evil will cease,
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must.

 The instrument has yet to be invented that canmeasure the infinitesimal odds that this poem reflects the spontaneousadmiration of a private author, either American or Pakistani. Given the Bushregime's documented efforts, working through the Rendon Group, the Lincoln Group, and similar propaganda mills, to seed “positive” stories in both the domestic and international media,it's a near-certainty that this hymn to Bush the Magnificent was extruded by anemployee of, or contractor for, his regime. 

There is no ambiguity about theorigins and intentions of “The Road We’ve Traveled,” an Obama administrationcampaign film produced by Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim and narratedby Tom Hanks.

Guggenheim is the Leni Reifenstahl of the Obamaadministration – a talented artist entirely devoted to the cult of the DearLeader. His17-minute  pseudo-documentary  promises to be a work of unalloyedLeader-worship in which Obama is wreathed in sanctity and hisevery deed is depicted in a heroic light. The clinching evidence of Obama's divinity, as portrayed in his work of cinematic worship, was the supposed courage he displayed in ordering the summary execution of Osama bin Laden, which was a precursor to the assassination of three U.S. citizens.

When CNN host Piers Morgan asked the filmmaker, “Whatare the negatives in your movie about Barack Obama?” Guggenheim replied: “Thenegative for me was that there were too many accomplishments.” The only other“negatives” he could perceive resulted from what he called the “toxicenvironment” created by those who dare oppose the Dear Leader’s infallible willand transcendently noble purposes. 

The Versailles court of Louis XIV, France’s self-described“Sun King,” included hundreds of sycophants and lickspittles who shamelesslysought his favor. In his book The GreatUpheaval, historian Jay Winik has described how some of them would literally fight each other forthe privilege of "presenting the chair for his daily `natural functions'.”

Guggenheim is the sort of personwho would fight for the privilege of hauling the king’s intestinal residue,which – he would insist – emits the enchanting aroma of fresh-cut flowers.

Louis XIV’s famous self-description was “L’etat, c’est moi” (“I am the state”). His final pre-Revolutionsuccessor, Louis XVI, offered a similar summation of his view of the law: “C’est legal parce que je le veux” (“It’slegal because I will it”). Royal absolutism of this kind, after being refinedin the crucible of revolution, was eventually remolded into the basic tenets oftotalitarianism – a system, Lenin said, that rested on “Power without limit,resting directly on force, restrained by no laws, absolutely unrestricted byrules.”

Lenin would recognize in  value of Holder’s sophisticaldistinction between “due process” and “judicial process” an effort to abolish any remaining legal limits on the lethal power of the State, as incarnated in the Dear Leader. He would admire theaudacity displayed by the Obama administration (as well as its predecessor) inasserting the unlimited power of the executive to kill, torture, and imprisonpeople at whim. He would covet the instruments of mass annihilation wielded bythe executive branch, and its equally destructive apparatus of mass indoctrination.And he might even spare a moment of incredulous pity for a population that isruled by such a system while clinging to the illusion of freedom.

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Dum spiro, pugno! 

The Resistance Rises: Reinstating the "Castle Doctrine"

As the lower house of theIndiana State Legislature approved Senate Bill 1 on March 1, RepresentativeLinda Lawson lamented that if it were passed the measure would signal thatit’s “open season on law enforcement.”

 “You have men and women in yourcommunity who are willing to die for you, willing to die for your family,” insistedLawson, who – as a former police officer herself –spoke onbehalf of 15,000 members of the police union. The only suitable way to displayproper gratitude to the heroic paladins of public order, according to Lawson, is to protect their purported authority to invade your home and killyou with impunity – a privilege that would be undermined by SB 1. 
 
The text of SB 1 states that itslegislative purpose “is to protect citizens from unlawful entry into theirhomes by law enforcement officers or persons pretending to be law enforcementofficers. Both citizens and law enforcement officers benefit from clear guidanceabout the parameters of lawful home entry, which will reduce the potential forviolence and respect the privacy and property of citizens.” 
 
To that end, the bill recognizesthat an individual “may use force … to prevent or terminate a law enforcementofficer’s unlawful entry.” 

Tool of the Police Union: Rep. Lawson (right foreground).

 Although Lawson’s hunting metaphor wasprobably used because it was a convenient cliché, it contains a deeper significancethat should not be ignored: Like the rest of the State’s exalted brotherhood ofcoercion, she assumes that the privacy of the individual’s home falls withinthe police officer’s natural habitat. 


SB1 is not an innovation; itsimply restores an explicit understanding of Indiana’s “castle doctrine,” whichwas subverted last year in the Indiana State Supreme Court’s Barnes v.State ruling. As a wireservice report observed at the time, that ruling effectively nullified the coreprotections contained in the Fourth Amendment and the equivalent provision inthe Indiana constitution, as well as protections and immunities recognized by "commonlaw dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215.” The 3–2 decision last May12 held that Indiana residents have no right to obstruct unlawful policeincursions into their homes.

As summarized by a legislativereport last November, the incident that gave rise to the Barnes ruling occurredfour years earlier, when police were summoned to the home of Richard Barnes andhis wife by a 911 call reporting a domestic disturbance. 

Barnes was in the parkinglot arguing with his girlfriend when the police arrived. She had already throwna duffel bag of his belongings outside the apartment, and told him to “take therest of his stuff.” As Barnes re-entered the apartment to do so, the policeattempted to follow him inside. Barnes quite properly told the police to stayout, and enforced that lawful order by shoving a police officer who disobeyed. 

 Barnes was charged with Batteryon a Police Officer, Resisting Law Enforcement, Disorderly Conduct, andInterfering with the Reporting of a Crime. The judge rejected a proposed juryinstruction that Barnes had the right to resist unlawful police entry, and hewas convicted on the second and third charges. The Court of Appeals ruled thatthe trial court committed a reversible error by rejecting that juryinstruction. The state, frantic appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheldBarnes’s conviction.

 “We believe … a right to resistan unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and isincompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” wrote Justice StevenDavid. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the levelof violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved withoutpreventing the arrest.”

 Although the "risks"to a police officer in such an encounter are vanishingly small, we shouldn’tforget that at all times, and in all places, "officer safety" is thecontrolling priority. "It's not surprising that [the court] would saythere's no right to beat the hell out of the officer,” commented Professor IvanBodensteiner of Valparaiso University School of Law.

When a cop invades a homewithout legal authority, he is acting as a criminal, rather than a peaceofficer. SB 1 recognizes that principle by focusing on the act of illegalentry, rather than the identity of the aggressor. 

The measure allows forforcible entry only when the officer has a valid warrant or legitimate probable cause; is in pursuit of a criminal suspect; or is acting with theconsent or on the invitation of an adult resident. In other words: It would restorethe status quo ante Barnes, which – in nullifying the Fourth Amendment –actually issued a hunting license to the police.

 Last June, 71 members of thestate legislature filed a petition with the Supreme Court protesting the Barnesdecision and demanding that it be revisited. In September, the Court issued aruling reiterating the claim that “the Castle Doctrine is not a defense to thecrime of battery or other violent acts on a police officer,” and recognizingthat the state legislature had the authority to create statutory defensesagainst that supposed crime. 


“Our laws, our statutes, ourConstitution, and the value of our country [were built] on one premise, andthat was to defend our citizens against the government –not defend ourgovernment against our citizens,” noted State Senator Mike Young ofIndianapolis, author of SB 1. “The [Barnes] ruling was a ruling that defendedthe government against the citizens.” 

 Rep. Jud McMillin of Dearborn,who wrote the house version of the bill, added: “The distinction here is notbetween police officers and citizens. The distinction to be made here isbetween what is lawful and what is unlawful. In a society where we value ourfreedoms, we cannot have a bright-line test that tells people when they cannotexercise their freedoms.”*

Such talk is intolerable tothose employed by Indiana’s affiliate of the Homeland Security State, whoinsist that public policy must preserve the privileges of the powerful, ratherthat the rights of the individual.


“We believe people have theright to be secure in their homes,” testified Hendricks County Sheriff DaveGalloway, uttering a sentence pregnant with the invalidating conjunction “but” –which, of course, followed immediately. “But the people who hear about this laware going to think it’s okay to kill a law enforcement officer. What you and Ithink is `reasonable’ isn’t the same as somebody high on meth. They’re going toshoot first, and ask questions later.” 

 A far greater and more commondanger is that posed by police officers who are high on the most lethal of allnarcotics – power.  The official positionof the Indiana Fraternal Order of Police is that any use of coercive force bythe State’s costumed enforcers is self-validating.

 “Our position is there is neveran opportunity to resist law enforcement,” insistedBill Owensby, president of the Indianapolis FOP. A great deal is revealedin Owensby’s choice of adverb: “Never” would apply to situations in whichpolice officers commit unambiguous crimes against person and property.

 Among the most prominent criticsof SB 1 are rent-seeking activists and social engineers attached to the state’sdomestic violence industry, who insist that the measure would impede theability of police to respond to situations involving spousal abuse. Under the “no-resistance”doctrine, however, a police officer can commit domestic violence and thencharge the victim with a crime if sheresists. As was illustrated by the case of Jerry Cunningham, the formerassistant chief of the Danville, Indiana Police Department, police andprosecutors are eager to extenuate crimes of domestic violence when perpetratedby a member of their hyper-violent sodality.

 In October 2010, Cunningham –who was in the middle of a divorce – tracked his estranged wife to another man’shome. After tearing down the screen door, Cunningham began what wasdescribed as an “altercation” in which he slapped his wife and slugged herparamour. A neighbor called 911 to report the incident, but made the mistake ofidentifying Cunningham as a police officer. 
 
As a result, rather than being “cuffedand stuffed” by a SWAT team, Cunningham received the personal attention ofChief Keith Gill, who displayed unaccustomed daintiness in bringing in hisunderling. Rather than booking him immediately into the jail, Gill tookCunningham to his home “to find out what’s going on – call for help, call forsome counseling,” theChief later recounted. 
 
Afterbeing placed on paid vacation (which was hastily redefined as “medicalleave” in order to keep him on the payroll after the police merit board ruledthat he be suspended without pay), Cunningham facedthree charges, including a felonious unlawful home entry. He was eventuallyfound guilty only of one count of misdemeanor battery. He was given a 363-daysuspended jail sentence and slapped with a fine of $1. He was also permitted tokeep his job, albeit with a reduction in rank to patrolman – a position inwhich, under the Barnes ruling, he would be permitted to invade homes at willand shoot anyone who resists his criminal aggression.


Cunningham was not the onlydomestic abuser on the payroll of the Danville PD, nor was he even the mostviolent offender; that distinction belongs to OfficerChris Gill, the Chief’s son. According to his ex-wife Teresa, Officer Gillrepeatedly beat her, throwing her against the wall of their home and eventhreatening to murder her in the presence of their child.






Aninvestigation of Officer Gill conducted by Policeabuse.com – a groupcomposed of retired police officers, private investigators, and court-qualifiedexpert witnesses on police practices -- revealed a long history of officialmisconduct and criminal behavior by the gypsy cop. Gill had been cashiered bypolice departments in Paris and Atwood, Illinois, before his father made roomfor him on the Danville PD. Sheltered behind the impregnable barricade ofnepotism, Gill continues to prowl the streets of Danville despite protectionorders granted to his ex-wife and ex-in-laws – and a pending criminal trial ondomestic abuse charges.


As her marriage with the officerdisintegrated, Teresa Gill placed their daughter with her mother and father,Joyce and Robert Abernathy. In March 2010, while Officer Gill was still on thepayroll of the Paris, Illinois PD, he used his position to remove the childfrom the Abertnathys’ home: He filed a false police report claiming that Teresahad threatened to kill that child. As he collected the child from her grandparents,Gill lifted his coat to display his gun and badge in a vulgar display ofmurderous intent. 

Aiding and abetting abuse: Keith Gill, Danville's nepotistic Police Chief.

 During an April 2010 childvisitation, Gill assaulted both Teresa and their son, which resulted in Teresafiling felony domestic battery charges against him. 

Gill, who stands to losehis job if he is convicted, has repeatedly barraged his soon-to-be-ex-wife andher parents with threats of lethal violence – while reveling in his sense ofprivilege as a member of the Brotherhood in Blue.
 
“I’m gonna do whatever it takesto f**k up your life,” Gill promised in a June 22, 2010 text message to Teresa.“I am a cop, they won’t believe you.  Have them drop [the charges] and I will stop…Nice try Whore.”

During legislative hearingsabout the Barnes ruling, Leo Blackwell, President of Indiana’s Fraternal Orderof Police insisted that “legal disputes about the right of entry should bedecided by the courts, not on the doorstep.” Under the supported by Blackwell’spolice union, Gill could invade his estranged wife’s home without a warrant orprobable cause -- and then arrest and charge her with a crime if she proved tobe insufficiently submissive.  Sure, thiswould eventually get straightened out by the courts – assuming that Teresa andher children survive the initial encounter. 

“TheFOP will not compromise when it comes to officer safety,” declared Blackwell ina recent legislative alert to union members. SB 1 “is terrible for lawenforcement and could result in the loss of life (maybe yours) if passed.” Accordingto the union, it is “never” permissible to resist a police officer – even whenthe sacred cause of preserving “officer safety"meansleaving a battered and terrorized woman entirely defenseless because the terrorist is carrying a badge.

* It should be acknowledged that Rep. McMillin's zeal for uniform application of the law has its limits: He withdrew a measure proposing drug tests for welfare recipients after it was amended to include legislators. For McMillin, apparently, some tax-consumers are more equal than others.

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The "Uniformed Sexual Predator Deterrence Act"

 

 

Sarah Smith was driving to work when her car was sideswiped by a man on a motorcycle. Like many people in straitened financial circumstances, she had let her liability insurance lapse. To make matters worse, her driver's license had expired. So she was probably overwrought when Pittsburgh Police Officer Adam Skweres arrived -- and frantic when he pulled her aside. The ensuing conversation left her utterly terrified. 

Officer Skweres told Smith that "he could make it look like [the accident] was my fault or he could give the driver a ticket for failure to obey signs," she recently recounted to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The price of a favorable assessment would take the form of unspecified sexual favors, and Skweres quite generously promised that what he would demand of Smith would be "as bad as what would happen to me in jail." 

Adam Skweres, accused sexual predator.

If Smith put up a fight, Skweres insisted, she would be arrested for resisting arrest, handcuffed, and then raped in the back seat of the police car. Before the officer could make good on his threat, the situation changed, and he agreed to let the terrified young woman go -- but only after gesturing to his gun and warning her that "If you say anything about this I'll make sure you never walk, talk, or breathe again."

This incident took place on July 14, 2008. Smith reported the assault to the Pittsburgh Police Bureau, as did two other women who had endured nearly identical threats from Skweres (one of whom, a woman embroiled in a child custody dispute, was told that she could purchase a favorable recommendation to the child welfare bureaucracy in exchange for oral sex). The uniformed predator was allowed to continue patrolling the streets -- and to collect his $57,000 annual salary -- until February 17, when he was arrested for sexually assaulting a young woman in her home six days earlier.

The February 11 assault took place in the home of a young woman whose boyfriend was in jail. After asking the victim if she was wearing a wire, and turning on the kitchen faucet to conceal any potentially incriminating noises, Skweres explained the nature of the transaction: He would "help" her boyfriend in exchange for sex. After forcing the traumatized woman to service him, the cop cleaned himself up with a paper towel (which he folded and placed in his pocket, perhaps after recalling the lessons taught by Monica Lewinsky's blue dress) and left.

Skweres was as predictable as he was persistent. Last December, he had paid a similar visit to Melissa Watkins, whose boyfriend was also in jail. She was alone with her young daughter when the cop materialized to proposition her. 

"He locked my front door and everything, he said, `so no one could bother us,'" Watkins told the Post-Gazette. Unzipping his uniform trousers, Skweres offered the same arrangement: He would "help" Watkins' boyfriend in consideration of sexual services. To her considerable credit, Watkins -- despite being utterly terrified -- refused. 

"There's a man with a badge and a gun in front of you, trying to proposition you," she recalled. "You don't know which way it's going to go." 

 In his memoir Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Expose of the Dark Side of American Policing, former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper warns that "sexual predation by police officers happens far more often than people in the business are willing to admit.... My cautious guess is that about 5 percent of America's cops are on the prowl for women. In a department the size of Seattle's that's sixty-three police officers. In San Diego [where Stamper began his police career], 145. In New York City, 2,000. The average patrol cop makes anywhere from ten to twenty unsupervised contacts a shift. If he's on the make, chances are a predatory cop will find you. Or your wife, your partner, your daughter, your sister, your mother, your friend."

The most significant advantage wielded by uniformed predators is not their physical size or even their arsenal; it's their ability to criminalize even the most tentative act of resistance on the part of their potential victims. Recall what Sarah Smith was told during her encounter with Skweres: If she fled, she would be arrested for resisting and obstructing. If she fought back, she most likely would have been charged with aggravated assault.  

This is exactly what happened in the case of a single mother in Milwaukee (whose name has not been publicly disclosed) who was raped by Officer Ladmarald Cates when he responded to a 911 call after someone hadhurled a brick through the woman's bathroom window. After dismissing the woman's boyfriend on an errand, Cates maneuvered the woman into the bathroom,  where he forcibly sodomized and raped her.

Immediately after the assault, the woman -- barefoot and wearing tattered clothing -- ran screaming from the house. Cates stormed out of the house and grabbed thevictim by the waist, causing her feet to strike his partner. This gave theofficers an excuse to arrest the battered and traumatized woman for “assaultingan officer.” 

She was taken to jail and held for 12 hours before receivingmedical aid. After the hospital visit, she was sent back to jail for four daysbefore being released without charges. 

I'd rather take my chances with private gang-bangers.

 This was not Cates's first assault -- but the department wasn't willing to take disciplinary action of any kind until DNA evidence corroborated the rape victim's account. Instead of prosecuting Cates, the department fired him for "idling or loafing on duty." He was convicted of federal civil rights charges on January 15. Cates is hardly representative of Milwaukee police officers -- not because of his casual corruption, but because he has actually been punished: The department holds down the number two spot in the national police brutality rankings. 

Cates's victim was handcuffed, jailed, and abused even further despite the fact that she had done nothing to resist. If she had put up resistance of any kind during the July 2010 encounter, she would likely be in prison -- or dead -- and Cates probably would have received a commendation for valor. This is because once a sexual predator in uniform initiates force against a Mundane, any effort to repel that aggression is treated as a crime. 

This principle, as I've noted before, was expressed by Gregory J. Babbitt, assistant prosecuting attorney for Michigan’s OttawaCounty, during the October 4 oralargument before the state supreme court in the case of People v. Moreno. That case deals with the question of whether a citizen has a legallyprotected right to resist an unlawful search or unjustified arrest by a policeofficer.

Associate justice MichaelCavanaugh described a scenario in which a woman in police custody issexually assaulted during a body search. In that situation, Cavanaugh asked Babbitt,could the victim be charged under the State’s "resisting andobstructing" statute?

 "Technically, youcould do that," Babbitt admitted, hastily adding that "asa prosecutor, I wouldn’t do that." Rather than offering physicalresistance and thereby risking both lethal retaliation and criminal prosecution, the victim should simplyendure the assault and then file a civil complaint after the fact. 

That's what Ladmarald Cates's victim did -- and, as long as resisting arrest is treated as a criminal act, that's the best outcome future victims can expect. 

There is  another alternative: We can restore legal protection for the right to resist unlawful arrest and other criminal aggression by police officers.


Ideally, police departments as we know them wouldn't exist: "Law enforcement" agencies are innately tyrannical artifacts incompatible with a free society. Where the use of force is concerned, peace officers should have exactly the same legal standing as any other citizen -- in other words, they can employ force (including arrest and detention) for the exclusive purpose of protecting innocent life and private property against criminal aggression.


We should work to abolish the "crime" of resisting arrest. Those who commit actual crimes against persons or property can't really be expected to submit to police without a struggle; people who don't commit such offenses shouldn't be required to submit to police at all. 

To that end I offer the following model statute -- which we could call the "Uniformed Sexual Predator Deterrence Act." Although the version below is based on the constitution and laws of the State of Idaho, it can provide a suitable template for similar legislation elsewhere.  



Prevailing dogma dictates that all citizens -- including isolated, vulnerable women-- have an unqualified duty to submit to anyone carrying a gun and state-issued credentials -- including sexual predators like Adam Skweres and Ladmarald Cates. The duty to submit includes allowing ourselves to be shackled and incarcerated without just cause, onthe assumption that the same State that stole our liberty will agree not totake any more of it when the matter is examined in court. And submission to unlawful police violence toofrequently results in injury, sexual assault, and death.

Restoring theRight to Resist Arrest: A Model Statute

An Act

Relating to the restoration of the right of a citizen toresist unlawful arrest, search, and seizure, by amending Title 18, Idaho Code,through deletion of section 18-705 and its replacement by language restoringthe common law right to resist unlawful arrest and establishing penalties forunlawful assault by public officials and sentence enhancement followingconviction of those who resist arrest in the course of committing crimesagainst persons and property.

Legislative findings:

Whereas – Article I, section 2 of the Idaho StateConstitution decrees: “All politicalpower is inherent in the people.[…] Government is instituted for their equalprotection and benefit, and they have the right to alter, reform or abolish thesame whenever they may deem it necessary; and no special privileges or immunities shall ever be granted that may notbe altered, revoked, or repealed by the legislature” (emphasis added); and

Whereas – The authority delegated by thesovereign people to any government official, including a licensed peaceofficer, cannot be greater than that of any law-abiding citizen from whom thatauthorization is derived; and

Whereas – Title 18, Ch. 7, Sec. 18-703 ofthe Idaho State Code designates the arrest or detention of any individual, orthe seizure, levy, or dispossession of any property “without a regular processor other lawful authority,” as a crime; and

Whereas – Title 18, Ch. 7, Sec. 18-706 ofthe Idaho Code defines a physical assault by a public officer “under color ofauthority, without lawful necessity” as a crime punishable “by a fine notexceeding $5,000 and imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one (1)year”; and    

Whereas The Idaho Code Judicial Instructions (ICJI 1262) asserts that "it is the person's duty to refrain from using force or any weapon in resisting arrest regardless of whether or not there is a legal basis for the arrest" -- thereby creating a spurious "privilege" or "immunity" liable to revocation by the legislature; and

Whereas – Current state judicial precedent(State v. Lusby, 2008) encourageslicensed peace officers to violate those statutes by provoking physicalconfrontations in the hope of charging citizens with “resisting arrest” inorder to circumvent Fourth Amendment restrictions on search and seizure(according to the Idaho Court of Appeals, “although officers mayhave conducted an unconstitutional search or seizure, a subsequent attack onthe officer is a new crime unrelated to any prior illegality”); and

Whereas –The Idaho State Supreme Court, in its 1973 decision State V. Richardson, explicitly acknowledged that “At common law a person unlawfully arrested could resist such an arrestby the use of reasonable force,” then – without legislative direction or otherauthorization by the sovereign people of the State – decreed that “the trendis, and should be, away from the traditional common law rule, and therefore wehold that if a person has reasonable ground to believe he is being arrested bya peace officer, it is his duty to refrain from using force or any weapon inresisting arrest regardless of whether or not there is a legal basis for thearrest,” thereby illegitimately abrogating what the Court itself acknowledgedto be a valid and long-standing individual right; and

Whereas – In its decision in JohnBad Elk v. U.S. (1900), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a police officertrying to make an unlawful arrest has “no right to unnecessarily injure, much less tokill, his assailant; but where the officer is killed in the course of thedisorder which naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, thelaw looks with very different eyes upon the transaction, when the officer hadthe right to make the arrest, from what it does if the officer had no suchright” – thereby explicitly recognizing a citizen’s right to use lethal forceto prevent an unlawful arrest; and

Whereas--  "The right to resist unlawful arrest memorializes one of theprincipal elements in the heritage of the English revolution: the belief thatthe will to resist arbitrary authority in a reasonable way is valuable andought not to be suppressed by the criminal law” (PaulG. Chevigny, The Right to Resist an UnlawfulArrest, 78 Yale L.J. 1128,1129 [1969]);

Therefore,be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Idaho:

SECTION1. That Title 18, Chapter 7, sec. 18-705 of the Idaho Criminal Code dealingwith “Arrests and Seizures of Persons or Property – Special Officers,” ishereby amended by removing the offense of “Resisting and obstructing officers,”and replacing it with the following:

18-705.Resisting lawful arrest, and the crime of unlawful arrest. Every person whowillfully resists, delays or obstructs any licensed peace officer in the courseof executing a valid warrant or conducting a lawful arrest (or any citizen seeking to execute a lawful citizen's arrest) will – uponconviction of a property crime or crime of violence – be subject to anadditional penalty of up to one year imprisonment in the county jail, and/or afine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000). These penalties are ofsecondary effect and cannot be imposed in the absence of a predicate offenseagainst person or property.

SECTION2. That any individual – whether licensed peace officer or member of the public– who assaults or detains another, or presumes to seize or levy property,without a valid warrant or court order, or legitimate probable cause that acrime against person or property has been or is about to be committed, isguilty of the crime of false arrest, as well as other related offenses, and isliable to appropriate criminal prosecution and civil action.

SECTION3. Notwithstanding any previous judicial ruling or administrative finding orpolicy, the right of the individual to resist unlawful arrest will berecognized as a valid defense in all criminal and civil proceedings. 

(Note: A version of this model statute was published in an on-line edition of Republic magazine.) 

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