An Unarmed Pedestrian Who Acted Crazy in New York City Vehicular Traffic Has Been Charged with Felony Assault — Even though He Didn’t Attack Anyone — on the Theory that His Traffic-Impeding Sudden Movements Caused Overaggressive New York City Police Officers to Shoot Two Innocent Bystanders — This Incompetence-Covering Prosecutorial Idiocy Sums the Plutocratic American Police State to a Tee

05 December 2013

We live in a society that has institutionally gone completely insane

Take this bit of evidence from the New York Times:

An unarmed, emotionally disturbed man shot at by the police as he was lurching around traffic near Times Square in September has been charged with assault, on the theory that he was responsible for bullet wounds suffered by two bystanders, according to an indictment unsealed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Wednesday.

The man, Glenn Broadnax, 35, of Brooklyn, created a disturbance on Sept. 14, wading into traffic at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue and throwing himself into the path of oncoming cars.

A curious crowd grew. Police officers arrived and tried to corral Mr. Broadnax, a 250-pound man. When he reached into his pants pocket, two officers, who, the police said, thought he was pulling a gun, opened fire, missing Mr. Broadnax, but hitting two nearby women. Finally, a police sergeant knocked Mr. Broadnax down with a Taser.

Or this one, regarding the bogus legal theory, from Adam Martin:

Prosecutors, who at first charged Broadnax with misdemeanors such as menacing and resisting arrest, obtained a felony indictment from a grand jury that said he "recklessly engaged in conduct which created a grave risk of death."

Two broad comments

First, as a former watch commander and police training supervisor, I point out that you go to non-deadly weapons like the Taser first in instances like this, not firearms.

In truth, any police department worth spit recognizes that non-harmfully dealing with disturbed people is the name of the police game. We should not be shooting at unarmed “crazies” just because they are disturbing the rest of society, during one of their emotionally or mentally trying moments.

Real cops, not the infantry wannabes that police departments too often recruit these days, are armed first-responding social workers, more than they are killers in battle gear.

Second, speaking as a former state assistant attorney general, I add that attempting to cover up police misconduct via bringing foolishly heavy-handed legal charges against an apparently mentally ill person — almost certainly to mask police department incompetence — dishonors both the Law and the prosecutorial function.

The felony assault charge aimed at Mr. Broadnax, who attacked no one — and is evidently guilty only of “acting uncontrollably crazy in public” — is unadulterated ass-covering BS.

The give-away is that prosecutor’s office raised the charge from obviously appropriate misdemeanors — any of which would have gotten Mr. Broadnax “into the system” — to felony status, so as to make the shooting seem more commensurate with the purported gravity of the situation. Why allow a jury to recognize law enforcement’s excessive force, when one can simply pretend that the misdemeanant brought the felony consequences upon himself?

The overall thrust of this prosecution is to further penalize a suffering human being for something he probably had no control over. And which would more appropriately be dealt with by the mental health system.

The only justification for the felony charge would be if New York law requires an underlying felony charge to forcibly introduce a perpetrator to the mental health system

In the states where I am licensed to practice law, a simple court order, based on reliable evidence, is all it takes. Scarring someone with a felony for no legitimate reason is the height of prosecutorial vindictiveness.

Then there’s this thought — do you really want to cast a police department in this light?

When this mess goes to court, as it may on behalf of the wounded bystanders, the City’s implied public relations argument is going to have to be that the disturbed Mr. Broadnax should have foreseen that New York City Police would almost certainly be incompetent in their resort to and use of deadly force.

In other words — “Our cops are so aggressive and stupid that disturbed people should anticipate they will be spraying bullets all over the place.”

Some situations might justify this argument — for example with an armed and imminently threatening perpetrator ensconced in a crowd of people — but Mr. Broadnax’s reported circumstances do not.

I am guessing that the City is going to be paying out a bunch of money in civil litigation. And the prosecutor’s office will deserve to become butt of contempt for its incompetence-concealing effort.

Wider implications — the rise of the militarized police state

Ever since 11 September 2001, philosophical militarism has been infiltrating domestic law enforcement in increasing numbers. You would think that America was under determined attack from its own citizens, given the way most departments are equipping themselves to deal with ordinary non-events that we cops used to deal with, without resorting to deadly violence.

The old principle that police work is an inherently defensive occupation has morphed into allegedly proactive policing as an excuse to overreact and injure people, followed by lying and legally insupportable justifications for so doing.

When prosecutors assist police in executing this freedom-destroying tactic, a peaceful democratic society has been undermined and an authoritarian state looms.

In this vein

Investigative journalist Radley Balko, who specializes in covering American law enforcement, has written:

In my own research, I have collected over 50 examples in which innocent people were killed in raids to enforce warrants for crimes that are either nonviolent or consensual (that is, crimes such as drug use or gambling, in which all parties participate voluntarily).

These victims were bystanders, or the police later found no evidence of the crime for which the victim was being investigated. They include Katherine Johnston, a 92-year-old woman killed by an Atlanta narcotics team acting on a bad tip from an informant in 2006; Alberto Sepulveda, an 11-year-old accidentally shot by a California SWAT officer during a 2000 drug raid; and Eurie Stamps, killed in a 2011 raid on his home in Framingham, Mass., when an officer says his gun mistakenly discharged. Mr. Stamps wasn't a suspect in the investigation.

What would it take to dial back such excessive police measures?

The obvious place to start would be ending the federal grants that encourage police forces to acquire gear that is more appropriate for the battlefield. Beyond that, it is crucial to change the culture of militarization in American law enforcement.

Consider today's police recruitment videos (widely available on YouTube), which often feature cops rappelling from helicopters, shooting big guns, kicking down doors and tackling suspects.

Such campaigns embody an American policing culture that has become too isolated, confrontational and militaristic, and they tend to attract recruits for the wrong reasons.

The moral? — If American citizenry continues to tolerate the blasting of innocents, by the feeble-minded militarists who have taken over our domestic institutions, American freedom will be irretrievably lost

We do not need gun-toting, shoot-first nut cases running our police departments. The metaphorical small dick syndrome runs rampant.

In truth, it takes far more courage to approach order-disturbers with non-violent skill, than it does to blast them in their mildly inconvenient tracks. Cops from my aging generation knew this. Too many among the new ones do not.

It is time to stop to the eruption of unnecessary violence from American authority figures. These people combine self-righteous paranoia with personal cowardice and institutionally sociopathic brains.

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