Category Archives: Crime and Punishment

Leon Lott’s just saving the world, isn’t he?

First, my twin, Sheriff Leon Lott, magnanimously agrees to solve one of the city of Columbia’s knottiest problems by taking over its police department.

Now this:

Lott heads to Iraq to train police forces

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has been invited to travel to Iraq to train Iraqi police forces.

The sheriff traveled to Iraq at the invitation of the U.S. Army and the S.C. State Guard where he is a provost marshal, said sheriff’s department spokeswoman Monique Mack. Lott will be at the Iraq Police College for two to three weeks.

While in Iraq, Lott will teach courses in community policing and will talk about the importance of having women on a police force, Mack said.

– Noelle Phillips

Ol’ Leon’s just saving the world, isn’t he? He’s pretty much got my endorsement for his next election sewn up.

Next: Mideast Peace!…

Why does it have to be a “hate crime?”

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OK, I’ve ignored it and ignored it, but now that there’s going to be a march tomorrow, I have to ask:

Why does it have to be a “hate crime?”

I mean, set aside the usual grim joke, as in: You mean, as opposed to those love crimes in which someone is shot and then dragged behind a truck for 11 miles?

And set aside the weirdness of the emergence of a group calling itself the New Black Panther Party, which hearkens back to a day long before the term “hate crime” was invented. It seems… anachronistic, out of sync.

I’m just asking, why does it have to have the political element of being called a “hate crime”? Why not just prosecute the perpetrating to the nth degree? I mean, if this guy’s guilty, he’s at least going to spend the rest of his life in prison, right?

As you know, one of the few things I agree with libertarians about is that in THIS country, there should be no such thing as a “hate crime.” The idea of punishing the political intent behind a crime — essentially, punishing thought, however represensible — is utterly and completely unAmerican. The only way thought or intent should come into the prosecution calculation is in trying to determine whether the perpetrator meant to do what he did, and understood what he was doing.

And yes, I know the answer to the question I pose in my headline above; I just consider it to be insufficient. The answer to “why must it be a hate crime” is that it’s deeply important to a lot of people to feel singled out to be victims of heinous crimes on the basis of accidents of demography to know that society disapproves of such mistreatment. But the legitimate way for society to show that is by fully punishing the actions, not by outlawing the abominable attitudes.

Punish the crime. Not the fact that the person who did it is a hateful bastard. That’s for God to deal with, not the state.

By the way, Kevin Geddings is out of prison

Sexual predator price tag seems a bargain

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Non-journalists are always complaining about editorials masquerading as news. Usually, they’re wrong. But sometimes reporters and their news editors are so obviously, nakedly, unabashedly (although not admittedly) making an editorial point that it’s painful to read. And mainly (to one like myself, who does not worship at the altar of the god Objectivity or even belief humans are capable of it) because it’s so badly done.

It’s particularly painful if you happen to be a real editorialist. News people, generally speaking, simply don’t think about what they’re writing about in the necessary ways to do it well. So they come blundering into an issue that they have defined poorly and explained badly, making a mockery of serious commentary. This is not because they lack intelligence. It’s because their jobs don’t require them to think about things that way. When you have to set out your opinion on various aspects of an issue, day after day, for the world to pick apart and throw stones at, you think a lot harder about what you DO think, and WHY, and what the implications are. And parts of your brain that were shut off when you were in news and strictly forbidden to air opinions suddenly get oxygen and start to function. It’s sort of weird. After I’d been in editorial for a couple of years, I was sort of embarrassed to recall some of the facile assumptions I held about issues before I really started thinking about them.

But when you are telling yourself that you don’t HAVE an opinion about it, that you are utterly objective, and yet have an editorial point you’re pushing with all your might, the result is likely to reflect that lack of understanding about what you’re doing.

And the thing is, you can’t even fully explain to news people this epiphany that hit me after I made the transition. You couldn’t even state it without insulting them. (In fact, I’m sure you are horrified at my arrogance, and you’re nothing but a layperson. But seriously, it’s not that I’m BETTER or SMARTER. It’s that the different functions make different demands of whatever poor faculties I may possess.) So you just held your tongue, and were frequently appalled by news people’s ventures into places where they should not go.

For instance, take a look at the piece that ran on the Metro front of The State over the weekend. But this is not about The State, but about the Charleston Post and Courier, from which the piece was reprinted.

The original headline was “S.C.’s tab $7.4M for predators,” which wasn’t particularly helpful, so we go to the subhead “Treating each sex offender in program costs state about $63,000 per year.”

An excerpt:

For 12 years, South Carolina has tried to protect the public by keeping its most-dangerous sex offenders locked up behind concrete walls and razor wire long after their prison sentences have ended.

But that sense of security comes at a steep price.

The state shells out about $7.4 million each year to treat those confined under the Sexually Violent Predator Act, which allows authorities to lock up some sex offenders indefinitely for the purpose of alternative care. That translates to about $63,000 per offender annually for each of the 119 predators in the program…

Oooh, golly — $63,000! Of course, it occurred to me immediately that that was probably less than what other states spend on similar programs, because SC always goes the cheap route. And sure enough, the story admits that inconvenient fact down below, but sandwiches it between TWO admonitions to ignore that fact, because… well, because it’s still just too damned much money we’re spending:

Those costs have put the squeeze on many governments struggling to cut expenditures in a crippling recession that has forced layoffs, furloughs and deep program cuts. Though South Carolina spends a good deal less than many other states on its predator program — New York spends $175,000 per inmate and California, $173,000 — the effort is still a drain on already strained coffers.

I mean, knock me down and hit me with a club, why don’t you?

So really, what we’re left with here is whether we think is whether we should keep sexual predators locked up. I happen to think we do. Lots of other people think we do as well.

But that’s just because we’re dumb as a bag of hammers, apparently. We’re a bunch of Neanderthals taken in by “this get-tough tactic” sold by pandering politicians. We are fooled by a “sense of security” rather than the real thing. And the politicians aren’t about to back down and “be seen as soft on rapists and child molesters.”

That’s what it’s about, you see. The mob’s desire for vengeance. Pitchforks and flaming torches. Irrational, emotional responses to problems that could easily be resolved by putting the money into “increased supervision of sex offenders in the community,” the way Colorado has done.

I find this irritating for several reasons, including the fact that I am NOT a “lock ’em up and throw away the key” yahoo. I actually happen to believe that one of THE greatest policy errors committed year after year in South Carolina is that we lock up WAY too many people who don’t need to be locked up. And we do it because politicians DO play on irrational fears of crime and desires for vengeance on the part of the public. This is foolish, because it simply makes no sense to lock up a guy who wrote back checks. It DOES make sense to lock up a guy who robbed a liquor store and pistol-whipped the clerk into a coma. There’s a difference.

And difference involves a calm, rational assessment of whether someone is a threat to others.

But here’s the thing about sexual predators. Their crimes are not like other crimes. One can rationally understand why an unemployed person — particularly one with a drug addiction — might hold up a liquor store. If he was particularly desperate or high from his latest fix, you can understand his getting violent. You don’t condone it; you punish it; you lock him away for a while to protect society. But someday, when he’s clean and sober, when he’s established a record for calm behavior and maybe when he’s no longer 19 years old or even close, you let him out. It’s a rational decision to lock him up, and a rational decision, under the right circumstances, to let him out again.

But while we’re all prone to greed and many of us have violent impulses, we know about living with those things and dealing with them. But most of us find it unimaginable that anyone would ever, under any circumstances, be attracted to child pornography. And while the thought of anyone having to do with such may make us angry, may make us want to run for the torches and pitchforks, it’s perfectly rational to think, “If someone can EVER have such an impulse, can they ever be sufficiently normal, or sufficiently in control, to be allowed to walk free in the world where our children play?”

Sexual desire is such a complicated, mysterious mechanism even at its healthiest. The sheer galaxy of factors — the light traveling to my eye and through neurons to parts of my brain that process color and contrast and pattern recognition combined with experience-based understanding of such subtleties as facial expression combined with precognitive programming on the cellular level all mixed up with the biological imperative to reproduce — that causes me to react as I do when I look at this picture or this one or, for comic relief, this one is so independent of will and resistant to reasoning, that it’s quite natural to assume that in a person in whom such mechanisms are so twisted as to lead them to unspeakable crimes… well, it’s just not going to go away because of a few years in a quiet place with regular sessions with a therapist.

Of course, we could assume wrongly. And indeed, a quick search on Google establishes that there is no end of arguments out there against the widely-held notion that sexual predators — rapists, and those who prey on children — are incurable.

Fine. Let’s have that discussion. Let’s see the data, and hear the latest findings. But of course, that news story didn’t bother with that. In other words, it didn’t touch upon the one question upon which the issue of whether to treat sexual predators different from other criminal was well-founded or not.

But then, that’s a common flaw in news stories, especially (but not only) those of the ersatz-editorial type: They don’t mention, much less answer, the one question I most want to see addressed. I have spent a huge portion of my life reading, all the way to the bottom, news stories that piqued my interest and made me think, “Maybe there’s an editorial or a column here,” only to find that the one ingredient most needed to help me decide what I thought about it was entirely missing. Which means it got into print with neither the writer nor his editor thinking of it. Which means that the one ingredient most valuable to the reader, as a citizen trying to decide what to think about this issue, is missing.

Nor did it touch upon the second question that should arise, which is whether the circumstances surrounding such crimes are indeed so different as to cause us to set aside such constitutional considerations as equal treatment before the law (due process would seem to be covered by the additional hearings necessary for such commitment). But newspaper stories have finite length, and I would have been happy merely to have had the first question answered, or even acknowledged. But it wasn’t.

And I find that hugely frustrating.

The Chicago Way: Just pass another gun ban

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Chicago has always had a bit of a problem with federal controls. Remember all that trouble Elliott Ness had getting any cooperation when Capone ran things (in the movie, at least)?

Well, the Chicago alderman made it really clear how little they thought of the Supreme Court striking down the city’s gun control law Monday.

The rest of the nation, pro- and anti-gun, talked and talked about it. But that’s not the Chicago Way. They’re into action.

The aldermen didn’t even let the week pass before they passed a new one, 45 to zip:

Grumbling about a U.S. Supreme Court they say is out of touch with America’s cities, Chicago aldermen voted 45-0 today to approve a rushed-through compromise gun ban.

The law, weaker than the gun ban tossed out Monday but with some even stronger new provisions, allows adults in Chicago to buy one gun a month, 12 a year, but they must pay registration and permit fees and take five hours of training.

Within 100 days, anyone who wants to keep a gun in the city will have to register, get their training and pay the fees. Also within 100 days, any of the estimated 10,000 Chicagoans convicted of a gun offense will have to register at their local police station like sex offenders.

Police Supt. Jody Weis said that new list of where criminals live in Chicago will help police do their jobs: “Armed with knowledge is our greatest asset,” Weis said.

What did ya think Chicago was gonna do? Lie down and whimper in frustration? Not the City of Big Shoulders.

How about that? Y’all go ahead and discuss this, but please — no gunplay.

“Stupid bloody cabaret”

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That headline comes from John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Bill Haydon, a character given to dry sarcasm among other vices, utters the words upon leaving a meeting in which there had been much posing and preening for show, but little point:

“Stupid bloody cabaret,” Bill remarked, waving vaguely at the mothers. “Percy’s getting more insufferable every day.”

That phrase entered my mind as I read in The Wall Street Journal about the ritual conducted in Congress yesterday when the boss of BP was called on the carpet:

Mr. Hayward stuck to his plan. He sat for hours on Thursday, alone at a witness table, parrying questions from indignant members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a deliberate monotone.

Over and over, he said he wasn’t involved in the decisions preceding the accident and declined to speculate on causes until investigations were complete.

Summoning executives of companies caught up in financial or legal trouble to receive televised scoldings is a ritual of U.S. politics. Detroit auto titans, Wall Street bankers, and the head of Japanese auto giant Toyota Motor Corp. have all done time in Congress’s dock as lawmakers looked for someone to blame for the calamities of the past two years.

Such proceedings are not designed to accomplish anything, beyond the public embarrassment of the guest of honor. Never mind that those subjected to such treatment so often richly deserve the treatment. The whole thing strikes me as inappropriate in a country devoted to the rule of law.

If we wish to prosecute, haul the guy into court. If we wish to make BP pay, make them cough up a huge amount of money. Which we had already done, and appropriately so. If we need to obtain information from them, this is hardly the forum for doing so. Quite the opposite, in fact. A fact-finding gathering would have the people there who could actually answer the question, and investigators better equipped to ask them than these politicoes.

This is about lawmakers preening before the cameras, exhibiting their righteous indignation to the folks back home. This is the modern equivalent of the public stocks, and the congressmen are the ones in the crowd who want to be seen as the first to heave a rotten tomato, or a dead cat, or a stone at the person thus restrained.

Mind you, I feel no pity for Mr. Howard. This is what he gets paid the big bucks for. What disturbs me is, what an inadequate way this is to deal with the problem. It makes my country’s system of addressing problems look tawdry and empty.

I’m probably going to displease my Democratic friends with this one, because as I read further down in the story, I see they were the main ones showing off their indignation. But that was just today. Some other day, with some other subject, it would be all about Republicans trying to humiliate someone they were angry with.

It’s the process that seems inconsistent with a rational way of dealing with this horrendous problem. And like so many things that I find objectionable in our society, this is about television. Remove the cameras, and this event wouldn’t be happening — or would be very different. Actually, I take that back. It’s not television per se. In an earlier era, they’d have been showing off for the newsreel cameras. It’s just that with television, constituents with nothing better to do can watch it in real time.

You doubt that it was pointless, beyond venting emotions? Then tell me — what effective action did the session lead to? What WAS the point? What has been done, as a result of that show?

You want me to tell you what the real-world consequence of that grilling was? BP’s stock went up, because its CEO “survived” the process. Really.

You know what I’d like to see? All these members of Congress in their chamber, seriously debating a real, sensible Energy Policy, one that helps us move beyond dependence on the BPs of the world. That would be useful. But I guess that’s just too hard.

CREW wants Henry to probe Greene candidacy

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“CREW?” Yeah, I had to look it up, too. I learned that it is “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington,” which rang a bell, and sure enough, they’re the crowd that not only listed Mark Sanford as one of the worst governors in America, they used his picture to illustrate the concept.

For what that’s worth.

Anyway, now they’re all worked up about Responsibility and Ethics right here in SC, and demanding that Henry McMaster, among others, investigate how in the heck that Alvin Greene guy became the Democrat’s champion against Jim DeMint. Here’s what they say, in part:

Washington, D.C. – Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), took two significant actions against the questionable Democratic candidate for South Carolina Senate, Alvin Greene. In a letter to South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, CREW asked for an investigation into whether Mr. Greene was induced to run for the Senate in violation of South Carolina law.

CREW also filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that primary-winner Greene and three other candidates in the June 8, 2010 Democratic primary in South Carolina: Gregory Brown, Ben Frasier and Brian Doyle and their campaign committees, violated the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) and FEC regulations by failing to file mandatory disclosure reports prior to the election.

Melanie Sloan, CREW’s Executive Director, said “The people of South Carolina have a right to fair, transparent and fraud-free elections. Paying candidates to run for office and concealing the sources of campaign funds undermines the integrity of the electoral process and threatens our democracy.”…

Seems kind of overly optimistic to me that Henry would be interested. He’s kind of busy these days knuckling under to the Nikki Haley tidal wave that’s washing the state GOP far, far out into right field (bradwarthen.com, never afraid to mix two overworked metaphors). After the whuppin’ he got last week, he’s now dutifully following in her footsteps.

So that leaves the FEC on its hands and knees looking for that elephant poop Jim Clyburn’s talking about.

Shadd endorses Meadors as 5th circuit solicitor

Let the voters decide the fate of Jake Knotts

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The Lexington County Republican Party has called on Jake Knotts to resign, and has done so, at least on the surface, for noble reasons. Good people everywhere are nodding their heads and thinking, “About time. South Carolina no longer has room for that sort.”

I applaud many (although not all) of the motivations that cause people to say that. And I think it might do our state’s reputation some good in the larger world if he were hounded from office.

But in the end, I think it’s none of the Lexington County Republican Party’s business whether Jake stays in office or not. As he says, he doesn’t serve the Republican Party. He serves the voters of his district. He should answer to them. That’s the way the system is supposed to work. Many of the same people calling for his head within the party are also supporting the candidate who has announced she will run against him in two years. Fine. Let the battle be joined. And let the voters decide whether they prefer Jake, or Katrina Shealy. All of this mess over that inexcusable thing that Jake said should be thoroughly hashed out in that election. And it certainly promises to be an interesting one. (And maybe, if we’re lucky, someone else will step in and run, someone who is NOT tainted by the blood feud between Sanford and Knotts, so that we can have a more straight-up election about values that have nothing to do with power politics between rival factions.)

There are many things that should NOT be settled by public vote. Matters of public policy, for instance. Ours is a representative democracy, and government by plebiscite is in no way to settle complex issues.

But a vote of the people is precisely how we are supposed to settle the important issue of who will be those elected representatives. And we must have the greatest respect for that prerogative of the people, or else, whatever our high-minded standards (and I do find it ironic to hear some of the high-minded pronouncements of principle I’m hearing from some of these Lexington County Republicans, although I welcome it), our system is not grounded in the ultimate source of legitimacy, the people.

That’s what I think about the Jake Knotts affair. Leave it to the voters.

Now, I expect to get hit with all kinds of howls of protest from those who think Jake’s my big buddy, just because, after opposing him strenuously for election after election, we very reluctantly supported him over Ms. Shealy (actually, over Mark Sanford, because that’s what the election was about) in the last election. Such people fail to understand what I think about Jake. I explained it pretty well in a column I wrote at the time, and I urge you to go back and read it. If you’re still not satisfied, well, I’m working on a post that elaborates. I’ll try to get it posted by tomorrow sometime. (I wanted to get it done today before posting this, but it got so long and involved — it involves trying to explain some thoughts I have about the world that I’ve never tried to set in writing before, partly because they take so long to explain — that I just set it aside, and decided to go ahead and post this.)

But in the meantime, consider this: Sen. Knotts is not accused of stealing from the state treasury, or high treason, or physical violence or anything else that would justify short-circuiting the voting relationship between him and his constituents. What he did was say a word — a word that reveals a particularly nasty, grossly unacceptable set of attitudes toward other people based upon the accidents of birth. It was inexcusable, and indicative of much deeper problems, of a great flaw of character.

There are people who believe that merely having such attitudes should be criminalized. I am not among them. For this reason I oppose “hate crime” laws. It’s one of the few things I agree with libertarians (like Jake’s enemy Mark Sanford) about. I believe it is unAmerican to punish a person for his attitudes, however grotesquely objectionable those attitudes are. What we should do is punish the act. And in this case, Jake Knotts didn’t ACT upon his attitude, he just said the word.

Then, let the attitude fend for itself in the public marketplace. This is particularly true of an attitude expressed by a politician. Let the voters decide whether they can live with what it reveals of the candidate’s character. Yes, I know that many people disapprove of the decisions that other voters make. But that’s none of their business. If the poor, black electorate of Washington, D.C., wants to re-elect Marion Barry, that’s up to them — unless he commits a felony or otherwise disqualifies himself. If the redneck white electorate of Georgia wants to elect a Lester Maddox, that is likewise up to them. One of the things these Lexington County Republicans are struggling with is whether they want to be associated with attitudes reminiscent of Gov. Maddox. Good for them. But the final arbiters must be the voters, not a party.

That’s the American way. With all its warts.

More on the subject — probably more than you want — later.

Benjamin’s statements and other documents

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As promised earlier in the day, here is a PDF of the documents Steve Benjamin released today. The Acrobat file includes:

A statement he made to police on May 3
A second statement made on May 6
A third statement dated May 19
A Uniform Traffic Ticket dated June 1 (it says “Date of Arrest,” but that’s just a formality; if I recall correctly, all traffic tickets say that)
The original incident report

Sorry to take so long to get these to you. I cooked and ate dinner first. Also had me a beer. So sue me.

I see that in the meantime, thestate.com has posted its own PDF of the same document, which they have enhanced to increase contrast. Read that one if you prefer, but I went to the trouble of scanning this one a page at a time, so I’m going to bloody well post it.

Benjamin pays $81.87 fine; ready to move on

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OK, that headline sounded a little too brusque. Obviously, the mayor-elect isn’t going to put this behind him in the sense of forgetting Ms. Ruben and her serious injuries. He makes the point repeatedly that she is in his prayers, and he would like a chance to see her when it’s OK with her family.

A phone photo of a copy of the citation; sorry about the quality.

But legally speaking, Steve’s mouthpiece James Smith says that now that the fine for driving without his headlights on has been paid (this morning, at a magistrate’s office), the case is done as far as any culpability for the accident on Mr. Benjamin’s part is concerned.

At the less than 15-minute press conference at City Hall, Mr. Benjamin’s aides distributed copies of a series of written statements by him regarding the accident, plus a traffic ticket he was given yesterday, and the original incident report. (I’ll scan those into a PDF for you when I’m home where my scanner is, or link you to them if someone beats me to it, which seems likely.)

As for how he could have been driving without his lights on in a high-tech Mercedes SUV, here’s the salient part of the statement:

My wife and I stayed at the Hilton Hotel in the Vista after the conclusion of the events of election day and election night, April 20, 2010. I was scheduled to be interviewed by WLTX on the April 21, 2010, 6:00 a.m. newscast. I awoke and prepared myself for the morning. I went to the hotel lobby at approximately 5:30 a.m. I had to retrieve the keys for my wife’s vehicle from the desk as there was no valet on duty and the valet had parked our vehicle th day before. I spoke with the front desk clerk and she gave me the keys to my wife’s vehicle. I prepared a cup of coffee and exited the rear of the hotel and walked into the parking garage. I located my wife’s vehicle, got in, started the vehicle, put on the seat belt and exited the parking garage. My wife’s vehicle has automatic lights. I did not adjust the light setting. As I drove the vehicle, the dashboard was illuminated and I was able to clearly see my path of travel.

Steve was reluctant to elaborate on how the lights could have been off, repeatedly referring reporters back to the statement. We were left with the implication that someone other than he had switched the lights off of automatic mode without his knowledge, but he hesitated to come right out and say “The valet did it.”

Other items from the statements and answers at the press confab:

He had the green light.
He was in the left lane of the two lanes heading east on Gervais at the time of the collision.
“I was not impaired at the time of the accident.”
“I was not fatigued at the time of the accident.”
“I slept approximately 10 hours in the two nights prior to the accident. The night of the accident I went to bed shortly after 2:00 a.m.”
At about 11:45 the night before, a supporter bought him “a vodka and tonic or soda.” He said “I cannot remember if I took a sip or two sips, but I drank a little just to be polite.” He later had a drink of Malibu rum and orange juice, just after midnight.
During the 24 hours before the accident, he had a biscuit with meat and coffee at 7:20 a.m. on election day; baked chicken and green beans for lunch, with water; snacks and candy at various times during the day; missed dinner at the usual hour but ate fruit and vegetables with some water at the convention center celebration.
He had the sips from the vodka drink at the Liberty Tap Room, where they had hoped to get dinner, but the kitchen was closed.
He and family and friends moved on to the Sheraton, where “I consumed a cheeseburger, fries, non-alcoholic iced tea and one Malibu and orange juice at approximately 12:12-12:30 a.m. He said he also had some appetizers. Then there was the coffee the next morning.
Other than the sips of vodka and the rum-and-orange juice (which I’ve got to say sounds like a nasty drink), he acknowledges drinking no alcohol during that 24 hours.
He says he did not make or receive any phone calls while driving that morning. Nor did he send or check text messages. But he adds, “I did check my voicemail and listened to messages using my speaker function of my cell phone.” The statement is unclear whether that was WHILE driving and no one thought during the press conference to ask that question. Sounds like it was. He concludes that statement, “I was not distracted at the time of the accident.”

That’s what I’ve got for now. I didn’t have my camera, but I’ll have a phone photo or two for you shortly. I’ll post PDFs of the statements and other documents tonight.

Oh, as the “move on” thing in the headline. James said this concludes Benjamin’s part in any legal matters having to do with the accident. As for the city police, their final report won’t be done until the state Highway Patrol is done reviewing it.

The mayor-elect himself made several references to his transition team and the 8 issue areas they are concentrating on, and said he hopes to get as good a media turnout as he had today when the team is ready to unveil their findings on those issues. In other words, he’s anxious to get started doing the job.

How is it that Benjamin’s lights weren’t on?

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If I can get away in time I’m going to run over and catch Steve Benjamin’s press conference on the subject, but I find myself puzzled by the news that police say he contributed to the wreck by not having his headlights on.

I thought he had one of those fancy new cars that automatically took care of stuff like that. Even my beat-up 2000 Buick Regal turns the lights on automatically when it’s dark outside.

And now that we know this, what happens next?

I hope to find out…

Rethinking Miranda rights for terror suspects?

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There was a heated debate over a week ago over whether the Times Square suspect should have been Mirandized. And lots of folks said absolutely, and not just the usual types on the left who think terror is about crime and not war. Conservative voices spoke up quite thoughtfully in defense of the idea that

Today, as three more are arrested, seems like a good time to revisit the issue.

Especially since the Obama administration signaled a couple of days ago that it was rethinking the wisdom of reading such suspects their rights.

Did you see that? Here’s an excerpt from a report about that:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Sunday it would seek a law allowing investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their rights, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. flatly asserted that the defendant in the Times Square bombing attempt was trained by the Taliban in Pakistan.

Mr. Holder proposed carving out a broad new exception to the Miranda rights established in a landmark 1966 Supreme Court ruling. It generally forbids prosecutors from using as evidence statements made before suspects have been warned that they have a right to remain silent and to consult a lawyer.

He said interrogators needed greater flexibility to question terrorism suspects than is provided by existing exceptions….

I didn’t realize that had happened until I saw an op-ed piece today in the WSJ praising it:

… In other words, the Miranda rights to remain silent and have an attorney present during questioning would be suspended for terror suspects believed to possess information that could prevent an attack.

The administration is making a number of admissions here: Mirandizing Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, aka the underwear bomber, after only 50 minutes of questioning was a mistake; terrorists are enemies of America, not ordinary criminals; and the law-enforcement approach to combatting terrorism, which is designed to obtain evidence admissible at trial after a crime has already been committed, is not the most effective way to obtain intelligence to prevent future attacks.

This is an important step forward and a sign that, after the Manhattan subway plot, Fort Hood, Detroit, and now Times Square, the administration has become more adaptable to the realities of the war on terror. Yet the jury is out on whether the administration has a real plan or is merely improvising. Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad remains in the criminal justice system and has not been designated as an enemy combatant, though he is still eligible for such designation….

Of course, the idea that Mr. Holder is raising is based in the oft-cited nostrum that the Constitution is not a suicide pact.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had had any further thoughts on this point.

Benjamin and Sheriff Lott, having a chat

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Forgot to mention this yesterday. Steve Benjamin came up to me yesterday after a lunch meeting of the Capital City Club board to talk about several things. None of them newsworthy, yet. More later.

But I thought I’d mention that, at the end of our chat, my “twin,” Sheriff Leon Lott, came up to take my place speaking privately to the mayor-elect. I walked away a few steps, then turned back saying, “I want to hear what these guys have to say to each other.” It was halfway a joke, as I knew they weren’t going to talk about anything I wanted to hear while I was eavesdropping, so after they politely laughed I left.

I don’t know that they were talking about taking advantage of this great opportunity to merge the Columbia police and Richland County Sheriff’s departments, but I hope they were. Of course, such dialogue would be informal and unofficial at this point.

By the way, one of the reasons I maintained my membership at Cap City after being laid off was that it constantly exposes me to little inconclusive bits of intel such as this — you see who’s talking with whom, and sometimes learn what they’re talking about, and it all goes into the general hopper that provides perspective on what’s going on. Another reason I kept it was that I had just joined the governing board — two months before I was laid off — and didn’t want to bail on that. Besides, the food at the lunch meetings is great.

Just to round out this contact report, among the other board members at this meeting were Converse Chellis, Jim Hodges, John Scott, Warren Tompkins, Luther Battiste (our chairman), Jimmy Derrick, Robin Gorman, George Wolfe, Matt Kennell, Tom Persons, and my financial adviser (poor fellow) Chris Burnette. By the way, Chris advised me to keep my membership, so I know I was on solid ground with that decision. Of course, he’s also chairman of the membership committee. Hmmm.

Kathryn’s going to look at that list and say, “Hey! A Rotary meeting!”

Chief Tandy Carter fired, just like that

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Sometimes things actually do move swiftly in Colatown:

Embattled Columbia Police Chief Tandy Carter was fired this morning, following tensions with City Council over the handling of the April 21 car accident involving Columbia Mayor-elect Steve Benjamin.

Carter held a news conference at police headquarters just before noon today, insisting he acted within the scope of the law — and his personal code of ethics.

“I am a professional police chief,” Carter said. “I am not a puppet police chief.”

Well, now he’s not ANY kind of police chief.

I’m still sort of reeling over this. Tandy Carter was a good police chief. And then, in a situation in which it seemed OBVIOUS that the thing to do was bring in another agency, he dug in his heels and got all defensive. And I just don’t understand that.

I was thinking about it over the weekend, and wondering. When someone says, as I have since the start, that he should call in another agency on the Benjamin wreck, does he actually think that we’re saying we don’t trust him? That’s certainly not what I meant to say. I trusted him completely. But, not having been born yesterday, I clearly understood this as a situation in which lots of OTHER people wouldn’t trust him on it (you who read this blog regularly may have noticed that there are a few cynical people out there when it comes to their views of public officials). And there was no way he needed that heat, or Columbia needed the controversy.

This situation got crazy and went bad fast.

I’m still sort of spinning.

Carter requests review after AG says yes, he has to

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Over lunch I reTweeted the following two items:

JKuenzie: SC Attorney General tells Cola police chief he has “no discretion” to refuse council’s directive on Benjamin investigation.

Followed shortly by:

wis10: Columbia Police Chief asks SCHP to review Benjamin investigation http://bit.ly/btAzxg

Note that you can read Henry McMaster’s opinion at Adam Beam’s blog.

Now, the question will be: Does this defuse Chief Carter’s confrontation with his bosses? Or do they still have a situation they have to deal with?

And if they don’t fire him (and mind you, I’m not saying they should), what sort of situation do Steve Benjamin and other new council members inherit?

Times Square partially evacuated (2nd time today)

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This is still developing:

Times Square has been evacuated from West 44th to West 47th Streets after the police received reports of a suspicious package at Broadway and West 46th Street at about 12:45 p.m.The package appeared to be a small, white cooler, The Associated Press reports.

It was the second suspicious-package call and at least partial evacuation in the area today.

… but it looks like quite a pattern of nervousness has developed around Times Square.There’ve been seven such suspicious-package calls in the last few days.

That car bomb the other day didn’t go off, but it’s having an effect.

Should Tandy Carter lose his job over this?

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The simple answer is NO, in the shoulda woulda coulda sense that things should not have come to this pass:

Columbia police chief’s job in jeopardy

Carter’s refusal to hand over crash probe to outside agency angers City Council
By ADAM BEAM and NOELLE PHILLIPS – [email protected] [email protected]

Columbia Police Chief Tandy Carter, who has been staring down City Council over his decision to investigate Mayor-elect Steve Benjamin’s car accident, could lose his job next week.

Carter refused to hand over the investigation to an outside agency against the wishes of City Council, which is concerned about the public’s perception of special treatment. But the tipping point seems to be Carter’s request for a state attorney general’s opinion regarding what City Council can and cannot tell him to do.

“I just need to think about this whole situation on requesting an AG opinion on whether or not I have the authority to direct him to do something,” said city manager Steve Gantt, who under state law is the police chief’s supervisor. “I have to figure out what in the world he is thinking about and make a decision on what I think is in the long-term best interest for the city of Columbia.”…

But I wonder what choice Steve Gantt and City Council will have going forward. Gantt says he’s been asking the chief to request an outside review of the case for two weeks. Now, he’s going to tell him to do it.

Meanwhile, Chief Carter is asking the state attorney general to rule on whether his bosses can tell him what to do. Which is really, really weird.

Yes, I know that Columbia’s system of government diffuses and confuses the lines of accountability, but this is just too wild.

I hate that we may be about to lose a good police chief over this — and by most accounts, he has been a good chief at a time when Columbia needed one — but his behavior in this case has puzzled me from the start.

Mind you, I am sympathetic to his insistence on letting the duly sworn cops with jurisdiction in the case do their jobs. Normally, I say the same thing: When Congress starts calling for a special prosecutor, I always wish they’d let the FBI or whoever just investigate and be the professionals they are. But this case was especially sensitive. It happened to the soon-to-be mayor with whom Chief Carter was publicly disagreeing just a week before.

I could see myself saying, “Dammit, I know I’m a professional who can do his job with integrity, and I don’t care what anyone says.” But there are larger things than the professional pride of the police — such as the good of the city. And the good of the city required that any whiff of doubt about interest in this case be eliminated from the start.

And that didn’t happen. And the chief dug in. And the chief ignored the wishes of his bosses for two weeks. Why, I don’t know. But I also don’t know how they can sit still for it.

Council comes down hard on Columbia cops

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Just to give y’all something to discuss while I’m tinkering around under the hood of the blog, how about this for a topic:

Columbia City Council members Wednesday publicly questioned the police department’s decision to investigate Mayor-elect Steve Benjamin’s April 21 car accident, characterizing it as “a series of … horrible decisions.”

“We are wearing our credibility out,” Councilman Kirkman Finlay said. “My personal opinion? It’s disheartening.”

Council members said city residents are complaining, loudly, about the need for an outside agency to investigate. Benjamin, too, asked for an outside investigation, on the day of the accident that seriously injured the other driver but left him unhurt….

“I believe the credibility of the city and the investigation is at stake,” [Mayor Bob] Coble wrote. “Clearly there is a conflict with the City Police investigating the Mayor-elect just as if it were the Mayor. It would seem we have an obligation to avoid the appearance of a conflict as well.”…

Wednesday, reacting to what they said was public pressure, council members were ready to enact a new policy that would require the police department to turn over any investigations involving the Columbia city manager, assistant city managers, council members or council members-elect. Councilwoman Belinda Gergel, who proposed the policy, also wanted to include in the resolution language that would ask the Highway Patrol to take over the Benjamin accident investigation.

“It would help remove a cloud of uncertainty in the eyes of our citizens and residents,” Gergel said….

You should read the whole story. Pretty scathing.

It appears that the only people who think the Columbia Police Department should control this investigation is the Columbia Police Department.