Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The battle for the nation's dumbest state legislator has been won. Utah state Sen. Chris Buttars has now officially crossed the line from looney religious righter to outright Orwellian nightmare. He has submitted a bill in Utah to make all reports of police misconduct secret and unavailable to the public.
A new bill proposed at the legislature would allow for police to withhold misconduct reports from the public. Supporters of the bill believe that police misconduct should be kept secret from the public so to not discredit police testimony...Currently, misconduct reports are available in Utah with an official records request. Under the bill SB260, sponsored by Senator Chris Buttars, the video and investigation report from Massey's tazering might have been kept secret from the public and journalists.
This is absolutely insane. How many instances do we need to have of shocking police behavior before we realize that the police need to be policed and that the only way to do that is for their actions to be made public? How many times do we have to see vice cops use fake testimony and gun down innocent people? How many times do we have to see cops complaining of not being allowed by other cops to break the law, including driving drunk, to conclude that there are a hell of a lot of cops around who think they're above the law?
How many cops have to get caught bragging about abusing inmates and waxing eloquent about how tasing someone "puts a smile on your face"? Or see video of a cop telling a kid that he'd better do what he's told or he'll just invent evidence of wrongdoing and arrest him? If it wasn't on video, no one would even believe the kid. And this crap goes on all the time. And the public has a right to know. And anyone who thinks otherwise has no business being in public office.
Comments
Oh, yes, let's maintain a police reputation for honesty and law-abiding by covering up the crimes they commit.
Whenever I hear crap like this from woo apologists complaining about skeptics pointing out wrongdoing in woos, I think I might use this for an analogy.
Posted by: Bronze Dog | February 18, 2008 11:33 AM
Wait, what? We want people to trust the police, so we should keep secret how untrustworthy they are? We should, in effect, keep the police's misdeeds secret so that they can more freely lie to us in future?
Posted by: Morgan | February 18, 2008 11:43 AM
The sad part is, I bet you will find a large part of the public believing this is a good law. <sarcasm>After all, it's only the drug dealers and illegal immigrants and other darkies who have anything at all to fear from the police.</sarcasm> Radley Balko is doing what he can to inform people that a police state is not in their interests, but it's just not what they want to hear. Nothing short of a real revolution, with 50% of the population engaging in civil disobedience, getting arrested, and clogging the court system, will change that perception that police are better than the rest of us "civilians."
Posted by: Shawn Smith | February 18, 2008 12:01 PM
So, according to Buttars, if (for example) the police use torture to force a confession, the use of torture should be kept secret so as not to discredit the confession in court. Lovely.
I think, though, that it's unfair to call Buttars the 'dumbest state legislator' for this. Republican neocons have been making the same argument with regard to foreign enemies for years now: waterboarding prisoners is fine, but talking about waterboarding prisoners hurts America; Abu Ghraib was a few bad apples, but the people blowing the whistle on Abu Ghraib handed our enemies a propaganda victory; etc, etc. Bush himself, again, has conducted the 'war on terror' with utter criminal incompetence, but according to every Republican mouthpiece, it's far worse - treason! Sedition! - to point out Bush's failures than it is to, you know, actually be responsible for the failures. Buttars deserves no award; his argument is a perfectly logical extension of those principles to domestic law enforcement.
And I'm not even going to get into the Republican claim that torture and brutality of every sort is 'tough, legal and effective'; I'm just going to mention that Buttars may simply see killing/Tasering/abusing people who draw the ire of the cops as proper operating procedure for effective law enforcement (after all, they wouldn't be there [in a position to be abused] if they hadn't done *something*); which, again, makes him a typical mainstream Republican, and nothing special at all.
Posted by: ithaqua | February 18, 2008 12:36 PM
Addendum: Buttars might also believe that the vast majority of claims of police misconduct - especially the ones captured on video - are lies meant to discredit the police, which, again, is just the standard Republican foreign policy line, as seen in this New York Times article:
"Nothing in the camp [Guantanamo] is what it seems," says the English translation of [former detainee] Mr. Kurnaz's book, due to be published April 1. "Nothing is the way the U.S. Army says it is and as it has been reported, filmed and photographed by journalists."
[...]When read Mr. Kurnaz's assertions, a Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon dismissed it as a deception of its own.
"Al Qaeda operatives," Commander Gordon said, "are trained to make false accusations about the conditions of their detention, in order to garner public sympathy."
Again, a perfectly logical extension of basic principles from foreign enemies (terrorists and their supporters) to domestic enemies (criminals and their supporters). No award-worthy stupidity, just banal Republicanism.
Posted by: ithaqua | February 18, 2008 12:43 PM
Wait, I didn't think there was such a thing as police misconduct anymore. Isn't that why we're one vote away from scrapping the exclusionary rule?
Posted by: Dan | February 18, 2008 1:57 PM
Dan:
Exactly - the police can do no wrong. Everything they do is legal by definition. Don't you know? Everything the government does or wants to do is legal and beneficial by definition. You're just a terrorist-loving anarchist if you believe otherwise.
Posted by: Patrick | February 18, 2008 2:20 PM
Ed, I can't believe you're trying to undermine the "New Professionalism." The Scalia said it, so it must be true.
Posted by: kehrsam | February 18, 2008 6:59 PM
Why does Senator Buttars remind me of the senator in The Godfather Pt II? The one that became Michael Corleone's lapdog after being 'caught' in a whorehouse with a dead prostitute?
Just sayin'...
Posted by: Tyler | February 18, 2008 7:04 PM
You've really got to wonder about someone who answers "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" with "no-one". I don't care how trustworthy (or not, I read Balko too" the police are. This si not about trust, governemnt is not about trusting people. Anyone who works for a government (like me) has to be prepared to have their decisions exposed to scrutiny.
Acutally this might be a good time for an Alpha Centauri quote: "Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Posted by: James K | February 18, 2008 11:16 PM
Is this guy a relative of the kid who wears aluminium headgear and constantly plans to unleash (very lame) choas on Southpark, Colorado? -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | February 19, 2008 12:09 AM
Ed, you need to look into Stacey Campfield of Tennessee. You may have jumped the gun a bit here.
Posted by: Rob | February 19, 2008 8:43 PM
heh heh did he say butt arse?)? -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | February 20, 2008 9:17 AM