Libertarians should be shocked! But should they be electrocuted?

In a post which shrilly and gratuitously indicts libertarians, a leading left-wing blog looks at a Seattle outrage in which the cops improperly tasered a woman over her refusal to sign simple traffic ticket:

Three Seattle police officers were justified when they used a stun gun on a pregnant mother who refused to sign a traffic ticket, a federal appeals court ruled Friday in a case that prompted an incredulous dissent.

Malaika Brooks was driving her son to Seattle's African American Academy in 2004 when she was stopped for doing 32 mph in a school zone. She insisted it was the car in front of her that was speeding, and refused to sign the ticket because she thought she'd be admitting guilt.

Rather than give her the ticket and let her go on her way, the officers decided to arrest her. One reached in, turned off her car and dropped the keys on the floor. Brooks stiffened her arms against the steering wheel and told the officers she was pregnant, but refused to get out, even after they threatened to stun her.

The officers -- Sgt. Steven Daman, Officer Juan Ornelas and Officer Donald Jones -- then stunned her three times, in the thigh, shoulder and neck, and hauled her out of the car, laying her face-down in the street.

The blogger does not provide any link to the story, and the Memeorandum link was the first mention I'd seen of the incident. If the facts are as described, what happened was outrageous. The woman sued and won in the trial court, and then the Court of Appeal reversed the case and held 2-1 that the officers were immune from suit. Officers should not be tasering people over trivial offenses, so I agree with the stinging dissent.

What I do not agree with is the blogger's ridiculous attempt to scold libertarians:

...where are all the anti-authoritarian libertarians now? It seems as if they only care about the constitution when it comes to taxes and guns. Someone else's right not to be electrocuted for refusing to sign a traffic ticket? Not their problem.
That is such a crock. I've lost track of the number of posts I've written complaining about police abuses, and I'm not even going to dignify his argument by supplying links.

As to the "right not be be electrocuted" he does not know what the word means. This woman was tasered. Shocked with electricity. Stunned, not killed.

The word "electrocute" is not complicated, and I think most people know that it means killed:

vb (tr)
1. to kill as a result of an electric shock
2. (Law) US to execute in the electric chair
[from electro- + (exe)cute]
So, while I believe that people do have a "right not to be electrocuted for refusing to sign a traffic ticket," that is not what happened here.

I don't know what is more shocking: the underlying story itself or its mischaracterization and gratuitous smear of libertarians as people who "fail to care about the constitution [except] when it comes to taxes and guns."

I'm going to stick my neck out here and venture that if there is a "right not to be electrocuted for refusing to sign a traffic ticket," then it follows that libertarians also have a right not to be electrocuted for allegedly remaining silent about a police outrage they might not have known about -- mainly because it was only reported yesterday.

I'm shocked! Stunned!

But I'm about as surprised as I am electrocuted.

posted by Eric on 03.27.10 at 01:11 PM





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Comments

Eric - The latest story just came out yesterday.

As you may know, I live in the Seattle area and often comment on stories on my own site and at Sound Politics.

I didn't comment on this one because (1) I haven't any special knowledge and (2) because I more interested in policy stories than individual stories.

If some one were to ask me about this story, I would say that, yes, the police seem to have erred (as well as the woman), but that news reports are so often incomplete (and sometimes wrong) so I couldn't say more about the subject than that.

Let me end with a more general point: It is odd that so many leftist bloggers think they can order conservatives, or libertarians, to write posts on particular subjects. I've always thought that one of the most essential parts of freedom of speech -- was the freedom not to speak.

(Incidentally, this hasn't been treated as a big story in this area.)

Jim Miller   ·  March 27, 2010 02:34 PM

In some states, you may be signing a guilty plea when you sign a traffic ticket. New Mexico is one.

I have refused to comply with an officer's request before and was told I'd be arrested if I didn't. I did not attempt to resist the arrest, but he suddenly changed his mind about my failure to answer his idiotic questions about why I was on that particular section of highway at that particular time.

Donna B.   ·  March 27, 2010 03:59 PM

An elected county supervisor in rural Tahama County, California named Kathleen Rowen, refused to sign a traffic ticket back in the 1990's. She demanded to be taken to a magistrate as referenced in the Constitution. So the CHP officer arrested her, and threw her in the Trinity County jail overnight, until a judge could be found. The newspaper article of this woman standing tall, eventually led to her downfall.
This woman and two other women county supervisors, forming a majority on the board, tried their best bring a little libertarian revamping of the county zoning code. At every turn they were thwarted, until finally the "good ol' boys" got them recalled. During the year long ruckus in 1995, the liberals in the county used every dirty trick imaginable, including setting off a bomb in the mail box of supervisor Landingham. After they were recalled, JoAnn Landingham, a retired kindergarten teacher, was so upset by the events and continuing treats, that she left the country, moving to South Korea as an English teacher.
Of course none of this got national attention like a brick through the window of some Democrat elected official.

An early write up these events is still available in the LA Times archives at: http:
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-12-04/news/mn-10253_1_tehama-county

Frank   ·  March 27, 2010 07:52 PM

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