Whipped Cream Difficulties

(Hattip to BlogHouston, where “Chron Eye for the Death Row Killer Guy” is a recurring feature.)

The Statesman seems to have embarked on a pro-David Lee Powell campaign, in advance of Mr. Powell’s scheduled execution on June 15th.

Yesterday, we were treated to a long article about Powell, his desire to live, and whether his execution had “been robbed of its meaning and purpose” after 32 years.

Today, we’re treated to an editorial stating that life without parole would be a fair punishment for Mr. Powell, since, after all, he hasn’t repeated his crimes and has been a model citizen on Death Row for the past 32 years.

Now, why did it take 32 years to get to this point? Well, part of the reason is that Mr. Powell has appealed his conviction twice, and was granted new trials in 1991 and 1999.

And what did Mr. Powell do to justify the death penalty? He killed a cop, Officer Ralph A. Ablanedo. Specifically, he gunned Officer Ablanedo down with an AK-47. (This was in 1978; I’m not sure if, when the paper refers to an “AK-47”, they mean a real AK-47, or one of these AK-47s. However, the APD site refers to a “fully automatic AK-47”, so I’ll give the paper the benefit of the doubt on this one.)

In addition…

Powell opened fire on a second officer when he was stopped a short time later, and also tossed a hand grenade, which failed to explode.

There does not seem to be any legitimate question about Powell’s guilt. The whole thrust of the Statesman‘s argument is that Powell’s successfully fought a delaying action for 32 years; and now that he’s managed to delay this long, we shouldn’t execute him because too much time has passed since the crime.

I’m not a blind supporter of the death penalty. I believe there are problems with it (and, at some point, I’d like to do a longer post about that). But Powell is not the poster child for injustice that the Statesman is making him out to be.

Police do not have an expectation of privacy in their public encounters with the citizenry.  In fact, they should have instead an expectation of public accountability for the performance of that work.  When a free people give police the authority to enforce our laws and to have the leeway to commit acts of violence in doing so, that is a trust that requires oversight and accountability.  The vast majority of police officers enforce the law in a lawful, professional manner, but some abuse their positions of trust.  Removing oversight makes it more difficult for the professionals to do their job and easier for the small number of abusers to bully others into following their example.

The problem isn’t that this needs to be said. The problem is that it isn’t being said where it needs to be said; in a 9-0 decision by the United States Supreme Court, written by Antonin Scalia.

(Hattip: Insta.)

I’ve been clicking through some articles on Jimbo’s site about the Seattle P.D. stomping incident, and ran across some things that made me go “Hmmmm.”

From the linked article:

Police records show that about 1:15 a.m. that night, four Hispanic men walked up to a man in the China Harbor parking lot and told him to give up his money. One pulled a 3-inch machete.

A three inch machete? I ran that past Lawrence, and his response was, “Did the bad guy also pull out the action figure that came with it?”

The same article links to the Seattle P.D. report on the incident. From that document:

<redacted> said that Suspect 1 pulled out a 3′ machete.

Three feet is a bit more convincing. But let’s think about this. Three feet is 36 inches, or the size of a yardstick. Wikipedia defines a typical machete as being 12.8 to 24 inches long. Three feet is getting more into broadsword territory. How do you conceal something like that? Stuffed down a pant leg? What does the draw stroke look like?

Lawrence pointed out that Jason’s machete in the Friday the 13th movies is three feet long; all the reproductions of that I can find online are not sharpened, though I suppose that can be fixed easily with a grindstone and some time.

I spent a great deal of time trying to find the Spinal Tap Stonehenge video on YouTube, but the only version I found does not appear to be embeddable. So I’ll leave you with this:

Not a 3" machete.

The story gets more interesting.

The Statesman states they’ve managed to get a copy of the independent report on the shooting incident involving Officer Quintana.

The 162-page report by KeyPoint Government Solutions, which was hired by the City of Austin to independently investigate the fatal shooting of Nathaniel Sanders II, reached conclusions that stand in contrast to the findings of police Chief Art Acevedo, who found that Quintana had not used excessive force or poor tactics. The consultant’s report was completed last fall, but its key findings were kept secret.

…

The report also said Quintana’s tactics in the moments before the May 11, 2009, shooting were far worse than careless or negligent and instead bluntly declared them “reckless.” Investigators wrote in the report that they were “mindful of the legal import of the term.”

Note that Chief Acevedo rejects the findings of this report, and has stated that the shooting was “objectively reasonable and within Austin Police Department policy.” Note that Office Quintana was no-billed by a grand jury.

It is also worth pointing out that the Statesman is reporting based on what they claim is the full version of the report. That version has not been released to the public; only heavily edited parts has been released, and the city is fighting against releasing the full version.

So how did the Statesman get it?

This week, American-Statesman reporter Tony Plohetski received a call from a person who did not identify himself and said he had a complete copy of the document. The man declined to say how he had possession of the report but agreed to meet Plohetski so he could review it. When they met, Plohetski did not recognize the man, who again did not identify himself. He allowed Plohetski to review it for nearly three hours.

Curious. Curious, indeed.

How should we treat police officers who make a mistake in their personal lives?

Clearly, it depends on the severity of the mistake. For the moment, though, let’s talk about something that’s a misdemeanor. Something like driving while intoxicated.

Should that officer lose his job? Does it make a difference if this was a first offense, or if there was a repeated pattern of DWI offenses? (For our purposes, we’re assuming that there were no injuries or property damage involved.)

Do the circumstances matter? Does it make a difference if the officer was out all night drinking at a “gentlemen’s club”? Does it make a difference if he turned down an offer to sleep it off at someone else’s house, and decided to drive home with a women he picked up?

Does it matter that he was carrying a weapon at the time he was arrested? Does it matter that he initially refused blood and breath tests; and when he was tested an unspecified number of hours later, he still tested over the limit?

Does it matter that he capped a guy last year, and was suspended for 15 days because he didn’t turn on the camera in his squad car?

I’m hesitant to take away someone’s rice bowl because of one mistake in their personal life. On the other hand, he’s a cop. We give him the power to carry a gun, to forcibly detain people, and even to shoot them. Don’t we have a right to expect “the highest levels of ethical conduct” from those people? Doesn’t DWI, even a first offense with no injuries, violate that expectation?

Or is the chief of police taking advantage of one mistake to get rid of an already controversial officer?