Sole Morality

Bully Badge

Ok, it has been a little bit. Good grief things have been busy and still are busy. But I came across this article via @cboyack and @ekimatuan on Twitter and it made me feel ill.

Out of the Philadelphia Daily News comes a report of police bullying that will make you want to throw something (preferably not at the LCD monitor, they can be expensive). Here's the scenario.

Imagine you are in your car and are rear-ended by another vehicle that drives off instead of stopping. The driver of the other vehicle turns out to be the son of a local cop who is on duty. The son goes and reports the accident to dad. What do you think should happen?

Morally, the father shouldn't show any preference in taking the report of the accident. Ethically, I believe the father shouldn't even get involved and the entire incident should be handled by another officer if not an officer from a different department. Relation to an officer should play no part in the investigation of an accident. What do you think actually happened? Well, if you didn't click through the link, then I can almost guarantee you won't guess. The cop assaults the victim.

Officer Lopez takes his son in his patrol car to the convenience store the accident victims are at and confronts him. During all of this, his son is armed with a handgun, although it was never drawn. Officer Lopez's account is that he ordered Agnes Lawless and her three companions to the ground and that she resisted, assaulting the officer. That is the charge she was arrested on and for which spent a night in jail. That is the story that the courts believed over Lawless' story, even though all three of her companions and the store clerk gave stories that matched hers.

The fact that the courts would side with a cop over the victim isn't unheard of as they often are faced with a he-said-she-said situation of events. The fact that they believed a single police officer over the victim and four other witnesses is concerning if not suspect. Oh, did I mention that the officer's son was involved in the accident that lead to this, thereby possibly prejudicing him in the recount of the events? I did? Oh, I don't see why I bothered since the officer didn't! In fact, he didn't even use his son's name in the report, only referring to him as a "witness." But the court did side with the officer and suggest that Lawless be brought to trial. Well, they did until the store's security footage was released and showed a different course of events. One that matched Lawless' version.

Despite her not being hostile in the least at the outset of the encoutner, Officer Lopez proceeded to approach Lawless from behind with a drawn handgun, forcibly grab her by the neck, force his gun against her neck, and struck her in the face. Lawless, uncertain of what was going on and obviously confused by the lack of professional behavior, felt that the best thing would be to leave the situation and call for some "real cops." She is stopped and physically restrained, not by Officer Lopez, but by his son. Officer Lopez twice asks the store clerk to "do himself a favor" and erase the security camera footage. Three times after the incident, cops tell the clerk to erase the tapes and testify for the cop.

With the video out and the charges aginst Lawless dropped, an Internal Affairs investigation was conducted. Here is a man who violated the public's trust by engaging in completely inappropriate and unprofessional behavior, comitted multiple crimes as he assaulted members of the public, and endangered the lives of all of the people in the store when he needlessly initiated a physical confrontation with a drawn handgun, pressing it up against the body of an innocent person in a threatening manner. Certainly plenty for an IA investigation to work from and with video footage of the encounter, you'd think that would be plenty of evidence.

No, not really. And this is where the article got my attention.

After four months, the district attourney decided not to prosecute Officer L0pez. In the end, the Internal Affairs investigation found that Officer Lopez had violated departmental policies, but that was all. He was reissued his gun and is back on full duty although the department may still reprimand him.

Frankly, that is thoroughly insufficient. He should have lost his gun, his badge, and his commission and been barred from ever being employed in law enforcement again.

Lapses in judgment like that of Officer Lopez's would be utterly inexcusable if committed by the public and should be equally so when committed by police officers. Officers should be ticketed every time they are caught speeding and not let off for the exact reason that they are police officers and should be setting the example of the behavior they expect the populous at large to exhibit. They should be the shining examples of what it means to be a law abiding citizen.

Police officers are granted an incalculable trust by the public and when they violate that trust, there must be significant consequences if the people are to be able to continue to place that trust in the police as a whole. Christ put it best when he told the mass assembled to put the adulterous woman to death when he advised the person who was without sin to cast the first stone.

How can we allow someone to enforce the rule of law who is on film eggregiously violating that law and reportedly shouting, "You think you can hit my son and get away with it, you think you can f--- with me?"

We can't and we should never be asked to do so.

Discriminating Language

It is not at all uncommon for laws to prohibit places of public accommodation, such as restaurants, to prohibit against discrimination. The city of Philadelphia has just such a law entitled the Fair Practice Ordinance and it disallows discrimination based on the following protected classes: ancestry, color, disability, gender identity, marital status, national origin, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation. Now, regardless of whether I personally agree that all of those should be protected classes, the law seems pretty straightforward. You can't refuse service based on any of those factors.

Back in early 2006, Joey Vento decided to put up a sign in his Philadelphia cheese steak shop, Geno's Steaks. The sign reads "This is America. When ordering, please speak English." His reason for the sign? "If you can't tell me what you want, I can't serve you," he said. "It's up to you. If you can't read, if you can't say the word cheese, how can I communicate with you -- and why should I have to bend?" (Quoted in a Boston.com article, which was quoting a Philadelphia Inquirer story that is no longer available online.)

Ask yourself, does the sign violate the law and discriminate based on one of those classes?

I'd say it does discriminate, but not on any of those classes. We can throw out the sex/gender classes as they don't really apply here. Religion, disability, and marital status can go too as they don't seem to even come close to having to do with language. Race, ancestry, color, and national origin are left. For me to determine whether the sign discriminates on any of those, I would ask myself, is English inextricably linked to any of those classes?

Color and Race: nope, lots of people of all colors and races both speak and don't speak English.

Ancestry: same thing, lots of different ancestries speak and don't speak ancestry. I can turn away a non-English speaker of Slavic ancestry and not turn away an English speaker of Slavic ancestry.

What about national origin? Not really. If you come here from Oman, I won't turn you away as long as you are ordering in English.

As far as I can tell, it doesn't break the law. Does it discriminate? Certainly, but it does so on the basis of language, something that isn't protected. It is akin to refusing service to those who aren't wearing a shirt or shoes or refusing service to people who make too much or too little money (which Philadelphia does protect in certain circumstances, but not for restaurants).

So do you agree? Did I reach the right conclusion?

Apparently, Philadelphia's Human Relations Commission (HRC) doesn't agree with me. They believe it discriminates against people of certain backgrounds. From an article on the Philadelphia Daily News:

Paul Hummer, the attorney prosecuting the complaint against Vento on behalf of the HRC, said the sign "discriminates on the basis of national origin because national origin and language are linked."

When it comes to national origin though, Joey Vento is no stranger. His grandparents immigrated from Sicily speaking no English and he indicates that it took his parents learning English in school before they, according to this ABC News article puts it, "realized the American Dream."

Vento is fond of promoting English as being essential to being American and often paraphrases this quote from a 1919 letter written by President Theodore Roosevelt ( (pdf copy of it can be obtained here, courtesy of snopes.com)), often mistaken for being from 1907, while he would have been in office:

"There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room but for one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality; we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people."

The above ABC article goes on to note that:

While some in the Philadelphia community worry Vento's sign might give the City of Brotherly love a bad reputation, Vento says his customers -- even the non-English speakers -- think it's funny. He is quick to point out he has never refused service to anyone who didn't speak the language.

"Here at Geno's no one, and I mean no one, in 40 years has ever been refused service for a language barrier."

So, if he doesn't discriminate based on it, who's being hurt? Who is being discriminated? Well, what if someone doesn't order because they read the sign and didn't bother to come to the counter because they don't speak English?

If someone can't speak enough english to ask for "one cheese steak," then chances are, they can't read the sign anyway and how are they going to be offended and discriminated against in the first place? And again, this goes back to the idea that discriminating on the basis of national origin and language is the same thing.

I'll tell you what I and a lot of others see the sign as discriminating: those who value the importance of free and political speech, even speech they may not agree with, and those who don't. That sign is Joey Vento's avenue of advocating for English to be the common language.

Free speech needs to be protected, not prosecuted.

Alcohol and Minors

From the Washington Post comes an article about a mom and her ex-husband who are going to jail. Here are the basic facts (I'll discuss her reasoning in a moment). Elisa Kelly and George Robinson decided to host a party for their son Ryan's 16th birthday. Ryan asked his mother to supply alcohol. Elisa and George supplied wine and beer upon the condition that none of them could leave the party. The police were called and found that nine of the sixteen party attendees had alcohol in their system, though none met the legal limit for intoxication.

There are assertions that she lied to the parents of the attending teenagers in saying that there would be no alcohol and also that she told the kids that gargling with vinegar would cover up the alcohol, though she denies both in this article. And if the history they give in that article is correct (substitute teacher, baseball coach, never had a parking or speeding ticket), I am inclined to believe her. After all, she has never denied what she did and has only contested the sentence (more on that to come).

Her reasoning is what really makes me think. She indicated that she believed that they were going to go get drunk whether she provided the alcohol or not. In fact, she notes in the second article that she would pick up these kids from other parties and they would be drunk. By her providing it, she was able to keep tabs on how much of what was consumed and, perhaps more importantly, she could control driving. In fact, according to her interview on this website, she went around collecting car keys and had other plans

I remember a friend of mine, Jerry (not his real name), losing his father while we were in high school. His dad suffered a heart attack while out horseback riding. The family was one of those families that welcomed anyone into it who needed some support. Consequently, there were about half a dozen other teenagers who felt as though they had lost their father figure. I remember stopping by that night and his mom walking up to me with a bucket full of keys, asking for my keys. She explained that her son and his friends were going to go out and get drunk to deal with this death whether she liked it or not and that there was nothing she could do to stop him. So instead she bought the beer and had them come to the house. That way, she could keep an eye on them and make sure no tried to drive home. I explained that I wouldn't be drinking and she told me that as long as I didn't even touch a bottle or can of anything, I could hang onto my keys. I conveyed my condolences to Jerry and talked with him and the other people there for about 20 minutes before I left.

It took me a while to process her reasoning, but in the end, I really agreed with what she did. Yes, she was breaking the law, but given her choices, she chose what I believe to be the lesser of the two evils. I don't know if any of those teenagers would have gotten killed driving home drunk had she not done what she did, but I do know that every one of them was at her house and not driving because of what she did.

Back to the 16th birthday party, I am left wondering the same thing about this woman and her son's party. The first article indicates that the judge was angry about the death of a teen the year before who was driving drunk. So, despite the prosecuting attorney's recommended 90 day sentence, the judge sent them each to jail for 8 years. Upon appeal to the Circuit Court, it was dropped to 27 months, the suggested 90 days plus 2 years.

So, to sum up, we have judge who wrongly lets a previous, completely unrelated incident of a teen killed while driving drunk sway his opinion in sentencing a man and woman who broke the law by throwing a party designed to keep teens from driving drunk. Anyone see anything wrong there?

I talked with a friend from Germany the other day who told met hat the legal age to drink in Germany is 16. The legal age to drive is 18. She told me that she went drinking at a club before she was 16 and there was a police sting. They simply made the under 16 leave the club but didn't do a thing about the fact that alcohol had been served to those under age. It simply isn't a big deal over there. You really don't even get carded. And drinking at home with your parents is the norm.

She went on to say that binge drinking isn't a problem over there. Drunk driving isn't either (although I am sure a better public transit system plays into this as well). Because it is open and accepted, teens don't have to find ways to sneak out to drink and then they don't feel the pressure to drink as much as they can because they may not be able to drink again anytime soon. They can learn to drink openly and (speaking generally) responsibly.

I wonder if that would work here in the United States. Would allowing teenagers to learn about and how to drink before they learn to drive and in a controlled and open manner reduce drunk driving and drunk driving deaths? I bet that more teens would be calling home asking for a ride instead of desperately attempting to make it home with their car and sleep off the buzz before their parents realize what they were out doing.

I realize that this is a rather controversial topic and there are probably a few of you out there with some differing opinions on the matter. I'd love to hear from as many of you as possible regarding whether you agree or disagree with me on any of my points above. Just be sure to include in your comment why you believe what you do. Purely visceral responses don't lend themselves towards productive discussion very well.

***Disclaimers***
Let me state explicitly for those who do not know or may be wondering at this point, I do not drink and have never tasted alcohol. I hope and plan to raise my children to do the same.

Also, I do realize that this line of reasoning can be easily extended to drug use. I realize that and I have chosen not to write about that. It very well may be addressed in a later post, but this one is too long already.