Eric Beecher: Santa Barbara Police Officers Rebuke Genis Over Misconduct Allegations

» PGL on 12.11.11 @ 04:10 AM

While I agree completely with Officer Beecher’s characterization of Darryl Genis, the far more damning accusations against the SBPD have come from eyewitnesses who insist they saw police brutality in the Gelson’s parking lot.

Where’s the SBPOA statement on that? Does the police union just automatically close ranks around thuggish cops?

Just who IS running this city? I truly would like to know.

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» capmotion on 12.13.11 @ 11:17 AM

The Founding Fathers of this Republic considered a proactive constabulary to be anathema to the regime of liberty being established here, which they verbalized in complaint number 10 of the Declaration of Independence, commanding the King to get his liberty-invading agents out of here.  And proactive policing did not creep back into these shores until after the Civil War, when Lincoln had contra-constitutionally demonstrated that cries of “emergency” and “war” could lull the public and seduce the legislature and judiciary into transferring power from the people, and from the other branches, to the executive.

Those transfers from liberty to power have proceeded subtly but unabated from that epochal point, and so overwhelmingly that it frequently appears that power is the default position here and liberty the exception.  And it is on that stage that conscientious defenders of liberty like Darryl Genis act out the passion play that is American constitutionalism. 

It was the intent of the Framers that we have a robust criminal defense Bar, because the executive cannot be trusted to protect individuals from overweening government, since the executive is the overweening government.  Liberty is protected by criminal defense attorneys, whose armament sometimes is only the Constitution, and they stand with courage and resolve and determination against all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, some of whom would want to shoot the defenders as they do their clients, some of whom would want to beat them as they do their clients, and some of whom would falsely cry foul to the State Bar and to an unknowing public just as they lie about their clients. 

It is no accident, although sometimes an irony to know-nothings, that the founder of American conservatism, John Adams, was a criminal defense attorney!

Darryl Genis and his ilk should be saluted, because the aggressiveness and effectiveness of their work, case-by-case, ultimately protects the liberties of us all.  The police are Darth Vader; defense attorneys are Obi-Wan Kenobi; be not seduced by the dark side of the force.

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» capmotion on 12.14.11 @ 12:52 PM

I know nothing about the Tudor/Genis dust-up. What I do know is that there is an unhealthy climate there and across the Fruited Plaint from proactive constabulary [a contra-constitutional excrescence on our body of constitutional law] that needs to “proact” to justify its existence, and you have a judiciary that is much more protective of the police than of “regular” folks who come before the courts. 

I recall with the clarity of a tinkling bell the suppression of Free Speech rights attempted by your DA, and then genuflectingly acceded to by one of your judges, when Genis sought to reveal information about police activity there on a DUI case, police activity that my own investigation has suggested to me was duplicitous and corrupt.  Speech about governmental actions are the broadest of all expressive rights, yet your judge acquiesced to the demands of the censors because of embarrassment to his cop chums that would result if the truth were to meet the light of day.

There is terrorism afoot in the land, and it is not by turbaned mullahs from 10,000 miles away, but by badged ruffians right on our own streets, and those sorts of domestic terrorists are emboldened when the judiciary coddles them by protecting the secrecy of their depredations, as increasingly happens.

Actually, I don’t disagree with you, A, that cops should file more lawsuits, because then the secrecy their judicial chums have tried to protect would have to come out into the light of adversarial day.

Don’t get me wrong, there are good cops as well as bad; the problem is that the system conspires to protect the bad, and their otherwise good confederates protect instead of exposing them.  To me, the worst part of the Rodney King baton-assault and the U.C. Davis pepper-assault was not the thugs wielding the assaultive weapons, but the witnessing cops just standing around letting it happen and then tailoring their reports to make sure their pals suffered minimal exposure.  If the baton-wielders and pepper sprayer had not had badges, the gaggle of cops standing around would have pounced on them with a fury making Saddam look like Goldie-Locks, but because the felons were cops, they protected them.  And you have judges over there who would supply, and actually do supply, the same sort of protection.

Lawlessness in the name of “law” “enforcement” has a tinny ring that would cause the Framers veritably to whirl in their graves.

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» capmotion on 12.14.11 @ 06:18 PM

@grundss: Thanks for the offer, but the only “spirits” of interest to me are the constitutional ones of the Framers. If you drink of that cup, you are intoxicated by Liberty and will tolerate not the fascists who would try to sober you up.

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