June 21, 2006

ACLU Fumes as the Good Guys Win One

Uh oh. In America’s never-ending game of Cops vs. Robbers, the umpires are starting to show favoritism toward the good guys. And the American Civil Liberties Union appears helpless to stop this travesty of good sportsmanship.

The ACLU’s latest attempt to even the playing field between police and criminals ran into a problem in the form of five U.S. Supreme Court justices – the five who haven’t gotten the memo that says law enforcement is a mere contest of wills between two sides of equal moral standing.

Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy last week sided with Detroit police and their action to enter the home of one Booker T. Hudson, from whom they seized five rocks of crack cocaine and a gun for use as evidence. Mr. Hudson, represented in the case by a Wayne State University law professor acting on behalf of the ACLU, was sentenced to a whopping 18 months’ probation. Still, his ACLU-backed attorney argued that he was railroaded.

What did the police do wrong? Did they fail to obtain a warrant? No. Did they fail to announce themselves before entering the home? No. The problem, then? They waited only three-to-five seconds between announcing themselves and letting themselves in. Oh, and they didn’t knock.

Three-to-five seconds! Anyone knows that’s not enough time to hide evidence.

But since when does legal precedent see any value in giving an advantage to law enforcement? In its predictable editorial decrying the ruling, the New York Times notes that the decision shoves aside legal precedent dating back as far as 1914, and expresses abhorrence that Scalia would dismiss supposed privacy concerns as desiring "the right not to be intruded upon in one's nightclothes."

The joke is on the Times, which fails to understand what Justice Scalia grasps perfectly well. Mr. Hudson was not thinking, “I’m not decent! Wait until Ma is in her kerchief and I in my cap!” He was thinking, “#$)*%! I need to stash my stash!”

The court minority, the Times and the ACLU complain that the decision weakens the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure. But that’s an interesting way of defining unreasonable. The police suspect there is evidence of a crime. So they obtain a warrant, approach the home, announce that they are the police and are about to enter the home where they think they will find the evidence, then do so.

And they find the very evidence they expected to find.

This is unreasonable? Barging into someone’s house and rummaging through their personal belongings because they made fun of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s earring – now that would be unreasonable search and seizure, and it’s the kind of thing the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent. It was not written to prevent warrant-wielding police officers from confirming their suspicions that there is of evidence of a crime waiting to be found.

But it’s not fair play!

In the paranoid fantasy world of the ACLU, police officers are a greater threat to the health, welfare and security of the general populace than criminals. Police have guns! They can put handcuffs on you! They can beat you with billy clubs!

It’s almost surprising that the ACLU hasn’t brought suit to eliminate police departments altogether (then again, who would they sue?), but they seem content to simply try to make sure criminals have as much chance of getting away with crime as the police do at stopping them. That makes the game fair.

Certainly, police need to be held accountable if they abuse their power. And occasionally some officers do just that. Then again, the number of police officers who are shot and killed every year by the kinds of criminals the ACLU likes to stick up for would tend to even out the accountability meter somewhat.

Most Americans are less concerned with the police following the rule book to a T than they are with the police succeeding at their mission – preventing crime and locking up criminals. If three-to-five seconds is too little time to prepare for the police to enter your home . . . good! I’m not rooting for fairness in Cops vs. Robbers. I’m looking for a decisive Cops win.

That doesn’t mean you sit by and allow police misconduct, nor does it mean we start turning a blind eye to truly unreasonable search and seizure. But the Booker T. Hudsons of the world do not need to be set free for these principles to be protected. Nor do their likely victims need to be hung out to dry, just so the ACLU can congratulate itself for evening a playing field that ought to be tilted to favor the good guys.

And it’s not the fault of the rest of us that the ACLU doesn’t know who the good guys are.

This is Column # DC38. Request permission to publish here.