Revenge of the Thin Blue Line 42: Carol Stream Police invade an apartment and shoot a black person

Just last week I wrote about a work friend wanting to disccuss Harvard Professor Roland Fryer's, interview with Bari Weiss concerning his 2016 study which PROVED!  BEYOND QUESTION!  there is no Racial Bias in Police Shootings... and then dumb old reality just had to butt in and disprove his theory.

If I were a more jaded person, I might overlay Fryer’s faulty and ridiculous claims over the body cam footage from Carol Stream.  But, I am not a ghoul. 

The Carol Stream Police Department had an Officer-involved shooting.  As always, I want you to understand that Police advocates have fought for years for this semi-blameless language to be used in official proceedings and in news reports because language is the first line of defense and weapon to be used to exonerate the Officers involved.

The case in Carol Stream involves a misdemeanor domestic battery.  The victim was out of the apartment.  Her injuries, while not reported in detail, did not necessitate hospitalization.  Inside the apartment was the suspected offender Isaac Goodlow.

When making a warrantless entry there are 3 exceptions; Consent, Hot Pursuit, Exigent Circumstances.

“Hot Pursuit” is obvious you’re chasing someone whose committed a crime and they attempt to defeat arrest by hiding in a house

“Exigent Circumstances”  is the immediate need to protect someone’s life (e.g. someone screaming for help or seeing a house on fire.)

She provided “Consent” for the Officers to go into the apartment where the suspect Isaac Goodlow was but, she did not have the right to make authorization as she did not live there and therefore the entry does not fall under the Search Warrant exceptions.

Officers may in good faith believe she has authority but, simply taking her word for it is not enough fact-checking.  Especially, when the victim of the crime is not in harm’s way and there is no on-going emergency which would lead the Officers to believe they had to apprehend the offender immediately.

Carol Stream Police Chief Donald Cummings gave a statement about the Officers attempts to get Goodlow to come out of the apartment before getting the maintenance man to open the door to the open gaining the Officers entry.  At this point, someone in the CSPD needed to say stop why don't we get a warrant to enter; this would have a two-fold effect of lowering the Officer's emotions and further provide Goodlow the opportunity to surrender.  But, instead the Officers went in.

6 officers went inside the residence.  From the "stack", it certainly looks like they wanted to do a SWAT style building entry, a maneuver which is en vogue, with training and tactics these days.  One Officer has a ballistic shield, another Officer has a Taser ready, and at least two had guns drawn.  

I think I know what happened with the first shot.  Everyone in that group is jazzed.  And I think the Officer had his finger on the trigger.  And as they entered the room with auditory exclusion, tunnel vision, jittery hands, and adrenaline pumping up his heart rate, he got startled, and the sympathetic nervous system gave the “Startle Response” and he squeezed the trigger.  The next shot and Taser deployment where in response to the first shot.

And like that Goodlow was shot and killed.

The Police Chief which listed off all the steps that will and must be taken to investigate this shooting and give full due process to the Officers involved.  Now, juxtapose this with the scant due process given to the dead man Isaac Goodlow.

"The totality of the video, including the events that occurred before and after the shooting, will be released at a later date pursuant to the completion of the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office review. Once the investigation is completed by the Public Integrity Team, the State’s Attorney’s Office will conduct a comprehensive evaluation of all forensic evidence, witness accounts, and officer statements to make a determination regarding the actions of those involved."

Due Process, you see is only available, to inherently good people who find themselves in an unfortunate situation.

For instance, right now, a cult of martyrdom is growing around Derek Chauvin to turn him into the American Nelson Mandela.  And while this is part of the broader rightwing attempt to undermine Law&Order and replace it with their Fascist White Power Fundamentalism understand the Chauvin Cultists and people who support each and every police shooting of black people can never be swayed with reality, facts, medical documentation, or even due process and court proceedings.

But, and this is the point with each and everyone of these incidents, a depressingly large swathe of White society does not question the extrajudicial killing of black people.  And a vile segment encourage and reveal in these killings and then, with malicious glee, use the deaths as on-line content fodder and incitement amongst their rightwing drones against the dead black person, black society in general, and of course, DemocRAT controlled cities. 

The basic paradigm which is understood and still taught is black people are inherently criminal and a priori guilty and therefore any time they have an interaction with Police its’ understood their deaths at the hands of Police are entirely their fault.  Whereas, white people (as long as the adhere to the tenets of rightwing white supremacy) are inherently good and must somehow have been caught up in a bad situation and therefore their interaction with Police they must be afforded due process above and beyond what is called for under the color of law.

I could go through the entire litany of cop jargon and lawfare that Police use to cover up such incidents, but the plain facts and what the American society has just seen is another unarmed black man shot to death inside his residence.

Police Injustice, the Policing System is working as Designed

Lost amongst the Trump-led GOPdammerung, the Dept of Justice released a depressing report on the state of policing in Baltimore. That report has been coupled with two more Police Shootings of young black males, one in Chicago and one in Milwaukee.

Now, the Milwaukee shooting appears to have been lawful, a "good shoot", but, criminals took advantage of the tensions and engaged in assaults and vandalism using the shooting as a pretext. The Chicago shooting is more complex and does not appear to be a "good shot" at this time.

It appears that young black men need to re-learn the lesson their fathers, uncles, and grandfathers learned;

"You need to understand that there are two gangs in the projects. The police are also a gang but they really have the power. I mean, these n* run around with money and cars, but at any moment the cops can get them off the street. Never, never, never piss off the police." -Sudhir Venkatesh recounts a discussion with "Autry" in Gang Leader for a Day (pg. 239)

The system of Policing in America is working as intended. Modern Police Departments were created during the 19th century to deal with 3 changing factors in America; 1) the growth of cities due to Industrialization, 2) the influx of immigrants from new nations, 3) the end of slavery and the Black exodus. Thus, a system needed to be created to deal with problems that original Sheriff's were not designed to handle; to control, disenfranchise, and ghettoize undesireables. To accomplish this it is not necessary that every Police Officer be racist. It is, in fact, desireable for the majority to be color-blind.

Every shooting is not done by a Bocephus white slave master racist cop but, that's what makes the rigged system work. The system by being generally good and staffed by lawful, honorable people creates a space for a bad element to exist and operate. Humans have a difficult time processing issues related to large, anonymous systems. It's too much. An individual bad actor or department can be identified and dealt with but, the system of control which has been created, and feed for centuries works in the background grinding out victims without being addressed.

Overall, the quality of modern police officers is very high but, that's a lie of statistics. In a Nation of 320 Million any one death is a insignificant blip, but such a calculus is used by those who do not suffer from the system.

Ferguson, Missouri two years ago became a microcosm of the harshness of the system. Michael Brown, got into an altercation at a gas station over a pack of swisher sweets, of which, Darren Wilson was unaware.

The altercation between Wilson and Brown at the door of the squad SUV and into the street without video evidence can never be properly reconstructed and one eye witness account will nver be heard but, right-wingers didn't feel comfortable with the known facts and had to start adding elements that were untrue. Conservatives sites claimed Wilson suffered a broken orbital bone from the "beating" he took and Faux News and the right-wing internet ran with the wholly untrue "diary" of Witness 40 to describe the final interaction and last shots fired at Brown.

But, when the Dept of Justice released the report which showed the Ferguson PD had been transformed from Officers into revenue generators to fill budget gaps that received little fanfare. Police Departments have been monitized over the last few decades as villages and cities have had to deal with declining budgets.

On top of turning Police Officers into tax collectors "Broken Windows" Theory has been in place for years. Broken Windows hypothesized that by cracking down on every minor infraction major crime would be detered. Additionally, "Stop & Frisk" and the War on Drugs turned policing from protect and serve into halt and harass.

Taken together, these had the effect of turning LEOs into occupying force, while other factors, the availability of high-powered firearms and long guns have led to a Paramilitary police look and mentality.

The recent Chicago Police shooting of an escaping car thief, and the mentality that led to the long altercation and not split-second decision was neatly avoided, while Chicago police bloggers who blamed both Mayor Rahm and Daley for cutting the training budget. Other anonymous LEOs joined in by saying lack of training was the problem.

This is part and parcel of the system. Bad shoots can be blamed on a lack of training or stress from working conditions and not from the violence/control/dehumanization inherent in the system. But, if these aren't enough to cover the bad shoot, then the character/criminal history of the suspect becomes pertinent and subtle lies can be added to the narrative.

Conservatives have been conditioned by right-wing toxic talk radio, Faux News, and the incestuous right-wing internet sites to reflexively blame all members of the maligned group. After every incident if the perpetrator is black, all members of the black community or #blacklivesmatter are guilty, if the offender is a muslim, all of islam is responsible, if the immigrant is hispanic, he's illegal.

Also, as conservatives have been trained to focus all their ire onto President Obama, every shooting in Chicago, every riot in Milwaukee becomes his fault. Additionally, since they ascribe to President Obama tyrannical powers they demand he turn those powers onto #blm and uniltaerally declare the organization a "terrorist group".

The arguments around #blm today are eeriely similar to those made about the Civil Rights Era; act responsibiliy, don't be so militant, don't do things which cause people to be annoyed or inconvenienced by you and eventually we'll get around to your concerns.

It wasn't until blacks began causing damage to property, in response to police shootings of black men that the media and conservatives began to pay attention. Of course, conservatives immediately called for violence against any and all black people and began demanding shoot-on-sight orders for looters.

Of course, it's hard to take conservatives seriously when they cry and moan about private property damage seeing as they venerate the Boston Tea Party as a near-Holy Event.

But, during the Civil Rights Era, black leaders knew they needed an unassailable champions to be the vanguard of the movement, that even the whiff of impropreity would be the wedge conservatives needed to discredit them and get sentiment against them.

While, the young black men killed in recent years have not be paragons of justice and untainted by criminal backgrounds, society in general and the black community have witnessed numerous incidents of #crimingwhilewhite, in which a white suspect has not been killed by Police and the treatment of President Obama, have created the perception that it doesn't matter what blacks do, because conservatives consider them criminal a priori and right-wing media will spare no effort slandering and smearing the dead black person.

To conservatives no police shooting of a black person is ever bad. No black person has ever been denied his constitutional rights, his right to due process, his right to be free of unlawful search and sezuire. Conservatives believe every black person is a criminal who just hasn't been caught yet.

Stand with Rand? Glenn Greenwald blubbers about Drones defends his support of the Iraq War.

"But I had somebody last week in Washington from either Georgia or Alabama that was saying, ‘Look, this goes back to we have got to have at least 50 rounds in our magazines because on average that’s about how many it takes to bring down a drone.’ I hope he was kidding, I don’t know for sure." - Representative Louie Gohmert, Confederate States of America on Drones.

Glenn Greenwald has declared that President Obama is worse than Dick Cheney. Because Obama, unlike Cheney, never infringed on an American's Constitutional Rights the way Obama did by authroizing a Drone Strike on Anwar al-Awaki (and his son).

What is this? Did the backlash against executive power take this long to foment in Greenwald? Does Glenn Greenwald feel frightened that Obama, who is worse than Cheney, is going to send a Drone Strike against him for speaking out?

What's actually happening is Glenn Greenwald is like John Wayne. Wayne chicken hawked his way out of World War II and in response became a jingoistic warmonger and arch-conservative. Greenwald supported the Phony GWoT and Iraq War Crime and now to make up for it he's become a lunatic anarcho-libertarian declaring all Government Action to be the illegal Use of Force.

Here is the text of what Greenwald, himself, relies upon to excuse his tacit support of the Phony GWoT and the Iraq War.

I did support the war in Afghanistan and, living in New York, believed the rhetoric about the threat of Islamic extremism.  

At worst, I was guilty of apathy and passivity. I did nothing for or against it because I assumed that those in positions to exercise adversarial scrutiny – in journalism and politics – were doing that. 

I had not abandoned my trust in the Bush administration. Between the president’s performance in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the swift removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the fact that I wanted the president to succeed, because my loyalty is to my country and he was the leader of my country, I still gave the administration the benefit of the doubt.  

I believed then that the president was entitled to have his national security judgment deferred to, and to the extent that I was able to develop a definitive view, I accepted his judgment that American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country.

The swift removal of the Taliban? He assumed others were scrutinizing the Rush to War. Loyalty to My Country! I deferred to Bush's Judgement.

As the 10 year mark of that bloody debacle hits home, it's amazing to watch those who participated in bilking the American People whitewash themselves of their guilt. I think that in order to prove himself, Greenwald will equate Obama's policies with Hitler at every opportunity. It's a powerful display. Hundreds of Thousands of Sunnis, Shias, Afghans, Pastuns, and others killed during the a Multi-Trillion Dollar Theft of Generations and Glenn will spare no effort over Drones?

Drones are tools and weapons. All the hand-wringing over their use in the Phony GWoT* is a mistake. Drones are a valuable tool which allows infiltration deep into hostile territory for targeted killings. Why send in a SEAL Team or conventional forces when a Drone can accomplish the task?

Drones for Domestic Use are also not a concern. Drones simply fall under the Use of Force and the 4th Amendment.

It makes no difference if a person is killed by bullets, blood chokes, burning or drone strike. Dead is Dead.

And under US Law (reviewed by multiple SCOTUS rulings and written into State Laws) Killing someone is considered the Ultimate Seizure under the 4th Amendment.

For Reference the applicable reviews of the 4th Amendment are:

• Graham v. Conner (1989)
• Tennessee v. Garner (1985)

Drones and their use gained massive blog-o-sphere attention after the Filibuster of the Director of the CIA by Senator Rand Paul. Couch-Borne Commandos and Self-Styled Champions of Liberty,as long as Liberty isn't Black people getting equal rights, like Senator Paul may have a problem with Drones but that's only because they've never been shot at or had to go hands on with a criminal.

Make no mistake if you've allied yourself with Rand Paul on this you're siding with John C. Calhoun before the Civil War. 

Republicans and the Right-Wing Fart Bubble only mention Drones as a smear tactic against President Obama.

Now, there may be arguments to be made against the Use of Drones. But, if you're mad that President Obama is using Drones in and of themselves you are wrong.

If there had been a Drone available to use against Christopher Dorner (Or against the Newest Second Amendment Hero Kurt Myers) then it should have been authorized and used.

Remember Dorner had already killed 4 people. He published a manifesto in which he stated he was going to kill as many people as possible. Some only tangentially connected. On the day of his death he shot two more Deputies, killing one, carjacked a couple and holed up in house firing numerous rounds at the surrounding officers.

Against a person, such as Dorner, does Glenn Greenwald or Senator Paul demand we send in single officers one at a time to face them man-o y man-o?

Now, Greenwald did write a column asking whether "[A]n armed drone should be dispatched against Dorner?"

But, while Greenwald believed it to be a good thought experiment about "Due Process" and his belief that Drones represent a massive violation of civil liberties, it highlighted the misunderstanding of seizures under the 4th Amendment (again killing someone being the ultimate seizure) and the Use of Force.

Apparently, Greenwald believes "Due Process" entitles a person to this level of warning:

If you believe that a Government should not be killing it's citizens, ever, that's a legitimate debatable position. But, Drones aren't used for the killing of incarcerated persons.

If  you're concerned about Drones being used for surveillance, well unless you are complaining about Cameras in high-crime areas, wire-taps, and police officers with binoculars then it seems an arbitrary concern.

If you believe the President does not have the authority to use Drones for targeted killings overseas then your complaint is with Congress. Force Congress to exert their constitutionally-mandated War Powers Role and have them vote to seize back that power by removing authorization. 

There might be legitimate concerns about the Use of Drones and there should be oversight and legal guidelines but they are nothing more than a tool. Every tool can be misused.

*- The War on Terror has a War Crime of Epic Proportions and has lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths and criminal theft of Trillions. As such it should be ended. But, the Drone Strikes aren't the worst thing about it.