Odds are you never heard about the killing of 20-year-old Dillon Taylor. He was shot to death in in Salt Lake City, Utah, just the other day. The man who shot him was a police officer acting in the line of duty. Dillon was unarmed. More significantly, he was white.
Where's the outrage? Where are the protests, the non-stop media coverage? Where's United States Attorney General Eric Holder on this killing? You can hear the questions coming from those located comfortably right of center, in publications such as The New American. It's the same group that scours the press clippings...
August 27, 2014
I couldn’t stop thinking about the allegory of the metals in Plato’s Republic as I read the op-ed piece in The Washington Post written by Los Angeles Police Officer, Sunil Dutta. He was writing to express a police officer’s point of view in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri. I kept thinking Plato nailed it; Mr. Dutta, though plenty spirited, is incapable of leadership. He understands his role, but not the reasons for the role he plays.
The Republic is one of western civilization’s great meditations of a well-ordered state...
August 20, 2014
Perhaps you missed the piece in today's Washington Post by Sunil Dutta, a member of the Los Angeles Police Department, and junior college instructor. It is a whiny, self-righteous screed that will make him a hero around cop bars and police water coolers nationwide. His message? If you don't want to get hurt, just obey when he asks you to do something. Screw the Constitution. Kiss the man's baton and you'll be fine.
Here are excerpts.
"Working the street, I can’t even count how many times I withstood curses, screaming tantrums, aggressive and menacing encroachments on my...
August 19, 2014
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that Michael Brown’s blood is on the gavel of the federal judiciary. In the past couple of decades, the courts have made it all but impossible to hold police officers accountable before juries. Is it any wonder officers think they can kill with impunity?
We know how Michael Brown, 18, was killed in Ferguson, Missouri — a police officer shot him to death. What we don’t know is why the shooting occurred.
The law gives to police officers the right to use deadly force. But that right is not without limitation. All citizens, at...
August 17, 2014
August 14, 2014
"If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." I think about this line of Friedrich Nietszche's more often than I care...
August 13, 2014
Every time I hear a judge talk about sending people to prison as a means of promoting public respect for the law, I want to stop the proceedings and...
August 9, 2014
From a distance, the case no doubt looked hopeless. Jonathan Gibbs had confessed to police, signing a statement under oath, telling officers he was...
August 8, 2014
Politico is not naming the member of the Washington, D.C., Police Department who announced that John Hinkley may face new charges because of the...
August 3, 2014
What would you call a self-confessed agnostic who recites Psalm 23 in times of grave trouble? Hypocrite comes to mind, and the...
August 3, 2014
One of the occupational hazards of the legal profession is a close acquaintance with chaos. The darkness leads some into the wasteland of depression,...