Healthy Skepticism

Dear Readers, everything is politically upside down these days.  Historically, Republicans/Conservatives stood uniformly behind our law enforcement and derided Democrats/Liberals as being “soft on crime.”  They still deride Blue Cities as crime cesspools; crime is naturally going to be more prevalent with people living in close spaces.

Yet, it is conservatives who are largely eroding our faith in the criminal legal system.  The idea of Presidential criminal immunity is a “conservative” tenet that positions a President above the law.  People like Steven Bannon and Peter Navarro were convicted (meaning there was a jury finding) of contempt for violating duly issued Congressional subpoenas.  They have direct access to the President-elect, if not an incoming role in his nascent government.  It is highly probable they will have these convictions pardoned from thumbing their nose to Congress.  This lack of respect for Congress is a dangerous virus.

Increasingly, in this vein, criticism of law enforcement is more prevalent in conservative social circles.  The FBI has a sordid past, we need to stay vigilant about excesses.  However, law enforcement in general, and the FBI is no different, tends to attract right-of-center careerists.  In other words, its ranks are filled with people with life-views sympathetic to Republican ideology.  

This makes some of the attacks on the FBI a bit odd.  The National Security Documents search of Mar-a-Lago was a “conservative” enterprise.  Claiming the FBI “planted” agents to stoke the January 6^th attack on the Capitol, suggests that a bunch of “conservatives” plotted to overthrow our government.  Moreover, their deaths and career-ending health consequences from this insurrection.  We have to see if the President-elect carries through on his promise to pardon all of the convicted criminals from it.

The glimmer of hope is that this “political” repositioning opens the door to a more healthy discussion about our criminal justice system.  A reexamination of the task of law enforcement and how the social role of police in our communities.

In a vacuum, we want “Rules of the Road” controlling our use of motor vehicles.  The car is all but a necessity today for transportation to work, school, and social events.  We live just too spread out in too many open spaces.  You want rules about equipment and operation to keep us all safe.  Sounds good, in theory.

The practice is that things have veered off track.  Traffic laws are both a tool for harassment and budget-filling profit centers for local communities.

Marginal and less affluent segments of society cannot afford to maintain their vehicles in tip-top shape.  And, they are also less likely to be able to pay fines and have other legal issues … which result in driving privileges being revoked or suspended.  Which starts a slippery slope of having to choose between a job and driving without a valid license.  All of this makes them targets for traffic stops.  Which makes them more suspicious of police motives, feeding a vicious cycle of community distrust.

This is true here in Georgia.  Poulan is a tiny enclave of less than 1,000 adults in South Georgia Worth County near Albany.  It was incorporated in 1889 and named after Judge W.A. Poulan, and it is also a modern-day version of a speed trap.  In 2009, nearly $900,000.00 was realized from traffic fines.  This is about 30 times more than a typical rate, the per capita revenue was $1,019.15 per person.

John Masters and Zack Watson are two ex-Poulan Police officers.  Two years they started speaking with an Atlanta News First Investigation into the Police Department.  Mr. Masters related how he felt pressured to write traffic citations by the city, issuing them for this sole reason, when he would not otherwise have done so.  Both Masters and Watson were gone from the Department by 2021.  

During its investigation, the ANFI team found that almost half of the city’s budget was covered by traffic fines in 2021 and 2022.  This is done from 15 years prior when the Georgia Department of Public Safety found 103 percent of the budget was from fines.  Even more crazy is that there are at least 17 cities scattered around Georgia whose budget was 25% or more dependent on revenues from fines (and forfeitures) from 2020 to 2022.  This past summer the city of Lenox even had GPS suspend its citation writing authority for 180 days.

Ironically, skepticism about our attitudes to law enforcement is an opportunity to have a healthy debate about its mission statement.  Let’s take this opportunity.

Warner Robins attorney Jim Rockefeller is the former Chief Assistant District Attorney for Houston County and a former Assistant State Attorney in Miami.  Owner of Rockefeller Law Center, Jim has been in private practice since 2000.  E-mail your comments or confidential legal questions to ajr@rockefellerlawcenter.com.