Another Isolated Incident
Radley Balko | March 28, 2008, 4:19pm
Two, actually. Both involve police intercepts of packages using the DHL delivery service on the campus at Duke University.
In the latest, police intercepted a package of marijuana bound for a fraternity house, then raided the place in full SWAT attire when one of the fraternity members signed for it. One of the residents describes the raid:
I am writing to share both my relief over the dropped charges against my housemate, senior Eric Halperin, as well as my continued anger at the blatant abuse of power by the Durham Police Department. On the morning of Feb. 27, our home off East Campus was raided by a team of State Bureau of Investigation agents and members of DPD. Without warning, our front door was knocked down and a handful of fully armed officers entered our home. Subsequently, we were ordered to the ground at the behest of assault rifles, dragged across the floor, hand-cuffed and forced to strip naked. In carrying out their search warrant, police officers destroyed hundreds of dollars of our personal property. Upon failing to find anything incriminating, my friend, Halperin, was falsely charged with drug trafficking without any investigation or evidence, except his signing for a DHL package not addressed to him.
It took a month, but police have now dropped all charges against Halperin. The earlier incident followed almost the same formula, except it took place in a dorm room. In that case too, the charges against the Duke student were dropped.
Even assuming it's appropriate to arrest a college student who signs for a package of marijuana addressed to someone else, why the SWAT tactics? Did the police department really think the fraternity was going to put up a fight? (Note: It was also the Durham police department that gave us this photo—discussion on that here.) Last month, there was a similar incident at LSU, in which a SWAT team raided a college student's home based on an anonymous tip that there might be some pot inside. They found nothing.
For some righteous outrage on the case, check out the "Liestoppers Board," a site set up by the parents of the wrongly accused Duke lacrosse team.
Aresen | March 28, 2008, 9:17pm | #
Stan, I am going to assume that your posts are truly what you believe, not trolling for the sake of getting a rise out of a bunch of libertarians.
Liberty is based on the assumption that people have rights. We libertarians are fond of Jefferson’s choice of modifier: “inalienable”. That means that rights are inherent and that people may not be deprived of those rights, except by due process.
Liberty and rights are not limited to people I like. Or people you like. They apply to, and are for, all people: Americans, Canadians, Russians , Chinese, whites, blacks, Jews, Muslims (even Osama bin Laden), Presidents and bums on the street. A person does not lose his or her liberties and rights by being
suspected of a crime – even if you and I and all people are morally certain that the person did the crime. Nor does a person lose his liberties and rights because he is a hypocrite or carries a moral stigma.
The only way that a person may be deprived of his liberty and rights is through due process. That is why we have laws and, in particular, you Americans have your Constitution: To protect the liberties of individuals.
It is a libertarian truism that, if one person is deprived of their rights, all people’s rights are in danger. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, she was not just defending the rights of blacks, she was defending the rights of every person on the planet. Note that Rosa Parks was defying the law – but not the Constitution and the rights embodied therein.
The police are not empowered to deprive a person of their rights. (Where in the U.S. Constitution does the word “police” even appear, let alone an enumeration of their powers?) They may, as representatives of civil authority, arrest a person and charge them with a crime. But, until that person is convicted of a crime, all his or her rights remain intact.
In fact, the laws of the United States say that, if the police or any other agent of the government willfully violates a person’s rights, it is the police or the agent may be charged with a crime. I recognize that many caveats and exceptions have been put around this last, but the fact remains that it is illegal to
deprive someone of their rights.
Among the rights protected are the rights to due process, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, right to reasonable bail, and the presumption of innocence.
Radley’s posts have presented many cases where these rights have been violated. You, perhaps, feel that these violations are acceptable “for the greater good”. We do not. We feel that just laws are the best protection of the good of all. We feel that bad laws – even for the most noble purpose – are a threat to every person, no matter how innocent.
Libertarians are often characterized as “heartless capitalist who only care about their own well-being.” However well that might describe any of us, we do have in common a belief that liberty and rights are the most important possessions of any human being. We believe that they supersede any other consideration. The fact that rights make people better off in a material sense is not a consideration.
Are we defending druggies and perverts? Yes, we are. Because they have rights. As do you. If you throw those rights away because you don't like the fact that they defend people you don't like, those rights will not be there when you need them.
