True Story, or Allegory? Why Not Both?!
There’s an apparently true story I’ve heard about a former judge here in Los Angeles that I want to tell you about. By the time I’m done, you’ll understand why.
The judge in question was a former defense lawyer and liberal. He was notoriously pro-defense. He constantly ruled against the prosecution, claiming that the facts simply couldn’t be as the police had claimed.
So a police officer offered to take the judge on a ride-along, reasoning that the judge might change some of his rulings once he saw what life was really like out on the street.
On the day in question, the police were conducting an undercover narcotics buy. These are elaborate operations due to the danger involved. In such a transaction, an undercover police officer is generally hooked up with an audio device that is monitored by a detective. Other members of the team keep the undercover officer under strict surveillance, and there are patrol cars in the area standing ready to swoop in once the buy is made, and the undercover officer gives the pre-arranged signal.
The undercover officer was given pre-marked money, and sent into the field. As I heard the story, the judge was sitting in the passenger seat of one of the unmarked police cars assigned to watch the undercover officer. The undercover officer approached a suspect who had previously been observed in suspicious hand-to-hand transactions with several individuals.
As the suspect and the undercover officer were engaged in conversation, the judge rolled down his window, leaned out, and screamed: “RUN! RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN! HE’S A COP!!”
According to the person who told it to me, this is a true story.
But according to the logic of those who defend the New York Times and Los Angeles Times for revealing the Swift anti-terror program, the judge didn’t do anything to help the drug dealer. After all, drug dealers all know that they are sometimes approached by undercover officers! Further, the LAPD web site explicitly acknowledges using undercover officers to investigate certain crimes:
It is that same criminal sophistication that causes law enforcement to resort to the use of undercover operations, surveillance and informants to counteract their progress.
It’s right there, on the Internet! It follows that the drug dealer in our story was aware of it. Right? I mean, it just stands to reason!
So if you’re going to criticize our friend the liberal judge for warning off the drug dealer, maybe you should criticize Bill Bratton, too! Anything else is just rank hypocrisy, indicative of conservatives’ desire to wage a war on liberal judges for having the guts to stand up to our increasingly intrusive police state.
P.S. You knew that’s where I was going with that, didn’t you?
I saw a special episode of Cops once where they focused on stings. In one sequence the police busted a drug house, only to have customers come up and try to buy drugs from them. They even told the first guy they were cops. His response was, “Cool. So, can I buy some shit from you?”
They busted his ass.
There was one guy who wigged to what was going on. He then spent his time telling the people coming to the house what the deal was. Their response was along the lines of, “Gotcha. Now pull my pud while you’re at it.”
I mean, there were people coming to buy even as previous ‘customers’ were being put into units for transportation right in front of them. Of all the delusions anyone can have, “It can’t happen to me.” is probably the most destructive.
Alan Kellogg (e464bb) — 6/29/2006 @ 6:56 amholy shit!
assistant devil's advocate (151583) — 6/29/2006 @ 6:57 amwhat did the undercover cops say to the judge after that? bet it wasn’t “your honor”. did your office paper him with a blanket peremptory challenge in all future cases?
Actually, I didn’t. The multiple levels of hearsay threw me off initially; I figured you were going to lambaste the L.A. Times for running some story that relied too heavily on a few highly questionable, unnamed sources.
Xrlq (f52b4f) — 6/29/2006 @ 7:28 amNo interference with an official act charges?
Dan Kauffman (b494d1) — 6/29/2006 @ 7:32 amthe analogy is a good one, IMHO
quasimodo (edc74e) — 6/29/2006 @ 8:01 amBu$hCo’s Bank Surveillance Program – The Decidering…
We on the left are always amazed by the ability of them on the right to march in lock step on every issue. Last week, we reported on wingnut reaction to The New York Times’s (and The L.A. Times’s and…
AGITPROP: Version 3.0, Featuring Blogenfreude (72c8fd) — 6/29/2006 @ 9:00 amIf a drug dealer is manufacturing illicit WMDs for personal use and manages to get wind of a police raid, isn’t he innocent if he manages to flush them down the toilet or ship them off to Syria before the cops arrive?
trentk269 (3d3bfe) — 6/29/2006 @ 11:36 amAnd so, what happened to the judge?
[I heard the story years ago and don’t remember. I want to say he was prosecuted for a misdemeanor, but I really don’t know. — P]
Kevin Murphy (805c5b) — 6/29/2006 @ 12:12 pmSo, everyone keeps telling me, no harm, no foul, ‘cuz nobody would be foolish enough to NOT think we’re watching the $$ transfers.
Does that mean Hambali wasn’t really caught by this program?
Or does that mean that a whole pile of libera . . . er, people . . . who tell themselves regularly on websites that they’re the Smart Ones (DK tells us that at least half of the kossuxs are above average) have managed, once again, to suspend rational thought?
bobby_b (163be3) — 6/29/2006 @ 10:56 pmDoes that mean Hambali wasn’t really caught by this program?
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt!
Or does that mean that a whole pile of libera . . . er, people . . . who tell themselves regularly on websites that they’re the Smart Ones (DK tells us that at least half of the kossuxs are above average) have managed, once again, to suspend rational thought?
Ding ding ding ding ding ding!
Patterico (50c3cd) — 6/29/2006 @ 11:01 pm