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Contempt of cop story lives up to its name

By Mark Obbie

The Post-Intelligencer's Eric Nalder, Lewis Kamb and Daniel Lathrop continued the paper's "Strong Arm of the Law" series on police misconduct with this story last week documenting racial disparities in "contempt-of-cop" arrests. That's shorthand for "obstructing a police officer" charges. The paper looked at cases since 2002 where that charge or closely related charges were filed as standalone charges, and discovered that blacks were eight times as likely to be arrested as whites when taking Seattle's demographics into account. The story, surrounded by sidebars on case examples, does a thorough job of exploring criticism of the tactic by outsiders and even by cops. The paper also acted in a forthright, transparent way by publishing online a complaint by the police department, e-mailed just hours before the paper went to press, questioning the study's methods. I have a different criticism of the story: about its balance and fairness. Even accepting as true the paper's statistical and policy conclusions, its prosecutorial tone and one-sided approach undercut the power of its conclusions. In the story, the police issue perfunctory denials in answer to a damning lede, and then the story proceeds down a relentlessly critical path. Where are the real-world anecdotes from cops about the circumstances under which they think such charges are legit? The stories of what must be countless lowlifes and jerks they encounter daily -- no doubt triggering an overreaction from time to time? Recounting those tales doesn't excuse misconduct, including racism. It merely reflects reality, and recognizes that while we're correctly hammering on the cops for a pattern of wrongdoing, there are some exceptions -- or explanations -- worth noting. (Via IRE.)

Full post as published by Lawbeat on March 07, 2008 (boomark / email).