Matt Denn Comes Right Out and Says It: Delaware Is A Police State.
This is one of the most important stories of the year. Attorney General Matt Denn admitted that the main reason why no officers were charged in the shooting death of Jeremy McDole was b/c the law enabling police to shoot first and face no consequences is so broadly written that it’s virtually impossible to charge police in any shooting. From the News-Journal article:
Denn’s decision didn’t rest solely on the facts of the case. Hamstringing the AG’s efforts was that Jeremy “Bam” McDole was killed in Delaware, a state that essentially immunizes law enforcement officers from criminal responsibility when they use deadly force in response to a perceived threat.
Here, a police officer doesn’t have to prove the use of deadly force was “actually necessary to protect the officer against death or serious physical injury,” according to the recent state Department of Justice report. “All (the officer) must show is that he believed that to be the case at the time that he used deadly force, whether that belief was reasonable or unreasonable.”
So, am I missing anything here? If an officer states that they ‘believed’ there was a threat, even if no other reasonable person would believe such a thing, he can shoot at will and w/o fear of consequence. When you couple that with the fact that cops can basically take possessions from people who they ‘believe’ may have committed an offense (civil forfeiture), what recourse through the justice system does an ordinary citizen (if they haven’t already been shot dead by a cop) have? BTW, raise your hand if you believe that no cop who has seized stuff has ever pocketed it or sold it. Didn’t think so.
You can tell that Denn is pissed off, and good for him. He points fingers at the City and specifically at one officer:
The AG’s report not only sheds light on the considerations underlying prosecutorial decisions. In an unusual move, Denn called for reforms to Wilmington Police Department training procedures, noting “serious deficiencies” in how officers are prepared to handle such crisis situations.
Denn also recommended in the report that one of the officers involved in the incident, Senior Cpl. Joseph Dellose, be stripped of his gun. That angered local police union representatives, who accused Denn, a career civil servant with no direct police experience, of overstepping his authority to advance his political objectives.
“From the outset, this was clearly politically motivated,” Sgt. Harold Bozeman, Wilmington Fraternal Order of Police president, said in a statement. “The elected attorney general of this state has used this tragedy as a vehicle to cajole voters in his re-election and much-speculated eventual ascendance to the governor’s mansion.
Bozeman’s statement demonstrates the arrogance of the police. Pissing off the cops hardly advances one’s career political objectives, especially as AG, and he knows it. You will also note that Bozeman doesn’t defend the cop, just tries to smear the AG.
The excellent News Journal story by Margie Fishman and Matthew Albright goes on to recount how Delaware’s law, which is an outlier, has been deemed unconstitutional by the U. S. Supreme Court. Read the whole damn thing.
I give Denn major props for drawing attention to this, and for helping pave the way for a civil suit. But this case essentially demands a U. S. Department of Justice investigation and filing of charges against these officers.
One thing for certain: The police won’t police themselves:
Local and state police union representatives fear that extra layers of regulation could have disastrous consequences for officers on the ground.
“How now do you expect us to do our jobs? said Fred Calhoun, state FOP president. “We have created a society that thinks that by creating policy they can dictate the outcome of someone’s future…If we could do that, we wouldn’t need the police.”
Let me first point out that the ‘extra layers of regulation’ would in fact be the removal of ill-conceived extra protections for cops enacted in our disastrous “Police Bill of Rights”. In other words, no longer would police be completely above the law.
And if police weren’t above the law, we wouldn’t ‘need’ the 4th Amendment. The ongoing actions of police in our police state are evidence that we do.
Just curious…
Does “El Somnambulo” refer to sleepwalking or “Cotton in the South”? or is it a double meaning?
Then Denn’s office should propose legislation which evens the playing field. THE AG;s office does it every day on other issues. But will he have the guts to do it because he wants higher office??? The ball is in Matt Denn’s court.
LE: My handle was originally that of a fictitious Lucha Libre wrestler with a sleepwalking gimmick. Finished my opponents with ‘sleeper holds’. Even got myself a mask. And wrote in the third person for my first couple of years on the blog. Unless you’re Bob Dole or Henry Kissinger, that’s not easy, which is why I dropped the third person narrative.
Chris: Denn has at least laid the groundwork for the civil suit. And it appears that he’s consulting w/legislators re changes, if you’ll note Helene Keeley’s comments in the story. The real question is: Will all the ex-cops and cop wannabes in the General Assembly who placed the cops above the law in the first place do anything about it?
Then Denn’s office should propose legislation which evens the playing field.
And how, pray tell, does that legislation pass through our police infested legislature?
Let me answer that for you, it doesn’t.
Denn’s comments aren’t “cajoling for reelection,” his comments are practically a cry to be removed from office in a police state like Delaware.
Denn needs to be our next governor.
@ES “LE: My handle was originally that of a fictitious Lucha Libre wrestler with a sleepwalking gimmick.”
I get it. So.. This plays no part…
El Somnambulo === 을 솜남부로 === Cotton in the South
Sorry, I’m just playing checkers. You’re playing three-dimensional chess.
I wonder if Rafael Navarro (creator of El Somnambulo) was aware of the pun. He does come from a cotton producing area of Mexico (Sonora)…
You don’t refuse to submit legislation just because it won’t pass a legislature.
You do it because its the right thing to do. It sends a strong signal , creates debate and makes folks honestly look at an issue.
William Wilberfore proposed abolishing slavery in England when the UK depended on the slave trade for most of its economy. He was laughed at for a long time. It took a while but it was eventually abolished.
Its called political COURAGE and INTEGRITY…
I had no idea that there was a comic character with the name (actually ‘Sonambulo’) when I came up with it. I WAS, however, a fan of the much-neglected Marvel character ‘Sleepwalker’. Oh, and I was a fan of pro rasslin’…hence the name.
Sorry to have hijacked your post…
Now let’s fix this excessive police state crap.
Matt Denn plays to his base which is made up of many of the same thugs that roam the streets of wilmington. Police need MORE rights not less.
Thugs with badges are bad, but thugs with badges that infest Leg Hall or worse.
Bear in mind that Denn never said the words, “Delaware is a police state.” Neither he, nor, I imagine, any AG would. The DOJ report outlined the fact that it’s almost impossible to successfully prosecute an officer regardless of how incompetent or trigger-fingered he is.
I wrote the hed b/c, to me, that’s what the report says.
One more clarification. I have it on very good authority that the AG has not consulted with members of the General Assembly regarding any proposed changes to the law governing standards for police shootings.
Nice try, but “Police States” don’t finish in the top 10 every single year in violent crime rates according to the FBI UCR reports. I do agree with you about civil forfeiture law.
Nice pithy phrase, devoid of facts or context.
When people are shot by cops and there are no repercussions, when cops can steal stuff from people who have not been charged, when they can live rent-free on palatial estates, I consider it a police state.
The fact that, in Wilmington, police are deployed in such an inept manner, and are trained so ineptly, in no way makes Delaware less of a police state.
I’m sure John Carney will come out strong for reigning in cops.
I think it was the state of Indiana that passed a law that specifically says that a citizen can claim that they feared for their life when they kill or harm a police officer. That’s a beautiful law. Cops should have no more prerogatives when it comes to killing or doing bodily harm than citizens. Pass such a law–in effect take away a cops monopoly on self defense–and they will probably start treating the public with more respect and restraint. Also, pass a law that allows a citizen to film a cop when they encounter one or witness one interacting with the public, effectively exempting citizens in police situations from the DE law that forbids them to record someone without their permission. That would give citizens a layer of protection from rogue cops.
I’m so tired of Denn constantly making every story in the news about him. AG is nothing more than a stepping stone for him.
El Som – You asked “So, am I missing anything here?” The answer is that you and the News Journal are both missing the fact that the standard being applied to the officer is the same standard that would be applied to you or me (the one found in Section 464 of Title 11, not the one found in Section 467 of Title 11). There is not some special standard being applied to the officer in the McDole Report. Further, this standard has been in Delaware law since the Criminal Code was written in 1973. Regarding the reason for adopting this standard and rejecting the “reasonable person standard”, the drafters of the Code stated, “All that is relevant to the actor’s guilt is that he did honestly believe it necessary to use force in his own defense. A person with such a belief presents no criminal threat to social order.” That said, the drafters also noted that “if the actor’s reaction deviates too substantially from the norm, he runs the risk that the jury will not believe him.” So, to say that the self-defense law applied to this officer is flawed is to say that a law applied to all Delawareans for almost 50 years is flawed. If that were the case, I would certainly hope the legal minds of this State would have noticed this sooner.
Also, you stated that the Delaware self-defense law was deemed unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. If that were the case, the AG would not need to worry about this standard.
L. Elite…
I get this: 을 솜남부로 === Cotton in the South but I don’t get this:
El Somnambulo === 을 솜남부로
Instead I keep coming up with this:
El Somnambulo === 몽유병 === Sleepwalking….
Am curious what happened to give you “Cotton of the Southern” which appears to be the actual meaning of what you put up as the equivalent of El Somnambulo..
Thanks in advance…
Most of the anti Denn people are missing this point.
If someone breaks the law, they should be punished. That includes everyone in a democracy, including the police. They do not get more rights than their fellow citizens, and they certainly should not get less…. They get equal.
When you absolve all police from criminal activity, it is the same as absolving all blacks from criminal activity, or all women from criminal activity or all underage kids from criminal activity, or all Delaware Chamber of Commerce people from criminal activity or all illegal immigrants from criminal activity, or all Delaware Developers from criminal activity, or all Duponts from criminal activity, or all legislators from criminal activity, or all former state treasurers from criminal activity, or all former governors from criminal activity; bottom line, you are going to get more criminal activity…………………………. period.
To stop that, you need the same law applied equally across the board… That of course includes police… Always has, and hopefully, always will.
When Teddy Roosevelt first took over the City of New York Police Department, the first thing he did was throw all the criminals dressed in the police uniform, in his jail. He actually kept the one key to their cell on his person. They were tried, found guilty, and the police department of New York City remained corruption free for generations.
There is precedent.
@k “Am curious what happened to give you “Cotton of the Southern””
을 솜남부로 — Just pronounce it.
을 == el
솜 == som
남 == nam
부 == bu
로 == lo
It’s a simple phonetic pun.
Ah.. soundwaves…. never even occurred to me.. Lol. My how our world has change since I’ve been alive…
🙂
@Penman’s account is illogical. If the standard set for Police Officers acting in their own ” self defense” is the same standard that is applied to all Delawareans in any case, then it would have never been necessary to set a separate clarifying standard for Police officers. That would have been an act of redundancy. Clearly the police have a more permissive standard for employing violence than ordinary Delawareans, a standard that effectively is carte blanche for acting violently. But let’s ask Penman to be consistent if he truly believes that police officers have no more permission to act violently than other citizens in self defense. Let’s see if he would support that right of citizens to employ violence against police officers when they feel endangered by them using the same criteria that police officers have to employ violence against citizens when they feel endangered by citizens.
I don’t understand on what basis Penman asserts that chapter 467 does not apply to the McDole killing. The purpose of the language in 467 is to clarify legislative intent on the standard to determine justifable homicide by a police officer. This language was created by the passage of Senate bill 142 in 2005. Perhaps we could ask for clarification from Tom Gordon the self declared author of the so called “Police Bill Of Rights”
I love this. This blog is starting to fall midway between progressive and libertarianism. Progressive libertarian party anyone?
Anybody have a take on this “vote of no confidence” by the FOP?
I’m temped to view it a dick cops being dicks, but with our cop infested state legislature, they do seem to have more than their fair share of political juice.
Yeah, I think it’s a reason to disband the police force to break the union. Do what Camden, NJ, did: fire all the cops, rehire half of them and get control of the police back in civilian hands.
Jason, you are asking the right questions, but do not let your prejudices cloud your judgment or the intellect we readers value. If our elected officials are worthy of our support, they and their works should be able to withstand our inquiry or our criticism.
Yes, because Camden is a model of what urban PDs should be. Please.
@LL: Please yourself. Do some research. You don’t know what you’re talking about and seem proud of it.
Drastic problems demand drastic solutions. Police all over the country are out of control, and just because Delaware’s don’t kill as many innocents as some forces elsewhere, police still control this state. If you’re happy with that, you’re part of the problem.