That Cincinnati Beating
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Ludwig von Mises often reminded his readers that
the state is all about beating, hanging, and killing, that when
you advocate a law or a regulation, you are effectively
granting the state the permission to kill non-compliers. This,
and not compassion, is the essence of statecraft. And while
plenty of foreigners know all about the killing power of the American
state, few in the US pay much attention, unless it
involves race.
Thus has the recent Cincinnati case of a police killing
gained attention, especially the snippet that shows the police
pounding a black man to his death. Like the Rodney King
case in Los Angeles, this one seems destined to inflame
passions. Those who regard blacks as official victims, entitled
to unending benefits at the expense of everyone else, revel in
such scenes, if only because they make the redistributionist
political agenda easier to enact and harder to object to. And
those who want to centralize law enforcement like it too,
because it seems to suggest that local police are abusive and
in need of top-down control by the squeaky-clean saviors
from on high.
Using these scenes for political propaganda is effective
because no person with an attachment to the idea of liberty is
thrilled to see police beating anyone. The scene seems to embody a
radical disparity in power, one person confronting a group of
uniformed government agents who can legally kill anyone who struggles
to be free of them. A police beating seems to sum up everything that
is inherently wrong with the existing relationship between the
individual and the state.
That is not to say that beating and killing is never
justified. A property owner can kill an intruder. A person defending
his life against an attacker can kill. Killing can be justified as
self-defense and even as punishment. These are established principles
in law and morality.
The tough part is making the transition to the state and
its relationship to individuals. Can the police legally kill someone
simply because he resists arrest? Why are the police permitted to
break the laws they allegedly enforce? They are permitted to speed,
trespass, and rob in the name of cracking down on speeding,
trespassing, and robbing. There is something about the
institutionalization of this hypocrisy that cries out for correction.
This case draws attention to the disparity. Nathaniel
Jones, the victim, had passed out in the parking lot of a White Castle
restaurant, doing no physical harm to anyone. Not wanting a man lying
on its property, and not employing private guards, the restaurant
called the police. The police roused him and an unarmed Jones came up
swinging hard. He wasn't complying - the greatest sin in the eyes of
the state.
Was he defending himself or were the police defending
themselves? It's unclear. What is clear is that he was hit 40 or 50
times with a metal baton (by mostly white police, and one black)
before falling and later dying. Traces of PCP were found in his blood
and other drugs in his car. The police department is aggressively
defending itself against charges of abuse: they say
the police obeyed regulations in exacting increasingly hard
punishments.
And yet, apart from taking drugs and trespassing, what
precisely had Jones done wrong, aside from resisting arrest? The
police tried to arrest the guy and one thing led to another until
Jones was dead. This is in contrast to the case of Rodney King, whose
beating followed not only an attempt to resist arrest but also a
dangerous high speed chase in a residential neighborhood that clearly
threatened innocents of all sorts. His beating was as much a
punishment for this as it was an attempt to restrain.
In a world in which property owners had absolute rights,
what would have happened to Jones? Could the restaurant owner walk up
to a passed out man on his private property and blast him in the head?
That would be contrary to normal rules of proportionality. In fact,
Murray N. Rothbard argues (Ethics of Liberty, p. 85) that this would
be the equivalent of murder.
Killing would only be proportional if the person were
threatening the life of the owner of the property, or his employees or
customers. One can imagine conditions under which a sleeping druggie
would go this far, and thereby be due the maximum punishment. But the
property owner would have every reason to stop the escalation, if only
to avoid legal entanglement and bad publicity.
We should remember that the rules of proportionality set
up a maximum allowable punishment but do not mandate it. Good sense
suggests that, say, a net or sedative spray might be a better approach
when someone resists being thrown off private property. Surely, the
police should take this approach, if available, before beating and
beating a person until he is dead. In the Rodney King case, the police
used stun guns, which had no effect, before resorting to extreme
tactics, though, despite appearances, they caused little injury to
King. Might this have been a better approach in the Jones case?
Our increasingly federalized police seem all too willing
in these days of the War on Terror to employ terror tactics whenever
they can get away with it. They have been unleashed
as never before, and hence have an increasingly antagonistic
relationship to the citizenry. They are less and less like servants
and more and more like masters.
Roadblocks in the US are now common. We think nothing of
showing our papers whenever we are asked. The slightest behavior out
of the ordinary calls down questions. You have the distinct impression
that you have no recourse to law and that your fate is entirely in the
arbitrary hands of the state. The armed agents of the state seem to be
experiencing a permanent bout of paranoia.
Imagine how private security guards might have handled the
matter differently. Wal-Mart, for example, which uses private
security. Might they have just helped the man and tried to contact a
family member? Might they have sedated him had he become unruly? Or
just backed off for a time until the man stopped protesting? Or
offered him $20 or a bottle of scotch to go? They would have at least
understood that beating, let alone killing, people on company property
is bad for business. But the restaurant called government police who
believe they can and should use every amount of force they can get
away with under the regulations.
As this case is looked at closely, and all the details
spread across the Cincinnati papers, a great irony presents itself.
The case will eventually be referred to the US government for
investigation and correction - the same US government that has killed
thousands and thousands of civilians in Iraq, shoots people on the
spot for resisting any of its foreign adventures, and otherwise thinks
nothing of destroying life, not just for one person, but for
thousands, and not just for the guilty but the innocent too.
And while this case will end up under court review, the
thousands of cases of killings in Iraq are subject only to military
whitewash. There is no rule of law, or anything approximating it, in
Iraq, where the US government demands the absolute right to have its
way with the population.
These are the people we hope will save us from the abuse
of our local police. We fret and worry about the death of one man in
Cincinnati, but hardly anyone wants to talk about the thousands dead
and tens of thousands maimed and otherwise harmed in Iraq. If you are
against police brutality, by all means investigate every allegation.
But let's not forget that the greatest brutality of all is war, and it
is prosecuted not by local police, but by the most brutal cop of all:
the central state.
December 4, 2003
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is president of
the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama,
and editor of LewRockwell.com.
Copyright � 2003 LewRockwell.com