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Watching the Watchers

By TChris, Section Misconduct
Posted on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 08:21:26 AM EST
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by TChris

Among the (sometimes former) police officers recently arrested or sentenced for possessing child pornography (or worse):

  • Kenneth Haga from Huntsville and Ken Stanley from Florence, Alabama. A third Alabama officer, Former Somerville Police Chief Chris Landers, is charged with sexually abusing a child.

  • Brandon Tomkins from Hillsboro, Oregon, also charged with sexually abusing a learning disabled minor.
  • Stanley Burkhardt, a former sex crimes investigator for the New Orleans Police Dept., twice convicted of possessing child porn, "has been jailed on allegations of sneaking out of a halfway house to use public computers to access the Internet."
  • And let's not leave out Tom Adams, the Mayor of Green Oaks, IL, who isn't a police officer but, as mayor, oversees the police. Adams is also described as "a former chairman of the Lake County Republican Party and a longtime GOP power broker." You know, one of those family values kind of guys.

As the Alabama story suggests, most police officers aren't viewing child porn, and the percentage who do may be no greater than the percentage of child porn viewers in any other profession. But other professions aren't charged with enforcing the law. Those who enforce the law have a special duty to abide by it. It's worth taking the time to note how often the police fail in that obligation.

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    Watching the Watchers | 21 comments (21 topical)
    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#1)
    by Patrick on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 10:35:08 AM EST
    T-Chris, Pathetic attempt. Had to throw in a mayor and former cops too. Things must be slow at the agency this week. One wonders how many defense attorneys have been arrested, but really it's not worth my time to find out.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#2)
    by Sumner on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 10:48:42 AM EST
    "Predator prudery" is a form of sexuality. It allows indulgence in sexual matter while feigning, (conscious or not), the outrage of the assault on sensibilities. In California, when lawmakers pass "sex-offender laws", (quite frequently by unanimous vote), they regularly laugh raucously while doing so, and during which time, their faces often show expressions of sexual excitement. So they like to regularly pass more such laws, over and over. "The First Amendment isn't absolute", they insist. (hmm. Read it.) The definition of a police state has been said to be where the police use their existing power to leverage more power, (say under the guise of "Kid-Safe", workshops to rile up communities.) It is nothing less than obscene that prison guard unions funnel money to lawmakers to pass more and more laws to put more and more people in jail in more and more prisons. This is even while more and more otherwise non-violent prisoners meet their deaths through violence and maltreatment. As such, state slavery is a potentially far more sinister form of human trafficking than what the US State Department regularly rails against, regarding other countries.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#3)
    by Jlvngstn on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 10:51:32 AM EST
    Police are fallible, and? I kept reading and rereading this post and I don't get it. I could understand if there was a cover up of some sort but I don't get it. I love TChris but this seems like a cheap shot to me.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#4)
    by JSN on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 11:06:26 AM EST
    What we have at the present time is the police investigate themselves and the county attorney who works very closely with police officers decides if charges should be filed. Sometimes a police officer is told to resign and no charges are filed if they do. Unless they are blacklisted this just moves the problem to another community. County attorneys, Sheriffs and police chiefs know these are a potentially explosive issues and are very tight lipped on such subjects. I am for oversight but I think for a law enforement agency it should an external peer review not a review by an appointed committee of citizens. External peer reviews are expensive and few communities are willing to pay for them.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#5)
    by Patrick on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 11:12:32 AM EST
    They are tight lipped in California because employee privacy rights preclude them from discussing personnel matters in public. BTW, it didn't take long to find defense attorney misconduct and I wasn't even trying.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#6)
    by Lww on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 11:19:22 AM EST
    Sumner, it is obscene for prison unions to be involved in lobbying crime legislation but the MOST obscene thing about our criminal justice system is the role lawyers play in it. Aren't they the biggest losers when crime goes down? If a bill was ever passed that legalized pot you'd see half the lawyer's houses go into foreclosure. Then again they'd just pass some more laws to make up the difference.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#7)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 11:20:11 AM EST
    I think that the child pornography laws as they are written are unjust. In the case of unjust laws, why say that law enforcement officers have a special obligation to obey them? The child pornography as, as they are written and interpreted in state and federal courts, have been used to criminalize such things as 1) a 16 y o boyfriend having a nude photo of his 16 y o girlfriend; 2) nudity of minors per se; 3) in the case of Stephen Yurick and his daughter who posed nude, about a dozen photos simply because they could reasonably be considered sexually attractive. In several cases, Marie posed herself.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#8)
    by Sumner on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 11:22:33 AM EST
    Do you not ask yourself, when "child-pornography" collections are seized, what is the ultimate disposition of the material? What prevents its diversion? Some cops are said to limit themselves to accessing only that porn that they can intercept during specific online traffic investigations and from forensic examinations on seized computers and media. Others surf the Internet to their "heart's" content for interesting material. Once suspects are convicted, sexual focus on "treatment" often involves subjecting individuals to watching "child-porn" while wearing "peter-meters" and requires mandatory disclosure of entire sexual histories, (which are then further used against the person.)

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#9)
    by Deconstructionist on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 12:48:53 PM EST
    So? Is the point here that because we can never achieve 100% compliance with the law among those charged with enforcing it that having laws is wrong? If not, is there a meaningful point?

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#10)
    by JSN on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 01:21:32 PM EST
    The meaninful point is that the so called "criminal justice/injustice system" is operated by imperfect people and we need to pay closer attention to what they are doing.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#11)
    by Deconstructionist on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 01:27:19 PM EST
    Paying closer attention is a grand idea. I just don't see how identifying a handful of cops who broke the law is really directing attention to what is meaningful.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#12)
    by Lww on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 02:08:43 PM EST
    So Sumner is envious of the cops and zait thinks...who tf knows? Everytime a child is photographed or filmed and everytime someone views it; the child is victimized.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#13)
    by Sumner on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 02:16:07 PM EST
    One of the key mantras currently circulating in law enforcement circles these days, is that in order to prevail, "make it personal". The radices of these particular laws come from the religious extremists in the US. Law should allow a process where religion masquerading as law, can be struck down. The system in the US does not effectively provide that. So-called "legislative hearings" into the subject at hand simply fail to consider any witnesses arguing to the contrary. Such advocates are dehumanized, vilified and demonized as "monsters" and the like, without challenge. Check the Congressional Record. This "child-porn" "exception" carved out to the First Amendment simply does not admit careful examination. Why are others able to see that tenets of theocracy are undesirable in law? The previous paralogism of ignoratio elenchi by an attempted reductio ad absurdum about devolving to no law at all, smacks of sophistry. Relax, my comments weren't a diatribe against defense lawyers' bread-and-butter nor against possible "work-related" access to kiddie-porn, by defense lawyers themselves. The system is broken here far worse than simply myriad bad cops. Note: Deconstruction(ism) > (Fr) déconstruire - Disassembly; taking apart; reduction; dissection; breakdown; dissociation; a taking to pieces. According to US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, "the political device by which tyrants rewrite history", with the fiction that democracies have a monopoly on histori(city).

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#14)
    by Deconstructionist on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 02:48:10 PM EST
    Well, good luck with your crusade to promote the First Amendment by opposing laws against child porn. It certainly is informative to learn that only religious extremists oppose child pornography and do so only to impose their narrow minded views upon everyone else. I had been operating under the misapprehension that most people of all religions and even the non-religious thought abusing and exploiting children was bad. Thanks for correcting me on that. Degrading and abusing children to provide enterntainment is something the First Amendment was intended to protect and I guess I have subconscious theocratic impulses that led me astray. I'll have to rethink my opposition to snuff films too, I guess. I've just been tricked by by the religious right into thinking some things are so harmful and serve so liile or no meritorious purpose that society has the right to restrict or ban them. I guess it's those same theocratic right-wingers who want to impose gun control despite the 2nd Amendment. You just casn't trust those crazy religious kooks.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#15)
    by Sailor on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 03:41:43 PM EST
    Well, good luck with your crusade to promote the First Amendment by opposing laws against child porn. It certainly is informative to learn that only religious extremists oppose child pornography and do so only to impose their narrow minded views upon everyone else.
    Here's your cookie.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#16)
    by Lww on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 03:48:22 PM EST
    Sailor, you sound like fat Rush when he accuses a liberal of being a "seminar caller." You hope they're honest.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#17)
    by Che's Lounge on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 07:41:09 PM EST
    It certainly is informative to learn that only religious extremists oppose child pornography and do so only to impose their narrow minded views upon everyone else. Nice try, but the discussion is about the objection to certain child porngraphy laws, not child pornography.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#18)
    by Patrick on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 09:10:34 PM EST
    Nice try, but the discussion is about the objection to certain child porngraphy laws, not child pornography.
    Oh, I thought the thread was about cops who break the law. So I guess my question is Which "certain" child pornography law do you feel is wrong?

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#19)
    by Sumner on Wed Aug 09, 2006 at 12:34:37 AM EST
    Several years back, when the war on sex really started to get under way, I declared a moratorium until the issues could be more fairly sorted out. My decree was ignored, so I amerced an amount equivalent of 5 times the national debt to be spent on reparations in the form of massive purchases of "child pornography", to also include smaller portions of that overall sum, for the long overdue reparations to Blacks, Native American Indians, etc. (It would seem that both Russia and Ukraine took the decree seriously, because they undertook major studio quality production on a mammoth scale of kiddie porn. Some of the finest art that exists on earth resulted from that endeavor.) As the burden for coughing up the enormous sum would ultimately fall most heavily upon the rich, that element of the social strata began financing other laws against child porn that "presume" to be now in place. This would have represented an unprecedented massive transfer of wealth to the children. All values within society would have shifted in an historically novel fashion. When Bush assumed office, he ran with the idea of massive deficit spending, but he defied my decree and instead, he ran the plan in reverse. The reverse Robin Hood instead borrowed heavily to further enrich the already obscenely wealthy.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#20)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Wed Aug 09, 2006 at 11:24:04 AM EST
    Re the justice or injustice of the child pornography laws as currently written and interpreted: prior to 1978, it was generally assumed/believed that for something to be criminalized in terms of photography, that it had to be obscene. From 78 to 82, Congress and some states took small steps to trying to criminalize nonobscene "child pornography" and in 1982, the Supreme Court gave them a green light to do so in New York v Ferber. My opposition to the child pornography laws isn't to what you and I and other people (other than the 25% of the US that is fundamentalist or "evangelical") would have considered obscene. Obvious cases of abuse or rape and generally even most cases of what would be statutory rape would have pror to 78 be considered obscene and even today would be considered obscene if we were applying an obscenity standard. However, with the permission of the federal courts, the Congress, the states and their judges interpreting the laws have criminalized many, many instances/photos of what is patently not obscene and what was not harmful to the minor depicted. Moreover, even in the Ferber decision and afterwards, "child pornography" as a legal class was supposed to be limited to visual depictions of sexual conduct. The states however have easily gotten around this limitation by definiting "sexual conduct" to be, frequently, nothing more than going nude or topless and being photographed. That should have rendered any such laws unconstitutional, but federal courts have enforced the constitutional limitation as to what cp is constitutionally supposed to be (per the Ferber decision) about as much as the CHP enforces the speed limit in Southern California. Anyone can easily buy from amazon books that depict minors nude, but to produce or possess such on your computer, and 3/4 of the states will prosecute and convict you and label you a sex offender for life. Even apart from the question of mere nudity, the slightest thing that might be interpreted as being sexually inviting, such as being in certain lingerie or being photographed nude on a bed, and you are again liable to be convicted of federal law. In the case of Stephen and Marie Yurick in Tennessee not long ago, Marie (a teen model)had several photos of herself taken nude using a timer on the camera. At trial, she was asked about the poses she had. She said that she got the ideas from magazines such as one might be in the grocery store. Her dad had retained these photos and so had Marie. He was convicted of violating the cp law and sentenced to years in prison. There are dozens of other similar cases, but this is one of the most egregiously bad and unjust.

    Re: Watching the Watchers (none / 0) (#21)
    by Che's Lounge on Wed Aug 09, 2006 at 12:08:43 PM EST
    Patrick, The point of my post is that Decon is mischaracterizing his opponents' position. I personally don't have the knowledge to debate child porn laws. But I can recognize a diversionary debate tactic. It disrupted the thread.

    Watching the Watchers | 21 comments (21 topical)