I’m a little confused by the legal strategy of police Lt. Ray Albers. I thought that the proper thing when you point a rifle at protestors, tell them to fuck themselves, and threaten to shoot and kill them, was that your life is subsequently ruined. At a minimum, you should lose your job, but you’ve just issued terroristic threats. It seems like you should probably go to prison.
Of course, a law enforcement officer who is engaged in crowd control has a little more leeway than a private citizen, and he can certainly argue that there were mitigating factors, like he’s a giant coward, that led him to use poor judgment. Maybe he could avoid serving time with the people who couldn’t pay for his speed trap fines.
However, me personally?
Any inclination I might have toward leniency and forgiveness pretty much went out the door when Lt. Albers’ attorney starting whining about how his client’s life has been ruined.
On Wednesday, Albers was at an administrative hearing as the Missouri Department of Public Safety tried to convince a member of the state’s Administrative Hearing Commission to take disciplinary action by suspending or permanently revoking the license that allows him to work as an officer.
The state of Missouri says Albers acted “without legal justification” when he pointed his assault rifle at a crowd of people, and that his “threat to commit a felony” — specifically, murder — violated Missouri law…
…Albers and his lawyer, Brandi Barth, offered several different defenses for his actions that night. Barth argued it was “unfair” to make Albers “the poster child” for bad policing during the Ferguson protests, and showed off photos of a number of other officers pointing rifles at protesters. Indeed, St. Louis County officers stationed on top of armored vehicles even pointed their sniper rifles at crowds of peaceful protesters in broad daylight a few days after Brown’s death, a tactic that drew widespread condemnation.
“There’s selective enforcement against Mr. Albers, in a situation where we have now seen at least a dozen officers in the selected photos having their rifles raised,” Barth said. “This situation of 30 seconds in a 20-year career has literally ruined his life.”
It’s not that I dispute that his life has been ruined, but he’s still alive.
Seems like things are about exactly as they should be.
