Sunday, March 23, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

COLUMN: Vin Suprynowicz

When do we start negotiating the peace?

Last week, we examined the case of one Orlando D. Barlow, 28, of Las Vegas, an occasional car thief last jailed for stealing a 36-ounce bottle of beer from a 7-Eleven at Maryland Parkway and Twain, back in 1997.

On Feb. 27, Barlow accepted a baby-sitting job that went wrong. Police were called to a home in the fairly upscale southwest Las Vegas neighborhood of Rustling Winds Avenue by the lady of the house, who got into a fight with Barlow upon returning home. The police arrived somewhat after 3 a.m. and ordered Barlow to come out and walk backward toward them through the yard. He complied.

Then, "They tell him that an officer is going to come forward and handcuff him, and he began reaching for his waist ... he makes numerous furtive movements toward his waistband," a police spokesman reported.

So, of course, the officers had to shoot him in the back with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle.

OK, the late Orlando D. Barlow was a sad sack who used to steal cars and had been known to punch prison guards. But why is it becoming more and more routine for American cops to walk free after shooting unarmed "suspects" in the back?

It was less than a month before this one, on Feb. 9, that federal DEA agents fatally shot 14-year-old Ashley Villarreal in the back of the head in San Antonio for the "crime" of driving away from her home in a pickup truck at 11 p.m. -- a house the DEA had staked out because the girl's father was suspected of cocaine trafficking.

Plainclothes officers on foot stepped in front of the truck in the darkened, rainy street -- "As agents tried to block the car's path, the driver accelerated," a DEA spokesman told the San Antonio Express-News -- then claimed they had to shoot the girl because they feared she was "trying to run them down."

Don't we all tend to "accelerate" after pulling out of our driveways? Are they going to contend 14-year-old Ashley, who "dreamed of becoming a model or a singer," was also a dangerous ex-felon?

I've run into this Metro fixation with "hands to the waistband" myself.

Driving home at 11 p.m. on a Friday after giving a dinner talk a couple years ago -- dressed in a coat and tie, and presumably looking like a reasonably well-groomed 50-year-old white guy -- I pulled into a McDonald's drive-through window for a late-night cheeseburger (the dinner speaker doesn't always get to actually eat dinner, you understand). I was promptly pulled over by one of Metro's ever-watchful Boys in Beige, supposedly for "driving erratically" with one hand on the wheel as I used the other to unwrap my burger.

"Been drinking?" the nice officer asked.

I told him I'd been trying to break a nasty Coca-Cola habit; don't use alcohol.

He then proceeded to "run my documents" and let me go ... all in all, he was darned polite ... but as I stood next to my car he repeatedly advised me to, "Keep your hands away from your waist," and, "I told you; keep your hands out of your pockets."

When did it become illegal to put your hands in your pockets in America, when left unexpectedly standing by the side of the road on a chilly Friday evening? The answer, it would appear, is a court case called People v. Ross, 265 Cal. Rptr. 921 (1990), in which the court held that cops can issue such an order in the interest of "officer safety."

But I have searched my copy of the Bill of Rights in vain for the loophole phrase "except when necessary to facilitate officer safety." Pardon me if I don't find it reassuring that a bunch of (predominately) former prosecutors now wearing black dresses have read this into our Bill of Rights, instead of pointing out the cops wouldn't have these problems if they simply stopped trying to enforce blatantly unconstitutional edicts infringing our Second, Ninth and 14th Amendment rights to drugs and guns and to travel freely without having to show any "government-issued photo IDs," on demand, in the first place.

If the officers spend their shifts in fear that the average middle-aged motorist is hoping for a chance to pull out a little .25 and plug them, why did they volunteer for this line of work? None of them were drafted.

Or why don't they at least lobby heavily (don't tell me they don't lobby the legislatures; they do it all the time) to end the War on Drugs and the War on Guns and all these revenue-seeking traffic stops, whereupon they could simply go back to answering emergency calls and chasing violent felons?

Cops are necessary. Most cops are decent folk. But they should make a list of the laws that are turning our streets into a war zone of "Us Against Them," troop up to the state Legislature, and say, "Let's repeal about 90 percent of this stuff. My granddad walked a beat in an even bigger city 60 years ago; he used to whistle and say 'Hi' to all the folks and rescue kittens from trees, and he never had to pull his gun once, in 30 years on the beat. Something has gone seriously wrong in America. If this is a war, when do we start to negotiate the peace?"

Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal, is author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega."