The Boston Globe Reports: “[Boston Police] Officer Justin Barrett was suspended Tuesday after allegedly writing the racially charged email about Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to colleagues at the National Guard, referring to Gates as a ‘jungle monkey.’ ”
Disclaimer: I am not condoning the officer’s conduct.
But there has been a lot of discussion lately about the First Amendment’s protections, even for offensive speech. So how is the officer’s suspension based a PRIVATELY-SENT email NOT a blatant constitutional violation?
http://www.boston.com/news/loc…
Please share widely!
The First Amendment doctrine is complicated in this area. You should read the Pappas decision and Judge Sotomayor’s dissent — they are both linked in my front-page post. Then add your thoughts in the comments on that post.
Beyond just the hate email, one has to wonder how b-r-i-g-h-t this fellow is. He sends his email around. Most people have figured out that email is about as secure as yelling something down the street. Not this boy in blue. He works in an area of mixed races, carries a deadly weapon, is empowered to use that weapon and to control social unrest, may be required to make quick and correct judgements. Do you want him or his kind in your neighborhood?
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p>I’m sure in this day and age, if he gets fired, he’ll land a job on another police force in a couple weeks. NYC is always hiring.
I know a police officer who is a passionate pro-lifer. Even though abortion has been perfectly legal in this country since Roe vs. Wade, this police officer still participates in anti-abortion demonstrations, and protests outside abortion clinics. He has sent volumes of emails characterizing Pro-Choice advocates as murderers and comparing them to Nazi killers, as well as using random assorted slurs. How can we expect a police officer to maintain law and order AND enforce the laws if he shows this poor judgement in his personal life.
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p>Of course, this is simply a story to show how we cannot hold people accountable in their work lives for subjective opinions they hold in their hearts, be they political, legal, patriotic, emotional or RACIAL.
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p>FREE SPEECH!!!!!
Certainly prolifers are capable of upholding and enforcing the law. They’re not all like the guy who assassinated Dr. Tiller. I must say you’re call to have a discussion about race is losing credibility with each additional comment of yours.
My call for discussions on race were largely ignored by BMGers. I tried. The relevance of my “Pro-Choice…” example is that police officers may have views on issues which people disagree with but we can’t hold police responsible for ther PERSONAL views on issues (race, gender, sexuality, abortion…) in their jobs. I personally don’t think we have the right to force police officers to “think” and “speak/blog…” according to standards. I certainly think we can enforce that Police conduct official business as per the law and police standards but as I said in my example… what if a cop is zealously Pro_life in his/her personal life… can we stop this behavior because we wonder if he/she can act as a police officer with this bias.
First yes, some views are more beyond the pale than others. Prolife is a position taken regarding the decisions people make, whereas racism is an irrational hatred relative to a characteristic of a person that is beyond anyone’s control (There, I said it – you happy?). Second, if one holds racist views there are whole segments of the community he will not be able to effectively police, whereas someone who’s ardently prolife as you discribe, well, maybe he shouldn’t be assigned to security detail at a prochoice rally, but there are plenty of other things he can do, including effectively serve in other contexts members of the community who happen to be prochoice.
Who will have the job of assigning only those officers to cases involving witness, victims and/or criminals from these groups? This would be completely insane and no police force could exist this way. You cannot hire police officers and assume these people won’t have some biases.
Who says that because this guy made a racial joke he is somehow unable to “effectively police”?
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p>What about a police officer who had a lousy mother. Should we ask him in the screening process about his childhood? If he hints at it, give him the boot because surely his experience would prevent him from making correct judgment calls in domestic disputes? All I’m saying is that there is a difference between the thoughts we privately hold (or, send to a friend in a private email) v. the MANIFESTATIONS of these beliefs. If, for instance, this officer were being investigated for use of unreasonable force on a black person, then sure – the email would be relevant to show some prejudice, etc. But apart from anything like that, it’s within his constitutional right to be somewhat of an a-hole.
The email that generated this discussion went way beyond a simple joke. To me it expressed views worthy of the Ku Klux Klan. You might have a constitutional right to be a jerk, but I don’t want such people in my police department.
…definitely fall more in the category of racist than prolife. I would be concerned about people with those kind of hatreds being on the force as well. You clearly carry a lot of prejudice and therefore seem to assume that everybody does. I am much more confident that most communities can build a police force free of bigotry.
some define bigoted as “a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices” sounds like a few bigots (ideology, union supporters…) blog here!
…the definition you cite applies only to naturally occuring traits and religion, for example racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, mysoginy(sp?). Union supporters, those on either side of the gun control, reproductive rights, or other policy debates may be ideologues, but not necessarily bigots. Again there is a difference between disagreeing on a position and hating a person. Personally, I only get intolerant either when I encounter the hatreds I listed above or I’m convinced that hard science is on my side.
I’m intolerant of attitudes, not people.
This exchange wasted your analytical abilities, IMHO.
I guess I did kind of let JohnD get to me on this one:)
My apologies
But thank you for being tolerant of me (a person).
KBusch and I can both attest to how hard it is not to take the bait.
I’ve missed our chats. We never got to speak about Gates/Crowley, Officer Barrett, Healthcare, volcanic deficits, government takeover of… well everything, the lack of a recession in MA… and just how your summer is going. When you feel the strength come back, give me a holler (until then I’ll just have to suffer from your CONSTANT ZERO rankings but I won’t resort to this cheap shot on your comments).
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p>But I am glad to see you are still the yin to KBusch’s yang (The Lone Ranger and Tonto…). Maybe we’ll have to wait for the eventual swing to supporting Republicans nationally in local elections in 2009 and national elections in 2010 to debate politics. Or sit by the side and watch. I was posting to someone the other day how boring some diaries are here and that I like the debate lively. Sorry I didn’t comment on your “birther” diary… nor did anyone else.
are the one that associated pro-lifers with assassins. JohnD’s comment was simply to analogize racial beliefs with other controversial beliefs. Relevant analogies is a perfectly logical way to debate an issue. Ad hominem attacks (e.g. you are losing credibility with each additional comments), on the other hand, are logical fallacies.
Racist views and prolife views are definitely NOT analogous in my book. One is dissent about policy while the other is extreme prejudice toward who a person is. I went to the assassin example because JohnD used examples of rhetoric of such extreme as to justify such assassination in the eyes of some. Unless you’ve been lurking for longer than you’ve been posting you’ve come late to the discussion. I’ve taken logic classes and it is emphatically NOT a logical fallacy or an ad hominem attack to point out that one’s credibility is waning. I think the accusation of someone being “racist” is thrown around way too generously, but if you’ve managed to earn that epithet from me you’ve really crossed the line. Not all controversial views are created equal; racism and prolife views are very definitely not equal.
Perhaps you have gotten into an odd corner. Aren’t there a number of government functions where the ideology of the officeholder really does matter? A radical libertarian should not be running the FDA and a master race theorist should not be running the Civil Rights Division.
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p>Even the privacy issue. Normally we liberals say that how people express their sexuality in the privacy of their homes should be irrelevant to job qualification. I don’t think that applies to pedophiles applying to be school teachers, though.
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p>So, to me, it oversimplifies to set up a neat, clean, simple wall between ideology or private life and job qualification.
That the officer’s ACTIONS should be the deciding trigger for disciplinary action? Look at his performance – has his racist views shone forth in his work performance? If so, they yeah he has no place on the force. If not, if he can keep his work performance and inner thoughts separate, then he is just somewhat of a jerk-ish cop.
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p>A radical libertarian running the FDA and a master race theorist running the ACLU. Those examples are bothersome because we ASSUME their views would effect their performance. That is not, however, necessarily true.
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p>I agree with your example about the pedophile – we don’t want him working in the schools. Likewise, I would not want a pedophile cop or a cop who killed little animals as a child and may be prone to violence to patrol the streets. However, slight distinction between pedophilic and violent actions and someone simply making a racist statement. (i.e. one is ILLEGAL and one is PROTECTED BY THE 1st AMENDMENT)
If their views don’t affect their performance, then they don’t really hold those views.
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p>Potentially, I could not believe in Euclidean geometry but I could still prove theorems in it because it’s a completely formal task. I could suspend my view and perform competently. So there, the presence or absence of views could be irrelevant.
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p>On the other hand, if I work at the EPA and really think that all regulation is deleterious, the human organization in which I operate lacks the clean formal boundaries of axioms and propositions. I get to bend a lot of stuff. And I will, because that’s what I believe.
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p>I grant that the way the law works under constitutional government requires the law to focus on acts not on intentions or thought crimes. I’d add, though, that pedophiles reading pornography are “only” committing thought crimes, too, and we certainly treat that differently.
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p>Put sharply (and a bit unfairly) for the sake of argument: Are we saying African-Americans more expendable than children?
I suppose we disagree about an element of human behavior – i.e. that humans are unable to hold a view but conduct themselves oppositely. I know I for one have often done it – I have worked for people whom I COMPLETELY disagree with, but I do what I am supposed to do, despite my contrary views.
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p>Clearly, we are not saying African Americans are more expendable than children. The law does afford extra protections to children than adults, for obvious reasons.
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p>A pedophile reading adult porn thinking disgusting thoughts – no crime. A pedophile writing an explicit email about children about this thoughts – maybe getting into illegal activity if it were considered kiddie porn. A pedophile acting on such thoughts, of course illegal.
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p>Outside of the protections for children, different story. There, a racist person thinking racist thoughts – no crime. A person writing a racist email about his thoughts – no crime. A person ACTING on those thoughts – obviously a crime. The difference isn’t between children and African Americans – it’s between children and adults.
I think the problem is that racism also affects one’s understanding of other people. Consider the fundamental attribution error, a phenomenon in social psychology. If some cuts us off on the highway, we typically think, “That asshole!” We attribute the behavior to disposition, not to the situation. (The driver didn’t see us, the driver needs to get a passenger to the hospital, etc.) People’s anger at strangers is full of this phenomenon.
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p>What’s this have to do with racism? People infected with racism encountering a member of an ethnic minority are much more likely to attribute behavior to disposition not situation. They are much more likely to fall into the fundamental attribution error.
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p>This is a cognitive thing. It is not shed as easily as carrying out a clearly defined task for a boss with whom one disagrees.
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p>Finally, it is something that tends to harm members of ethnic minorities.
My goal in mentioning race, gender, ideology… was to say we cannot simple pick one bias that a police officer could have and make it “punishable”. I believe we would have a very slippery slope when we “pick one of these biases and suddenly punish individuals for what was once an “assumed” right of personal privacy. I think we have all grown up with the understanding that while some traits of people, including views on gender, politics, sexual taboos and so many other issues… may be objectionable, they are your private business.
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p>Actions on your bias which break the laws are obvious problems which deserve punishment however I still feel that a police officer who happens to say… “hate teachers” due to something which happened in high school can still do his job.
We’ve probably all done what you’ve mentioned regarding working with people with whom we disagree. I would go as far as to say that being able to do so is a valuable life skill. The distinction you’re not making is between disagreement and prejudice. A prolife viewpoint constitutes by definition a disagreement with a prochoice viewpoint. That’s perfectly valid; you can say to someone, “I disagree with your views on reproductive rights because of x, y, and z.” You cannot, however, go up to a black person and say, “I disagree with the fact that you’re black; why aren’t you white?” There’s nothing to debate there and there’s no valid reason to hate someone on that basis.
I suggest that the first amendment claims are without foundation for the following two reasons:
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p>1. He, like public school teachers, surely has a “conduct unbecoming” clause in his contract. Like it or not, a community expects certain conduct from its police and its teachers. When a teacher runs an erotic website, they’ll get fired. When Officer Barrett publishes (essentially) a racist, misogynist, and threatening diatribe, he should expect to be fired.
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p>The purpose of such a clause is specifically to allow dismissal in cases like this, without jumping into the murky waters you describe.
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p>It’s not a first amendment violation because nobody is arguing he should be jailed or face criminal penalties. He violated a clause in his contract.
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p>2. An important job duty of every officer is to be an effective witness in prosecutions, including “disorderly conduct” prosecutions. A defense attorney for any defendant arrested by Officer Barrett will wave this email in front of the judge and jury. End of story.
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p>If the BPD does not did not have such a clause, and was not able to dismiss him, then I argue that the ability of the BPD to prosecute any defendant would be compromised — a defense attorney for any defendant arrested by any officer will wave this email and impeach the objectivity of whatever officer made the arrest.
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p>A police force that follows your contemplated standard will have to prove that every arresting officer successfully kept “[their] work performance and inner thoughts separate.” That is significant harm to the effectiveness of the entire police department.
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p>Officer Barrett demonstrated his unsuitability as a cop by publishing his offensively racist and misogynist email. His “inner thoughts” don’t matter. His public statements do.