Tuesday, April 21, 2015

The Two Faces Of Eric Holder


It has long been known that during his time as Attorney General, Eric Holder has been a man who talks a great game and delivers less, much less. And as his time is coming to an end, the NYTimes gives us a look and one of his skeevier duplicities.
Teresa Sheehan was alone in her apartment at a mental health center, clutching what her lawyers said was a small bread knife and demanding to be left alone. San Francisco police officers, responding to a call from a social worker, forced open the door, blinded her with pepper spray and shot her.

It was the kind of violent police confrontation that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has frequently criticized in Cleveland, Albuquerque, Ferguson, Mo., and beyond. But last month, when Ms. Sheehan’s civil rights lawsuit reached the Supreme Court, the Justice Department backed the police, saying that a lower court should have given more weight to the risks that the officers faced.

At the Supreme Court, where the limits of police power are established, Mr. Holder’s Justice Department has supported police officers every time an excessive-force case has made its way to arguments. Even as it has opened more than 20 civil rights investigations into local law enforcement practices, the Justice Department has staked out positions that make it harder for people to sue the police and that give officers more discretion about when to fire their guns.

Police groups see Mr. Holder as an ally in that regard, and that pattern has rankled civil rights lawyers, who say the government can have a far greater effect on policing by interpreting law at the Supreme Court than through investigations of individual departments.

“There is an inherent conflict between people at the Justice Department trying to stop police abuses and other people at the Justice Department convincing the Supreme Court that police abuses should be excused,” said Ronald L. Kuby, a Manhattan civil rights lawyer.

To some extent, conflict is built into the system. The Justice Department’s core mission is law enforcement. It oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, among others. In every administration, it is in the government’s interest for federal agents to have as much leeway, and as little liability, as possible.

“It’s natural that the instinctive reaction of the department is to support law enforcement interests, even when a particular case may have compelling facts for the individual defendant,” said Neal K. Katyal, a former acting solicitor general in the Obama administration. He said the Justice Department had a duty to tell the court what effect a ruling could have for federal law enforcement agencies.

When police abuse cases make it to the Supreme Court, even if they have nothing to do with federal agents, the Justice Department often weighs in. Last year, the department sided with police officers in West Memphis, Ark., who shot a driver and passenger 15 times, killing them at the end of a chase.

John F. Bash, a Justice Department lawyer in that case, told the justices that “there is some level of reckless driving in response to a police pursuit that authorizes the use of deadly force.” What was certain, he added, was that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity, which shields them from civil rights lawsuits. The Supreme Court unanimously agreed.

Every such victory makes it harder for citizens to prevail when they believe they have been mistreated by police officers. It also adds obstacles for the Justice Department’s own civil rights investigators when alleging police misconduct. That has led to some tense debates inside the department, current and former officials say, as the government’s civil rights and appellate lawyers discussed when the department should weigh in, and on which side. Those debates have led the Justice Department to take more nuanced positions than government lawyers might have otherwise, the officials said.
The concept of protecting your own is not hard to understand, despite the tenuous connection, but the failure to set and enforce the standards that the police should operate under is appalling. And the failure of Eric Holder to follow up his strong talk on civil rights with any meaningful action ranks up there with his treatment of the Wall St. Frauds & Banksters as one of his greatest failures.

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