A San Francisco cop who is already a defendant in a federal civil rights lawsuit — filed against him by a black cop who was racially profiled and arrested while off duty — arrested and handcuffed a public defender in court Tuesday for refusing to allow him to violate her client’s constitutional rights by photographing and questioning him without his attorney present.
“San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Jami Tillotson, an 18-year-veteran of the public defender’s office, was in court when she was notified that one of her clients was being interviewed and photographed by police in the hallway. She rushed out to intervene and notify her client they did not have to speak to police without an attorney present.”
Police Inspector Brian Stansbury then arrested and handcuffed her.
We all want our police to do a good job. We should support them when they do. But there are people who shouldn’t be cops, who don’t get it, and sometimes you feel like screaming and swearing at them. We gotta keep our eye on the ball, though, and stayed focused on what really matters, which is getting abusive cops removed from our police forces.
Police agencies across America have made bad hiring decisions. Probably the vast majority of cops know what their job is, and how to do it, but some cops are out of control. What was Stansbury thinking? The guy is power tripping. He’s dangerous and should be removed from law enforcement.
No doubt this attorney will sue Stansbury and the City of San Francisco, but legal judgments against police, even big ones (such as the multimillion-dollar settlements municipalities and their insurers are paying to families of innocent people gunned down by killer cops), don’t seem to make a dent in the problem of police abuse of citizens. Generally speaking, police departments are protecting abusive cops instead of getting rid of them. Meanwhile, taxpayers get stuck with the legal payouts that result from their bad behavior.
In one outrageous Arizona case, a detention officer rifled through a defense attorney’s files, in court, behind her back, which is a clear violation of attorney-client privilege and the defendant’s constitutional right to be represented by counsel. A judge found the officer in contempt of court and ordered him to apologize, but on orders of his boss — the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio — the officer refused and spent 10 days in jail.