2011-03-07
In his dissent in Mr. Florence’s case, Judge Louis H. Pollak, a former dean of Yale Law School, was also skeptical of the majority’s theory. “One might doubt,” he wrote, “that individuals would deliberately commit minor offenses such as civil contempt — the offense for which Florence was arrested — and then secrete contraband on their persons, all in the hope that they will, at some future moment, be arrested and taken to jail to make their illicit deliveries.”
The older I get and the more I see of cases like that of Mr. Florence the more I believe that the difference between criminality and civility in our society depends upon who was first to pull out the gun.
Mr. Florence got a ticket once. In 2003 he committed a traffic offense. He paid his fine. He obtained a letter from the court certifying that he had paid his fine-- God knows why he even thought for a second he would ever need it. Just because he was black. Because he was a financial adviser to a car dealership and made a decent wage. Because he drove a BMW. [You know, I suspect that a certain segment of the population has already sighed a little sigh of condescension: well-- he's black and driving a BMW.....]
Then, in 2005, Mr. Florence was pulled over. His wife was driving and his four-year-old son was in the back. The cop called up the record of the offense and arrested Mr. Florence on the spot. Mr. Florence showed him the document from the court showing that he had paid the fine for the offense. The cop-- representing you and me and all other white taxpayers, and Clarence Thomas, one must suppose, because he sure as hell didn't seem to represent any coloured taxpayers-- arrested him anyways. He was held for eight days.
You don't believe that? I don't either. Here's a direct quote from the NY Times article:
Mr. Florence was nonetheless held for eight days in two counties on a charge of civil contempt before matters were sorted out.
Say what you want about the NY Times, they almost always have the facts right, so I believe it.
But here is the issue germane now-- maybe-- to the Supreme Court: he was ordered to strip, bend over, and separate his cheeks while a group of manly police officers looked on.
Mr. Florence is asking the court to rule that such intrusive, humiliating actions are not justified by the law. The prosecutors argue that such procedures are justified by the enormous risk of people driving around with drugs or weapons stuffed into their anuses on the off chance that a police officer might stop them, call up a paid traffic ticket on their computers, and prove incapable of decoding the information correctly and decide this person was a threat to society and needed to be locked up in the same jail cell as a rich convict who had secretly arranged the entire thing from his prison cell and doesn't care where the contraband has been.
The black man on the Supreme Court will relish ruling against him, but what about the seven sane members (Scalia, in my view, is nearly a psychopath) who might consider Judge Pollak's perspective above.
What kind of person believes the police should have the right to pick up a man -- seemingly at random-- and strip search him and hold him for eight days... for a traffic offense (if one were to assume, crazily, for a moment, that Mr. Florence was even guilty of not paying the fine)?