[dropcap size=small]A[/dropcap]new Federal Court suit filed by a Georgia woman alleges that an Albany police officer brutally attacked her and caused her to have a miscarriage. The woman, Kenya Harris, is suing the City of Albany, Georgia, as well as police Chief John Proctor and officers Ryan Jenkins and Richard Brown, Jr. for excessive force, assault and battery and infliction of emotional distress.
Harris states in her claim that after waiting for over five hours in the Albany Police Department due to a matter involving her minor son, she told Jenkins that she had other children to tend to at home and that she needed to leave. Harris alleges that Jenkins then responded that he did not appreciate her tone and that he would put her head “on the floor” if she continued. After repeating that she needed to go home, Harris alleges that Jenkins followed through with his threat.
The complaint states that Jenkins grabbed Harris by the neck and slammed her to the ground, after which Harris blacked out only to come back to consciousness with Jenkins sitting on her back. She then reports that she was handcuffed, slammed against the wall and placed into an interrogation room. Harris claims that she then requested medical attention and was denied, before being taken to jail and charged with obstruction of justice. Harris believes that her miscarriage was a result of Jenkins’s actions.
If Ms. Harris’s story is accurate, it would be just the latest chapter in what seems like a never-ending book of police brutality and abuses of power. This is all a consequence of police forces being constantly empowered by those wishing to appear “tough on crime.”
Preserving civil liberties is not always a politically popular thing to do, but supposedly taking those actions which are necessary to allow police to “catch the bad guys” and “keep us safe” seems to be always in vogue during campaign season. As soon as an accusation of being “soft on crime” is lobbed toward one who is skeptical of state police action, that same actor is quick to do everything in his or her power to make such an accusation moot through their demonstration that they are more than willing to erode human rights in favor of the police state.
Most libertarians acknowledge the need for a police force in a free society to protect individuals and their property, although the issue of whether such forces should be government-run or privately-owned is a wholly separate issue. However, when police are granted as much power as they are today, it is easy to understand how it could lead to a cognitive dissonance of sorts; after all, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
It’s fair to say that most officers do not go into their field desiring to do harm. They, like any other professionals, want to do what they believe is right. But when the government criminalizes thousands of activities, gives broad leeway to officers to enforce such laws and demands “results” in the form of arrests, criminal charges and convictions, these perhaps otherwise benevolent law enforcers are left in a bind. After years of doing what they must to simply complete their jobs, it is not difficult to see how officers could begin to get tuned into the mindset that they are not enforcing the law; they are the law.
No amount of court-awarded damages will ever bring back Kenya Harris’s unborn child, or erase the memories that she will forever have from that day when her life was permanently changed. However, if we can use this incident to realize as a country just how far police use of force has stretched, perhaps this death will not be in vain.
