Over the last few decades, we’ve seen numerous bad actors escape punishment for their bad acts — ranging from theft to sexual misconduct to summary execution — for no better reason than that they were government employees, under the doctrine of “qualified immunity.”

Now the US Supreme Court appears to have dropped the “qualified” part in favor of just plain immunity, full stop.

On February 21, the court rejected an appeal from Anthony Novak, who was arrested and jailed for four days in 2016, before being acquitted on a charge of “disruption of police operations.”

Novak subsequently sued for damages, and his case seemed airtight:  The supposed “disruption” consisted of a Facebook page parodying the Parma, Ohio police department.

The “qualification” for immunity claims, per the Supreme Court’s 1982 ruling in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, is that a government employee’s conduct must not “not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”

Like, for example, the rights to free speech and freedom of the press enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

A “reasonable person” — in particular a “reasonable cop” from Ohio, where high school students must complete a semester of coursework on “US government,” and where police officers are required by law to swear or affirm that they will  “support the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America” — couldn’t have missed knowing about those clearly established constitutional rights.

Parma police officers Kevin Riley and Thomas Connor had no plausible claim of confusion as to whether they were violating Anthony Novak’s rights when they arrested him for saying things they didn’t like.

The immunity they’ve been granted first by  a federal judge, then by the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals, and now by the US Supreme Court, isn’t “qualified.”  It’s just a free pass for people with badges.

Come to think of it, why should such people receive any immunity at all, “qualified” or otherwise, for committing crimes?

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, right? I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere. “But Your Honor, how was I to know bank robbery was illegal?” won’t likely bring a judge down on your side of things.

The people who make their livings enforcing the laws should be held to a higher standard, not a lower standard — and certainly shouldn’t be allowed to play a get out of jail free card — when they violate those laws.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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A specter is haunting the globe — the specter of overpopulation. Or maybe under-population. Or perhaps “demographic decline.” Whatever it is, all the powers of old Earth have entered into various holy alliances to exorcise it.

The panics started way back when with Thomas Malthus, but came to new prominence in 1968 with  Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb.

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” the Ehrlichs wrote. “At this late date, nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” The only chance of saving humanity was for governments to embrace population control measures ranging from “free” contraceptive distribution to mandatory sterilization, which they enthusiastically did (see, for example, China’s “one child policy”).

World population has continued to grow anyway … but since the book’s publication, the world death rate has fallen from 13.5 people per thousand to 7.7 per thousand. We got better at feeding people and treating their illnesses instead of everyone just lying down and dying.

On nearly every re-reading more than half a century after its publication, The Population Bomb discredits itself further. Nobody gets everything completely wrong, but the Ehrlichs came close.

Now, all of a sudden, the concerns run in the other direction. Fertility rates are falling.

China’s government is begging people to have as many children as they can instead of forcibly limiting couples to one with measures up to and including forced abortion.

The US government continues to look for ways to put its “child tax credit” on steroids, not just because Democrats love handing out checks (although they do), or because Republicans realize lower birth rates mean smaller work forces demanding higher wages (although they do), but because plain old racism is back in vogue.

It seems that those with lighter skin are having fewer babies than those with darker skin. Horror of horrors! America’s complexion might change if something isn’t done to get those “white” people back on the baby-making treadmill!

Do population growth and shrinkage have consequences? Well, of course they do.

But population growth and shrinkage are also becoming more and more self-regulating in what basically amounts to a global marketplace.

With both contraception and fertility assistance widely available, increasingly large swathes of the population can decide, based on their own circumstances, whether or not it’s “profitable” to have children and, if so, how many and when.

The trend seems to be toward fewer and later, and that’s understandable. Increased human productivity ended the days when most of us were farmers, and every farmer needed ten helpers, and got them by siring rather than by hiring.

The real specter isn’t population growth or population (or “ethnic”) decline. The “market” has that in hand a la Darwin and Mill and naturally selects for how to make most people most happy.

The real specter is the threat to government’s control over individuals’ choice to reproduce or not. If the politicians can’t plan your future, they doubt their own. That’s a feature, not a bug, in freedom.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“[F]ormer MTV star” Connor Smith, NBC Chicago reports, “is wanted in the Chicago area after he was accused [of] trying to meet a child for a sexual encounter.” Smith is accused of “traveling to meet a minor, grooming a minor and disseminating harmful material.”

While I’ve never heard of this “star,” he sounds like a bad dude who’s up to some very bad things. But perhaps not quite as bad as one might think from the story’s lead paragraphs. As it turns out, Smith was “communicating with an undercover detective … posing as a girl under the age of 15.”

I see quite a few stories like this one, and each of them makes me wonder: What’s being done for the actual children who are actual victims of actual grooming and actual sexual abuse?

According to statistics from the National Center for Victims of Crime, one in five girls and one in 20 boys are victims of child sexual abuse nationwide.

Any way you slice the demographics, that’s millions of real victims.

And the vast majority of those victims are molested by people they know well (especially family members), not by randos who chat them up via phone or web apps.

How many of those real crimes go unsolved — in fact, are never even noticed — because law enforcement agencies spend their employees’ time and your money manufacturing sick fantasies and arresting those who fall for stings based on said fantasies, instead of doing their supposed jobs?

If Smith did what the cops say he did, chances are pretty good that he’s done it before, for real, to an actual victim or victims.

But in THIS case, all he’s actually accused of is talking dirty with, exchanging dirty pictures with, and attempting to meet with, an adult entertainer who pays union dues to the Fraternal Order of Police instead of to Actors’ Equity.

How much of that actor’s — and other cops’ — time was spent purveying free porn and setting up an ambush with an eye toward making a splash in the news, rather than on following up on actual tips, interviewing actual victims, and tracking down actual criminals who committed actual crimes?

Someone should ask that question next time the Lake County Sheriff’s Office comes to taxpayers demanding budget and manpower increases. Perhaps  a local community theater troupe can fill in and free up the county’s law enforcement budget for a focus on “serving and protecting.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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