Police from five Connecticut towns
participated in a botched raid in Easton in 2008, one that was
predicated on a warrant that permitted cops to “search for a small
quantity of drugs and to seize anything in the house where a box
the size of a breath mint container and two glass pipes might
be hidden,” as the Connecticut Post
reported on the disastrous raid. It ended with alleged drug
user Gonzales Guizan killed at the hands of police. An
attorney’s general report cleared cops, based mostly on their own
testimony, but while Easton
tried to fight a decision to allow a civil lawsuit to go
forward, it ended up on the hook for $3.5 million. None of the
police officers or the supervisors who thought a five-force raid on
an alleged petty drug user was worth the effort and exertion of
violence were held accountable for their actions. But now the
arrest of one officer, William Ruscoe, in nearby Trumbull on
charges of sexual assaulting a teenage girl,
with the possibility of more victims coming forward, calls to
question the systemic policy decision not to hold police officers
accountable in the kind of fatal and unnecessary situations like
the one they created in Easton in 2008.
If you’ve ever had to go on your state’s DMV website to pay a
ticket, you might have noticed the state reminding you that
“driving is a privilege, not a right,” usually by way of explaining
why in addition to paying a fine “points” are added to your
license. Accumulate enough points, and your
license is suspended. Participate in a raid that ends with the
fatal shooting of a citizen while in the employ of the government,
however, and have access to more labor protections and due process
“rights” than almost any other profession in the world. Incidents
of police abuse and nothing else happening are available aplenty.
There is something seriously wrong with our relationship to
government when we accept driving as a privilege and carrying
a badge and gun and exercising a monopoly on violence as a
right.
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