Sheriff Outreach

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Back when Mason County Sheriff Kim Cole was just a road sergeant, he allowed a former county commissioner to sue the county for his inability to properly conduct a traffic stop or an arrest.  The county would eventually settle the case with Martin Schilling, but Cole was unapologetic for his unlawful acts and he seems to allow them by his road deputies at almost every turn.  

The latest tragedy of bad training comes from a press release from the desk of Sheriff Cole explaining where a deputy made a traffic stop in a residential neighborhood in Scottville.  See whether you can spot the problems with it.

SCOTTVILLE (MCP) – A 34-year-old Scottville man refused to provide any identification to a Mason County sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop at the intersection of Reinberg and Broadway avenues Thursday, Nov. 21, shortly before 8:30 a.m. and “rolled the deputy’s arm up in his window while he was attempting to lock himself in his vehicle,” said Mason County Sheriff Kim Cole.
In addition to a misdemeanor of operating without a license, the man was also charged with a felony of resisting and opposing police, Cole said.

Did you notice anything?

Looking at the eventual charges, one wonders what precipitated the stop in the first place, this is similar to what Sergeant Cole did with Schilling twice.  A police officer needs to have an articulable reason to stop a motorist (reasonable suspicion), they just can't stop a car on a whim and look for problems or ask about relatives and friends of the driver. 

Michigan police agencies do currently have license plate readers that are able to tell whether the car is registered and insured, but those issues were apparently in order here.  One would expect that if the deputy knew the driver and knew that their license had been suspended that this would have been in the release, for it speaks well of the attention to detail of his deputies.

The main issue, however, is that Cole portrays the man rolling up his windows as a violent act against his officer, rather than wonder why his deputy had his arm in the man's car in the first place.  An officer making a traffic stop should be trained that sticking your arm into somebody's car without permission, articulable probable cause, or a warrant is a violation of the motorist's rights.

From a respected law firm:  "You DON’T have to let the officer inside your vehicle or allow them to shine a light and look through your car.   An officer only needs reasonable suspicion to pull you over and detain you for a short period. Being detained, however, doesn’t give the officer permission to enter your vehicle. This means leaning in, reaching in, or putting a flashlight in the vehicle to shine it on persons or the car itself."

An officer can ask you to get out of the car, and you must comply, but if they do, they still cannot legally enter that car to go on a fishing expedition without the above, or an arrest is made and/or the car is impounded.  A properly trained officer acting within that training wouldn't have his arm inside the car just because a person was reluctant to show his ID.  The video below shows how this can be dangerous to all parties involved, when an otherwise pleasant stop for tinted windows turns into a near death experience for an officer and serious criminal charges for the driver.

Perhaps the reluctance of the Scottville man was based on the absence of any reasonable suspicion to have been stopped in the first place or due to the aggressive intrusion into the vehicle by the questing arms of a deputy not concerned about the law, the rights of others, or even his own safety.  Our county's deputies have a bad reputation for a growing list of their own infractions, people may be rightly in fear for their life when they get stopped and probed by poorly trained bullies without any reason.

Ironically, the reason why Sergeant Cole was willing to violate the completely innocent Martin Schilling's basic rights over ten years ago was because one of the other county deputies unwisely stuck his hand in the window of Schilling's son's moving car to grab the steering wheel after the deputy noticed there was an outstanding bench warrant for missing a court date. 

That action of reaching in the window, like this one that happened just a few blocks away, led to a much more serious felony charge for the driver due to the escalation by the deputy.  It does keep the jail in business.

[Freedom Seeker]

I don't like to comment much on articles dealing with police because they have a hard job and as humans make errors but it would seem that not to stick your arm inside someone's vehicle would be standard training. Further it seems MCSO should have already learned that lesson!

[Willy]

What I find disturbing about many of these "stops" gone bad is how the officers handle the situations. Many common incidences have turned tragic due to over reaction by the police. Most people who think they have done nothing wrong are agitated by being a target of law enforcement. Just look at the civilian deaths and assaults at the hands of the police just in this area. I'm not saying the police are always in the wrong, I am just pointing out that the police are supposed to be trained professionals who should know how to handle agitated people. The type of persons most people become when confronted by officers especially when a person is innocent. I'm sure many if not most officers become  cynical when dealing for years with people who are considered criminals but that's where a good officer's knowledge and training is a  must. Being able to calm people and diffuse potential violent confrontations takes a special kind of person. I would never be a cop in a large city but a small burg is different. Most of the trouble in a small town is the work of a limited number of people who are well known to the police so just the fact that knowing who they are dealing with and how to deal with that person makes all the difference in the World.

An incident that should not have happened

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Tragic story in the video, which happened about 10 years ago, Zerby's family was eventually awarded $6.5 million in a civil lawsuit, the killers were actually found to have lied about the shooting in their police reports when forensic investigations found the nozzle underneath Zerby's thigh, meaning he couldn't have had it in front of him pointing at officers.  The LA County prosecutor didn't consider those factors when declining to criminally charge the officers.  The best the family could get from official sources was a statement by a retired police deputy:

Roger Clark, a former lieutenant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, testified that the officers did not need to shoot Zerby and had no reason to not give him an opportunity to drop the nozzle before using deadly force. Clark said that the officers had good cover from brick walls and a fireplace, and that because Zerby had committed no crime, that it would have been reasonable of the officers to have announced their presence.

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I've noticed that some people get uncomfortable when I write stories about local and state police behaving badly, since they feel as if criticism of the police and their actions are not proper when one is supportive of them.  I would disagree, and make clear that I have no grudge against the local sheriff for anything against me (beyond a history of improperly withheld FOIA responses), but I get personally appalled at the MCP and COLDNews for running a story like this without asking the questions I have (why was the car stopped, why was the deputy's arm in the car, why wasn't the driver able to lock his door and/or roll up his window) before publication.

Our police agencies need to be held accountable by the media, when they are not, those citizens who know their rights under the law will assume (probably correctly) that their rights will not be observed by those 'law enforcement' officers, and that there are two kinds of laws:  those that apply to you, and those that cops ignore for themselves.