Cops don't start out "bad"--indeed, most cops never do turn bad, they're honest, hard-working and honorable. But you could probably make the case for the DeLand, Florida cop who was dumb enough to tangle with Daytona Beach criminal defense attorney Michael Lambert as someone with potential to go "bad"--or at least become overly-drunk with his own power, to the detriment of his fellow officers and those they all serve.
I'd like to think maybe Lambert's actions woke this guy up. And I'd damn sure like to see more lawyers fight this kind of fight. It doesn't seem like much, but--maybe it is? Follow me over the fleur de kos for more....
From today's Daytona Beach News-Journal:
a DeLand police officer told a driver it was his “lucky day” and offered him a warning rather than a citation. But the driver demanded the traffic fine. And when a traffic hearing was held weeks later, the officer didn't show. Now, the driver is fighting to drag the cop into court to explain why he shouldn't be held in contempt for skipping the hearing.....
The driver was well-known criminal defense attorney Michael Lambert. And Lambert said the police officer accused him of “impolitely” honking his horn. That was after Lambert honked his horn at the unmarked police car, which had remained stopped at a green light. On top of the unusual accusation, Lambert said the police officer tried to intimidate him by calling for backup in the form of “two humongous motorcycle cops.”
...
“In my mind, he was a coward,” Lambert said in a phone interview. “He just wasn't going to show up. But if you are going to abuse your power to pull people over, you better have the intestinal constitution to stand before the court and say this is what I did and this is why I did it.”
(Fair use prevents me from posting more of the News-Journal article. But that's ok, it's worth a click to go over there. Just keep in mind there's a five-article-per-month click limit unless you're a subscriber.)
The abuse of power Mr. Lambert is addressing here is quite important. Many of the local cops are out-of-control drunk with it. Daytona Beach is notorious for it. These are the same people who have driven Spring Breakers away, and are bound and determined to do the same thing to the hundreds of thousands of bikers who descend on this part of Florida during Bike Week and Biketoberfest, whose money is just as green as the money brought to Disney World. I dread the day these people forget their decorum and start hassling NASCAR visitors--people will sometimes laugh at me for saying that, and will swear it'll never happen, but don't think for a minute that it couldn't. Hell, it even happened to me once.
Yup--my middle-aged, frumpy self got pulled over one day in Daytona Beach, for driving with an expired tag. The cop decided he smelled pot and brought in the dogs. Five cops, two hours, one dog and one obnoxious threat later, I was free to go and later got out of the charges on a technicality (having to do with the DMV--someday, I'll diary on this, I promise!). The obnoxious threat came from the K-9 assistant, who told my five-foot-one person that I had no rights and I was under arrest, even though I wasn't, and if I opened my mouth again, she had 50,000 volts of electricity strapped to her hip and she wasn't afraid to use it.
Yeah, tough chick, you're gonna tase a middle-aged woman that you're bigger than, because she dared to ask you what she was being charged with or if she was being arrested after someone said they smelled pot? Really?
Oh, shocking--I almost forgot. This is the same city whose cops are infamous for tasering shoppers at Best Buy....
What was I thinking?
It is this mindset which compels me to applaud the Mike Lamberts of the world. May there be more of them than any of us is aware of and may they materialize pretty soon, before the trust factor for our police, which we all need to function in a civilized society, is destroyed by the power trips of some bad apples.