A death sentence for Baltimore

With regard to the false imprisonment charges brought against six Baltimore policemen, Andrew McCarthy writes at National Review,

The law allows police to be wrong without being criminally culpable. If this were not the case, police would not make arrests, even if crimes were committed before their eyes, for fear that they could be prosecuted, sued, or fired if a prosecutor or judge second-guessed their judgment.

The average person who runs away from police has done something wrong; it is not unreasonable for a cop in a crime-ridden area to conclude that he is probably dealing with the average person, not the unusual type who runs for no apparent reason. And the whole point of the investigative stop is that police can ask a few questions and let the detainee go on his way if there is no good reason to detain him further.

Police have the right to be wrong, as long as they are wrong in a reasonable way. That is the case not only when they detain someone but when they decide they have grounds to make an arrest. If a police officer finds on a suspect what he believes in good faith is an illegally possessed knife, he can arrest the suspect. If it turns out that the knife is actually legal, the remedy is to vacate the arrest — not to prosecute the cop for unlawful imprisonment. It’s a mistake, not a crime.

If police are now to conclude that they cannot, without fear of being prosecuted, take routine investigative steps based on reasonable suspicion, communities cannot be protected. There can be no security and no commerce. Innocent people will be preyed upon and killed.

The unlawful-imprisonment charges filed by prosecutor Marilyn Mosby are not even social justice, much less justice. They are a death sentence for Baltimore.

Read more here.