REPORTER CHARGED WITH TAKING PHOTOS - CHARLEVOIX COUNTY

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 REPORTER CHARGED WITH TAKING PHOTOS

Mitchell Jon MacKay

PROSECUTOR CHARGED WITH DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, bad checks, property damage, charges reporter with taking photos of a crime scene.  Wait, didn’t reporters always take pictures of crime scenes?  Well, yes, but that was before an obscure law having to do with gravesite indignities that the current prosecutor of Charlevoix County, Michigan dug up from presumably computer search because he had no idea the law even existed. But then he presumably didn’t know he couldn’t beat up his wife, write bad checks or destroy property either, so….

            This is a matter of relativity.  Not long ago State Police employee Bill Smith, commander of the Gladwin post was busted for drunk driving in Sault Ste. Marie but got off through a complicit judge; trooper Aaron Sweeney of the Petoskey post was busted for domestic violence; a former Charlevoix deputy was charged with domestic violence on M-66 – it goes on and on.  And a reporter is busted for taking photos.  This is known as malfeasance, using the law and the uniform for nefarious purposes.  Happens every day.

            Way down there in Texas a former prosecutor was recently found guilty of malfeasance for failing to record exculpatory evidence in the Michael Morton trial which begot Morton 25 years in prison.  The ex-prosecutor, most recently a judge – there’s a scandal in itself – was disbarred, fined, ordered to community service, and received ten days in jail of which he did five with good behavior and…that’s all.  Twenty-five years of an innocent man’s life begot five days in jail and loss of license which he can reapply for in five years. 

            I know of a certain judge who did five years of disbarment for misappropriation of trust funds but he certainly never did anything so heinous as photographing dead bodies.  That takes an especially diabolical paparazzi.  Fortunately our local cops and prosecutors are on the job, even if some of these are on the docket. 

            But then, we have to allow for hypocrisy too.  Well, like congresswoman Debbie Stabenow for instance who campaigned on the internet for salvaging the SNAP program of food assistance, then appeared for photos with the congratulatory promoters of cutting food assistance and rewarding agriculture with more corporate welfare, people like those Koch brothers.  That photo should be illegal.  Where would America be without hypocrisy?  The US Constitution upheld slavery – yes, it actually says it in that short document.  The US Constitution upheld Indian displacement – yep it’s there too.  What’s not there in that hallowed parchment is separation of church and state; the framers didn’t want to go there nor did they want to deal with the precept of presumed innocent until proven guilty – those items were added argumentum ad hominem in the course of interpretation thereafter.  Well, sort of like “Citizens United” with nary a citizen voting. 

            What we have here, friends and neighbors, is the burgeoning police state that disallows anyone, reporter or public from “interfering” with police actions.  They don’t want proof positive of any malfeasance.  That’s what this is all about.  First it’s money, then it’s power trip, then it’s secrecy, in that order.  Isn’t the latter what the whistleblowing chronicles are all about?  And isn’t the former what bureaucracy is all about?  The middle ground is the benefit of putting on the uniform so that clemency is pretty much a done deal when officials go afoul of the law. 

            Look, if a prosecutor, a judge and a cop can break the law with impunity but a news reporter can be arrested for exercising the 1^st Amendment, we may know there’s something very wrong here in America.  And this is not big bad Chicago, Los Angeles or Detroit; this is Charlevoix county, rural Michigan.  But the coliseum games continue unabated because it’s established in rule of law, due process.  Watch this upcoming contest for Circuit judge of this county, which will prove to be a real sideshow, a freak show tragicomedy of errors but for the only reputable candidate to date, Roy Hayes III.  It’s time for another American Revolution, folks.  The reason is exactly the same as ever:  arrogate oppression.

©2014 Mitchell Jon MacKay