Blog/2024-07-02/Imaginary Heroes
A thing I find endearing about Americans is their enduring belief that There's Someone Competent Running Things. This shows up in all sorts of ways, but the most obvious examples to me are:
- The US Postal Police
- Federal Prosecutors
US Postal Police
First, I suppose come the US Postal Police. In theory they're armed and empowered to dispatch anyone who threatens USPS workers.
But I came across some news by accident the other day that made it seem that this is not the case. To be clear, I would hope for law enforcement to be very good at enforcing the law, but it doesn't seem like they're as scary as these people are making them out to be. After all, let's look at this random case:
Wise, then 33, entered the postal truck in San Francisco’s Ingleside neighborhood in August 2022, threatened to shoot the driver and stole letters, packages and the driver’s cellphone. He was accompanied by another man who has not been caught.
Looks like a case for our federal experts: the postal police. To their credit, they solved half the case and nabbed one fellow. Well, what did he get for these crimes?
The judge ultimately imposed a 30-day jail term, telling Wise at his Feb. 14 hearing that some period of confinement was needed to send a message to other would-be postal thieves. He also ordered Wise to pay $1,300 in restitution.
Listen, it's actually really good that they caught one of the two guys peacefully (or at least without killing him). And since he was the guy holding the gun, he's obviously the more important one to catch. But none of this is really scary. "Hold a gun to a postman's head and you'll get THIRTY DAYS IN JAIL!" Yeah, I'm sure people are quaking in their boots.
Federal Prosecutors
Federal prosecutors are similarly supposed to be incredible hard-asses. They're tough no-nonsense guys who will get the bad guys off the streets and keep us safe. Or so the story goes. But what is the truth? Something less so. In fact, the US Attorney prosecuting was so soft that the federal judge told him off for being too soft.
U.S. District Judge James Donato approved the deal, but criticized U.S. Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey for failing to charge Low with a felony. The judge said he had reviewed previous federal DUI cases and did “not see a single California case where a drunk driving incident that resulted in a death was ever charged as a misdemeanor.”
“There is nothing I can do … though — and this is one of the rare times I have felt this — I believe one of the only times in my ten years on the bench, I have felt that the charging decision is a grave injustice and does not serve the public interest,” the judge said, according to court documents. “My hands are tied,” he later said, noting that prosecutors, not judges, have “sole discretion” over charging decisions.
It appears, if I'm being honest, that it is not true that they "don't fuck around". It appears, instead, that they fuck around a lot and the reputation is undeserved.
Or perhaps more likely, they don't fuck around on some people and they do fuck around on others. Without a doubt, if it came out during some trial that I had written a blog post like this, I'm sure they "don't fuck around". On the other hand, if I were adequately drunk when killing people, they do "fuck around". A matter of fitting the reaction to the crime, one must assume.
