Question Authority At Your Own Risk
A Seattle doctor’s claim that a Washington State trooper bullied him sounds far-fetched. But that’s no justification for a libel verdict that warns all citizens to bite their tongue rather than criticize police.
Woodrow Thompson, an anesthesiologist, wrote to Gov. Mike Lowry following the 1993 incident to complain that he had been pushed and threatened at gunpoint by trooper Davis Richmond.
An internal investigation by the Patrol exonerated Richmond. At no time did he face disciplinary action or lose pay over Thompson’s allegations.
The matter should have ended there. However, Trooper Richmond sued the doctor, and a King County jury awarded him $15,000.
This wasn’t the first time a law enforcement officer was the subject of an irate citizen’s unsubstantiated tirade, and it won’t be the last. That’s the nature of the job.
But what Richmond seems to forget, and the state Court of Appeals must remind him when it reviews the misguided verdict, is that all agents of government are answerable to the people of this country, not the other way around.
When government becomes destructive of its legitimate aims, Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.”
Certainly, then, the people have a right to complain about how government work is done.
Some complaints will be off base - as Thompson’s appears to have been. When they are, ample safeguards protect an officer’s interests.
Had the WSP’s internal investigation concluded the doctor’s accusations had merit, the trooper still would have been entitled to a full hearing and all the procedural precautions that go with it.
Richmond’s libel action was blatantly retaliatory. And the jury verdict is a chilling caveat to any citizen who would dare to point out genuine police misconduct: Don’t risk it.
Just to answer a libel suit properly would cost a defendant a couple of thousand dollars in legal fees. To fight it would cost still more. And to lose - no lawsuit is a sure thing - could be devastating.
In 1798, when the new-born democracy was struggling to establish its principles, nervous Federalists outlawed sedition. Criticize the government and you could be fined or jailed.
Fortunately, the freedom-focused philosophy of the Revolution regained the upper hand.
Sadly, their spirit survives. In Seattle, where five defamation suits were filed against citizens last fall, a spokesperson for the Police Guild was quoted in press accounts as saying the suits were not meant to collect damages but to send a message to citizens.
Such a message may be suitable for police-state tyranny, but not for a democracy. Not in 1798. And not now.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Doug Floyd/For the editorial board