Is That Legal?

If the events of Friday demonstrate to Malkin that women shouldn't be cops, Malkin's writing demonstrates that women shouldn't be writers.

The New York Times has an interesting sidebar article about the culpability of the Sheriff's Office in Nichols' escape and crime spree. "Mr. Nichols, 33, a 6-foot-1-inch, 210-pound former linebacker, was being escorted to court by Cynthia Hall, 51, a 5-foot-tall sheriff's deputy, when they stopped in a holding cell. After Deputy Hall removed Mr. Nichols's handcuffs, officials said, he overpowered her, took her gun and left her with a fractured skull."

Malkin will point to the fact that it was a woman who was overpowered. However, actual criminal law experts point to the fact that it was not "Political Correctness", but suicidally sloppy police procedure at a department level, that is really at fault:

Robert J. Castelli, a former police instructor who teaches police procedure at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said that if accounts of the episode are accurate, the sheriff's office violated most of the accepted guidelines for transporting prisoners.
Experts recommend that prisoners be shackled at the waist and ankles, with their handcuffs attached to the waist, Professor Castelli said. Officers should typically disarm themselves if they are going to be in close quarters with a prisoner, and an armed officer should observe from a distance. In addition, an officer should never be alone with a prisoner.
"It's one thing when an officer makes an arrest on the street; he or she has no choice," Professor Castelli said. Whether in the jail or on the street, one of the cardinal rules of law enforcement is the same: never let a civilian get your gun."

But presumably Malkin is not interested in facts, but in the opportunity to sell her columns, and thus this kneejerk response unadulterated by reality.

Just one
source that popped up:

FBI agents escort murder suspect Brian Nichols from an FBI holding facility FBI facilty March 12, 2005 in Atlanta, Georgia. Nichols surrendered earlier in the day after being surrounded by police in a apartment complex in Duluth, Georgia. Nichols is accused of shooting and killing four people at the Fulton County Superior Court, including Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rowland W. Barnes.

The killings in which Nichols is suspected of committing comes as a shocking surprise to his friends and family who described him, in various reports, as being a good person that didn't grow up in a broken home.

Even
easier to see
here.

Murder suspect Brian Nichols (L, in t-shirt) is escorted by FBI (news - web sites) agents from FBI headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, March 12, 2005. Nichols is a suspect in the Fulton county courthouse killings of a judge, a sheriff's deputy and a court clerk and a possible murder of a customs agent.

As long as she meets the physical fitness standards of the department what difference does her sex make? There are women out there tougher and stronger than I am, why should I be allowed to guard inmates but not her because of an assumption that women are not as strong as men?

You used a logic model in this evaluation. That Malkin has as much concern for the truth as she does for being an ethical journalst right away should be the tell-tale sign that she is not above seeing DaVinci in her pasta (if it serves a story) or in dancing all-night to a tape-recording of her own voice (if it helps take the edge off how lonely her bittterness has made her.

She recently blamed Christina Ricci for the "current fad" of "cutting." So, she has no shame, has no problem making an ass out of herself in public and can barely rant and rave anything unique without at some point rehashing her old material.

But we should not judge too harshly those for whom a sense of decency and respectability and good character was not part of their curriculum in kindergarten. Pity is fine, harsh scorn is probably wasted as they'll never really "get it." Sad, but true.

She is just so annoying. And she gets paid to be so. How did I miss that gravy train?

The word "cavil" comes to mind in regard to this post.

I remember someone noting that when this happened on CNN while I was waiting in the Atlanta airport of all places. And I thought it kind of a weird fluke that a female cop was at his side again, but I didn't think particuarly that she was in any danger, nor do I think the deputy who was murdered by him in the courthouse was at fault. Anyone who says she was is an idiot, because I'm somehow sure she arrested a number of supposedly superior men in her time. Let's not start pointing fingers and start getting retarded here with a call for an end to women cops, when the reality is that the judge, the deputy, and no one else is responsible for this hideous crime than Nichol's himself.

Good post! You 1, Malkin 0.

I knew a guy who used to work for a court house in Albuquerque and his job was to walk behind the perps and look super-bad about it. And yeah, he was a guy who could handle himself if anything happened, but, as he described it to me: 1) he did the job for years and nothing ever happened. 2) The perp is shackled and outnumbered and knows it. 3) Even if the perp tries something, it isn't the sole responsibility of the person closest to him to stop him. That's why there are tons of cops around, as you point out. Anyone could stand next to the guy, including me, and the situation would still be secure.

Is it too much to hope that Rove, DeLay, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush will one day do perp walks?

Go back to the Malkin post -- even a couple of her readers (particularly a guy named Anthony) understand that she's full of it.

But, of course, it's too late -- the ConservaBorg are already blogging in lockstep....

Others blogging this angle: La Shawn Barber, Lawrence Auster, The Political Teen, Stop the Bleating, and Stephanie Key, who has some excellent questions for law enforcement officials about courthouse security procedures and lapses leading to Nichols' bloody escape.

Didn't this guy get the gun off of a male court officer?

Yes, the all-GOP perp walk is too much to hope for, but still I hope.

Call me shrill, but I maintain that this was an excuse for Michelle to post a photograph of Nichols to make sure that we're all aware that he is black.

Whenever somebody with an obviously non-European last name does something particularly stupid or bad, Malkin is sure to post about it and question their citizenship.

If the stupid/bad person is a celebrity whose non-European ancestry is generally known (and whose last name is ambiguous in terms of ancestry), the story will appear without a photo.

Unknown bad/stupid people with ambiguous last names (like Nichols) who merit posts on her site are most likely to merit photographic evidence of their race.

Skeptical? Her archives are all there on her site to poke through. Start with the Summer, 2004 when she was merrily posting as much as a photo per day at times.

Here is one of my favorites:

"This is all because Kimora is an African-American Asian woman.

Note the 23 trackbacks from Malkin's adoring fans, too.

Michelle Malkin should check the AP photos.

http://editorial.gettyimages.com/source/search/details_pop.aspx?iid=52379531

You forgot to mention the leg irons. Footage of the event showed the suspect shuffling along, s-l-o-w-l-y, on account of the additional restraints.

The last line of this post is the most relevant:

Malkin regularly refers to herself as a "journalist," but make no mistake: She has never been a reporter for anything other than her student newspaper. I doubt that she's ever covered a trial or a crime scene. It is obvious, to experienced journalists, throughout her work.

Malkin first got newspaper work as a columnist. That's all she's ever been. Columnists may have good writing skills (dubious in her case) but they don't have to have journalistic skills. Those can only be acquired through the experience of being a reporter.

Michelle Malkin is a joke

Isn't Malkin in much greater trouble for not specifying "alledged killer" or "suspect in the killing"?

I can still remember the transition when newspapers had to start including that text or they would get somehow vaguely "in trouble" (I was young, then).

Doesn't that still apply? Can we get Malkin "in trouble"?

they'd also tell her not to use the word "salient," like that. As in, "his point is still salient." It cried of someone out of their intellectual depth...trying desprately to sound like they belong.

In fact, an 8th grade english teacher would have caught that one...no need to bother the folks at the city desk.

However, actual criminal law experts point to the fact that it was not "Political Correctness", but suicidally sloppy police procedure...

Of course "Political Correctness" never really is the "cause" of anything, because it isn't anything more than an all-purpose epithet used by the loony right and to avoid the effort of actually employing reason. "Political Correctness" is a hammer for all the "nails" in the world that offend wingnuts.

It is kind of interesting though, to wonder why, with all the members of law enforcement in the group, the woman above was the one to lead Nichols in his perp walk. Was it just that the officer who would normaly serve that role just happened to be a woman on that day? Or was there a purpose of trying to send some message with this picture? Or perhaps with the success of Nichols' last hostage--a woman-- in effect "talking him down" into a state where he was in a more compliant state to surrender, maybe it was decided that a woman officer at his side to talk him through the perp walk would help keep him calm. There are alot of angles invovling presumably smart policework that don't require one to descend into "PC"-phobia.

None of this changes the fact that I find her kind of hot.

I guess I have a thing for raging stupidity.

A commenter pointed out that an earlier commenter had used a term for Ms. Malkin that I deem inappropriate for this site. I have accordingly removed it. Thanks to commenter Steve for bringing it to my attention.

(I have also removed Steve's comment, which quoted the slur.)

Guns don't kill people...people don't kill people....Political Correctness kills people!!!!

For whatever it's worth, Malkin's premise as I read it is that this guy stripped a female deputy's service weapon from her, proving that women are generally unfit to be big strong police officers (and yet the politically correct morons still let lady cops participate in the arrest, the big leftie morons).

So I did a quick Lexis-Nexis search, and emailed Malkin a list of male police officers who were killed with their own service weapons within the last few years. There was, predictably, no response.

Chris, Malkin never answers e-mails. I guess she thinks she is too important that she need not deign to respond to challenges from others.

Unless you are on of her sycophantic blogging buddies, like Lashawn Barber, you are nothing to her but a click on her website. I don't even go to her site anymore. The fewer clicks she gets, the better. If I want to read one of her columns, I just go to townhall.com or Vdare.

Please allow me to blog whore my fisking of this idiot on another topic:

The Friday Fisking of Michelle Malkin You Crave.

Prof Muller writes:

"...Malkin...uses the photo as an excuse to rant against this as "another way in which the PC agenda kills people."

But those weren't Malkin's words. It was an excerpt from a statement by one of her readers. She answered (the whole reader's quote) with two words: 'Sadly, yes.' That's a rant??

"This is not a photo of a person being taken into custody. This is a photo of a perp walk..Folks, take it from a former prosecutor--this is Criminal Procedure 101 we're talking about here. A rookie reporter in her second week on the city desk would be able to recognize this picture as a perp walk. Michelle Malkin, however, couldn't.

But I can't find where Malkin said what the professor is implying here. Again the "taking in custody" remark was made by someone else, not Malkin. She included statements from those on both sides of the argument in her post. Unfortunately, this is not evident from Professor Muller's rendition. I wonder how many in this thread actually read her post?

As Dave wrote: "The word "cavil" comes to mind in regard to this (the professor's) post.

And that's an understatement. What is it with this unhealthy, obsessive, and ongoing animosity toward Ms. Malkin which leads apparently otherwise seemingly normal people to engage in such captiousness?

Sorry "Mr. Former Presecutor", but you are all wet here.

You see, Malkin's post consists of nothing but emails from Malkin's readers. Her opinionating words on the topic at hand consist of "He's got a point" and "Sadly, yes".

Also, you are forgetting the term 'In Control'.

Who is 'in control' of the suspect? Why, it just happens to be a woman.

Maybe, just maybe, if the people in charge of this movement would have taken Nichol's very recent past of overpowering people smaller than himself into account and put either one person of greater size then himself or two of equal size 'in control', they wouldn't look so PC.

Perp walk or no, this movement of the prisoner was just as sloppy as you say Malkin's post was.

Liberal Avenger: What the hell are you talking about? 1. Malkin is a minority. 2. Simmons accusations are completely ridiculous! Read the report. She was driving recklessly, didn't pull over in a timely fashion, and she had weed on her.
Keep on "avenging", you clown.

---"Or perhaps with the success of Nichols' last hostage--a woman-- in effect "talking him down" into a state where he was in a more compliant state to surrender, maybe it was decided that a woman officer at his side to talk him through the perp walk would help keep him calm."---

Or maybe it's the Abu Ghraib thing of humiliation. A slender blonde woman is all we need to take this perp for walk!

Hey, it seems to be [i]de riguer[/i] in Iraq, so why not here?

de rigeur

Who was it that is responsible for the capture of this penitentiary trained man-criminal? His unarmed female hostage. As a rule, the LE handling prisoners and doing court work and bailiff duties are past their prime (if they ever were in their prime) or have been forced into it for medical or psychological reasons.

I've been rolling my eyes at Michelle Malkin editorials for the better part of a decade now. She used to rant and rave on the editorial pages of the Seattle Times (one of my local papers) and she seldom, if ever, made any sense. She'd make one statement about some current event and then proceed to go off on a tangent that showed she was more interested in getting responses than actually paying attention to the subject she was writing about.

I can't believe anyone close to journalism would even consider giving her a job with something other than janitorial work, but then she doesn't seem to be real good at cleaning up the messes she leaves behind.

Could Nichols have overpowered a 6ft+ 210lb former linebacker sheriff's deputy? How about a 6ft+ 210lb former linebacker sheriff's deputy who also happened to be a woman?

Sure, especially if said deputy was unprepared for an attack.

Well said. I'm a 6ft., 210lb. former infantryman, and I would not have wanted to be alone in a hallway with this guy -- especially with him unhandcuffed, and me with a gun on my belt. The bad idea parts are 1.) alone, 2.) unhandcuffed. Maleness and largeness are not major issues, here.

Michelle Malkin is just another "FOX NEWS IDIOT"