The Atlantic
By Conor Fridersdorf
May 26, 2015
When
the Border Patrol stopped Jessica A. Cooke at a checkpoint, the
21-year-old was about to earn her degree in law-enforcement leadership
from New York’s public-university
system. Due to her course work, she knew her rights as an American. She
chose to complain when her rights were violated. And, as a result of
that decision, the unarmed woman was pushed, thrown against her car, and
tased.
The
Watertown Daily Times tells her story, but there’s no substitute for
watching the altercation that left her on the ground screaming in pain
and incomprehension:
Cooke
is an American citizen. The Border Patrol stopped her inside the United
States. Although she was close to the Canadian border, she had not
crossed into that country.
And she produced a New York state driver’s license to confirm her
identity. Even if one believes that the Border Patrol ought to operate
internal checkpoints within the United States—which I do not—showing a
valid I.D. ought to be enough to allow motorists
to proceed.
This
video suggests that there was no probable cause to search this woman’s
trunk, which was later shown to contain nothing illegal when it was
opened without her permission.
She should have been permitted to drive away unmolested, not forcibly
detained while a canine unit was called, apparently from an hour away.
And the male Border Patrol agent clearly and needlessly escalated the
situation.
“If
you want to know how Cooke ended up on her back, screaming in pain as
the barbs from a stun gun delivered incapacitating electricity into her
body, there are several
possible answers,” Reason’s Jacob Sullum writes. “You could say this
indignity was caused by her own stubbornness, her refusal to comply with
the seemingly arbitrary dictates of a Border Patrol agent who was
detaining her ... Or you could blame the agent's
insistence on obeisance to his authority, which led him to assault an
unarmed 21-year-old woman who posed no threat to anyone. But the
ultimate responsibility lies with the Supreme Court, which has invited
this sort of confrontation by carving out a disturbing
and dangerous exception to the Fourth Amendment.”
His article adeptly runs through the relevant case law.
What’s
additionally galling is that even with video evidence showing Border
Patrol agents misapplying the case law and then meting out wholly
unnecessary violence, Cooke
is more likely to be charged with assaulting an officer than the
officers themselves are to be disciplined. Her video will presumably be
an asset if she goes forward with a lawsuit. “If I can take it to
Supreme Court, I will take it to Supreme Court. I should
never have been detained,” she told her hometown newspaper. She added
that she is still in the early stages of applying to U.S. Customs and
Border Enforcement to become a federal law-enforcement officer herself.
“Of course I second-guess it,” she said, “but
it takes something like this and someone like me to change it.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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