John Brown's Body

     The arrest of Karen Garner rightfully garnered outrage around the nation and around the world. The arrest of the septuagenarian with dementia on suspicion of shoplifting was not another case of an officer killing an unarmed black man, but it did highlight the danger bad cops pose to other vulnerable portions of the population. During the June 26th, 2020, arrest, over $13.88 worth of merchandise that she actually put back before she left, Officer Austin Hopp broke her arm, sprained her wrist, separated her shoulder, did not call for medical assistance, and then kept her in jail with this painful injury for hours, going so far as to manipulate her shoulder in her booking photographs to hide the injury. For context, Ms. Garner was 5'2" and 80 pounds. Hopp pleaded guilty and in May was sentenced to five years in prison and three years of parole for felony assault as part of a plea agreement in order to avoid the 10 to 30 years in prison he would have faced had he gone to tria

     Originally, Judge Peter Cahill seemed like an average, respectable judge. That changed pretty quickly after the Derick Chauvin case. I won't get into Chauvin's sentence: 22.5 years is a fairly good sentence for a murdering cop to receive when compared to other sentences around the country. Still, earlier this month, with the trial of Chauvin's fellow officers Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng fast approaching, Cahill postponed the trial yet again, this time until January 2023. His reasoning? He believed the February federal conviction of the three officers on civil rights charges punishable by life in prison and the May guilty plea of Thomas Lane, who will be sentenced in September to three years in prison for accessory to manslaughter in the state case, would cause a jury to be unfairly prejudicial against the remaining two officers in their state trial. The officers are all set to be sentenced on federal charges by the end of the year.      This means it could take thr