In addition to the lawsuit by attorney Anne Marie Gennusa and her client, Mr. Sturdivant (see below), federal court records reflect that there are two other federal civil rights lawsuits pending against St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, including one filed November 24, 2009 by West Augustine residents roughed up by deputies at a peaceful graduation party, and another filed October 31, 2009 by a Texsa motorist harassed by deputies after a road rage incident.
Under the circumstances, controversial right-wing Republican St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's airy remarks about attorney GENNUSA's lawsuit (below) are rooted in deep-seated hostility toward civil rights litigation.
Sheriff Shoar's pig-ignorant comments about our Constitution and Bill of Rights (below) reflect the pained cognitive dissonance of a defendant in multiple civil rights cases. Several of those cases involving SHOAR's practices as Police Chief and Sheriff have already resulted in payouts of millions of dollars (including the $3.5 million settlement with Marshall Burns, tackled into paraplegia outside Christoper's (now Auggie Dog's) by one of SHOAR's officers when DAVID SHOAR (f/k/a "HOAR" was St. Augustine Police Chief)(the officer is apparently still with SAPD).
We have too many police officers without compassion, education or ethics.
We have too many police managers who are unqualified bigots.
That's a function of: (a) the political nature of the Sheriff's office; (b) the authoritarian history of Ku Klux Klan terrorism and one-party rule in St. Johns County; (c) our corrupt St. Johns County political machine; (d) and the youth, inexperience and lax training of many police officers. At Flagler College, local deputies and police officers have used the "n-----" word to describe African-Americans during classes, referring to whom they would like to shoot and kill.
We don't need sadistic, racist police officers (sado-cops) on the public payroll.
The New Zealand Police Act bans hiring of police officers under age 25, because their brains are not yet fully formed. Reckon we need to do the same here?
As long as police officers think they're above the law, they will break it.
As United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis wrote 81 years ago, government official lawbreaking promotes anarchy:
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding....Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means-to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal-would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face."
Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 479, 485 (1928)(Brandeis, J., dissenting).
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