Waterboarding in the news again!

I saw Jesse Ventura on one of the talk shows ask the rhetorical question, ‘if waterboarding isn’t torture, why don’t the police waterboard criminal suspects to get information from them’, or words to that effect.  Of course at the time I thought to myself, ‘score one for Ventura’.  After reading this bit of shocking news, I wish Jesse hadn’t gone there!

The Independent Police Complaints commission is investigating claims that Metropolitan police officers mishandled prisoners and submerged the head of one man in a bucket of water during the course of a raid. The allegation was made by Metropolitan Police employee, thought to be a serving officer.

There was alarm at the allegations at Scotland Yard, which has faced several crises over the actions of its officers in past months, including the death of a man at the G20 protests.

The officers under investigation were among 10 based in Enfield, north London, who were suspended in February in one of the worst allegations of corruption to hit the Metropolitan police in recent years.

And there’s this

A group of Scotland Yard officers were suspended after “serious allegations” about their behavior during the arrests of five suspects last year, police said Tuesday.London’s police force did not go into detail, but Sky News television, the Daily Mail and The Times of London newspapers reported that six officers were accused of “waterboarding” drug suspects.

The papers gave varying accounts of the exact technique used by police, with the Times saying that officers poured water on a cloth and placed it over a suspect’s face to simulate the experience of drowning. The Daily Mail said police officers repeatedly dunked the suspects’ heads in buckets of water.

At first glance this shouldn’t be so disturbing, because British police have shot at and in one case shot and killed an innocent man, lied about why and how he was shot with nothing happening to the offending officer(s). On a more visceral level is the terrible thought that criminal behavior is now commonly employed by police the world over  plunging the world into chaos.  We’ve written about police brutality here in the States and now waterboarding or some variation thereof used in the UK seems to suggest an attitude of ‘anything goes’ in government’s reaction with its citizenry.  Whereas possession of marijuana used to be viewed as an offense which merely got a person a ticket, and large amounts a court date and maybe a few years in jail, now law officers see nothing wrong with waterboarding suspects.  Whereas failure to yield to a police or emergency vehicle would get one a ticket, now one is liable to be arrested and brutalized by law enforcement officers!  So I wish Jesse hadn’t mentioned that the reason  the law doesn’t waterboard suspects is because it’s illegal, because now it appears they don’t it’s illegal and a necessary part of the trade!  As an aside, I wonder if any of the officers in the UK charged with this served in Iraq either in the regular British army or as mercenaries……..make that contractors.  Finally, I’m glad to see that it was someone on the force who turned these thugs in. The only way this problem of criminal behavior on the part of the police is going to get solved is when good cops turn in the bad ones who then get prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  I love good, faithful, law abiding police and appreciate their service to the society; the bad ones are the reasons we should cherish and internalize the 2nd amendment.