Remorse or not, no excuses — none
Law enforcement officers are tasked, for outrageously inadequate pay, to put their lives on the line day in and day out for our protection. In order to be able to do that job, they are granted what, especially in a free society, is an extraordinary degree of discretionary authority over our liberty, our physical safety and in extreme circumstances even our lives.
Gross abuse of any kind of authority is reprehensible. When the authority in question involves the power of law enforcement, the abuse is of an especially ominous and sinister kind — a kind that violates every fundamental principle of what public service and public safety are supposed to be about. It is not just abuse of the basic rights of the victims involved, but also of the reputation and good name of every courageous, hard-working law enforcement officer who every day does what it takes to earn what the badge represents.
On Wednesday, a nine-woman, three-man jury concluded after two days of deliberations that a former deputy of the Harris County Sheriff’s Department abused his authority to a degree and in ways that not only make him unfit to be a law enforcement officer, but could land him behind bars.
Thomas Carl Pierson was charged on 12 counts involving alleged inappropriate conduct toward three different women during traffic stops in 2015 and 2016. The ex-deputy was acquitted on aggravated sodomy, sexual battery and stalking charges. But the crimes of which he was found guilty are more than appalling enough.
Pierson was convicted on two counts of sexual assault on a person in custody related to one traffic stop; false imprisonment related to a pair of traffic stops in which he and a woman flirted, he suggested she turn down a road, and then he used his blue light to pull her car over a second time when she didn’t.
He was found guilty of tampering with evidence for turning off both his body microphone and his dash cam during the second stop. (The defense argument that it was not technically evidence because it had not yet been collected is … imaginative, in a Catch-22 kind of way.)
And he was found guilty of multiple counts of violation of his public oath. (The defense technicality in this case was that Pierson’s oath had not been properly signed and recorded.)
Testimony in this trial painted a scary and eye-opening picture of how one rogue officer — unconstrained by codes of official conduct; by the surveillance technology that is supposed to prevent such grotesque violations and protect officers and the public alike; and by bounds of professional standards and simple human decency — can victimize, potentially even terrorize, people over whom the law assigns him authority.
Ignorance of the law, we are told from the time we are children, is no excuse. Lawbreaking by those wielding the power of the law is inexcusable.
This story was originally published August 30, 2017 at 6:50 PM with the headline "Remorse or not, no excuses — none."