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Brian Campbell cried. He pounded the lectern. He broke down, unable to speak at times.
The longtime Hanceville resident was before the city council two weeks ago, recounting his interactions with the now defunct Hanceville Police Department. He was beaten by an officer, he said. He was essentially left to suffocate in a police vehicle. And his nightmare was just starting.
Campbell, a 62-year resident of Hanceville who is well known by most of the towns’ leaders, a man who has never been in trouble, was left permanently injured, he said. All because a Hanceville cop misunderstood a situation involving Campbell’s alzheimers-stricken wife.
As his case moved through the court system, no amount of explaining was enough to end the nightmare.
Didn’t matter that the cop never read Campbell his rights. Never officially told him he was under arrest. Never asked him to explain the situation at his house that day.
Instead, he was thrust into the system – a system designed to chew up and spit out average folks and to make it damn near impossible to challenge the stories of cops.
Campbell took a year of his life to fight the bogus arrest and it cost him $17,000, he said. A local judge wouldn’t hear him, threatened at one point to “put me under the jail” for missing a discovery hearing – where his two attorneys were present – while he attended the funeral of his daughter.
Didn’t matter. Campbell was the criminal. The cops said so. The system started chomping.
This is the system that average citizens face. Every single day. And if you’re young and Black or young and Hispanic, that system is even worse.
Yet, somehow, our Republican lawmakers believe the system remains too slanted … against the cops.
A bill that passed the House last week, sponsored by Rep. Rex Reynolds, further expands the immunity protections for police officers, granting them special protections under the law that average citizens don’t enjoy. It also pauses trials in order to hold immunity hearings and their appeals process – a tactic that will delay the trials of bad cops for a decade.
Who in their right mind would think this is a good idea? That cops somehow need more protections?
For goodness sakes, do you know the story of Aaron Cody Smith? He was a Montgomery cop on patrol when he encountered Greg Gunn walking down his street in the early morning hours.
That’s it. Just walking. There had been no reports of break-ins, no disturbance calls, nothing. Still, without cause, Smith stopped Gunn and told him to put his hands on the car to be frisked. At some point during that interaction, something happened, and Gunn took off running towards his house.
Smith tackled him in the street. Gunn didn’t fight him, never struck him. Instead, he broke free and continued to run. He made it to his neighbor’s house, where he began pounding on the door and screaming for help.
In his version of events, Smith claimed Gunn then picked up a painter’s pole as a weapon. And that’s why he shot Gunn multiple times, killing him.
Prosecutors didn’t buy it. They believed Smith planted the painter’s pole, using it as an excuse. A jury in a far-away county agreed, finding Smith guilty of manslaughter. And a judge appointed by the all-Republican state Supreme Court sentenced Smith to 14 years.
It took four years, without the immunity pauses and all of the enhanced immunity in Reynolds’ bill, to finally get that sentence. But Smith still didn’t report to prison for another year.
Then, in 2024, after serving less than three years, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall took over the case, which was still being appealed, and let Smith out on time served.
This is the reality of the system we live with today – one that has been so slanted towards cops that it is impossible to properly punish even the worst actors.
In the last few years, thanks to news reporting and the federal government, we’ve seen three different entire law enforcement agencies be exposed as essentially criminal organizations. We’ve had horrific stories of cops seizing property and cash. We’ve witnessed murders, abuse and sickening malfeasance.
Almost all of it allowed to fester and grow because of this insane environment we’ve created where it’s almost impossible to even question the actions of a law enforcement officer, much less arrest one.
There’s no doubt that cops have an extremely tough job. There’s no doubt that they often face bogus allegations of wrongdoing. But we’ve established a system at this point that more than adequately protects cops. We don’t need additions.
In fact, out of all the stories floating around about cops and lawsuits and arrests, I can’t find a single one in this state where a cop, or a group of cops, was wrongly arrested, much less convicted, on bogus allegations.
Look around at what’s happened in recent years in Decatur, Huntsville, Cullman, Hanceville, Montgomery, Mobile, Tuscaloosa and Brookside and honestly tell me that the problem we have is that we’re being too tough on cops.
