Criminal Intersectionality

Ever since I saw the video of [Ashli Babbitt] being shot, her expression's stuck with me. She had "this was not supposed to happen" written across her face. A different person could have predicted this outcome considering how apparently insistent the people behind the door were that they would shoot anyone who'd try to come through, but not her.

For what it's worth for my perspective in criminal defense, the vast majority of the population has never had an antagonistic encounter with law enforcement, let alone get arrested. The number of arrests that do occur are disproportionately concentrated on the portion of the population that are frequent flyers.

The area where this bubble gets broken is with drunk driving. By far, it's the most "intersectional" criminal offense because it doesn't seem to discriminate on the basis of race, class, or gender, unlike other criminal offense. By now I've probably seen hundreds of DUI arrest videos and I can't count the number of times people express disgust and utter disbelief that they are getting arrested. The sense is that crime is what other people do, not them.

One example I remember to serve as illustration happened with this 20-something white woman who got arrested for a DUI. After she gets pulled over, she treats the entire encounter as a trivial and temporary inconvenience. It wasn't until she's told to turn around and put her hands behind her back that she fucking flips out and starts yelling "I have a criminology degree from [X] university!" over and over again, as if that's sufficient pleading for the cop to let the whole thing go.

I'm just projecting here, but it wouldn't surprise me to see Babbitt in a similar light. She probably has never had a negative encounter with police that resulted in her handcuffed. So the fact that law enforcement is not only capable or willing to use any kind of force, let alone deadly force, probably came as a huge surprise to her.

While I think the events of January 6th were a huge shitshow, I genuinely feel bad for those who got caught up in the moment and just wanted to take some iconic selfies. Their conduct was more or less harmless, but they're about to get fucked with the full weight of this country's criminal justice apparatus and be made an example of.