D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced a military-style checkpoint yesterday to stop cars this weekend in a Northeast Washington neighborhood inundated by gun violence, saying it will help keep criminals out of the area.

Starting on Saturday, officers will check drivers’ identification and ask whether they have a “legitimate purpose” to be in the Trinidad area, such as going to a doctor or church or visiting friends or relatives. If not, the drivers will be turned away. . . .

Any driver objecting to being denied access to the neighborhood faces arrest.  And drivers are the only people being scrutinized; pedestrians will not be stopped.  Do they not have bus service in D. C.?  Or murderers who can walk or ride a bicycle?

The irony of the nation’s capital, supposedly the nexus of freedom, democracy and justice, modeling its crime prevention tactics after the Stasi is painful, but also completely lost on its municipal leaders.  As the city’s interim attorney general said, he’s “not worried about the constitutionality of it.”  Remember, it’s just a piece of paper.  In the meantime, let’s see yours, comrade.

The friends who stood up for a man who shot two Columbus officers now are under fire from the local police union.

Derrick Foster, 38, has admitted firing the shots that struck two officers during a drug and gambling raid on April 30. Friends say it was a terrible mistake by a “gentle giant” who is a devoted single father to two daughters. . . .

At least 14 people, including former Ohio State University athletes who knew him as a Buckeye football player, have written letters of support for Foster, who is charged with four counts of felonious assault of a police officer. Weiner cited the letters in seeking Foster’s release on house arrest during a hearing on May 22.

Franklin County Common Pleas Judge David E. Cain denied that request. The Fraternal Order of Police passed on many of the supporters’ letters to its 4,100 members and encouraged them to express their displeasure or boycott their businesses.

“I still believe he’s a threat to society. The minute you put your thoughts on a letterhead, you open yourself and your business up to criticism,” said Jim Gilbert, president of Capital City Lodge No. 9. “We’re asking our officers and the public to stand up between the citizens and the violence they put against our officers.”

As I’ve noted elsewhere, the Columbus police seem to have a siege mentality when it comes to dealing with the citizens they have sworn to protect and serve.  Foster—a single father, former Ohio State football player, model city employee and so far as anyone knows, not a drug dealer or user—is now portrayed by the police union as a dangerous cop-killer.  Their efforts paid off in keeping Foster, who has no criminal record, locked up for now.

And anyone who might actually know Foster and dares to speak up on his behalf now faces the collective wrath of Columbus’ finest:

The first two union targets were Michael McGuire, the owner of a Budget car-rental location and a lifelong friend of Foster’s; and Pickerington Central High School Principal Scott Reeves, who met Foster at OSU in the mid-1980s.

McGuire said he felt threatened when one officer called him and the union sent him an e-mail after he wrote that Foster “is a tremendous role model to his children and other teens in the community.”

Reeves, who probably should not have written his letter in support of Foster on school stationery, was reprimanded by the district superintendent.  Even so, the police union plans on visiting the next school board meeting to further express their displeasure over Reeves’ temerity to defend his old college friend.  And as Radley Balko points out, even if Reeves erred in using his official capacity to support Foster, how many cops have done the same thing in harassing Foster’s supporters?

Given that his defense attorney might use some of Foster’s friends as character witnesses, the union’s behavior amounts to intimidation.  It’s not acceptable when mobsters do it, so why let the police get away with it?

But it’s the rhetoric from union leaders that disturbs me most.  The police seem utterly incapable of grasping the concept that when unknown assailants break into one’s home, exercising one’s right to self-defense is a perfectly reasonable option.  Would any one of these cops give up the right to defend themselves should a thug break into their homes?  Yet reverse the roles, and suddenly the private, gun-owning citizen is a threat to public safety.

The problem isn’t with individual cops, or even corruption like we’ve seen with the Atlanta SWAT unit following their brutal execution of Kathryn Johnston and their attempts to cover it up.  So far as I know, the two officers shot by Foster and another man on April 30 were not corrupt, or known to use excessive force.  They were just doing their job.

And that’s the problem: the job.  Any job which requires forcibly entering a private home without warning, for the purpose of finding evidence of non-crimes (and in this case, no drugs were found and no charges have been filed except those against Foster and his co-defendant), is not a job at all.  It’s a criminal act.  And people threatened by violent criminal acts may very well respond with force to defend themselves.  Self-preservation, and protecting others one cares about, can be a strong instinct.  But as far as the cops are concerned, that makes one a danger to the public.  Maybe that’s why they’ve come to regard every citizen as a potential threat, even as they fail to recognize it’s their own use of force which puts the public on edge.

How many more Derrick Fosters and Cory Mayes and Ryan Fredericks will spend the rest of their lives in prison, or even be sentenced to death, for exercising their right to self-defense in the face of unknown danger?  Who will be next?  Will it be you?