Published on: Wednesday, February 03, 2010

By Brian J. Karem

Captain Paul Starks at the Montgomery County Police Department is my new hero. I’m as serious as I can be when I say that and he joins a long list of police officers I truly admire.

“Being a pain in the butt isn’t against the law,” he told us this week.

He got it exactly right.

Last week's story "Good Samaritan Snare," has generated more e-mail responses than any other story we've published in the last three years.

From the comfort of anonymity our readers divided into groups and began firing upon each other with the intensity of a Civil War firefight that causes more problems than it solves. 

Some have called Mr. McCann everything from a goofy hipster to far, far worse. Some of you blasted the police involved and claimed they should become garbage men, or far, far worse.

Neither side has physically threatened the other, thank heavens, but they've used their words like blunt instruments.

Not to leave us out of the mix, both sides are littered with those who are convinced we only told one-side of the story, by either omission, or manipulation of facts and e-mail messages, or both. Some were upset because we wouldn't publish their anonymous vitriolic accusations.

For the record we relied heavily on the court transcript of the trial for our story - though because of the constraints of space we weren't able, obviously, to include the entire three-hour trial - though we listened to it all.

Those who say our coverage favored Mr. McCann are upset because these simple facts can't be ignored: At approximately 1 a.m. on Sept. 23, 2009 Mr. McCann helped a 90-year-old woman change a flat tire. McCann then flagged down a police officer because he was concerned the woman might be suffering from dementia. McCann's friends left. He stayed and told police officer Robert Skelton, the very officer who stopped to assist, not to "Harangue" the woman.

Though two officers testified McCann didn't curse, yell or threaten them in any way, he did continue to heckle them.

While McCann stood on public property, Skelton apparently shoved him across a set of railroad tracks. A few minutes later McCann refused to yield to an arrest, Skelton tased him and later charged him with two misdemeanors. One of the charges was hindering a police officer. That's a very questionable call because officer Skelton testified and told us in an e-mail last week that he was able to assist the elderly woman.  If not guilty of that charge, then McCann's lawyer argued in court that the second charge was illegal so he had the right to resist the arrest. McCann might have had better luck before a jury, but McCann's lawyer John Monahan admitted he blew that call.

The district judge William Simmons Graves found McCann guilty, but his court fees were dismissed and his sentence suspended. The judge said if McCann would complete 24 hours of community service work, then he'd strike the conviction, which is either ironic or amusing since doing community service work is what got him arrested in the first place.

We covered much of this last week, but it is worth repeating that everyone involved in this mess is at fault. However, ultimately Mr. McCann has the Supreme Court by his side. In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled in a similar instance City of Houston V. Hill, 482 U.S. Supreme Court that people, in effect, have the right to heckle the cops.

Oops. Sorry. We'll be here all week. Try the veal.

There isn't a standup comedian alive that wouldn't kill for the power Skelton wielded that day - the ability to tase some heckler that's got you good and " p***ed off" without any repercussions.

But, that's too much power for one man. We all have to learn to get along without super powers. Sorry.

Most of those who wrote in got that point. Others didn't and I suspect the ease with which some will sacrifice their liberties for the misperception of safety constitutes a small albeit scary crowd; intolerant and ultimately ignorant of our system of jurisprudence.

Time to grow up.

Part of that growth has to come at the hands of the consumers of news as well. Too many people are hiding. Too many of them crave anonymity from which they can shout the most bilious bile of blather as one could imagine in all of Christendom.

Come out from behind your cloak of anonymity and speak forthright as men and women - adults. Those under the age of 18 either chronologically or by default or demeanor can be relegated elsewhere.