Support Your Local Police

On a number of occasions, I have noted that police appear to be objectively pro fascist.

We have another data point with the conviction of former head of the Washington, D.C. police department's intelligence unit tipping off Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio about an outstanding arrest warrant, and then lying about it.

A former D.C. police lieutenant was found guilty in federal court Monday on charges that he improperly warned Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio of his pending arrest two days before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, then lied about it to investigators.

Shane Lamond, a 24-year department veteran, withheld from colleagues that Tarrio had confessed to burning a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a historic African American church during a pro-Trump rally weeks earlier and leaked word to Tarrio that a warrant had been signed for his arrest, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson found.

“Whatever the relationship had been before, after the banner burning the defendant was not using Tarrio as a source; it was the other way around,” Jackson said Monday. “He knew then, and he knows now, that it was wrong.”

She found Lamond guilty of obstructing justice and subsequently making three false statements in an interview with two U.S. attorney’s office investigators to hide his involvement: Lamond denied tipping off Tarrio to the investigation or the arrest warrant and claimed their communications were mostly “one-sided” from the Proud Boys leader.

The week-long trial spotlighted D.C. police interactions with extremist groups in 2020 and 2021, when liberal groups accused police of appearing to favor right-leaning organizations. Lamond, 48, of Stafford, Virginia, headed D.C. police’s intelligence unit at the time.

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What mattered, she said, was that Lamond shared sensitive information with Tarrio and lied about it — the rest was “icing on the cake.” 

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Jackson set Lamond’s sentencing for April 3. The District obstruction charge is punishable by up to 30 years in prison upon conviction, and the federal false statement counts are each punishable by up to five years, but first-time offenders rarely receive maximum sentences.

This one should get the max, or something close to it.

Police know the law, and he abused his position, and then lied about it.

Cops should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us, because they are given the right to apply force, often deadly force, by the state.

To quote Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility.