There’s an old rule of thumb that states that any law that’s named after someone is almost invariably ill-conceived and poorly written. The reason: named laws (Anton’s Law or Meghan’s Law) are typically enacted in the wake of high-profile incidents or crimes by politicians looking to do something about a situation…practical applications and unintended consequences be damned. Which perfectly explains Marc Anthony’s Law. . .
Jersey City policeman Marc Anthony DiNardo was shot in the face and killed last July after breaking into an apartment while trying to arrest a robbery suspect. Now, as anyone who’s ever seen an episode of Law & Order or CSI: Anywhere probably knows, it’s already very much against the law to shoot just about anyone – much less a police officer – in the face. But as you can imagine, the DiNardo shooting was big news in one of the biggest media markets in the country.
Enter New Jersey Assemblyman Charles Mainor.
Sponsored by Assemblyman Charles Mainor, the proposed law would make it a first degree crime to use a defaced or stolen firearm to cause serious bodily injury to a law enforcement officer, and a second degree crime to use a defaced or stolen firearm to cause bodily injury to a law enforcement officer.
Prison sentences are pretty much guaranteed with second-degree crimes but not always with those lower. This would become another charge that prosecutors could add in seeking longer terms.
Did you catch that first paragraph? It’s probably just a case of poor journalism on the part of the hapless cliffviewpilot.com, not that it really matters. Mainor’s intent is to make killing a cop more badder and illegaler than it used to be if the shooter had scratched off the gun’s serial number first. Because without the serial number, the poor cop will suffer more and end up even deader. Or something.
“[Detective] DiNardo was a decorated officer. Just weeks before his death he helped save a woman who had jumped into the Hackensack River. He should have been readying to celebrate his 38th birthday, but instead his life was cut short by a stolen 12-gauge shotgun,” said Mainor (D-Hudson).
The law hasn’t been passed yet, but it’s only a matter of time. What self-respecting local politician will want to vote against stiffer penalties for cop killers? And being the primary sponsor will, of course, look awfully impressive on Mainor’s campaign materials in his next election effort. Which is really the ultimate point here.
It’s a meaningless, feel-good exercise that will allow the gallant Assemblyman Mainor to stand before the microphones and say, “by God, I did something about this heinous crime.” Bravo, Assemblyman Mainor. Your everything the people of New Jersey have come to expect from their representatives in Trenton.
It’s not meaningless. It enshrines in law the principle that a police officer’s life is more valuable than the lives of those they supposedly protect. I’m *so* glad I moved to PA.
I’ve known some Jersey cops who were good guys. Detective DiNardo is probably rolling over in his grave.
Its called the chair, bring it back and that is about all the punishment you need for a cop killer. What is the difference between life without parole or LWP and 20 extra years in the mind of a criminal?
Similar deal in NH. Killing a cop is worse than killing a citizen. No death penalty for killing a citizen.
Case in point, the Mount Vernon murder, where a mother was hacked to death in her bed and her daughter chopped pretty badly. No death for those perps.
The thug who shot Officer Briggs in Manchester got death.
There should be no double standard.
You think that’s a double standard? In most states, if you run over and kill a person by accident you probably wouldn’t even lose your license, but if you run over and kill a road worker by accident you’ll do time. Why are those people’s lives so valuable compared to anyone else’s?
It’s clear that government employees are becoming, and probably already are, a superior class of American.
I think that that sign’s and flagers show to most driver that You should SLOW DOWN and not run into hi-way construction workers.
Um. I’m not sure if this was what you really meant to say:
“What self-respecting local politician will want to vote against killing cops?”
Actually, that was what I meant to say, but it didn’t read well. I’ve clarified it a little. Thanks.
lol, DiNardo’s wife is trying to play the ghetto lottery and is suing the city for 10 million. According to the article below her lawsuit alledged her dead husband was “not properly trained… didn’t follow procedures… failed to establish proper chain of command… and tactical decisions were made by someone untrained to do so.” It sounds like her husband wanted to be a bad ass and got what he deserved. I wish I had a job where I could be sue my employer if I was incompetent and didnt know what I was doing.
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2011/08/dinardo_lawsuit_rejected_by_ap.html
So the response to a cop who thought he was tougher than he was, is more laws. Remember that next time you go to vote, this is what you get, more politicians and more laws.
matt , the “lottery” you are implying is when people sue over frivolous issues.This man was shot in the face. you don’t think cops serve warrants anywhere else and have never been shot at before when doing this? if this cop was white you would be crying and prostrating, go to stormfront if you want to talk about crap like that, seriously, no one cares that you are super racist, we get it.
Uh, sdog, look at the picture with the post. The cop was white. matt, in addition to being super racist, also really hates cops, of any and all colors.
i was talking about matt’s “ghetto lottery” comment. thinly veiled racial code language, not fooling anyone. it is very clear that it is intentional. i got caught up in my annoyance with his constant sharing of his timothy mcveigh/ hutaree militia ideology and confused the cop picture with the picture of Mainor. that type of stuff is what gives those who embrace 2A issues a bad name.
matt is a broken record, he will make intelligent comments on firearms in one thread, and then throw bombs like his previous posts in other threads. i get and love the the 1st amendment, but this is not a white supremacist space and it drives me nuts that he yaps about that crap here.
Agreed about matt and his racism and overblown rhetoric. It’s extremely tiresome. Also, his whole “I’m so clever because I don’t vote” thing is laughable as well. I’m probably not voting for President in the next election because I don’t see anyone out there who isn’t unspeakably objectionable on some level or other, but I’m not fooling myself into thinking that I’m making some grand statement by doing so. I’ll make sure to vote locally so I can vote against whatever ill-advised and poorly thought out measures the initiative process will have disgorged this time.
well said carlos and you are totally right about local elections. My scummy governor is proposing all kinds of distasteful tax increases, anything from taxing online purchases more to increasing our gas prices by 18 cents, all from a guy who doesn’t drive himself anywhere in, i dunno 20 years? .
I especially dislike the initiative process because there are two types of initiatives that pass with ease: 1) those that increase services, and 2) those that cut taxes. People have no problems with voting for both kinds at the same time, but then they wonder why the budget doesn’t balance.
oh noes, I say a white woman is playing the ghetto lottery and somehow i’m racist? Look at what your doing sdog, you and Ralph are much more like me that your willing to admit. and if you would have followed any of my rants, im an anarchist, not a christian. that also explains why i encourage people to not vote.
Seems the cop was of Italian extraction.
lol sdog, she is fling a frivolous lawsuit. her husband and their coworkers didnt know what they were doing, from the outcome that is obvious, and now she wants to be rich because of it.
and fyi, this cop was white
read above 5 comments
I did, and replied to one. there is nothing relevant in them. its a circlejerk with you a Carlos calling me racist. Don’t get me wrong, I am, but look at yourself, you claim that anything I say, especially this, is somehow about race. It gives the impression you guys may have a inferiority complex.
It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think that the term “ghetto lottery” coming from an admitted racist might have a racist tinge to it, especially since sdog had initially confused who was who between the two pictures in the post, and thought that the dead cop in question was black.
The rest of the comments were merely calling a spade a spade.
How can there be a racist tinge if there arent any jews in this story? Ghetto when used racially refers to jewish neighborhoods.
It does however demonstrate that blacks in general love to call everyone else racist, while being huge bigots themselves, as demonstrated so well by sdog or the Crown Heights Riot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Heights_riot
Sorry, matt, but when you use words, the rest of us take them to mean what they mean in the real world, and not whatever special meaning they have inside your head.
Ghetto referring to jewish neighborhoods is a commonly accepted fact. The other definition of it refers to an ambiguous under privileged group. But if you want a comment from me with a racist tinge, how bout you uncle toms stop bein so ignant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto
A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues. The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term may refer to an overcrowded urban area often associated with specific ethnic or racial populations living below the poverty line. From a statistical perspective, ghettos are typically high crime areas relative to other parts of the city. [1]
Etymology
Dictionaries list a number of possible origins for the originally Italian term, including “gheto” or “ghet”, which means slag or waste in Venetian, and was used in this sense in a reference to a foundry where slag was stored located on the same island as the area of Jewish confinement (the Venetian ).[2], and borghetto, diminutive of borgo ‘borough’.[3]
Wow, you just completely skipped over the “African American Ghettos” section of the wikipedia article as if it didn’t exist.
Now pop quiz: are we in 1)America; or
2) Venice?
His comment has nothing to do with race. His wife is clearly stating that her husband was incompetent and, if that was the case, is trying to milk money from the department by suing them for her husband being lousy at his job – so the “ghetto lottery” comment is perfectly valid.
Just because you associate the ghetto and lower class actions with blacks doesn’t make everyone as racist as you.
Totenglocke, we’ve already addressed sdog’s confusion about who was who in the pictures above. As for matt, he’s admitted to being extremely racist many times, so it’s not exactly a secret. In this particular case it’s not about race, though, but his hatred of cops.
We have way too many laws in this country already. Murder is already illegal and always has been. Just go with that.
+1 agreed. “harm no man, let no man harm you” BM.
With stuff like this and the rapidly increasing militarization of the police force, I’m starting to get really uneasy. I have this constant feeling that although its not there, yet, there is a jackboot hovering right over my throat.
“the proposed law would make it a first degree crime to use a defaced or stolen firearm to cause serious bodily injury to a law enforcement officer,”
Hang on a second, I think we’re missing something here! What if we re-wrote ALL gun control laws in the above manner? Such as, “use of a fully automatic machine gun to kill someone is illegal”. Written in such a manner, we could all own, possess, even carry machine guns, just so long as we didn’t kill somebody (especially a cop) with it.
“Use of a silencer on a weapon while committing a felony is illegal”. We could own silencers, without licenses or registrations, put them on any weapon, just so long as we didn’t actually use them to knock over the corner convenience store.
I think I’m see a silver lining here.
There are already all sorts of laws like that in Jersey. For example, hollow points are illegal, except for target shooting and (I paraphrase) “use in one’s own home” (the latter being the only case where peasants can legally use a firearm for self-defense in Jersey).
I little while ago a man went to prison in Jersey for transporting two loaded handguns in his car. If I recall correctly, he had just moved to Jersey from Colorado, and was splitting his time between his parents’ home and a friend’s home, living out of his car. He got a few years for transporting his firearms improperly (loaded in suitcase in the trunk), and a few more because they were hp.
The crime is murdering another human being. That’s what should be illegal. The add-ons become a means to ruin the lives of people who clearly had no intention of harming anyone, but simply fell afoul of a massively complex set of rules designed to make life difficult for anyone who chooses not to rely on the state from the cradle to the grave.
Never made it to prison. On a petion for a pardon, Christie gave him clemency. Not a pardon, mind you, so he still has a lifetime ban on gun ownership, but at least he avoided the can.
“…but instead his life was cut short by a stolen 12 gauge shotgun.”
edit: “…but instead his life was cut short by a scumbag with a stolen 12 gauge shotgun.”
Fixed it.
How do you know they were “scumbags”. They were suspects. We dont even know if the police identified themselves, or if they had a warrant. None of the articles i’ve read said what exactly happened. But from the aftermath you can tell that the police decided to execute them rather than back off and wait them out or use tear gas. The police really fucked this up if 2 suspects managed to shoot 5 cops and somehow injure an additional 3.
Fair enough, matt. I was really only thinking about the shotgun apparently acting of its own accord, not about the facts of the situation. Sounds more like the officer in question’s policy was kind of a kick-in-door/shoot first, ask later one.
+1.
+2
I thought the Marc Anthony Law was “Don’t Marry Jennifer Lopez”
Oh, come on. That had to worth it in the short term.
The Marc Anthony Law should be “Don’t Marry Cleopatra!”
Technically, that guy was Mark Antony, with a ‘k’, no ‘h’. Even more techically, he was Marcus Antonius.
Maybe this law will remove the plea bargain aspect or prevent the early release of the bad guy at some point. If someone you love is killed and they aren’t a cop then tough shit, your family isn’t as important and we can feel sympathy for the criminal like always.
No one should worry about a law named for a dead officer. Personally, I’m more concerned about the one they name after me.
There are all kind of enhancement laws on every state’s books, including dear old MA. Beat up someone because you don’t like their baseball team and go to jail for five. Beat up that same person to exactly the same extent because they’re gay and its a “hate crime” and the BG gets to do ten. So I guess that when a Yankee fan beats up a Red Sox fan, that’s what? A love crime?
Had someone tried to rob me a couple of years ago and survived, they’d go to jail. The same exact crime now gets the perpetrator an extra fin because I’m “elderly.”
Does any of this makes sense? Well, if these laws are trying to override judicial leniency, then yes, they make sense in a perverted way. It would be better to get rid of the judges, but we’re stuck with them.
While these enhancements offend me, I take solace in the probability that sooner or later, everyone in the entire universe will be in a protected group. As long as there are stupid politicians seeking to curry favor with stupid people, there will be stupid laws.
Judges bitch about mandatory sentencing guidelines all the time, it’s hard to determine if they are a good thing or bad thing, but for violent crimes I can’t let a judge decide to give someone time served and call it a day.
I doubt anyone in the act of killing a cop is aware they are facing a stiffer punishment when caught. These laws are supposed to make them think twice before acting on a LEO, but they don’t even think once. Make the penalties for doing anyone as stiff as possible.
Am I the only one creeped out by the oversized photo? It looks so Stalinist or like something from Kim Jong Il.
You may have a point.
I think that’s an imposed photo, probably a screen grab from a news cast.
Oh, I see it now. Sorry about that.
I’m a little more puzzled by the Italian flag. Did he have dual citizenship?
Really? You went there? That puzzles you? I’m going to have whatever f***ing flag I want at my funeral.
That’s an Irish flag. It probably belongs to the police department band.
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