ELECTION: A price to be paid to ensure our rights

Re: “Council hopeful Tom McCarthy says run-ins don’t color his view of police” (TNT, 9-22).

I live in the county and don’t vote in Tacoma elections, but I like to give context when possible.

A thrust of the article dealt with costs of political protests: the cost of a trial and the possible costs to Tacoma had McCarthy’s lawsuit against the Tacoma Police Department been successful.

Sorry, folks, but those are the costs of democracy. Dissent is integral to the process, and if it costs taxpayers to ensure that our civil rights and liberties aren’t abused, that’s the dues for getting to live under the U.S. Constitution.

At a community meeting I attended, McCarthy said he wants to improve Tacoma. I believe he was trying to do that with the TPD suit, since suing the pants off them for unlawful arrests, illegal search and seizure, etc., is a way to get them to clean up their act. These sorts of lawsuits are intended to “get them where it hurts” to achieve desired results.

That a jury didn’t see these as civil rights abuses doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. From personal experience, I know the ACLU only takes cases it believes have merit and are likely to win. It’s possible that this was a faulty verdict.

This story was originally published September 28, 2015 at 1:27 PM with the headline "ELECTION: A price to be paid to ensure our rights."