2015.8: Let's Play Servant and Master

 Posted on January 05, 2015 in Uncategorized

Scott Greenfield wants the backstory? Here's the backstory.

I asked the Collin County Sheriff's Office for Sergeant (now Investigator) Christopher M. Meehan's personnel file. Robert J. Davis, representing the Sheriff's Office, requested an opinion from the Attorney General allowing the Sheriff's Office to withhold the bulk of the cop's personnel file for various reasons, ranging from the specious ("There is certainly no information contained in the personnel file of Investigator Meehan which is a a legitimate concern to the public...") to the offensively stupid (the language quoted in 2015.6).

/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Robert-J.-Davis-Public-Information-Opinion-Request.pdf

I haven't yet written about the New York Police Department's petulant response to criticism (as a Libertarian, I don't want to discourage them in making only the arrests that they "have to": you go, guys!), but that, Justin Keiter‘s petulant response to my naming him as the lawyer engaging in what an appellate dissent called "egregious misconduct," and Davis's response to my public-information request on behalf of the Collin County Sheriff's Office are all of a piece: public servants behaving as though they are masters.

The master gets to criticize the servants. The master gets to know which servants are engaged in misconduct. The master gets to poke around in the servants' business.

The servant who forgets this needs to be let go.