Starving for Justice, First Fast, July 19, 2011

Today is the first day of fasting. This first fast for “Starving for Justice” will be for just one day. As I begin the day I am made aware of how much a meal provides a short respite from the hell my life has become. Today there will be no brief escape afforded by the consumption of food. Before our friend, Audrius Kazenas, was taken by ICE on November 26, 2008 and placed in detention where he sits to this day, I would frequently get so busy fixing a fence or clearing a space for a garden that I would not think to eat, but now I am looking forward to a day of no food and I am feeling the loss. My stomach is already protesting its lack of breakfast. It may be a very long day.

My focus this morning is on law enforcement. Audrius Kazenas was, for many years, part of law enforcement in his own country. In the years after the Soviets were thrown out of Eastern Europe he chose a career in military intelligence, working undercover to expose the connections in his country’s new government to gun runners and drug smugglers with allegiances to what had been the Soviet Union. He paid a heavy price for that choice when a man he was investigating attacked him and in the resulting struggle, died. Audrius landed in prison, was stripped naked, taped to a chair and shocked with live electrical wires while his breathing was cut off by a gas mask placed over his head. He was then thrown into the general population who were informed of who he was.

Audrius survived – that time – and when he was released he returned to his position as an officer in the military. Now, because he compromised his allegiance to the law believing that it was the right thing to do, thinking that he had to in order to protect his family, he himself has been compromised. The same siren’s call that enticed him to bend the law just a little to handle what he thought was an emergency; that convinced him that this one time bending the law was the right thing to do, has brought him to where he sits now. Meanwhile, the one who enticed him continues to entice others in law enforcement to do the same for the same reason, to bend the law just a little, because this time it is an emergency. The result to the rest of us for all this “law bending” has been a break down of Justice for when those charged with maintaining a system of Justice instead decide to twist it to suit them, that system is lost. Such actions are warranted only when the whole system is unjust.

Audrius has infinite faith in law enforcement and the importance of a clean system of Justice and he has maintained that faith even while uncovering instances of corruption within the system, even while being tortured and abandoned to survive or die. He still has faith in the system despite the fact that it has failed him yet again, but his faith, so far has not come to his rescue this time. His faith could well bring him right back to the circumstances he endured once before and this time he might not escape with his life intact. In post-Soviet Eastern Europe it is understandable that they would struggle with corruption within their law enforcement community. But Audrius is not sitting in an Eastern European prison; he sits in an American prison now, and has done so for nearly three years. His faith is undeterred. He still maintains a belief in a system of just laws. I, however, am charged with the task of working within that system to try to free him. My sole connection with law enforcement has been through friends and organizing a neighborhood watch so my faith in our Justice system is less subjective. With what I have experienced trying to rescue Audrius, my faith in our system has been shaken almost beyond the point of repair.

Just as law enforcement, after dealing with criminal mentalities day-in and day-out, develop a tendency to automatically suspect everyone until they have proven that they are not criminals; struggling to keep standing under this load day-in and day-out has taken its toll on me. Knowing that the loss of the last two-plus years of my life was mostly caused by a few members of law enforcement who have used their position to give them an advantage has caused me to develop a tendency to automatically suspect law enforcement officers until they have proven that they are not seeking to use and abuse their position for their or their family and friend’s gain. In the end the larger loss is to law enforcement officers as they can not do their job as effectively if they are not trusted. But trust, once betrayed, is very hard to restore.

A law enforcement system that has lost the trust of the people can not function in a civilized society. Our symbol of Justice is blind for good reason. A system of Justice that can look to see who is before it can tip the scales in favor of those who are part of the system, thus creating a them-against-us mentality where law enforcement officers take care of their own first and the law second. From the public’s point of view they then are no longer representing the law and the public will no longer inform them what is going on around their area. They then become the blind ones as the people they are supposed to serve will no longer trust them to handle the needs of society.

The results of this are seldom huge, but they can end in massive destruction made possible through cumulative small losses of public trust and cooperation. An example of this would be our “War on Terror.” Before Audrius was taken I would not have placed those words in quotes, but by now I have lost a lot of faith. How does one measure what the results of lost faith are? There is no way to judge where one citizen’s altered trust will result in a loss of data that could lead to tragic results. A year or so ago, when some jewelers I know asked me to sit in on a meeting with a horsewoman who was making them a proposition, I said nothing to DHS about the very suspicious activity that was revealed in that meeting by that woman. This woman made claims that only a person with knowledge of certain Arab Horse bloodlines and the practices of Arab Horse breeders would spot as suspect. I used to breed horses from those exact lines, a fact that, when she discovered it, made her exceedingly nervous to where she exited the meeting prematurely and a deal was never struck. At best, the people who had asked me to sit in avoided being taken in by a likely scam; at worst, a woman funneling funds to Saudi Arabia for less than honorable purposes escaped detection.

Before my recent experience trying to help prevent my friend, Audrius Kazenas,’ deportation to a country where he has been tortured already I would have called DHS and reported what I had learned in that meeting, but I did not. I feel that this agency has betrayed me unjustly, that they are not interested in protecting common citizens such as myself and that they have chosen instead to support the criminal element in our society that preys upon us. I did not come to this conclusion without evidence. I have in my possession a paper filed with a court of law where an agent of DHS states that known terrorists with links to Al Qaeda are simply fighting for freedom from Russia and are of no concern. Other statements on that same paper lead me to believe that DHS agent is assisting at least one person engaged in unlawful activity to escape detection. These statements were filed with the court to pursue the deportation of Audrius despite his twice being granted relief from deportation under the Convention Against Torture by an Immigration Judge, so how can I think anything other than “This agent is dirty?” How can I trust an agency that apparently considers some terrorists to be freedom fighters and feels that laws are fair game for manipulation to benefit family and friends? I can’t! And so DHS never got a report from me on suspicious activity that only a person who has bred one select line of Arabian Horses would have ever spotted. That activity was probably nothing, perhaps just a petty con artist plying her trade. I certainly hope that is the case, but lost faith in law enforcement, multiplied, will eventually take its toll on the ability of law enforcement to do their job. That, right there, is why it is absolutely mandatory that the people who enforce our system of justice must be held to a higher standard of conduct from the rest of us, not to a lower standard as some that I am encountering are now being held. Justice itself depends upon it and when it is not done, Justice is lost. In Audrius’ case, to date, Justice has been abandoned, and so today I choose to fast as an overt expression of what it is to be starving for Justice.