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The accountability cycle and the West Virginia State Police
West Virginia needs to be able to trust the West Virginia State Police. That starts with accountability.
Once upon a time in France, a key voice of the American Revolution was out of favor and making trouble. In trying to defend the goings on of the French Revolution, and unintentionally foreshadowing how that revolution would end up, Thomas Paine wrote: “A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.” Paine’s experience of only being spared the guillotine because Robespierre found himself under one first, and the American revolutionary’s jailer incorrectly marking his cell door for execution, did little to improve his opinion on the subject.
While lopping off heads has mercifully fallen out of favor in the two centuries from then until now, the core problem of accountability and who does the accounting remains. “Who watches the watchers” is a problem as old as humanity itself. So too is the core problem of folks wanting to be in charge of holding everyone else accountable while at the same time not wanting themselves held accountable. Sort of like a moral musical chairs where whomever doesn’t have a seat when the chorus of accountability stops playing is the one left standing and singled out for…
