The Andy Griffith Show was a very popular American TV sitcom from 1960 to 1968. It starred Andy as a kindly, down-to-earth small-town sheriff in Mayberry, North Carolina and Don Knotts as his deputy, Barney Fife. Barney is a bumbler, insecure, and suffers from low self-esteem. But when he pins on his badge, he becomes smug and full of bravado – Mr Tuff Guy. He suspects everyone of latent criminal intent. In one episode he busts a little old lady for jaywalking across a street with no traffic on it. In another, he arrests someone for “conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace”. We thought this was hilarious – conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace.
TV’s Barney Fife was a little man with a big badge. He was very funny. But t’aint so funny in real life. The law of the badge: if your only identity is a badge, anyone questioning your authority is a criminal. While it certainly doesn’t apply to all officers/agents, it definitely applies to some.
When authority turns deadly
On 7 January 2026, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old American mother of three in Minneapolis, Minnesota. During an ICE raid, one agent approached her car. When she refused to open the door and tried to drive away, Ross pumped three bullets into the vehicle. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed Good tried to run over Ross and that he shot in self-defence. Video clearly shows Good turning slowly to the right while Ross was to the left of the vehicle. DHS called Good’s actions an act of “domestic terrorism”. Vice President JD Vance said that Good was “a victim of left-wing ideologies”. President Donald Trump claimed Good was a “professional agitator”.
Tyre Nichols: another casualty
The law of the badge can lead to arrests, beatings, and even death. The killing of Renee Good reminded me of the Tyre Nichols killing in January 2023. He was driving home after admiring the sunset over the Mississippi River in Memphis, Tennessee, which he did every evening. Less than 100m from his mama’s house, he was stopped by police, yelled at, and yanked out of the car. Five big men with badges pushed around this skinny 29-year-old. He managed to get free and started running towards home, proving he must be guilty of something. They caught him, zapped him with a Taser and pepper spray, and beat and kicked him. Three days later, he died. What was Tyre’s crime? In the police report, they wrote he was driving “quickly”. Not recklessly, not speeding, just quickly enough to give the men with badges an excuse to harass him.
My guess – it’s only a guess – is that those five big Memphis cops didn’t mean to kill Tyre Nichols; they just wanted to teach him a lesson: they had badges and he didn’t.
A personal encounter … and the pattern is repeated
The law of the badge is an old, old story. Here’s my little contribution. Many years ago, after trying and failing to write the great American novel while working on a horse ranch in Colorado, I returned to the family home in Wichita, Kansas. Within a month, I found work teaching Swahili and African Culture in the Department of Extramural Studies at Wichita State University (WSU). I had one problem – getting a parking sticker for my beat-up and super-ugly 1962 VW Squareback. I wasn’t full-time faculty or staff (like a janitor), and I wasn’t a student. I didn’t fit into any of those categories. Admin said they needed time to figure this out.
With no other choice, I used visitor parking.
Eventually, the campus cops noticed that this junker VW with Colorado number plates visited WSU every day. I got a parking ticket. Back to Admin to ask for a sticker. Still working on it. This went on for several months, by which time I had accumulated five parking tickets.
One day, I’m leaving the campus at around 4pm when I hear a siren and see a flashing red light in the rear-view mirror. This burly campus cop sidles up and asks to see my driver’s licence – also from Colorado. Car registration from, guess where.
“You from Colorado?” he asks.
“I used to live in Colorado but now I work here.”
“You faculty or staff?”
“Staff”, I say.
“Then why don’t you have a staff parking sticker?”
“I’ve been trying to get one for over four months but there seems to be a snag with Admin.”
He gets all squinty-eyed and asks, “Mind if I take a look inside?”
“Why?”
“Drugs. We have a big drug problem around here, in case you don’t know.”
And that’s when I made a big mistake. I say, “Sure, as soon as you get a search warrant”.
“Oh, you didn’t tell me you’re a lawyer. Okay, Perry Mason, I’ll get a search warrant. It may take a few days. Drive your car over to that parking area and lock it. Hope you like to walk.”
Fortunately, he did not take the keys.
Also fortunately, it was a Thursday. My old man would be at McDonald municipal golf course, which was about 10 blocks from WSU. I managed to catch him before he left. On the drive home, I told him what had happened. He jumped on my case for being a smartass, neither the first nor last time for that lecture. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.
It so happened that a fellow named Dean Smith used to work part-time for the old man while putting himself through law school. He was now legal counsel to the chancellor of WSU. The old man called Dean. Dean called the chancellor. Dean then called me and said I could go pick up the VW.
The next day, the cop tracked me down. “You think you’re so smart. Well, I’m gonna tell you something you don’t know. Every campus cop also has a Sedgwick County deputy sheriff badge. We can get you anywhere in the county and we will … I will.”
And that’s when the harassment began.
Hell hath no wrath like someone with a badge scorned. I’d be driving on a busy street outside the campus. On came the siren and red light. Mr Campus Cop, now deputy sheriff, would pull me over, check my licence and registration, which he’d already checked, check my turn signals, check windshield wipers, all very slowly. Three times this happened over the course of a month. The fourth time, I said, “You’ve made your point and I accept it. I’ve already told you: you were right and I was wrong. Okay. But stop me one more time for no good reason and I’ll lodge a complaint of harassment, and you know who I know, and who he knows”.
“Are you threatening a police officer?”
“No, I’m making a promise. You go your way, I’ll go mine.”
And we did.
Power without accountability
The year 2025 saw deaths at the hands of police acting as judge, jury and executioner reach a new high: 1,315 in the USA. Furthermore, police are criminally charged in less than 1% of fatal shootings, and found guilty 0.3% of the time.
This I do believe: you can pass all the laws you want; you can subject officers/agents to monthly, weekly, even daily training. But until you weed out those who follow the law of the badge, it will only get you so far. As long as little men have big badges, please don’t engage in any conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace.
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