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In the last several years, shocking stories of police and law enforcement overstep have occurred and come to our attention either through conventional or secondary media sources. On this blog I told of the false imprisonment of Brandon Raub, a Virginia soldier who was snared by law enforcement because he simply offered a negative opinion of the Obama regime on his Facebook page, when the page was to be available only to a few of his friends. Eileen Hart was charged with "making terroristical threats" in New Jersey following a calm discussion at an open meeting with her county's tax assessment team, where she simply read the Constitution. A few months ago, some young women who were students at Mr. Jefferson's University of Virginia went out to get sparkling water and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream after dark. Those entrusted with seeing that those under twenty-one don't drink accosted them with guns drawn, without identifying themselves, and actually jumped on the hood of the young woman's car. To her credit, the young woman sped away slightly grazing one of the officers. She then called police, who indicated that she should return to the location where this occurred, where she was initially arrested for assault on an agent, and a number of other felonies, in association with her possession of a non-alcoholic substance which they mistakenly thought was liquor. Now, a man in Deming, New Mexico was held for twelve hours and experienced a rectal cavity search following a routine traffic stop, without just cause. He has filed suit.
Policemen in the United States used to be dressed as policemen. They were there "to protect and to serve" the citizenry, and most of them did exactly that. Over the last several years there has been a militarization of police officers. The federal government has paid SWAT teams to kick down the doors of people behind on student loans. The clothing and gear is more militaristic, and sadly for some, so is the attitude. For some, we are no longer the citizenry who pays their salary, but enemy combatants.
I have always been very pro law enforcement. I know many honorable excellent law enforcement officers on many levels and those who are Federal agents of one kind or another. They are bothered by the trend I have mentioned also.
My thought is this. Most people are principally law abiding, and we will report activities we see to law enforcement when we have concerns. However, the fact that the cases I mentioned above happened at all is also an indication that many other bizarre cases, which are never reported to us, are likely to have happened also. Law enforcement must always be beyond reproach. Without our belief that the police are "the good guys" and are acting in our best interests, then the public will not only stop reporting things they see to the police, but they will stop cooperating in many ways. The erosion of trust in the police and law enforcement agencies, federal, state, or local, will make genuine crime much more difficult to fight. We have all seen drivers flashing their lights on a roadway to warn other drivers that a police officer is parked and ready to pounce. On the surface this seems innocent enough, but what if the car you have warned is a violent bankrobber who has not yet been caught. Warning him might allow him to pull his weapon and be more ready than the officer who pulls him over, and is then shot by him. Failing to provide information to the police is also one of the reasons many crimes are not solved. In so many places, people won't speak to the police or they won't trust them with sensitive information.
Law enforcement officers of all levels must do everything "by the book". If you make us your enemies, then, this is what people will become. The world is dangerous enough. We need each group to play it straight.
Other sources of information on this topic:
https://www.aclu.org/blog/tag/militarization-police
http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/overkill-rise-paramilitary-police-raids-america
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/police-militarization
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/how-the-war-on-terror-has-militarized-the-police/248047/
11 comments:
In an emergency they will be occupied with their own problems. It seems that they, like terrorists, tend to attack soft targets, they aren't stupid.
A neighbor has the opinion that there's no such thing as an honest cop. To his thinking, half the cops are criminals themselves and the other half knows it and does nothing about it. Therefore, none of them are honest "keepers of the law." Anymore, I agree with him. The son of a former co-worker went to college to be a cop and worked a seies of three jobs before giving it up and going to a factory. In the first one, he was handed a list of people that he was never to stop under ANY circumstances. I forget the problem with the second. In the third, he was warned to never cause any problems around a certain truck-stop, because the county sheriff was a drug king-pin and conducted his business there.
I was the victim of some pretty scary police harassment. I did not dare complain.
The raid was not because anyone owed student loans. It was for Federal student loan fraud. Still, the response seemed pretty extreme.
A good point.
A few years ago, a rural Virginia sheriff was arrested for being his county's "drug kingpin". It happens sometimes.
I have been lucky that I have known some very fine police officers, however, they know that there are problems within their ranks. A lot of the police talent in this country went to Iraq or Afghanistan. This left some inferior younger officers working some of the areas here. Some of the officers weren't right when they returned from war. The mindset shift to seeing us as "enemy combatants" is also a problem.
This happens sometimes, and it can be very scary. A gunsmith and FFL dealer I know was harassed by police when he simply was traveling an interstate highway and was stopped on a routine traffic stop. The officer saw from running his plate that he had a concealed weapons permit, and spent forty-five minutes harassing him.
I have only personally experienced one incompetent state police officer, who interestingly was female. However, she was incompetent across the board and was removed within months of having stopped me inappropriately.
Law enforcement officers of all levels must do everything "by the book".
Who wrote the book???
A female cop has never stopped me, I've been cheated. :-)
The "book" started with The Constitution, which spawned all the law books you see in an attorneys office. Although the police aren't responsible for knowing everything in all those books, they are taught about civil rights, getting a warrant, and what constitutes unreasonable search and seizure no matter how brief their police training might be. We no longer just have police who took a twelve week live-in course at a police academy. We have police with associates degrees, bachelor's degrees, masters and Phds. They should be better at doing the job while upholding rights, not worse at it.
This kind of heavy handed behavior by law enforcement is what encourages organized crime, much like what happened to Sicily many generations ago. When people can't trust the law to look after their own best interests, they'll form their own "system" and enforce it with omerta, the law of silence and complete noncooperation with any type of government or law enforcement.
Exactly. It's very difficult for a society to come back from such a transition from an erosion of trust in law enforcement. This is why it's so important that law enforcement be held to a very high Constitutional standard.
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