Posted on 04/17/2015 1:40:52 PM PDT by familyop
Okay, thank you for your fascinating analysis, kiryandil.
Walter Scott wanted to leave the area, and showed over and over and over that that's ALL he wanted to do.
But he was guilty of Michael Slager's Capital Crime of "Contempt of Cop", and therefore had to die...
I noticed. But worship of authority, a/k/a, jackboot licking, runs deep in some.
I don’t see any such checks to abuse of power in the model of policing that you propose. Are we subjects now, to what is essentially rule by whatever violence the government should choose to mete out?
If you were the subject of an abuse of power by an officer of the law or other agent of the government, what checks to such abuse would you want and/or expect to be in place to deter those abuses, protect you from them, and/or compensate you for damage done by them?
This question is not only generally relevant to the topic, but also specifically relevant to the jurisdiction, which has a reputation for excessive taser use, and this specific officer as well.
You hit the nail on the head. The central problem is the network of infractions with excessive penalties that is designed to escalate to the use of force.
Problem 1 is that a person is being pulled over for a broken tail light. It was daytime. Doesn’t that officer have something better to do with his time? No, he doesn’t, because he’s got a revenue quota and this is one of the ways of meeting it. If not for the fact of a broken tail light, Walter Scott would still be alive. This is a mind-blowingly perverse situation.
Problem 2 is that a man can go to jail for not being able to pay court-ordered child support. I could not imagine a less constructive policy; a man in jail is not able to work to pay down the sum, and giving him a criminal record makes it substantially more difficult to do that as well. At this point in history we are supposed to understand that debtors’ prisons are barbaric and not useful.
Problem 3 is that it’s not obvious to all that a man scared to be arrested for not paying child support when he simply doesn’t have the capacity to pay shouldn’t be gunned down if he runs away from a taser. Willingly standing still to be tasered is not a normal human reaction so that can’t reasonably be expected of the victim.
He sure ain’t paying down that child support or fixing that tail light now, which is empirical evidence that present predominant paramilitary policing practices as applied under an already-large and ever-increasing body of criminal law is taking bad situations and making them worse, rather than leading to better outcomes.
That settles it - we have been inundated with leftists who haven't yet discovered they are leftists. The ability to make up "facts" out of thin air because they fit their meme, and then espouse the lies as actual facts is the first clue.
I’m not sure that I’ve proposed a model of policing. If anything, prior to 1985 there was actually less of a check on police power in this sort of situation. The common law that went back to our founding and even earlier held that police could kill any fleeing felon. (OTOH, there were fewer offenses that were considered felonies, but assaulting a police officer and taking his weapon surely would have been one of them.)
Policing is inherently a slippery slope with limits that are difficult to formalize. The quality of policing is fundamentally a function of culture rather than of formal limits. A healthy culture can place few such limits on its police yet still have civilized policing that respects the citizenry.
His family said that Walter Scott used roads and streets that were less frequented by the agents of the State.
We refer to this as "using the Outlaw Trail", where I live.
The notion that there's pretty much a cop under every rock these days should give a thinking peasant pause...
Scott couldn't avoid the murderous revenooers, no matter what he did.
I would submit that prior to 1985, there wasn't a cop under every rock, so it was less of an issue. Plus, police weren't trained to "confront at all costs", as they are today.
We're inundated with "law enforcement" people of every stripe these days.
They sure drive fancy rigs, too - wish I could maintain my vehicles and property like that. I guess when money is no object (you just seize it from malefactors like Robert Durst), you can operate like that...
Murder suspect Robert Durst wants police to give back the $161,000 'life on the run' money seized during arrest
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3042789/Durst-wants-money-police-161K.html
Geez! They stole it at gunpoint, fair & square! What a whiner!
Besides, Durst might have Done Bad Stuff, so the stealing is All Good.
Wonder if that's why Slager pulled over Walter Scott's Mercedes? Because he thought he might rack in some revenue or a car for the local "Policing For Profit" drive?
You got your facts confused. Mike Brown is dead. And Walt was the one resisting arrest and attacking the LEO.
You got your facts confused. Mike Slager is going to prison, where he'll wish he was dead. And Walt was the one running away from and attacked by the LEO Slager.
Officer Mikey Slager just couldn't let it go, but he got filmed, unfortunately for him...
The American legal tradition stems from a root that is all about putting limits on what the agents of government may do. From the Magna Carta onwards, the major developments in Western legal tradition are all about guaranteeing freedom from violent and arbitrary impositions of government.
The strict limits put on government power in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the explicit text of the Declaration of Independence all speak directly to that tradition. The enormous benefits of the innovations in human liberty such as freedom of conscience, the right to a trial of one’s peers, the right to be secure in one’s property, and others all exist for this purpose.
I will have to disagree with the assertion that a civilized society can co-exist with one that has limited checks on police power - the two don’t go together, and the idea that they do runs directly counter to these central legal concepts of Western civilization. Unchecked power is always abused; surely the Obama administration is evidence enough that the argument to limit the power of the government over citizens.
I'm just confused about how the Founders managed to get along without police crawling around everywhere, like maggots on a gut wagon...
We shall see. The facts may prove otherwise.
I appreciate where you’re coming from but your argument is just too abstract. As far as the letter of the law, the police are probably more limited than ever. This is certainly true in this particular case where prior to 1985 a cop could shoot any fleeing felon.
A lot of police work happens at the gut level. You can pile on the formal limits but ultimately it’s cultural conditioning that shapes how a policeman relates to the public he serves.
Not sure the "tidying up" of the crime scene is going to go over big with the peasants on the jury. Plus the back-shooting.
That's still a big No-NO in this country.
Like George Zimmerman, Michael Slager should have stayed in his squad car, with Walter Scott's license in hand. And his Mercedes. And his passenger.
Perhaps this incident will enlighten a few over-zealous officers of the law...
Well, at least make sure that they rough up the kid who's videoing them, and grab the cell phone...
Is this written down anywhere, or are you just promoting your gut-level sense of a "rule of thumb" from before the onset of the Golden Age of The Police State?
We'll also have to note that Walter Scott was NOT a felon.
And just because Slager assaulted Scott in the back alley doesn't make Scott a felon.
It's more like it makes Slager a vigilante.
Trayvon lived like a thug and died like a thug. Better parenting and he might still be above ground.
It will be interesting to hear what reason the LEO gives for drawing his firearm in this case.
You might try googling “fleeing felon rule”.
When you assault a police officer and grab his weapon, you have committed a felony.
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