Posted on 07/23/2013 11:17:27 AM PDT by AtlasStalled
An increasing number of police officers are forming motorcycle clubs, but gang investigators fear such groups can hurt the credibility of law enforcement.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
The Cops are already a gang; they just operate under the color of authority.
They already are a gang. Thin blue line and all that.
Just last night, I saw a cop nearly cause a massive pileup as he aggressively changed lanes (no signal) several times trying to get behind the citizen who was going 5 MPH over the speed limit.
Every lane change he made was illegal and dangerous. All that to write a ticket for a family trying to get home, who was going with the flow of traffic.
That’s the sum total of my experience with the cops after 52 years and over a dozen interactions. They will never enforce the law when you call them. They will pull you over and write you at ticket for trying your best to follow the law and making a rare mistake.
The cops are just revenuers for the welfare state, in my experience.
The tribal unity and bonding and secretiveness of a biker club, yet the members also carry badges and guns, and are members of the same union and department as the local law enforcement, what could go wrong.
As the Journal has pointed out in a series of articles, municipal police departments exhibit the following characteristics:
(1) a phenomenon that sociologists call "amoral familism"
(2) militarized gear and training
I believe that lots of individual preppers have provided for themselves on the basis of being able to defend their homes against individual interlopers or roving, undisciplined gangs.
I think the situation would be quite different: trained groups of colleagues with massive weaponry acting in concert, under color of restoring order.
Ever since the so-called War On Drugs (WOD) and, now, the War On Terror (WOT) — actually more like the War On The Bill of Rights) — began, our civilian cops have been undergoing MILITARY training. The “authorities” gentle it down with the prefix “Para” but those “dynamic entry” teams would be more at home in Baghdad than Boston. (Well, unless they hit John Kerry’s front door at 3 am, Boston might not be a good example.) Watch “Dallas SWAT” for a dose of how it works.
I have long thought that that sort of activity within the ranks of otherwise “civilian” law enforcement was a push by those with an agenda to bypass posse comitatus for purposes BEYOND the WOD/WOT and other currently criminal behavior.
That the mass of that shrinking minority – the American citizen (thank you Mr. Open Borders Bush and Total Amnesty Obama) – has NOT objected to this erosion of personal liberty does NOT bode well for the future of freedom here.
I wonder what sort of body count of innocent grandmothers and others it will take before folks begin to grasp that they might be more at risk from the cops than the criminals and bring the situation back under control?
My Uncle Bob (R.I.P.) would be horrified.
My Uncle Bob was a 30-year veteran of a police force in suburban Cleveland. He was best man at my wedding in 1962. He served in an era when MOST cops embodied the now frequently hollow motto emblazoned on police units all over this country: “TO PROTECT AND SERVE.”
The last 10 years of his career were spent as the chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he had touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.
I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens (see Warren v. DC for some fascinating and frightening reading on that), would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.
Having said that, I must also lament that SOME cops are “cowboys.” Too many are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take.
I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. (See footnote below). Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! — spring to mind.
And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear to anyone with half a brain criminality of the Clintons and now Obama – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem? There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?
Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck… This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.
Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my uncle would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” — referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
Dick Bachert (1999) Updated 12/2010
FOOTNOTE:
At a cocktail party back in the late 80’s, I struck up a chat with a fellow — his name was Joe M. — whom I’d met on one or two previous events. After my first encounter, Joe’s neighbor and my boss at the time told me that Joe was an alcoholic who had just retired from 25 years with the IRS. Needless to say, I was guarded in expressing my political views to Joe as the IRS had helped my dad into an early grave in 1977 — at age 59 over an estate matter. Joe was pretty deep into his cups at the function in question and began telling IRS “war stories.” Most had to do with clear cases of criminal conduct by not very nice people. Joe — who was a few years short of 60 — sounded to me like someone who enjoyed helping getting really bad people off the street and I asked why he’d retired early. He told me that what he called “the service” had changed for the worse. Then I asked him about the new people coming in. He shook his head, actually teared up and said that many of them were “really bad.” I pressed. “Really bad” meant incompetent? “No — DANGEROUS,” he responded “they like to hurt people.”
It was then that I think I understood why Joe drank.
Just about everything.
I'm a member of one of Colorado's 50+ Motorcycle organizations who belong to our "Confederation of Clubs"
Tell me more about this “massive weaponry.”
Let em ride. They are immune from laws and enjoy a great amount of drinking and driving. We could use more organ donors.
I am a pretty old motorcyclist. 50+ years. I take it as an insult when someone refers to me as a “Biker”. I am not biker! I am a motorcyclist!
In my opinion, Bikers are the trash of the two wheel world.
They have no credibility left to hurt.
Put another way: in a situation of disorder combined with resource scarcity, cops' families will NOT be the first to starve.
No kidding, and I would guess that the problems increase as the club matures and becomes more autonomous over the decades.
The Blue Knights have been in existence since ‘74. A great group.
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