Posted on 01/18/2011 9:26:42 AM PST by DariusBane
Police are unconstitutional?...needs a tinfoil hat alert in title.
Here is an excerpt that will rock your “normal” view of the relationship between the citizen and the State, as existed in our early history:
“Nothing illustrates the modern disparity between the rights and powers of police and citizen as much as the modern law of resisting arrest. At the time of the nation’s founding, any citizen was privileged to resist arrest if, for example, probable cause for arrest did not exist or the arresting person could not produce a valid arrest warrant where one was needed.92 As recently as one hundred years ago, but with a tone that seems as if from some other, more distant age, the United States Supreme Court held that it was permissible (or at least defensible) to shoot an officer who displays a gun with intent to commit a warrantless arrest based on insufficient cause.93 Officers who executed an arrest without proper warrant were themselves considered trespassers, and any trespassee had a right to violently resist (or even assault and batter) an officer to evade such arrest.94
Well into the twentieth century, violent resistance was considered a lawful remedy for Fourth Amendment violations.95 Even third-party intermeddlers were privileged to forcibly liberate wrongly arrested persons from unlawful custody.96 The doctrine of non-resistance against unlawful government action was harshly condemned at the constitutional conventions of the 1780s, and both the Maryland and New Hampshire constitutions contained provisions denouncing nonresistance as “absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.”97 “
“Police are unconstitutional?...needs a tinfoil hat alert in title. “
Before you roll out our tinfoil hat alert, maybe you should revive some critical thinking skills and read the article. I told you it would challenge the conventional wisdom.
I am sure that you have not had time to read the article.
I want my local police department back.
See US v Cruikshank.
Sounds authoritarian.
You are on the enemies list now. Just don't talk about unfunded pensions for the police union and perhaps they'll overlook you.
Today, Law Enforcement is held in such glorified esteem by the slack jawed public that “if” you made it to trial (doubtful) you will enjoy no such protections from the court.
US v Cruikshank:
“On Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, an armed white militia attacked Republican freedmen who had gathered at the Colfax, Louisiana, courthouse to protect it from the pending Democratic takeover. Although some of the blacks were armed and initially defended themselves, estimates were that 100-280 were killed, most of them following surrender, and 50 were being held prisoner that night. Three whites were killed. This was in the tense aftermath of months of uncertainty following the disputed gubernatorial election of November 1872, when two parties declared victory at the state and local levels. The election was still unsettled in the spring, and both Republican and Fusionists, who carried Democratic backing, had certified their own slates for the local offices of sheriff (Christopher Columbus Nash) and justice of the peace in Grant Parish, where Colfax is the parish seat. Federal troops reinforced the election of the Republican governor, William Pitt Kellogg.
Some members of the white mob were indicted and charged under the Enforcement Act of 1870. Among other provisions, the law made it a felony for two or more people conspired to deprive anyone of his constitutional rights.
Given the disproportionate rate of black fatalities, historians have come to call the event the Colfax Massacre.[2]
[edit] Ruling
The Supreme Court ruled on a range of issues and found the indictment faulty. It overturned the convictions of two defendants in the case. The Court did not incorporate the Bill of Rights to the states and found that the First Amendment right to assembly “was not intended to limit the powers of the State governments in respect to their own citizens” and that the Second Amendment “has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government.”
Although the Enforcement Act had been designed primarily to allow Federal enforcement and prosecution of actions of the Ku Klux Klan and other secret vigilante groups in preventing blacks from voting and murdering them[3], the Cruikshank court held that the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses applied only to state action, and not to actions of individuals: “The fourteenth amendment prohibits a State from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; but this adds nothing to the rights of one citizen as against another.”[4]”
I grew up in a town with a constable. He was a pretty good guy who mostly kept us local kids from getting in any serious trouble.
Good lord.
intersting.... ping for later.
I agree that urban law enforcement has metastasized into something mildly undesirable(or worse depending on your POV). But how to fix it? City police departments probably never should’ve been allowed to happen. But the alternative is a greatly expanded sheriff’s department with full time professional deputies, which probably would be an improvement with respect to costs and taxes. I don’t know if it would be more constitutional in function though.
Nope, but to compare any profession today to the ‘same’ profession 100 years ago is ludicrous.
The article is a history of the changing balance of power between the individual and the State over the history of this country. Didn’t read the article did you?
I don’t quite understand some of the objections towards teh OP’s posting. I haven’t had time to read it, and I’m sure no one else has either. Rather than throw out ad hominum attacks toward him, why not read it? And if you’re too busy to read it, then shut the hell up. From what I saw as I quickly skimmed the article, it looks to be a fairly well researched and footnoted article about the history of police authority. How do we know where we are going, if we ignore where we came from? We are a product of our history. Only an ignoramous would put blinders on when confronted with their own history.
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