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 “
Sounds authoritarian.
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.
Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to assume the position.
Thanks for posting; I’ve only scanned it and will have to read it in more depth later.
I don’t believe that local police forces are unconstitutional, but there are probably elements of the way we do policing that need to be re-thought. And I agree with the notion that too much separation has arisen between police and citizens, that in the end citizens police themselves (and we have delegated certain people to specialize in this, but delegating must not imply giving up either rights nor responsibilities).
I have a lot of misgivings about the way traffic enforcement is handled, becoming as it sometimes does a source of revenue and control rather than merely safety.
I think at the end of the day a constitutional republic will have policemen but it is worth while to think about how we assure that they are still fellow citizens and not centurions.
I'll be curious to see whether distinction is made between local (State) police and Federal police, the later I believe clearly being unconstitutional.
ML/NJ
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Well... let’s do away with police then, and see how it goes.
Is posting the entire text rather than an excerpt and a link Constitutional? Someone call a cop.