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.
POLICE AND THE “AUTOMOBILE EXCEPTION”
The courts have been particularly unkind to Fourth Amendment protections in the context of motor vehicle travel. Since the 1920s, Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has allowed for a gaping and ever-widening exception to the warrant requirement with regard to the nation’s roadways.391 Today, police force untold millions of motorists off the roads each year to be searched or scrutinized without judicial warrant of any kind.392 Any police officer can generally find some pretext to justify a stop of any automobile.393 In effect, road travel itself is subject to a near total level of police control,394 a phenomenon that would have confounded the Framers, who treated seizures of wagons, horses and buggies as subject to the same constraints as seizures of other property.395
The courts have laid down such a malleable latticework of exceptions in favor of modern police that virtually any cop worth his mettle can adjust his explanations for a search to qualify under one exception or another. When no exception applies, police simply lie about the facts.396 “Judges regularly choose to accept even blatantly unbelievable police testimony.”397 The practice on the streets has long been for police to follow their hunches, seek entrance at every door, and then attempt to justify searches after the fact.398 Justice Robert Jackson observed in 1949 that many unlawful searches of homes and automobiles are never revealed to the courts or the public because the searches turn up nothing.399