Posted on 05/28/2012 7:23:51 AM PDT by Daffynition
I’ll say it first.
Histroy has proven you wrong, just look upthread, and keep reading FR, there are countless situations showing otherwise.
I hit a deer once on a desolate stretch on OH 32, the Honorable James A. Rhodes Memorial Highway.
The cop asked my how fast I was going. I told him 65. He said, "You might not want to tell me that (the speed limit was 60.)"
Imagine the Prosecutor's Office programming those robots.
On some of the reality tv shows I see this militant attitude by police. Not excusing it. I have experienced it, too.
However, you weren't arrested. Sorry you had an unpleasant experience.
When stopped, #1 is that I will not be in violation of any law (except possibly a traffic violation), will have my CCW permit and be carrying legally, and be exceedingly polite to the officer, regardless of his/her attitude. I would never bluntly say "you cannot search my car", or "do you have a warrant", but would say "No, I prefer you don't search my car, etc."
No way in hades I remove my CCW regardless of what the officer says. The officer will have to do that. :)
Without law enforcement we would have total anarchy in very short order.
As empirical verification of your point (even if anecdotal), over the past decade the police in the Kansas town where I reside have become increasingly intrusive to the point of giving the feeling of being a wannabe police-state in a way not found anywhere else in the state. The force is also the most-well-educated police force in the state with a distressing number of officers holding masters degrees.
“... without law enforcement we would have total anarchy”
Agreed. However, without checks on law enforcement... what would we have then?” A police state where every civilian’s rights are deemed unnecessary. So, yes... love the good and hate the bad.
How much of your local PO dept budget is devoted to going after criminals, rioters, thieves, rapists and mass murderers? It's the other activities that concern people. To answer your question, I would prefer drastically reducing the police forces and tell people they need to take care of themselves. If the police were so effective at doing the things you listed we wouldn't need so many. People, families and neighborhoods should be their own first line of defense. Our dependency on the police is propagated and then used against us
Ditto. The first thing I do is advise the officer of my weapon. Never reach for it.. it needs to be secured to have a conversation.
From Charles Kesler, published in the Claremont Review of Books 3/21/10
Can you have a bill, a single law, that is almost 3,000 pages long? In the old days, that would have constituted a whole code of laws. When our founders thought about law, they often thought along the lines of John Locke, who described law as a community’s “settled standing rules, indifferent, and the same to all parties,” emphasizing that to be legitimate a statute must be “received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies” between citizens.
This phonebook-sized law that would control a sixth of the U.S. economy cannot be a law by that definition. If you rummage through the text of, say, the House of Representatives’ version of the bill, you find scores of places where power is delegated to administrative agencies and special boards, which are charged to fill the gaps in the written legislation by promulgating thousands, if not tens of thousands, of new pages of regulations that will then be applied to individual cases. Voters sometimes complain that legislators don’t read the laws they enact. Why would they, in this case? You could read this leviathan until your eyeballs popped out and still not find any “settled, standing rules” or a meaning that is “indifferent, and the same to all parties.”
In fact, that’s the point of such promiscuous laws. They operate not by setting up fences to protect each man’s liberty. They start not from equal rights but from equal (and often unequal) privileges, the favors or benefits that government may bestow on or withhold from its clients. The whole point is to empower government officials, usually unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, to bless or curse your petitions as they see fit, guided, of course, by their expertness in a law so vast, so intricate, and so capricious that it could justify a hundred different outcomes in the same case. Faster than one might think, a government of equal laws turns into a regime of arbitrary privileges.
A “privilege” is literally a private law. When law ceases to be a common “standard of right and wrong” and a “common measure to decide all controversies,” then the rule of law ceases to be republican and becomes despotic. Freedom itself ceases to be a right and becomes a gift, or the fruit of a corrupt bargain, because in such degraded regimes those who are close to and connected with the ruling class have special privileges.
paging ayn rand. ayn rand, please pick up the white courtesy phone.
Two things stand out:
I think the point of the article is that it is prudent to keep in mind the inherent conflict between your personal interests and the interests of the institution as interpreted by the officers of the police.
It is always and in all situations your duty as an American to consider your own self interest first. This is one of the core things that make America Unique.
In some circumstances it may be in your self interest to cooperate completely with the police.
In other circumstances it may be in your self interest not to cooperate.
And if it is unclear where your self interest lies it is your basic civil right to hire and advocate ( or demand one at public expense).
Maintaining civil order is a core reason we form governments. But to keep a health balance it is necessary for citizens to actively stand up for their interests against them.
Would that things were so simple.
You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law.
You have the right to speak to an attorney.
If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.
Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?
AND THEY ALWAY LEAVE OFF
NOTHING you say may be used in your defense.
Reason: Stuff against you and written down by a cop is considered confessional evidence.
Anything you say that is written down by a cop that benefits you is considered hearsay, unless you say it while under oath and in court.
Bottom line: Say nothing to cops, it can never benefit you and can never help you.
I should add. I don’t have a ccw. My weapon is “securely encased” per fl statute. It only needs to be holstered in the glovebox..
“Isn’t this what a Security Guard does; Observe and Report?”
Yes, or worse - an informant to an oppressive government.
“Gort, Klatu birada nicto.”
Good post!!
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