We civilians think current LEOs are generally out of touch with people in at least two ways.
We think they don’t appreciate or zealously guard our constitutional rights.
We also think LEOs tend to circle the wagons and give their blue brothers a pass when they violate our rights.
Your post sounds like you are coming from the perspective of one of the above criticisms. Either you see no violation of rights here, or you just feel the need to back up your blue brothers.
Either way, we middle class civilians who have rabidly supported the police for several decades and always saw them on are side, are becoming wary of the modern LEO community to actually serve and protect us.
Now why is that? Why are we growing increasingly concerned that the police see all civilians as the enemy rather than just the people we consider the bad guys, like hardened criminals. Not that we believe LEOs are out to get us. Just that we believe that in their zeal to get the bad guys, the LEOs no longer respect the rights of civilians. It is pretty mild now, but I see that lack of respect for constitutional rights getting worse over time, in the LEO communities zeal to get the bad guys.
Combine this with the outrageous activity of TSA, which I acknowledge is not LEO, but we civilians feel more and more like we are living in a police state.
For my part, I am more than willing to risk the impact of bad guys on my life resulting from LEOs completely respecting my constitutional rights, for me to enjoy the full liberty of my inviolable constitutional rights. In a free Republic, there we enjoy a bit less security as a trade-off for our liberty. I won’t surrender my liberty, or portions thereof, like being subjected to unreasonable search at DUI checkpoints for example, just to insure my security.
I’m sorry you can’t see that pulling over cars and handcuffing the occupants without the due process of reasonable suspicion, is not a violation of people’s rights to be secure in their person against unreasonable searches. The police had a good reason to want to do mass random searches, but they had no constitutional power to do so. That’s the breaks. They can’t just violate people’s rights because the ends justify the means. They can’t.
But they do. And that is why more of us middle class civilians who have a lifetime of blind support for the police are becoming increasingly concerned about the current LEO community and the trend toward an increasing police state.
>>Your post sounds like you are coming from the perspective of one of the above criticisms.
I think you are incorrect, and that this is a both/and situation, not either/or.
And if this guy is a cop, he is very much part of the problem.
Spot on, well said.