Posted on 07/13/2014 1:52:17 AM PDT by beaversmom
Does anyone know the story here?
“particularly since a meek mild-mannered mumsy employee of mine was unlawfully seized by an angry small-town cop last year.”
It's the illegality of drugs and the draconian punishment for their possession or use which motivates some to react violently to the prospect of being incarcerated for decades.
Without the artificially high prices created by the illegality, most illicit drugs would cost pennies per pound. It's always been my opinion that less harm would be done allowing addicts to overdose whenever they like rather than give up all of our Constitutional protections in order to fight this losing battle.
I'm just uninterested in continuing the effort to protect people from their own bad choices at such a high cost to me.
I can see it both ways. A cop is alone, outnumbered, he uses extra force to maintain control, people start appearing and seem to be challenging him.
Me, my family, I would hope they say something like - “This must be a mistake, let’s clear it up downtown”...rather than the alternative (but no, I don’t trust my wife either to stay cool).
Nothing good there, but there are PLENTY of better examples to show our drifting towards a police state.
What kind of man are you?
I know what kind of man young Bob Tolan is - the kind of guy I'd like having my back in a tough situation. Unarmed, he got up off his belly, onto his knees and verbally challenged the armed Brownshirt from 15 feet away.
What's going to be entertaining is the first few times "Confrontation Cops" run into a planned scenario. The training seems to assume that backup is endless and in great depth...
The innocent peasant kid is lying on his face, and the King's Man starts beating up his mom.
The UNARMED kid gets to his knees and DARES to verbally challenge the gunthug from 15-20 feet away. Gunthug blasts him, and the various courts think that's just swell, until it hits the Supreme Court.
Holy crap! I just realized I've got the kid's dad's baseball card from 1968. The elder Tolan was part of the 1967 & 1968 St. Louis Cardinals World Series teams.
Mark Steyn ping and this one is a really pithy one.
Freepmail me, if you want on or off the Mark Steyn ping list.
Thanks for the ping Slings and Arrows.
My exact thoughts as well...............
We need to end the police state that is being put in place.
What the hell do people think “Shelter in place” Means?
Thats A kind way of declaring martial law as they roll the tanks out.
Kinda like promising I wont *** in yer mouth
We we know whats going on.
Well stated.
Wow.
As usual, Steyn sums it up perfectly.
I have seen zero evidence that cops have any intention of demilitarizing at all. If anything, they are escalating. This is clear if you read all the stories here about cops shooting dogs
Change wouldn’t come from them directly, but from state legislatures, as part of police de-paramilitarization laws.
1) The state would have a standard list of weapons and equipment that all police departments *could* have, and anything not on that list would have to be turned over to their county Sheriff or the State police, for safekeeping in their facilities. Exemptions for special needs would be on a case-by-case basis.
2) No police department could receive equipment or funding directly from the federal government, it could only come through the State police, and could not be directed to a particular police department by the feds.
3) Any information provided by the federal government from secret sources would be inadmissible in state courts. Likewise, “no-knock” and warrantless searches would be severely restricted.
4) The curricula of the State police academies would be adjusted to modify the behavior of the police so that they would be far less inclined to commit acts that erode the confidence of the public.
5) Abuse of steroids by police would no longer be an internal matter, but treated as a criminal offense.
To take care of #5, mandatory drug tests, with criminal penalties for same.
One possible problem is that Class IIIs can relatively easily transfer between police agencies, but if sold to the public, it might give an opportunity for the feds to horn in, which they would.
Since they have been the biggest advocates of police paramilitarization, I have no doubt they would try to prevent de-paramilitarization if at all possible.
There is also a sneaky one hidden in here, that the feds provide them with advanced communications equipment designed for the feds to tap into. Both directly and indirectly. A big part of de-paramilitarization is to build a wall between local police and the feds, so that either have to go through the state police.
A lot of the problem is based in the RICO law, because when the feds make a bust in a local jurisdiction, they automatically give 10% of the ‘take’ to the locals, even if they were not in. The local police are “allowed” to spend this money on all sorts of surplus military equipment and weapons. In the 1990s, I believe the ‘local take’ for police nationwide was about $600 million.
So de-paramilitarization is a big project, and not an easy one, because it will upset many federal schemes.
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