The last years of his career were spent as the Chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he’d touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.
I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens, would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.
My sister is married to a good guy – who was also a good cop.
And I STILL vividly recall a business trip and having a flat tire. I pulled onto the narrow shoulder and was opening the trunk when I spied a Georgia State Trooper’s car cross the median, hit the flashers and pull in some distance behind me and a bit closer to the road, shielding me and my car from the 70 MPH traffic. SHE got out and asked if I needed any help. I told her I could probably handle it. She said she’d keep her unit there until I got done.
THEN she spotted my cane and saw that I was partially disabled. Before I could object, she was in the trunk, had wrestled the spare to the ground and was jacking up the car, all the while asking me to remain safely near the guardrail. About that time, two county deputies stopped and pitched in. The lady trooper cut her hand fooling with the jack and soiled her freshly pressed uniform wrestling the dirty flat back into the trunk. They couldn’t have been nicer! I took their names and wrote highly complimentary letters to their superiors – all of whom promptly acknowledged them and thanked me for the kind words.
These officers – like my uncle – grasped the significance of “To Protect and Serve.”
I also recognize that the cops – like Gort in “The Day The Earth Stood Still” -- are simply the muscle (the “enforcement”) behind the legislative and statutory “law” enacted by society as a whole. That is, after all, why it’s called “LAW ENFORCEMENT.” And although it could be argued that this society may be morphing into the homonym for “whole” as you read this, these laws are enacted by our alleged “representatives” meeting in generally safe, quiet and opulent chambers far from the increasingly mean streets where the cops ply their trade. If the cops have too many intrusive and abusive laws to enforce, check the nearest mirror for a likeness of the responsible party.
And if the cops ARE abusive to the general citizenry, why aren’t HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of us RAISING UNHOLY HELL at each and every meeting of the responsible governing body? French political philosopher Joseph D'Maistre declared that "Every people gets the government they deserve."
Have we really become the “nation of sheep” an author foresaw many years ago? If so, we have little right to object to the shearing. Or the coming slaughter and culling of the flock. And my guess is that the culling will begin with the most troublesome and noisiest sheep. And guess who THAT is?
An old friend is a ranking officer with a large police department. I would rate his love of our freedoms and the Constitution against anyone here at FR. A few years ago, he told me that IF the order to begin some sort of weapons round-up among the general citizenry ever came down from “on high,” we would quickly know about it from the reports of disturbances and gunfire from the neighborhood cop shop: Fully HALF the officers in his department are Second Amendment guys. He and they would be the first to resist such an order – physically if necessary. What should scare us all is the shift in our demographics and the continuing leftist indoctrination by the government schools, making it impossible to know how much longer that ratio – and sentiment – will hold.
A civilized society must also recognize the need to assure that EVERY officer we put out there be as well paid, trained and supervised as possible. The people doing this work ought to have the best training and equipment we can provide them if only to convey to them our belief that their work – and their lives – are as worthy as our own – if only to keep their morale at the highest possible level. Disgruntled malcontents almost always make lousy cops.
Having said that, we must also recognize that EVERY large barrel contains some bad apples -- and SOME cops are “cowboys.” Some are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take.
I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! -- spring to mind.
And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear criminality of the Clintons – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem. There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?
Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck… This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.
Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my Uncle Bob would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” -- referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
One thread discussing marijuana legalization generates > 1000 comments.
Dozens of threads discussing police abuse of power generate < 150 comments.
Also known as the "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" defense.
The cop should have to personally pay pay the family $500 to buy a new dog and $10,000 for their grief so they can take a 2 week vacation in Hawaii and mourn their loss.
In other words, "Who you gonna believe? Me, or your own lyin' eyes?"
This idiot's report can be used like a shovel to bury his own ass.
I don't know about the rest of FR, but on the main "News/Activism" page, where all the thread replies are listed I keep seeing these HUGE, absolutely monstrous "message boxes" appear... Right at the top, above the thread titles.
Several of them have been quite lengthy, many paragraphs.. The last one contained this:
Q: Guess who took the time to write a special thank-you note to FR posters?
A: JEB BUSH!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/783970/posts More Announcements / Options
There was some stuff from "Greyfox" in there previously also.
Is FR broken by chance? Is this normal and if so can I SHUT IT OFF somehow? (cause it's really annoying)
Regards.
Wow... I didn't know dogs are supposed to understand the command 'Get back'.
This was a very unfortunate incident, and it is easy to condemn the cop in hindsight. But there was simply no moral fault on the part of the police officers; they were responding as imperfect human beings might be expected to respond to a quickly-unfolding situation filled with unknowns. The death of this dog was no more the moral fault of the police officer than it would be the fault of, say, a driver who runs over a dog rather than swerving, losing of control, and placing his own physical safety at risk. If the choice is between injury to a human or the death of a dog, the human wins--except in PETA world.
Street experience teaches cops to be proactive--not to wait until they have absorbed the first surprise.
Of course the family did nothing wrong, either. And their dog was simply acting as a dog acts. No moral fault or any fault there. Dogs are protective--not particularly discerning. These characteristics make dogs valuable to armed criminals for the same reason they are valuable to a law-abiding families. That's too bad.
The family will understandably be angry and enraged but the cop has no reason to accept the rage and take it personally. He ought to express his sympathy and as a kind gesture offer to get them a new dog, but solely as a gesture of sorrow and kindness--not as an admission of fault.
This kind of incident produces gallons of anger and resentment but offers no legitimate bucket to place them in.
God help us when we face terrorists--not just the Griswolds.
Officer Lying Dogkiller needs to go to Johnson Prison.
There are of course a few who simply hate police and will be against them no matter what. On the other hand it is beyond my comprehension at the number of, well, idiots, (sorry but no other word apllies) who think it is perfectly alright for a cop to kill a friendly dog who approaches him.
They also think it is just ducky to terrorise (maybe that is not even a strong enough word) a family with no real information to go on. Heck that type of conduct is reprehensible even if they knew the family was a bunch of terrorists.
Somewhere, somehow, the police have got to use just a little bit of common sense. This was obviously a family on a trip. I repeat: This was OBVIOUSLY a family on a trip. Sure the police should still use some caution because on some really rare occassion it might actually be armed felons.
Just how far this country has slid can be implied by the following fact: In ancient Rome, it was illegal to shackle a Roman Citizen for any reason. The Romans were not a bunch of Peta, Hippie Loving Flower children either. They did understand the concept of dignity tho. Apparently a whole lot better than a lot of people on FR do.