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To: MadRobotArtist
My Uncle Bob was a 30 year veteran of a police force in suburban Cleveland. He was best man at my wedding 40 years ago. He served in an era when MOST cops embodied the now frequently hollow motto emblazoned on patrol cars all over this country: “TO PROTECT AND SERVE.”

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 had 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 guard rail. 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 who 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.

Having said that, I 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 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.

49 posted on 09/10/2001 8:36:24 AM PDT by Dick Bachert
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To: Dick Bachert
I know what you mean. I am probably more critical of cops than most, but have run across some really good ones.

I recall one night, my car died right off the traffic circle in Dothan, Alabama.

It turned out to be a broken wire in the distrubutor. (I have a mental block right now and can't think of the part's name) By luck I happened to have a spaare in my trunk.

Right after pulling over, a Dothan city cop stopped and asked if I needed help. I told him I thought I knew what it was but would appreciate it if he stuck around long enough to see. He not only stuck around but helped me fix it and also kept up a very interesting conversation.

In some places he probably would have searched the car (for his own protection), called for back-up, and cuffed me until he made sure I wasn't the Son of Sam killer.

53 posted on 09/10/2001 8:49:11 AM PDT by yarddog
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To: Dick Bachert
TO be honest, I have a very good friend who retired from the police force. He is probably one of the finest people I know in the world. I am not knocking cops, or what they do.

What I am saying is simply this. In the Minneapolis area, we have some people doing some things they shouldn't. Especially in the Bloomington and Richfield area. I'd lay money on it, after my posting, I get pulled over and ticketed. Why? Because some people abuse their power. Don't get me wrong, I have always respected the law, and have never done anything to ask for trouble. However, I have had some injustices done to me by the police because They Could, when I was a kid. Now as an adult, I can tell you that it's very real. The vulgar display of power is Very Real.

The police are doing things they KNOW are constituionally illegal. I realize that they have to uphold the local laws. The problem is that a lot of them aren't saying anything about it, nor are they trying to change things. When they start going door to door for health and welfare inspections, and start confiscating guns, that will be the time that people wake up.

Unfortunately, the sheep will bleat, but nothing will be done.

62 posted on 09/10/2001 10:47:05 AM PDT by MadRobotArtist
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