My father is a cop. He works for the DOT and as much as I love him, there are times when he gets an Only Ones attitude. I supposed it comes with the job, but it shouldn’t. I have nothing against cops in general, and even to this day I wouldn’t mind being one myself. Being a Wookie Suiter though, I’m not sure how well I’d fit in.
This latest atrocity though, has really rubbed me the wrong way. Seems that the Indiana supreme court has decided you are not allowed to resist anyone breaking down your door. Oh, sure it says
…there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers
But at 2 AM when the splinters are flying and someone is screaming “POLICE!”, exactly how are you assured they are who they say they are? Indianans are now forced to live in terror of defending themselves because if they happen to be innocent and are attacked in their own homes, they’ll have to second guess if defending their own lives will be tantamount to murder should anyone barging in be employed with the local constable.
At what point have we the people become the enemy? Kevin Baker points out one of my favorite quotes from Battlestar Galactica where Adama is asked to use the military as police
The police protect the People. The military defends the State. When the military becomes the police, the People become the Enemy of the State.
The Indiana ruling is chilling to the bone, but it’s not surprising. We are continually being told that officer safety supersedes any rights we might believe we have. Here in Florida, a sheriff was on record saying that he would advise his men to draw down on anyone openly carrying should the law go into effect. The refrain repeated over and over during the debates were that it would make Officer Friendly’s job soooo much harder because it’s hard to tell that the guy with the holstered gun isn’t a threat to anyone.
I love my father and I want him home every night, but at no point should his safety come at the cost of my liberty. We respect police officers because their jobs are hard and dangerous. There is no respect in demanding that the citizenry be disarmed and cowed into submission so that the officer faces no threat. There is no respect because that is not a valid line of thought. The criminal element will not follow any laws and will only gain advantage as we continually remove the freedoms we enjoy for a false sense of “officer safety”.
More and more I feel less like a free man and more like a target for those who wish to rule me. Talking to a former cop yesterday, and something I’ve discussed with my father, it clear that an officer that pulls you over has enough ‘laws’ behind him that if he or she decides to charge you with something, you’re getting charged. Feel like asserting your rights? I guarantee you Officer Friendly is going to find that your tire pressure is .4# too low and thus you will be slapped with a ticket. This isn’t how the populace should live.
I still believe that most police are honest, hard working people. Take my father for example. However, even he starts considering his job as a source of revenue for the state rather than one of providing safety. I don’t want stoned truckers barreling down I4 at 90MPH with faulty brakes, but I also don’t want the cost of liberty raised because cops go looking for stuff to fine you for. In Robb’s Perfect Utopia, for a ticket to stand the cop MUST state on the dashboard camera, before he gets out of the car, the reason for the stop. Anything found after that that is not criminal in nature is null and void. And the tickets themselves should not go to the police department because it creates a perverse incentive to ticket people for money rather than stop them for safety violations.
Every podunk town now has SWAT. Cops are being fitted with more and more weaponry and less and less barriers to using them. The War on Some Drugs has withered away the historical tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police and instead, we’re pitted against each other. This isn’t healthy for a republic.
Again, this isn’t railing against the generic ‘cops’. I still wouldn’t mind being one myself. The fault of all this lies in our own hands as we’ve continually given over our freedoms voluntarily rather than fighting back tooth and nail.
It’s so ingrained in everyone’s heads that the security of a few outweigh the liberty of all that we might never regain those freedoms ever again.
Now, please stand over in this line for your mandated patdown.
And so it is no longer just Black folks who are stating that the police are acting more and more like occupying armies.
Here in Florida, a sheriff was on record saying that he would advise his men to draw down on anyone openly carrying should the law go into effect.