People of a certain age might remember the old John Birch Society slogan "Support your local police!" The idea here is that your local policeman is a liberty-loving buddy of yours who would only ever support just laws and constitutional mandates. Only those bad guys in the FBI or BATF would ever consider violating your rights. Now, obviously that has always been a rather naïve fantasy, but the notion certainly has a long history of support among American conservatives. The idea that unionized, well-paid government employees sympathize with the common man instead of with the government that signs the cops' checks apparently has long made sense (for some reason) to conservatives and many others. But thanks to the ongoing "state of emergency" and the fact that state governors, mayors, and health officials now rule by decree, we're witnessing more and more how local law enforcement officers have no particular interest in the rule of law, the Bill of Rights, or basic human rights of any sort. Police have been at the forefront of arresting business owners for the "crime" of using their own private property, using city parks, and engaging in other peaceful activities. As Judge Napolitano has noted, these "stay-at-home orders"—and the penalties that accompany them—aren't even real laws since they were never passed by a legislature or brought into being by any process other than on the authority of a single person who is usually a state governor or municipal official. By no definition of "rule of law" do these measures meet basic moral requirements for their imposition on peaceful citizens. But the police are enthusiastically enforcing these edicts nonetheless, and using them as an excuse to harass the taxpayers.
Here are just a few examples from around the United States.
- Police arrest a business owner for refusing to close his smoke shop.
- Police harass and detain a man for playing softball with his family in a nearly empty park.
- In Delaware, "a local business owner was even arrested for personally violating Carney's stay-at-home order."
- Wisconsin police arrested a dog groomer for social distancing–related "violations."
- Shreveport, Louisiana, police threaten local business owners.
- NYPD officers assault a man for violating social distancing "laws."
- In Odessa, Texas, a SWAT team descended on a peaceful demonstration at a tavern.
1 comment:
In northern Colo, a state patrol apparently had nothing better to do than stop and demand that a fishing enthusiast, without any one else around on a particular stretch of river, go home because he was farther than 10 miles from his home..... appears that the CSP has too many non essential gov employees also. And the cops wonder why they are held in such disregard?
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