The End of Government
The Era of Lawlessness
The Front Lines
The police have it tough. On the one hand, they have to keep the people in their communities safe from murderers, rapists, drunk drivers, rioting protestors, and other criminals. On the other hand, they have to take care to be selective in enforcing bad laws and bad judicial rulings so they do not become more dangerous to the public than the criminals they are supposed to stop. Being the part of government that deals directly with the public when justice has failed, they will bear the brunt of the counterattack should the people ever decide enough is enough. They are caught in the middle.
One way the public takes out its anger on the police is to second-guess everything they do. When the police delayed entering a night club in Florida, thinking it might have been a hostage situation, and the shooter continued to pick off the clubgoers one-by-one, they were chastised for being cowards. (78) Yet, when they moved too quickly to take out a shooter in a mall, they shot the wrong guy, who had his gun out likely for fear of the real shooter. They were chastised for being hotheads. (79) Sometimes, you just can’t win.
Because police – unlike judges or legislators – have to make split-second life-or-death decisions, they sometimes make mistakes. We should all cut them some slack. I can also understand why an otherwise good officer might feel tempted to falsify evidence in order to get off the streets someone they are certain is dangerous, but can’t prove in court. While this practice should never ever be done, and too many innocent people have been jailed already by mistake, I find this type of action understandable considering the pressure they are under and the difficulty of proving anything beyond a reasonable doubt.
Even when the police do everything right, they are still victims of false reporting and prejudice. When Officer Darren Wilson was attacked by a robbery suspect who tried to take his gun, ran away, and then turned and ran toward him when told to stop, forcing Wilson to open fire, the lie circulating the media for weeks was that he shot an unarmed man in the back with his hands up. (80) Police don’t always do everything right, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t real bad guys out there that have to be stopped. I understand that police have it tough.
What I cannot understand and have terrible difficulty forgiving is when police escalate situations into violence when they don’t need to – or when they go after people who they have no reason to suspect of criminality. This puts us all in danger and it is these kinds of actions that we should not tolerate.
Disclaimer: I don’t want to get bogged down in establishing the truth of any of these stories. I know I wasn’t there. That isn’t important because I am not condemning specific cops; I am only debating policies. I share the stories I have heard in order to better explain the type of behavior we must take a stand against. Whether any of the stories are true is irrelevant because there are people both in and out of law enforcement that support these behaviors, meaning that stories just like this will continue into the future. That’s the problem I want to address.
Disclaimer: Whenever I bring up issues such as these, people tell me that my opinion means nothing because I am not an expert in law enforcement. I might not be an expert in law enforcement, but I am an expert in human behavior and psychology and how humans will react to attack. I have been living as a human among other humans for forty years now, so I think I know what I’m talking about.
I once heard the story of a man who was walking along, minding his own business, when he was rushed from behind and thrown to the floor by a group of cops. As it turns out, he resembled a suspect they had been chasing. In the case where the cops shot the wrong guy at the mall, the mistake was forgivable because it was already an active shooting situation and the guy had his gun out. In this case, he was just minding his own business. They could have surrounded him and asked to see identification. They didn’t have to attack him. It is inexcusable.
The police should really be more careful. I know that if I was ever attacked unexpectedly, my first instinct would be to fight back. Even after I had a chance to think it over, I would still conclude that fighting was better than cooperating, since I was attacked first without being given the chance to cooperate. If cooperation is a means of keeping out of trouble, and I was already in trouble, I would rightly conclude that I had absolutely nothing to lose by teaching my attackers a lesson. I would assume that they only wanted to fight and were not interested in robbing or interrogating me. I might even think they were trying to kill me and I would do everything I could to kill them first. Even if it was clear that I would ultimately lose, I would consider it my noble duty to injure or scar them so that they would think twice about ever attacking anyone else. If what happened to this man ever happened to me, there is a very good chance I would be dead – along with at least one of the cops, maybe more. I am the most peace-loving, patriotic, law-abiding person you will likely ever meet, but if I am attacked first without being given the opportunity to submit, violence is inevitable. This is the problem with pre-emption. It creates conflict that might not have otherwise existed.
Furthermore, whether my attackers identify themselves as cops or are dressed as cops means nothing to me. Anyone can dress as a cop. There was even a man in Florida dressed as a cop who would pull people over (he had a light on his car) in order to rob them. The news media actually gave the advice that if followed by an emergency vehicle with its lights on, not to pull over (as is the law), but to keep driving until reaching a populated, well-lit area, and calling 911, yet I know that anyone actually following that advice when being chased by a real cop would find themselves in deep doodoo.
The situation is ten thousand times worse when SWAT teams burst into a house in the middle of the night. In the United States, average citizens are likely to keep guns in their homes and use them on home intruders when awoken suddenly. That is in fact their primary purpose! Self-defense laws support this reasoning! There might be situations where those inside are deemed so dangerous that risking their lives, the lives of the police, and the lives of everyone else in the house is considered worth it, but afterwards one cannot legitimately charge anyone with murder for killing the cops. How are people to know any better in the heat of the moment? If we overlook the mistakes that police make (such as the ones who shot the wrong guy in the mall), by the same logic, we must overlook the mistakes private citizens make.
Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that police should never break into houses, only that there needs to be some sort of realistic understanding of the likely consequences. The attacked – guilty or innocent – are more likely to fight back than not. People on both sides will die. Sometimes this is worth it, but only very rarely. This should only be done when there is an absolute certainty that the accused will not go peacefully – but it has happened before that the cops got the wrong house!
Then there is the story of Eric Garner. In this case, he was in fact guilty (allegedly) of selling tax-free cigarettes. This sounds like the type of crime that might get one summoned to court, but not arrested. Why not issue him a ticket? Instead, the police jumped on his back and wrestled him to the ground and held him there. Due to previously existing health conditions, he suffocated and died. (81) While the police cannot be held one hundred percent responsible – it’s not as if they knew of his health conditions – they should be more careful, knowing that the general public is full of people with this or that problem. I don’t believe that criminal charges are appropriate here, but how was the officer not immediately fired? How is it that even one person in the country defended him? That is what boggles my mind.
Even if someone might be technically resisting arrest (at least initially), why not talk to them and try to calm them down? Why not exhaust all non-physical strategies first? Does human life have no value at all that the police can’t be patient? What kind of people are we hiring as cops? What kind of people do we want as cops in case we are ever targeted?
Another story I heard was the case of a man who was briefly detained by police and then started to walk away despite orders to stop. The whole thing was caught on film and he was clearly high out of his mind. He walked slowly and was clearly no immediate threat to anyone, yet the police shot him dead. (82) Was this necessary? People are not always going to follow orders. They might be on drugs. They might be suffering hallucinations. They might not understand English. They might be deaf. They might have brain damage.
Then there was the man who for some reason had a gun. Maybe he liked guns. It is his constitutionally-protected right to have one. There is no evidence that he used it or threatened anyone with it. He was minding his own business in his own neighborhood. Strangely, the police surrounded him, pointed their guns at him, and ordered him to drop it. When he did not immediately comply, they shot him dead. (83) The given explanation is that he had a previous TBI and was likely momentarily confused, but we will never know for sure. In any case, I know that if any reasonable person was ever in that situation, the last thing they would want to do would be to drop their gun.
If people are already pointing guns at me, I have no way of knowing they aren’t going to shoot in the next fraction of a second whether I put my gun down or not. Even if I judge them not to be malevolent (which is unlikely, considering they are already pointing guns at me), I have no way of knowing one of them won’t slip and hit the trigger by mistake. I have every reason to shoot first so long as they continue to point guns at me. It gives me a legitimate claim of self-defense. Only if they put their guns away first will I feel safe enough to perhaps put mine away as well. This is just common sense! I don’t even have a TBI!
I’ve also heard the story of the man with schizophrenia that the police attempted to detain for questions. They had no reason to suspect him of a crime or even suspect that a crime had been committed. Quite understandably, the man became paranoid and ran away. The police chased him, making him even more paranoid. Why were the police chasing someone whose only “crime” was running? Who wouldn’t be paranoid under those circumstances? I don’t even have schizophrenia, and I know that I would be paranoid!
Then there is the story of a recent immigrant in New York City. He barely knew English. One night, he was sitting outdoors in the dark – something I’ve sometimes done and something not even remotely suspicious. When a group of four undercover cops noticed him, they thought it was suspicious. When they approached him, he ran. They were not in uniform. It is believed that he thought the undercovers to be the same gang who had robbed his cousin, because as they closed in, he took out his wallet – but we will never know for sure because in the dark the police mistook his wallet for a gun and killed him. (84)
If someone runs from you, and you don’t have a reason to chase them, don’t chase them! If I chased everybody I thought was suspicious, I would be charged with harassment and disturbing the peace, but the police do this all the time with impunity!
I know I wasn’t there and I don’t know what really happened. That’s not the point. The point is that all sane people agree that these types of actions (when and if they do happen) are intolerably evil. It’s not debatable. Unfortunately, sane people seem to be in the minority.
Accountability:
I once heard from an acquaintance that a family member of his had been grabbed by a cop when there was no reason for it. He complained to the chief, who told him that you have to let a cop do whatever he wants and then sort it out later in court if there was any wrongdoing.
This is insane! By this logic, the man with the TBI I mentioned earlier should have just disarmed himself and allowed the police to possibly shoot him. By this logic, I could get in trouble if suddenly grabbed for no reason and I reflexively knock the officer’s hand away without thinking. I have done exactly the same thing to bullies before and it surprises me as much as it does them. Reflexes do not have any concept of “later in court.”
Some things can’t be made up later. You can’t “uninjure” someone. You can’t “unmurder” someone. You can’t take back your moment of indignity. That a court might later find I wasn’t legally required to identify myself won’t remove my name from informal blacklists. The irreversible damage has already been done. In cases where I believe the officers might destroy evidence, thus preventing the courts from ever correcting the situation in even a small way, there is no such thing as “later in court” if I cooperate. Under those conditions, resistance is mandatory.
The most common problem I have had with authority figures, whether parents, teachers, or employers, is that they expect their orders to be followed immediately without discussion. If they are unclear and I ask for clarification, they freak out. If I try to inform them that I left the stove on or the car idling and I need to know how long this new chore is going to take, they freak out. Power corrupts and the more power someone has, the more unreasonable they become. Fortunately, parents, teachers, and employers do not usually have me at gunpoint. If I were being held at gunpoint, I would rightly conclude that something had already gone wrong and the person was being unreasonable. If asked for ID, I would not know what to do. Reaching in my pocket might get me shot. Not reaching for it might be seen as resistance and get me shot. Trying to talk about it might get me shot. There is no telling what I might do under those circumstances. If I see the gunman’s attention slip, I might attempt to disarm or even kill him. Who could blame me?
Mistakes will happen, but shouldn’t the emphasis be on preventing abuses in the first place? One bad cop is just one bad cop, but when the police chief says stuff like “sort it out later in court” it proves he doesn’t take the issues seriously. When people believe that those in power at least take the issues seriously, they can be patient, but so long as police chiefs say things like this the community has no reason not to take the law into their own hands and destroy the police station. Once again, the government is playing with fire.
Besides, it is a lot of trouble to file a complaint and there is no guarantee the courts – which as I showed in the previous chapter, are often corrupt – will side with justice. The fact that the officers consider themselves to have a green light to do whatever they want will also lead to problems of misunderstanding. I have noticed that when tempers are high, people have an even harder time understanding basic language and reading intent than usual. Employers are like this all the time. Traffic directors are notoriously unclear. Malcolm Gladwell has written about this very phenomenon in his book, Blink, calling it “temporary autism.” I fully expect that one day I might be told to do something and misunderstand and the police will not understand that I misunderstood and will assume I am toying with them.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty. It’s not that I don’t want people to fear the government; I do. How else will we keep the peace? I just want to make sure that the government fears the people as well. There should be balance. In this day and age, when cameras are nearly ubiquitous, the NSA keeps our emails, and law enforcement has ready access to all manner of surveillance techniques, the people we should be watching the most are those in government. They work for us!
Instead, there is such an unprecedented rejection of accountability that it has become absurd. Government employees demand heavily tinted car windows that conceal their identities even while denying this to the rest of us. (85) Addresses of government officials are kept secret so angry mobs don’t show up at their house, yet the police can always find someone’s address. Now, for the first time, filming in public has become controversial! What has always been fair game for eyewitnesses to report, and for decades has been filmed by the free press (even when in bad taste), is now considered protected. Journalists have been detained and even attacked for recording outside post offices (86), police stations (87), and many other places, all while on public sidewalks. They have had their cameras stolen for “evidence” when recording traffic stops and police behavior during riots. Don’t we want to know whether our government employees are using our tax dollars well? It’s our right to know!
How big is the problem?
I have heard many more stories of terror over the years, but I always told myself that they were few and far between. I told myself that in a country as large as the United States there was bound to be a few bad apples. I told myself that the media report on every scandal, but they don’t report on the many more times that everything works just as it should. I believed that the average cop only wanted to protect and serve. Then a series of events in very recent years made it clear we have a very grave problem:
I once read a report of a time when the police surrounded a vehicle at a gas station and used “flash-bang” grenades to disorient and stun the driver, who had a warrant out for his arrest. The obvious happened, meaning the driver responded to the perceived attack by firing at the cops. This started a shootout in the middle of an urban area, resulting in the death of both the driver and his girlfriend. Somehow, they missed the baby in the back seat and everyone in the surrounding neighborhood. It seemed like an obvious case of very bad judgment that I thought would be immediately condemned by everyone. Instead, the police supported the action. I saw countless people interviewed both in and out of law enforcement say that this is exactly the type of behavior we want more of. I told myself that for ratings, the media will dig up the craziest fringe wackos it can find, and that they were not representative of the country, but then I saw on an online forum that literally thousands upon thousands of comments (I read no fewer than one hundred before skimming) were left in support of this exact action. I told myself that these were all internet trolls just looking to say something offensive for shock value that they didn’t actually believe themselves, but then I found that at least two of my “friends” (people I actually knew in real life) had the same ideas. This is how I knew we had a widespread problem.
While this particular story has been very hard to find again, I am not writing to establish the facts of the case; I am writing about the popular attitudes about this type of policing. In any case, there are many similar stories.
Since then, I have encountered so many people saying such outrageously silly things that I am terrified out of my mind. One person said that we don’t need to train the police better; we need to train the public. WTF? The government is supposed to work for us!
I have heard others such as Brandon Tatum saying that the police need to enter unknown situations rapidly with guns drawn for their own safety (88), yet they can’t seem to understand that by the same logic, anyone so abruptly disturbed by unknown invaders needs to point guns back at the police for their own safety.
I have heard others say that police-given orders should always be obeyed immediately because this shows the proper Christian “humility.” They consider it arrogant to take a stand for human rights and they make cowardice a virtue.
The problems go all the way to the top. Former Attorney General Eric Holder once lied to a judge that he actually believed that journalist James Rosen was working with terrorists so that he could get a warrant to tap his phone. He admitted to the lie later. (89) President Barack Obama once signed a paper declaring that he alone had the absolute right to order a drone strike on anyone at any time anywhere in the world without a warrant. (90) In an active war zone, with no functioning justice system supported by all parties, one can’t wait for a warrant, but should we be assassinating people on their way to the grocery store because they might be working with terrorists? How was Obama not immediately impeached?
We now know the FBI was behind the plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan (91) and there are hints they might have had a role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol (92). This makes the FBI an enemy of the very system it is a part of. If the FBI agents do not arrest themselves, it is not only justified, but obligatory for someone else to do it. Unfortunately, anybody thinking about going against the FBI will have no idea if they are working with FBI informants, and no idea whether they will be the ones in trouble or their FBI partners. Right now, prosecutors are still treating the FBI as a legitimate branch of the government. It is not. It is a crime syndicate that frames innocent people and commits acts of terrorism against the United States. As of 2022, any prosecutor taking any claim of the FBI seriously and giving immunity to its members involved in militant groups is as much a traitor as they are.
Are there any good cops left? I find it harder and harder to believe all the time. If there are, they need to make themselves visible. Take a stand against the real criminals.
Mixed Signals:
When I bring up issues such as these, people tell me to keep my head down and not rock the boat, and everything will be fine. They care nothing about people in the news; they care only about themselves. They think it can never happen to them so long as they are respectful and obey orders. This is not true.
I have heard people give advice that if pulled over during a traffic stop while carrying a weapon, to inform the officer of this so they can take it from you and give it back later. It has happened at least twice that an officer saw a holstered weapon and pre-emptively shot the driver, who had only been reaching for a license. (93) What if you forget you have the weapon? What if you don’t want anyone to know that you have a weapon? What if you suspect that this is a bad cop (or a fake cop) that you might need to defend yourself against? What if you are a political activist that has been targeted with false charges in the past and you don’t want to give them any opportunity to detain you on some obscure legal technicality of dubious interpretation relating to your gun? What is the purpose of the first, fourth, and fifth amendments if not to protect our right not to declare whether we are carrying and what we are carrying? Why do we have to choose between the bill of rights and a shootout?
I have even heard people advise me never to put my hands in my pockets or reach for the glove compartment, because an officer might think I am reaching for a weapon and shoot me pre-emptively. I often put my hands in my pockets if I am nervous. What if I forget? In order to keep my cool and suppress the fight-or-flight response (both fighting with and fleeing from police are BAD ideas), I must fall back on my normal habits and pretend everything is normal. That means a lot of reaching in my pockets and a lot of sudden movements. What if the officer asks to see my registration? Everybody I know keeps theirs in the glove compartment. Where else would it be kept? What if I only want some gloves?
I have also heard people advise me never to talk to cops or answer any questions, because they are often listening for something they can misconstrue as a contradiction, and therefore a lie, and lying to a police officer is a crime and can also bring down a lot of additional questions and searches and seizures. I have been told that if you speak, the officer can claim you slurred your words and charge you with drunk driving. I have been told that if you roll down your window, they can claim they smell drugs and use it as an excuse to search and then plant evidence. The problem with this advice – besides making me paranoid and needlessly rude to those in uniform – is that cops do not always accept silence or honor our fifth-amendment right not to speak. I have heard countless stories of cops who ordered people out of their vehicles for not divulging their destination and pedestrians who were detained and threatened for not giving out their name.
Other people give the advice to simply answer all questions honestly and that this will placate any suspicious officers. At the same time, I am told that it is required by law to show license, registration, and proof of insurance if driving a vehicle – but what if this is a fake cop that I do not want to divulge my address to? How can I identify them without talking with them, thereby giving them a chance to say I am slurring my words or resisting lawful orders?
At this point, I have no idea how to stay out of trouble. Talking might be used against me. Silence might be used against me. Following the law does not protect me. If I am ever pulled over, what do I do? Should I speed away? Should I shoot pre-emptively? I truly don’t know that any strategy is any worse than any other strategy.
I can’t live like this! I refuse to spend the rest of my life on my toes carefully watching everything I say. I have work to do. I refuse to believe that all cops might be out to get me. This is prejudice! Should I also assume that all Hispanics are trying to rob me and that all women are gold diggers? Whatever happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt?
One way the public takes out its anger on the police is to second-guess everything they do. When the police delayed entering a night club in Florida, thinking it might have been a hostage situation, and the shooter continued to pick off the clubgoers one-by-one, they were chastised for being cowards. (78) Yet, when they moved too quickly to take out a shooter in a mall, they shot the wrong guy, who had his gun out likely for fear of the real shooter. They were chastised for being hotheads. (79) Sometimes, you just can’t win.
Because police – unlike judges or legislators – have to make split-second life-or-death decisions, they sometimes make mistakes. We should all cut them some slack. I can also understand why an otherwise good officer might feel tempted to falsify evidence in order to get off the streets someone they are certain is dangerous, but can’t prove in court. While this practice should never ever be done, and too many innocent people have been jailed already by mistake, I find this type of action understandable considering the pressure they are under and the difficulty of proving anything beyond a reasonable doubt.
Even when the police do everything right, they are still victims of false reporting and prejudice. When Officer Darren Wilson was attacked by a robbery suspect who tried to take his gun, ran away, and then turned and ran toward him when told to stop, forcing Wilson to open fire, the lie circulating the media for weeks was that he shot an unarmed man in the back with his hands up. (80) Police don’t always do everything right, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t real bad guys out there that have to be stopped. I understand that police have it tough.
What I cannot understand and have terrible difficulty forgiving is when police escalate situations into violence when they don’t need to – or when they go after people who they have no reason to suspect of criminality. This puts us all in danger and it is these kinds of actions that we should not tolerate.
Disclaimer: I don’t want to get bogged down in establishing the truth of any of these stories. I know I wasn’t there. That isn’t important because I am not condemning specific cops; I am only debating policies. I share the stories I have heard in order to better explain the type of behavior we must take a stand against. Whether any of the stories are true is irrelevant because there are people both in and out of law enforcement that support these behaviors, meaning that stories just like this will continue into the future. That’s the problem I want to address.
Disclaimer: Whenever I bring up issues such as these, people tell me that my opinion means nothing because I am not an expert in law enforcement. I might not be an expert in law enforcement, but I am an expert in human behavior and psychology and how humans will react to attack. I have been living as a human among other humans for forty years now, so I think I know what I’m talking about.
I once heard the story of a man who was walking along, minding his own business, when he was rushed from behind and thrown to the floor by a group of cops. As it turns out, he resembled a suspect they had been chasing. In the case where the cops shot the wrong guy at the mall, the mistake was forgivable because it was already an active shooting situation and the guy had his gun out. In this case, he was just minding his own business. They could have surrounded him and asked to see identification. They didn’t have to attack him. It is inexcusable.
The police should really be more careful. I know that if I was ever attacked unexpectedly, my first instinct would be to fight back. Even after I had a chance to think it over, I would still conclude that fighting was better than cooperating, since I was attacked first without being given the chance to cooperate. If cooperation is a means of keeping out of trouble, and I was already in trouble, I would rightly conclude that I had absolutely nothing to lose by teaching my attackers a lesson. I would assume that they only wanted to fight and were not interested in robbing or interrogating me. I might even think they were trying to kill me and I would do everything I could to kill them first. Even if it was clear that I would ultimately lose, I would consider it my noble duty to injure or scar them so that they would think twice about ever attacking anyone else. If what happened to this man ever happened to me, there is a very good chance I would be dead – along with at least one of the cops, maybe more. I am the most peace-loving, patriotic, law-abiding person you will likely ever meet, but if I am attacked first without being given the opportunity to submit, violence is inevitable. This is the problem with pre-emption. It creates conflict that might not have otherwise existed.
Furthermore, whether my attackers identify themselves as cops or are dressed as cops means nothing to me. Anyone can dress as a cop. There was even a man in Florida dressed as a cop who would pull people over (he had a light on his car) in order to rob them. The news media actually gave the advice that if followed by an emergency vehicle with its lights on, not to pull over (as is the law), but to keep driving until reaching a populated, well-lit area, and calling 911, yet I know that anyone actually following that advice when being chased by a real cop would find themselves in deep doodoo.
The situation is ten thousand times worse when SWAT teams burst into a house in the middle of the night. In the United States, average citizens are likely to keep guns in their homes and use them on home intruders when awoken suddenly. That is in fact their primary purpose! Self-defense laws support this reasoning! There might be situations where those inside are deemed so dangerous that risking their lives, the lives of the police, and the lives of everyone else in the house is considered worth it, but afterwards one cannot legitimately charge anyone with murder for killing the cops. How are people to know any better in the heat of the moment? If we overlook the mistakes that police make (such as the ones who shot the wrong guy in the mall), by the same logic, we must overlook the mistakes private citizens make.
Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that police should never break into houses, only that there needs to be some sort of realistic understanding of the likely consequences. The attacked – guilty or innocent – are more likely to fight back than not. People on both sides will die. Sometimes this is worth it, but only very rarely. This should only be done when there is an absolute certainty that the accused will not go peacefully – but it has happened before that the cops got the wrong house!
Then there is the story of Eric Garner. In this case, he was in fact guilty (allegedly) of selling tax-free cigarettes. This sounds like the type of crime that might get one summoned to court, but not arrested. Why not issue him a ticket? Instead, the police jumped on his back and wrestled him to the ground and held him there. Due to previously existing health conditions, he suffocated and died. (81) While the police cannot be held one hundred percent responsible – it’s not as if they knew of his health conditions – they should be more careful, knowing that the general public is full of people with this or that problem. I don’t believe that criminal charges are appropriate here, but how was the officer not immediately fired? How is it that even one person in the country defended him? That is what boggles my mind.
Even if someone might be technically resisting arrest (at least initially), why not talk to them and try to calm them down? Why not exhaust all non-physical strategies first? Does human life have no value at all that the police can’t be patient? What kind of people are we hiring as cops? What kind of people do we want as cops in case we are ever targeted?
Another story I heard was the case of a man who was briefly detained by police and then started to walk away despite orders to stop. The whole thing was caught on film and he was clearly high out of his mind. He walked slowly and was clearly no immediate threat to anyone, yet the police shot him dead. (82) Was this necessary? People are not always going to follow orders. They might be on drugs. They might be suffering hallucinations. They might not understand English. They might be deaf. They might have brain damage.
Then there was the man who for some reason had a gun. Maybe he liked guns. It is his constitutionally-protected right to have one. There is no evidence that he used it or threatened anyone with it. He was minding his own business in his own neighborhood. Strangely, the police surrounded him, pointed their guns at him, and ordered him to drop it. When he did not immediately comply, they shot him dead. (83) The given explanation is that he had a previous TBI and was likely momentarily confused, but we will never know for sure. In any case, I know that if any reasonable person was ever in that situation, the last thing they would want to do would be to drop their gun.
If people are already pointing guns at me, I have no way of knowing they aren’t going to shoot in the next fraction of a second whether I put my gun down or not. Even if I judge them not to be malevolent (which is unlikely, considering they are already pointing guns at me), I have no way of knowing one of them won’t slip and hit the trigger by mistake. I have every reason to shoot first so long as they continue to point guns at me. It gives me a legitimate claim of self-defense. Only if they put their guns away first will I feel safe enough to perhaps put mine away as well. This is just common sense! I don’t even have a TBI!
I’ve also heard the story of the man with schizophrenia that the police attempted to detain for questions. They had no reason to suspect him of a crime or even suspect that a crime had been committed. Quite understandably, the man became paranoid and ran away. The police chased him, making him even more paranoid. Why were the police chasing someone whose only “crime” was running? Who wouldn’t be paranoid under those circumstances? I don’t even have schizophrenia, and I know that I would be paranoid!
Then there is the story of a recent immigrant in New York City. He barely knew English. One night, he was sitting outdoors in the dark – something I’ve sometimes done and something not even remotely suspicious. When a group of four undercover cops noticed him, they thought it was suspicious. When they approached him, he ran. They were not in uniform. It is believed that he thought the undercovers to be the same gang who had robbed his cousin, because as they closed in, he took out his wallet – but we will never know for sure because in the dark the police mistook his wallet for a gun and killed him. (84)
If someone runs from you, and you don’t have a reason to chase them, don’t chase them! If I chased everybody I thought was suspicious, I would be charged with harassment and disturbing the peace, but the police do this all the time with impunity!
I know I wasn’t there and I don’t know what really happened. That’s not the point. The point is that all sane people agree that these types of actions (when and if they do happen) are intolerably evil. It’s not debatable. Unfortunately, sane people seem to be in the minority.
Accountability:
I once heard from an acquaintance that a family member of his had been grabbed by a cop when there was no reason for it. He complained to the chief, who told him that you have to let a cop do whatever he wants and then sort it out later in court if there was any wrongdoing.
This is insane! By this logic, the man with the TBI I mentioned earlier should have just disarmed himself and allowed the police to possibly shoot him. By this logic, I could get in trouble if suddenly grabbed for no reason and I reflexively knock the officer’s hand away without thinking. I have done exactly the same thing to bullies before and it surprises me as much as it does them. Reflexes do not have any concept of “later in court.”
Some things can’t be made up later. You can’t “uninjure” someone. You can’t “unmurder” someone. You can’t take back your moment of indignity. That a court might later find I wasn’t legally required to identify myself won’t remove my name from informal blacklists. The irreversible damage has already been done. In cases where I believe the officers might destroy evidence, thus preventing the courts from ever correcting the situation in even a small way, there is no such thing as “later in court” if I cooperate. Under those conditions, resistance is mandatory.
The most common problem I have had with authority figures, whether parents, teachers, or employers, is that they expect their orders to be followed immediately without discussion. If they are unclear and I ask for clarification, they freak out. If I try to inform them that I left the stove on or the car idling and I need to know how long this new chore is going to take, they freak out. Power corrupts and the more power someone has, the more unreasonable they become. Fortunately, parents, teachers, and employers do not usually have me at gunpoint. If I were being held at gunpoint, I would rightly conclude that something had already gone wrong and the person was being unreasonable. If asked for ID, I would not know what to do. Reaching in my pocket might get me shot. Not reaching for it might be seen as resistance and get me shot. Trying to talk about it might get me shot. There is no telling what I might do under those circumstances. If I see the gunman’s attention slip, I might attempt to disarm or even kill him. Who could blame me?
Mistakes will happen, but shouldn’t the emphasis be on preventing abuses in the first place? One bad cop is just one bad cop, but when the police chief says stuff like “sort it out later in court” it proves he doesn’t take the issues seriously. When people believe that those in power at least take the issues seriously, they can be patient, but so long as police chiefs say things like this the community has no reason not to take the law into their own hands and destroy the police station. Once again, the government is playing with fire.
Besides, it is a lot of trouble to file a complaint and there is no guarantee the courts – which as I showed in the previous chapter, are often corrupt – will side with justice. The fact that the officers consider themselves to have a green light to do whatever they want will also lead to problems of misunderstanding. I have noticed that when tempers are high, people have an even harder time understanding basic language and reading intent than usual. Employers are like this all the time. Traffic directors are notoriously unclear. Malcolm Gladwell has written about this very phenomenon in his book, Blink, calling it “temporary autism.” I fully expect that one day I might be told to do something and misunderstand and the police will not understand that I misunderstood and will assume I am toying with them.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty. It’s not that I don’t want people to fear the government; I do. How else will we keep the peace? I just want to make sure that the government fears the people as well. There should be balance. In this day and age, when cameras are nearly ubiquitous, the NSA keeps our emails, and law enforcement has ready access to all manner of surveillance techniques, the people we should be watching the most are those in government. They work for us!
Instead, there is such an unprecedented rejection of accountability that it has become absurd. Government employees demand heavily tinted car windows that conceal their identities even while denying this to the rest of us. (85) Addresses of government officials are kept secret so angry mobs don’t show up at their house, yet the police can always find someone’s address. Now, for the first time, filming in public has become controversial! What has always been fair game for eyewitnesses to report, and for decades has been filmed by the free press (even when in bad taste), is now considered protected. Journalists have been detained and even attacked for recording outside post offices (86), police stations (87), and many other places, all while on public sidewalks. They have had their cameras stolen for “evidence” when recording traffic stops and police behavior during riots. Don’t we want to know whether our government employees are using our tax dollars well? It’s our right to know!
How big is the problem?
I have heard many more stories of terror over the years, but I always told myself that they were few and far between. I told myself that in a country as large as the United States there was bound to be a few bad apples. I told myself that the media report on every scandal, but they don’t report on the many more times that everything works just as it should. I believed that the average cop only wanted to protect and serve. Then a series of events in very recent years made it clear we have a very grave problem:
I once read a report of a time when the police surrounded a vehicle at a gas station and used “flash-bang” grenades to disorient and stun the driver, who had a warrant out for his arrest. The obvious happened, meaning the driver responded to the perceived attack by firing at the cops. This started a shootout in the middle of an urban area, resulting in the death of both the driver and his girlfriend. Somehow, they missed the baby in the back seat and everyone in the surrounding neighborhood. It seemed like an obvious case of very bad judgment that I thought would be immediately condemned by everyone. Instead, the police supported the action. I saw countless people interviewed both in and out of law enforcement say that this is exactly the type of behavior we want more of. I told myself that for ratings, the media will dig up the craziest fringe wackos it can find, and that they were not representative of the country, but then I saw on an online forum that literally thousands upon thousands of comments (I read no fewer than one hundred before skimming) were left in support of this exact action. I told myself that these were all internet trolls just looking to say something offensive for shock value that they didn’t actually believe themselves, but then I found that at least two of my “friends” (people I actually knew in real life) had the same ideas. This is how I knew we had a widespread problem.
While this particular story has been very hard to find again, I am not writing to establish the facts of the case; I am writing about the popular attitudes about this type of policing. In any case, there are many similar stories.
Since then, I have encountered so many people saying such outrageously silly things that I am terrified out of my mind. One person said that we don’t need to train the police better; we need to train the public. WTF? The government is supposed to work for us!
I have heard others such as Brandon Tatum saying that the police need to enter unknown situations rapidly with guns drawn for their own safety (88), yet they can’t seem to understand that by the same logic, anyone so abruptly disturbed by unknown invaders needs to point guns back at the police for their own safety.
I have heard others say that police-given orders should always be obeyed immediately because this shows the proper Christian “humility.” They consider it arrogant to take a stand for human rights and they make cowardice a virtue.
The problems go all the way to the top. Former Attorney General Eric Holder once lied to a judge that he actually believed that journalist James Rosen was working with terrorists so that he could get a warrant to tap his phone. He admitted to the lie later. (89) President Barack Obama once signed a paper declaring that he alone had the absolute right to order a drone strike on anyone at any time anywhere in the world without a warrant. (90) In an active war zone, with no functioning justice system supported by all parties, one can’t wait for a warrant, but should we be assassinating people on their way to the grocery store because they might be working with terrorists? How was Obama not immediately impeached?
We now know the FBI was behind the plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan (91) and there are hints they might have had a role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol (92). This makes the FBI an enemy of the very system it is a part of. If the FBI agents do not arrest themselves, it is not only justified, but obligatory for someone else to do it. Unfortunately, anybody thinking about going against the FBI will have no idea if they are working with FBI informants, and no idea whether they will be the ones in trouble or their FBI partners. Right now, prosecutors are still treating the FBI as a legitimate branch of the government. It is not. It is a crime syndicate that frames innocent people and commits acts of terrorism against the United States. As of 2022, any prosecutor taking any claim of the FBI seriously and giving immunity to its members involved in militant groups is as much a traitor as they are.
Are there any good cops left? I find it harder and harder to believe all the time. If there are, they need to make themselves visible. Take a stand against the real criminals.
Mixed Signals:
When I bring up issues such as these, people tell me to keep my head down and not rock the boat, and everything will be fine. They care nothing about people in the news; they care only about themselves. They think it can never happen to them so long as they are respectful and obey orders. This is not true.
I have heard people give advice that if pulled over during a traffic stop while carrying a weapon, to inform the officer of this so they can take it from you and give it back later. It has happened at least twice that an officer saw a holstered weapon and pre-emptively shot the driver, who had only been reaching for a license. (93) What if you forget you have the weapon? What if you don’t want anyone to know that you have a weapon? What if you suspect that this is a bad cop (or a fake cop) that you might need to defend yourself against? What if you are a political activist that has been targeted with false charges in the past and you don’t want to give them any opportunity to detain you on some obscure legal technicality of dubious interpretation relating to your gun? What is the purpose of the first, fourth, and fifth amendments if not to protect our right not to declare whether we are carrying and what we are carrying? Why do we have to choose between the bill of rights and a shootout?
I have even heard people advise me never to put my hands in my pockets or reach for the glove compartment, because an officer might think I am reaching for a weapon and shoot me pre-emptively. I often put my hands in my pockets if I am nervous. What if I forget? In order to keep my cool and suppress the fight-or-flight response (both fighting with and fleeing from police are BAD ideas), I must fall back on my normal habits and pretend everything is normal. That means a lot of reaching in my pockets and a lot of sudden movements. What if the officer asks to see my registration? Everybody I know keeps theirs in the glove compartment. Where else would it be kept? What if I only want some gloves?
I have also heard people advise me never to talk to cops or answer any questions, because they are often listening for something they can misconstrue as a contradiction, and therefore a lie, and lying to a police officer is a crime and can also bring down a lot of additional questions and searches and seizures. I have been told that if you speak, the officer can claim you slurred your words and charge you with drunk driving. I have been told that if you roll down your window, they can claim they smell drugs and use it as an excuse to search and then plant evidence. The problem with this advice – besides making me paranoid and needlessly rude to those in uniform – is that cops do not always accept silence or honor our fifth-amendment right not to speak. I have heard countless stories of cops who ordered people out of their vehicles for not divulging their destination and pedestrians who were detained and threatened for not giving out their name.
Other people give the advice to simply answer all questions honestly and that this will placate any suspicious officers. At the same time, I am told that it is required by law to show license, registration, and proof of insurance if driving a vehicle – but what if this is a fake cop that I do not want to divulge my address to? How can I identify them without talking with them, thereby giving them a chance to say I am slurring my words or resisting lawful orders?
At this point, I have no idea how to stay out of trouble. Talking might be used against me. Silence might be used against me. Following the law does not protect me. If I am ever pulled over, what do I do? Should I speed away? Should I shoot pre-emptively? I truly don’t know that any strategy is any worse than any other strategy.
I can’t live like this! I refuse to spend the rest of my life on my toes carefully watching everything I say. I have work to do. I refuse to believe that all cops might be out to get me. This is prejudice! Should I also assume that all Hispanics are trying to rob me and that all women are gold diggers? Whatever happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt?