A post submitted by CGI member Commonman5150.
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Un-Civil Servants
If you spend anytime browsing YouTube you’re sure to run into videos that show malfeasance by police officers, everything from simple ignorance of the law, to outright criminal activity. On the other hand, there are also a ton of videos showing cops acting in exemplary fashion as they deal with people who are rude, insulting, and/or entitled, basically being complete assholes. I am amazed at the restraint police officers show in dealing with these people, if it were me, I’d want to just bitch-slap them. I could never be a cop. Being a cop has to be one of the most difficult jobs out there. Not only do you have to deal with the dregs of society, thugs and criminals who have no respect for the law, (no I’m not talking about Congress, but…) they also have to deal with people experiencing what may be the worst day of their lives. They have to make sure they are aware of changes in laws and regulations that happen almost daily. They have to have a skin as thick as a Rino, and still act with compassion and professionalism. It’s why whenever I have the opportunity to shake the hand of a cop and say thank you, I do just that, because it really is a thankless job. I need to say this before I go on, I’m definitely a pro police dude, I’m all for officers who do the job the right way, on the other hand I have no patience or latitude with cops or bureaucrats for that matter, who either think they are above the people they serve, or don’t know all the details the job requires.
Some videos I’ve seen involve what’s called “1st amendment auditing.” This is when a person goes to a public place, maybe on a sidewalk, oftentimes a government office, and proceeds to take video footage of publicly accessible areas, in an attempt to provoke a reaction to see if people know the law. In one, a guy who goes by “Bay Area Transparency” (BAT) goes to a county probation office that has signs all over the lobby saying that taking pictures is prohibited. The office workers tell him that he can’t take pictures, and he politely tells them that he absolutely can, that their signs are actually in violation of the 1st amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled that there is no expectation of privacy in a public setting. The office workers call the cops to force him to leave, exhibiting a definite level of ignorance followed by arrogance and disdain. Very few of them realize that it’s a public building, for some reason they are under the delusion that since it’s a government building it has the same protections as a private residence. “BAT”, who is usually courteous and polite, although he can get a bit snarky, informs these people that he has every right to do what he does. He is in a publicly accessible area, free to take pictures of whatever he can see. What he does is expose these people who seem to have forgotten that they are public servants, they work FOR the people, and should perform their jobs with that in mind. No one forced them to take government jobs. What I find most distressing is when the police arrive, instead of informing the office workers that BAT is not doing anything illegal and that in fact they are in violation of the 1st amendment and need to comply, they take the side of the office staff, thereby making the whole situation worse, and opening up the county to a lawsuit. It’s ridiculous, if these people would just do their jobs, if office management had trained them properly about citizen’s rights, he would just go away. Instead, they come off as over officious jerks.
We’ve all seen movies like “First Blood” where a police dept decides what the law is, and what rights they will enforce. It’s a standard cinematic plotline to portray heroic rogue cops bucking the system by either stretching the legal line or flat out breaking it. Two videos I watched are tragic examples of that. One where an officer didn’t like it when a gentleman refused to provide an I.D. This man didn’t fit the description of the suspect they were investigating and wasn’t where the complainant said the suspect was supposed to be. Still the officer arrested him, citing interfering with an investigation, all because he stood up to the cop and exercised his constitutional rights. The man lost his job, and despite his obvious innocence was prosecuted, eventually the charges were dropped but only after his life was turned upside down. In another instance, a veteran ended up paralyzed when officers didn’t take it seriously when he said he couldn’t feel his legs after being forcibly restrained. As I wrote earlier there are far too many of these videos out there. Given that there are roughly a million law enforcement personnel, even if 99% are fine that means there are 10,000 bad cops, doing bad things every day!
The main issue seems to be a lack of proper training. These videos show officers who either don’t know the law, especially ID laws, or are mistaken as to individual 1st, 4th and 5th amendment rights and violate them constantly. Even more insidious is when they know a citizen’s rights but ignore them anyway. Bad cops don’t like it when a citizen knows their rights and the law better than an officer who should. Every single police officer should know the basics of what they are allowed to do, they all swore an oath to uphold the constitution. The old saying that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” runs both ways. Their first action shouldn’t be to immediately assume that someone has done something wrong. It seems that innocent until proven guilty has been replaced by what can I get away with, what rights can I skirt, so I can arrest someone. In one video a cop deliberately escalated a situation so she could use her taser, bragging to her partner afterwards, “I just popped my cherry.” I think part of the problem is that police are allowed to lie to suspects, I realize that this can be a very useful tactic, but it seems to create an environment where cops think they can get away with bad behavior or think they can get away with violating citizens rights because the average person is unaware of their actual rights.
These incidents while very disturbing, are not the only issue I have. What really astounds and frightens me is what police forces worldwide did during Covid and have continued in the aftermath of the plandemic. Faced with unenviable task of enforcing unconstitutional edicts from power hungry politicians, we witnessed so many police forces turn into Gestapo like storm-troopers, this was particularly evident in Australia where they rounded up people and detained them in “quarantine camps.” In Cananda, we witnessed the vengeful persecution of Pastor Artur Pawlowski, among many dastardly deeds done by Canadian police. In America our constitutional rights and freedoms are being eviscerated by the Biden regime on a seemingly daily basis. The Department of Justice which is supposed to be non-partisan, has become the enforcement wing of the radical left. The just released Jan 6th footage is absolute proof of that. Censorship, political persecution, election fraud, the malicious persecution of Christians, and an obvious two-tiered justice system have turned America into what can only be called a banana republic. Our law enforcement agencies have been complicit in this, especially the FBI. Once renowned as the finest law enforcement agency in the world it has devolved into a Nazi style secret police, persecuting political dissidents with overwhelming and intimidating force.
It all comes down to keeping the oaths that were sworn. Just like all the doctors who ignored the Hippocratic oath to “first do no harm” by going along with all the unscientific crap coming down from the CDC and Dr Mengela-Fauci, during Covid, bad cops in America have broken their oaths to follow the constitution. I realize that its easy for me to sit behind a keyboard and pass judgement on these people, I wasn’t faced with the choices they all had to make. I answer this by quoting Luke 12:48, “to whom much is given, much is required.” Police have an immense power to alter peoples lives, doctors have peoples lives in their very hands. What is required is they act unselfishly, that they take their oaths and responsibilities seriously. So many doctors and health care officials traded the health of so many people, especially elderly people, for the security of their jobs. America watched in disgust as police forces acquiesced to the will of corrupt and evil politicians, enforcing unconstitutional edicts handed down during Covid and then letting cities burn, and people die, during the George Floyd riots. We now have the FBI performing SWAT-like raids on non-violent citizens, automatic rifles leveled at children, a justice department that prosecutes a grandmother for trespassing on Jan 6th but allows Palestinian protesters to stop Congress with impunity. The Capital Police have totally discredited themselves for their behavior on Jan 6th. Capital police have been shown to have committed perjury, lie to congress and get away with murder in the case of Ashley Babbit. I don’t buy the argument that they had no choice, there’s always a choice. Some, very few, cops and doctors kept their oaths, but so many others abandoned them and willingly went along with all the lies the regime promoted.
As I wrote before, I have the utmost respect for people who made the decision to become police officers, it’s a highly stressful, thankless job. The problem I have now, is because of the actions of bad law enforcement, there is no way I will cooperate and surrender my rights. If a cop is doing their job correctly, they should have no problem with that. I will never consent to a warrantless search. I will always try and record any interaction with the police. Like a child that is caught lying, police forces nation-wide have surrendered their trustworthiness. I won’t be disrespectful, but I will not do anything I’m not required to do. I will obey the law, not just because it’s the right and moral thing to do, it most certainly is, but also because I don’t want to give a cop a reason to question me, or a bad cop to either manipulate what I’ve said, or even worse manipulate evidence. I realize that doing so increases the chances of escalating the severity of the situation, cops in general do not like you recording them and may try to find a way to retaliate. Still, faced with the choice of exercising my constitutional rights and risk being falsely arrested, which means obtaining costly legal assistance, or acquiescing, which just encourages the cops bad behavior, I choose to exercise my rights.
The best way to deescalate the situation in my experience is to ALWAYS act respectfully in dealing with a police officer. There is a great funny video by Chis Rock called “How NOT To Get Your Ass Kicked BY The Police” It’s both hilarious and somewhat disturbing, because a few of the videos I watched you can tell the officer pulled over the citizen for “driving while black.” I said before that I don’t believe there is systemic racism in law enforcement, but that doesn’t mean that there are no racist cops. It would be a great world where ordinary citizens didn’t have to worry about getting their ass kicked by the police, unfortunately it happens, and when it does the best protection you can have is your own photographic evidence of the incident. It seems that to a certain extent, maybe because of all the issues that arose out of the George Floyd “Summer of Love” riots, which resulted in the calls by lunatic leftists to defund the police, in conjunction with all the Gestapo tactics that were forced upon police forces nationwide during Covid, that policing has evolved into an “us vs them” mentality, instead of “us serving and protecting them” attitude. That is a very dangerous change, one that will lead us into a police state, (if we’re not there already.) A state where individual rights, liberties and freedoms are quashed by an oppressive law enforcement complex that serves whoever is in charge. Or even worse becomes a governing entity unto themselves, answerable to no one but themselves. Instead of serving the public, they will become like the movie “Judge Dred” where Stallone’s character asserts “I am the law.”
Our founders inserted the Bill of Rights into our constitution with the express purpose of making sure this doesn’t happen. As we see our basic rights being subverted every day by corrupt and evil politicians, now more than ever, we need to make sure that while we still can, we exercise our constitutional rights whenever it’s necessary. If we let cops, bureaucrats and doctors, get away with abusing us, then we only have ourselves to blame. In the famous lyrics of Bob Marley, “Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights…don’t give up the fight”
Food for thought, brothers and sisters
Rock on Y’all
