I've been away from the computer for little while and I thought I would return with this little message. A while back I received a video in an email that showed a woman who goes by the name of Josie the Outlaw. The video is directed towards police and asks a simple question, at what point does following unconstitutional laws and breaking the oath you took acceptable? And I am kind of paraphrasing what it asks but generally this is what the topic of the video is about. And while I wholeheartedly support the message behind the video Miss Josie has left out one important thing. And that one important thing is what I would like to discuss.
What is that one important thing you ask? I am so glad you asked. How thoughtful and insightful you are. That one little thing that Miss Josie failed to mention is the reason behind these problems to begin with. And those reasons span a couple different things which I will go over in detail. And these reasons should not be a list solely at the feet of police officers.
First let's look at what a police officer is and is supposed today. A police officers job is to enforce the laws that we the people have decided to go by. That's right, we have elected people and they have gone to Washington, to our state capitals and our city governments and created laws or allowed laws to remain on the books at our behest. So if we are mad at police officers for enforcing laws that we don't like, what are we doing about it? Being mad at the police officer for doing his job is kind of bonehead.
Now I will say all that with a kickback towards Josie that a police officer should do his job under the notion that it falls within a narrow scope of authority as it spelled out under the U.S. Constitution as well as their perspective state constitutions and city ordinances. Police officers must also remember that they have discretion. Discretion is a little thing that police administrators do not like. Discretion allows an officer to ride a ticket or give a warning. Administrators don't like that because they like statistics. They like checkmarks on the stat sheet at the end of the month showing that you did something. And to be brutally honest a police officer who gave out 30 verbal warnings is not going to be well-liked by administrators at the end of the month. Even though he possibly corrected the bad driving habits of 30 people it is not a ticket or an arrest so it may not count towards his stats.
That may drive us into a whole Nother area that we may be concerned about. What is causing this drive towards numbers? Is it the administration's desire to show that their officers are productive? Could it be that local politicians like the revenue that it generates? Possibly. But is this the fault of the lowly police officer? I don't think they deserve all the blame.
And back to Miss Josie's video. Police one day you may be faced with a choice. To not follow an unconstitutional law. I tend to look at things a little different. Why are we having unconstitutional laws passed that may require a police officer to act upon it? Well, that sits solely in the lap of we the people as a citizenry. We have allowed unconstitutional laws to be passed. We have allowed administrators to run amok. We have allowed political parties to push their own agendas. It's that simple. If we the people elected people that were worth a damn we may not be in this mess. If those elected people would go and do what they're supposed to do we may not be in this mess.
But let's face it we are in this mess. We have allowed this to happen and it's not necessarily the police officers fault. It is our fault that we have allowed our government to get to this point. So what can we as citizens do about it? Well the first thing we asked citizen should do is get up off of our asses and get active. That's right off the couch and into the trenches. That is the only way that we can ever hope to fix this mess. And sometimes I'm not sure that that's even a possibility.
So there is my two cents on Josie the Outlaws video aimed at police. I'm not saying that she is not correct about some things. Police officers certainly need to operate within their scope of authority. But, if you have officers operating outside of their authority you doing sure better do something about it. Start with their supervisors. If that does not change the behavior of a bad police officer that may be indicative of problems higher up the chain. Next I would recommend going to the Sgt.'s supervisor or Chief. I say Chief but it could be the sheriff or other top level police administrator. If that does not correct the problem I would try to solve it from a political standpoint. Go to the mayors office or city councilmembers office and voice your disapproval. This is where I feel a group of citizens has the most power. Nothing motivates a politician more than the threat of not getting reelected. If a mayor or city councilmember does not want to keep their police department in check, then you find someone who will and you put them in office. That means getting off your butt helping with the election processes and getting the boat out there. So do it. Do it now!
http://youtu.be/IOsN-P5abVg
