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Somewhere along the line, the motto traditionally associated with our police forces -- "To Protect and Serve" -- mutated into "To Harass and Intimidate." Much of the blame for this Frankensteinian transformation can be traced to the insidious infiltration of the federal government into matters that are (or at least, should be) matters of purely local concern.
While the Constitution delimits what the Congressional, Executive, and Judicial branches may or may not do, those boundaries have, for the most part, disappeared as meaningful barriers to the encroaching tentacles of the thugs-in-suits occupying the nation's capital. Easier to hold water in a sieve than to contain and constrain the abuses of power practiced by those who have sworn an oath to protect our rights. Whether the overreaching occurs overtly as in the Drug War and its literal assaults on peaceable citizens or covertly in a blinding web of prohibitions and regulations, the threads of control sink deeper and deeper into every crevice of our daily lives.
The most direct interface linking those distant tin-dictators with the common citizens are the police forces in our various municipalities. Regardless of the transgression involved, the cop on the beat is the one who is charged with enforcing in the most practical and noticeable ways the often arcane dictates of our soi-disant masters.
Irritated when you are pulled over for failing to wear a seat belt? Annoyed to be delayed on the road by a drunk-trap thinly disguised as a "safety check"? Furious to be perused by an agent of the Border Patrol scores of miles from the border? Exasperated to be treated like a dangerous criminal for merely seeking to fly to your destination? Federal blackmail ("pass this law or lose your highway funds") or Constitutionally unauthorized national policies are to thank for these not-so-subtle-hints of the police-state lurking in the shadows of the future.
If and when our safely ensconced "leaders" decide to implement a national identification card or to ban the possession all guns, you can bet your last steadily-shrinking dollar that it is not they who will be leaning towards your car window or knocking on the door of your home at three o'clock in the morning to check your compliance with "the law."
No. That thankless job will fall to the street officer patrolling the streets of your town. The saddest part of this whole sad state of affairs, however, is that we can no longer trust our local police officers not to obey those orders which shred the last tattered bits of the supreme law of the land.
Younger cops move into the ranks having never known a different system. As with the majority of all citizens, few beginning police candidates are aware of the true history of this country or the principles which led to its flourishing. Older cops who might refuse to confiscate a weapon, to conduct a warrantless search, or who might conveniently decline to notice an infraction of a bad law are replaced by those inculcated with a lifetime of government-school propaganda.
Brainwashed or merely ignorant, the result is the same.
The evidence of such attitude shifts are not difficult to find. Consider the police and INS agents who snatched Elian Gonzalez from his family in the dark hours of the morning while waving automatic weapons about and threatening to shoot innocent bystanders. Likewise, the FBI and BATF who surrounded, tortured, and burned the women, children, and men at Waco never hesitated in the performance of their "duties."
Those sterling exemplars of due process in the DEA who have murdered old men because of a mistaken address or seized the property and money of blameless -- and uncharged and unconvicted -- citizens in the name of "asset forfeiture" and the War on Drugs demonstrate no reluctance to discharge their tasks.
Saying, "No! No more. This is wrong," requires more commitment, more courage, more guts than the average person is able to muster. Cops have families and bills to pay. A mortgage on an old ranch house. A new SUV. A job they could lose, jail time they could serve by taking a stand, by rejecting a command from a superior.
The Second Amendment says that our right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. In how many communities are firearms of any kind effectively or literally banned? How many non-violent people have been arrested and jailed on "weapons" charges for merely possessing a gun?
What percentage of criminals languishing in our prisons are there for doing nothing other than having or using certain drugs? For engaging in voluntary interactions with other consenting adults, whether for sexual services, concert tickets, or other substances our elected overlords have deemed too "unsafe" or "threatening" for us to own?
Surveys demonstrate that most police officers are -- in contrast to their politically motivated chiefs -- in favor of citizen ownership of guns.
But would you trust in such a belief to protect you should a neighbor inform the authorities that you harbor a "proscribed" weapon? Already in Connecticut, police have confiscated weapons from gun owners on the unsubstantiated word of a snitch. Perhaps the person truly believed the accused appeared "unstable" or "dangerous." Maybe he merely had a grudge to settle and involved the police as his unwitting agents. Regardless, the "law" which sanctions such outrageous behavior is being enforced with zest and rigor by the local constabulary.
The Constitution has not curtailed these disgraceful actions. The cops have not rebelled at such blatant violation of rights. Citizens themselves have not risen in disgust and demanded the abolition of arbitrary power and the restoration of objective law.
This chilling trend is unlikely to be reversed anytime soon.
As Joseph Farah of WorldNet Daily pointed out in a recent commentary, the number of federal law enforcement agents continues to increase, from 69,000 in 1993, to 83,000 in 1998. Armed federal agents seek out violators for offenses absurdly deemed "criminal" rather than civil in nature. Certain employees of the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Army Corps of Engineers are permitted to carry weapons in fulfilling their jobs.
But an ordinary citizen is not allowed to go armed in a national park...
Not only does the number of federalized crimes continue to soar, so, too, does the dependence of city police on their national benefactors. SWAT teams and other cops race about in black suits, body armor, and helmets. Fully automatic weapons and special assault vehicles filter down from the "generous" feds.
Cops become more arrogant and demanding in their relationships to their titular employers, i.e., the taxpayers. An armed driver is viewed with suspicion as a "threat." Someone who turns and walks away from a police officer is fair game for questioning or arrest. Breaking into your home and copying your computer files without your knowledge or permission is viewed as a proper policy.
The line between cops and soldiers blurs until one is hard pressed to distinguish one from the other. A soldier's main task is to destroy people and property. Too many police find that a more attractive option than peacefully resolving problems and treating citizens with respect and deference.
If bribery is insufficient to effect the creation of a national police force, the feds are not reluctant to take more direct actions in accomplishing their goals. According to the Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA), police departments in Steubenville, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have been "forced to sign consent decrees admitting their departments had participated in a pattern of civil rights violations and therefore needed the federal government to come in and run all future operations." (The Shield, Winter/Spring 2000, p. 22.)
The departments in Columbus, Ohio, and Los Angeles, California, face similar threats from the United States Department of "Justice." Twelve other cities (e.g., New York City) have also been targeted. If police in an area are truly violating citizens' rights, then, of course, they should be investigated...by the leaders of their own state. For the national government to extort compliance via the threat of monetary loss and to attempt to micro-manage the day-to-day affairs of individual police officers and administrators is yet another example of the statist mind-set.
Nearly every law, regulation, and rule promulgated by politicians today flows from their unconscious and unquestioned belief that they know best how the rest of us should live our lives. This pretension to omniscience and infallibility would be laughable were the consequences not so tragic.
It's easy to vent one's anger at the cop whose face you see looming against your car window. The individual police officer is the most visible target and expression of a society reeling towards an awful reckoning. I would wager, however, that few of those men and women in uniform are intentionally or maliciously seeking to create a police state. No, they are merely "doing our job," "doing as we're told."
The fantasy is that one day our police officers will shake off the mental stupor deadening their sense of right and wrong and realize who it is that truly stands as the foil to their role as cops. Let us hope that someday they realize that the biggest and most dire threat to them and the neighbors whom they are hired to protect are not the robbers slinking in the backyard at night. The danger we must most guard against is the aim of the treasonous politicians in Washington and elsewhere to rob us all of something far more precious and irreplaceable than our money or our property: the sacred value of our freedom.
