The other day I made a post that I'd honestly been holding in my pipeline of articles for many months. Perhaps I didn't post the writing simply because I was developing it as I told myself or perhaps more because I felt like I had gone down the path of a crackpot tinfoil conspiracy blogger and there would be no return. As I hit publish on DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED TOTALITARIANS I felt like it was a cathartic act where I finally revealed some of my most concerning thoughts and fears about the direction of the country. Oddly, I didn't receive any rebuke at all and actually had all sorts of traffic from other sites, so I guess it was met with some agreement. I haven't noticed any NSA or CIA traffic, so hopefully I've avoided the Do Not Fly list despite the content in the post warning of growing government attacks on their own citizen's freedoms and Constitutional rights.
REINFORCEMENT
If I was feeling any regret for the post at all, it disappeared today as I read and saw this story from an ABC news affiliate about how police in Aurora, Colorado handled a bank robbery and the subsequent pursuit of the criminal.
Please watch this short video -
EVERYTHING IS ACCEPTABLE TO REACH A GOAL - ABC NEWS
Whew! Aren't we glad they caught that suspect? I sure am! In most bank robberies statistics I've seen robbers yield an average of $4,000 to $10,000 in their unlawful act. (2009 Average armored car hauls produced an average of $302,000 per robbery.....why would you ever go after a bank?) (Back to the story). So we have a robber in an intersection that is known to be armed and the police barricade him in and then proceed to extract each driver and passenger in the roadway, cuff them, and detain them, search them, and question them. Over 40 people! For 2 Hours!
The police chief essentially says that they were careful and followed all procedures and that this kind of detention is all good and worth it because they caught a dangerous criminal. He didn't mention that 75% of bank robbers are eventually caught of course and he didn't want to discuss the potential his department's actions had of endangering all 39 of the other citizens in the intersection. He also didn't want to discuss the fact that all 39 of the innocent bystanders had their 4th Amendment Rights shredded in the name of catching a bank robber that might have had $10,000.
NOW WE KNOW WHAT THOSE RIGHTS ARE WORTH
If we want to get cute, we can then assume that the Aurora police force values the civil rights of their citizens at less than $256 per person. In other words, if the offender took $10,000 worth of that paper fiat in 4th Amendment terms it is less than $250. As a resident of Aurora, you now know that the police department will risk your life, destroy your rights, and pridefully defend their actions if the monetary cost to a bank or other entity is greater than $250 per innocent bystander!
THE WORST OUTCOME
Let me be clear here, I hate criminals, I hate robbers, I like law upholding police and judges, and detest the idea that the lines between the two groups is sometimes blurred. It actually makes me cringe to think that the Aurora police department successfully apprehended the alleged bank robber using these means, as it can only suggest to them that their actions resulted in a perfect outcome. This result can only encourage the bad behavior. I actually wish they had missed the robber and then captured him in some other part of town as it would have exposed the over-the-top police action as a brutal misuse of power. Now, we hear that the chief is saying that this was just an extreme case that required this type of action, and it clearly was worth it as a criminal is now behind bars. As we all know, it is human nature to continue doing things we have success with and it is only natural for us to repeat them.
WHAT IS NEXT?
We got the bad guy, now what happens next? Isn't it obvious? We will now get an urgent alert that there is a robber running loose in an apartment complex or subdivision. Rather than work to identify suspects that fit a description or try to narrow down the possible suspects, we'll see our police forces move in an lock down entire neighborhoods, detaining everyone that is unlucky enough to be at home or doing their laundry. In this case, the police can easily just handcuff everyone and then search their cars, trucks, homes, and bags, until they find what they are looking for. Along the way, they'll probably find a few people with outstanding warrants, illegal drugs, and also a few weapons. We'll all celebrate that those bad people were caught and we'll quickly forget that the police used the same type of tactics as the Nazis and KGB to enforce their version of law and order on their citizenry.
If we don't stand up against this infringement, they certainly won't stop taking the power we are happy to abdicate to them.
GOATMUG
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