Back when I was a young starving musician, I was driving the band’s van loaded with equipment back to our storage room after a long gig. At about 3am I ran into a police roadblock — a common enough occurrence in apartheid South Africa. The block was manned by a single cop who’d parked his SUV across the road and when he saw headlights approaching, would just turn on his flashers to cause the oncoming car to stop. So I did.
“Where are you going?”
“Back home — well, back to offload all the band equipment first, then home.”
“Open up the back.”
“Now open up the side door.”
“I can’t see anything; all that crap is blocking up the doors.”
“Yeah, we have a lot of equipment.”
“Unpack it.”
“Why?”
“I need to see that you’re not carrying anything illegal in there.”
“I’m not not carrying anything illegal.”
“Unpack it.”
“No.”
“What?”
“Look, be reasonable, can you? It’s three in the morning, I’ve been working since 5 yesterday afternoon, and I’ve still got two more hours’ work before I can get into bed.”
“Not my problem. Unpack the van, now.”
I lost it. “No. You want the van unpacked, you can fucking do it. I’ll sit here at the side of the road, and after you’ve discovered that I’m not carrying anything illegal, you can pack it all back again, and then I’ll go home.”
I think he was more surprised that I wasn’t going to obey his orders — probably the first time it had ever happened to him. He stared at me, I stared right back at him. (My kids call it my “hitman” look.)
After a moment or two, he sighed and said, “Just get back in your van, and fuck off.” (I think he figured out that he and I were alone on a deserted road in the middle of Fuck Nowhere, South Africa, and I was a LOT bigger than he was.)
So I got back in the van, and drove off. As I did so, I touched the Colt Combat Commander strapped to my hip (which he hadn’t discovered), looked back at him in the rearview mirror, and murmured to myself: “You don’t know it, sonny, but I just let you live.”
I was that angry.
I told y’all that story so we could talk about this one.
We all know about the asshole who teases a normally-placid dog until it snaps at him, then beats it or kills it because “it’s dangerous”.
Feel free to read this article, then this one, and tell me if you don’t know exactly how that dog feels.
I should point out that almost every single incident of law-abiding people turning around and killing government agents or officials has been because someone’s property has been destroyed, confiscated or otherwise appropriated.
So if government agencies persist in this nonsense, do not be surprised if in desperation, angry and helpless citizens start doing stupid stuff.
Note that I’m not talking about those assholes who go round assassinating cops in cold blood — they need killing more than their victims do. But at some point, a government official is going to fuck someone over because, in terms of Government Regulation #132-22-47, they can.
One day, the person they’re fucking with is going to snap, pull a gun and start shooting. And of course, it’ll all be his fault.
If you think this is unlikely, ask yourself why so many government agencies have started installing bullet-proof glass in front of their customer service counters. They know how people feel, and still they carry on doing it — because that’s what petty bureaucrats do when their actions are protected or even “justified” by some law or regulation.
The fucking government agencies (like those in the attached articles) need to start backing the fuck off before the shit really starts to fly.
If anyone kills my wife (36th anniversary today) they will be killed as soon as possible. How could it be any other way?
Red flag laws*spit*, which allow cops to take your guns on the say so of an unsworn complainant, without the gun owner having a judicial hearing first, are another despicable branch of this kind of government thievery.
And don’t let anyone tell you that there won’t be abuse. In Colorado the law was on the books for 14 days before it was abused. It took another week for the DA to bring perjury charges because the woman filing the complaint lied.
It’s either getting more common or I’m just getting old and tired of it.
Last year my 12 year old son was jumped by three brilliant and talented young scholars who had been admitted to his charter school and brought in from their normal school districts which were, apparently, not serving their particular educational and behavioral needs (I hope the sarcasm is coming through). Said young gentlemen proceeded to “jump” my son, unprovoked and en masse. Broken bones, concussion, spent a day in the hospital. A few weeks later I received a call from the police, telling me to expect a summons in the mail. Apparently my son was being cited for disturbing the peace because he had been cursing while he was getting his ass kicked.
Of course I tried the case, being a scumbag lawyer and all, and got a not guilty in about 30 seconds flat, but the whole experience was just so, I dunno, cruel and unnecessary. I mean, for one, who busts a 12 year old for swearing, and two, who busts a 12 year old for swearing while he’s getting his ass kicked? Other than reminding the citizenry that the state can put its boot on your neck, what’s the point of doing stuff like that?
Cops will pull that nonsense precisely BECAUSE it’s less physically hazardous to do it to people like your son and yourself than it is to do it to the ferals that attacked him.
When they don’t have anyone’s support and are facing physical retaliation at every second — when every neighborhood doesn’t care if they get assaulted patrolling them — they’ll change, or die.
“Other than reminding the citizenry that the state can put its boot on your neck, what’s the point of doing stuff like that?”
That’s exactly the point.
Has it really come to that point?
Not quite yet.
Illegals voting and illegal voting.
Reducing the U. S. Constitution to a piece of paper.
Attempting to bypass the purpose of the Electoral College.
If you happen to have a roll (extra large) of toilet paper, I can keep going.
Just how much of this is the American electorate going to ingest before…
Agreed.
“…in desperation, angry and helpless citizens start taking care of business…”
For laws to be respected , laws (and the enforcement officers thereof) must be respectable. Turning the LEO’s into armed tax collectors against whom the citizenry has no recourse may be the most effective way to erode that respect. Somehow, I suspect that’s a feature instead of a bug.
(Bonus points for the Ron “Tater Salad” White reference, which is actually a Bill Cosby reference.)
“Taxation by citation”, is exactly how the various municipalities in the state of NJ fund their systems.
Back in ’05, when the NJ State Police were on strike for the first half of the year, it was reported in the newspapers that most of the towns and cities were going bankrupt without their normal income from their share of ticket revenue. (That state has the highest concentration of police radar in the nation.)
And, once again, the media was puzzled by the reported stats that the roads had gotten SAFER without the police doing their job of chasing speeders.
In reference to your “contraband” stop, many cops firmly believe that if you are out after midnight or 1am you are either drunk, up to no good, or both. They forget that some people are legitimately going home from work – or in the small hours of the morning they’re going to work. The odds of catching a drunk at those hours are pretty good – and bad for the rest of us. As far as the catch 22 type incidents mentioned in the articles I recall a quote from the pre-French revolution days that went something like “The Law forbids both rich and poor men from sleeping under bridges”. In those days the solution to inequality like that was provided by the guillotine – sort of like the rope and tree solution except that its a bit hard to hang somebody who has met Madame Guillotine.
Might make for an interesting Fifth Amendment case. Does a citizen have to assist police in unpacking a personal vehicle in order to check it for contraband? Can a LEO infer guilt from refusal to comply?
From 2010 till 2013 I worked for a nice company, just to get the insurance because I was too young for Medicare and I did desk grunt work, paid much more than I was expecting and had incredible benefits and insurance.
Once of my lunch friends was a beautiful blonde woman, mother of five kids who had been a manager in a Saving & Loan company overseeing a work force who did data input from 8 pm till 4 am every night. Until that industry went belly up and she was fired. The she took an admin job with us, at lunch as we shared our stories, she told me that driving home at 4:30 in her previous job, she was stopped rather often by cops who thought she was either drunk or a good looking hooker going home from her last trick. She kept all of her ID and work information handy to show the cops and she also said she had a bit of fun asking them if they only stopped blondes with big hair in Texas. That lady was everybody stop talking, turn your head and look at the door breathtaking gorgeous.
*So if government agencies persist in this nonsense, do not be surprised if in desperation, angry and helpless citizens start [s] doing stupid stuff[/s].” Dispensing long pent up righteous wrath.
FTFY.
Personally I think Marvin Heemeyer’s birthday should be a US National Holiday.
(in a deep, booming voice)
This, is Ferguson! …. and we know what eventually happened there.