Big Brother is Looking Out for You
A few weeks ago, Big Brother wanted to make sure my friend and I were good citizens.
My friend, Colin and I, had just finished eating dinner and were going to see Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers (which, by the way, lets you draw your own conclusions, but for me was evidence of how contemptible the state and its wars are) when we got in his car and he drove off to the movie theater.
At an awkward fork in the road, Colin took a right where he should have gone straight. He ended up turning left across the double yellow line and across two lanes of opposing traffic to get back onto the road. And, of course, a police officer was waiting right in front of us on the dark road for someone to do something just like that.
We pulled over, and the police officer asked for my friend's license. Colin stalled, since he (naturally) didn't have his license on him, and started searching his pockets and glove compartment.
Then came the questions. "Have you been drinking? Do you have a license at all?"
Colin had not had anything to drink since the previous night, though the officer said that he could smell the alcohol on his breath. And his license was in fact valid, praise be to the DMV and the Arlington County Police Department to let someone have a valid license who accrued over $1000 in tickets last summer.
Soon the cop's female partner came up to the passenger side, shining a flashlight by my face. And I guess I couldn't blame her. I mean, I do look kind of like a criminal, and have seen older women pitifully clutch their purses as I walk by them down the street, worried that this peace loving anarchist would rob them. Plus, I had a hard time not cracking up in laughter at the absurdity of it all and the attention we were getting for my friend's thoughtlessness.
After a few minutes of badgering from the first cop over drinking, not having a license, drug use, and past driving infractions, he and his partner decided to bark at my friend outside while I waited in the passenger seat.
I could clearly hear the conversation. Colin took a pounding while being questioned over whether he had a job, how he didn't know how to drive (true enough, his driving makes me nervous), whether he paid his expenses, got good grades, was a good son to his parents, and so on. In the fifteen some minutes he was questioned, I zoned out a few times.
Worried that we would be late for the movie, and figuring Colin would have his car towed for not having a license on him and his previous infractions, I rolled down my window and yelled, "Hey, Colin, should I just refund your ticket?" I got a chilling look from the female cop, so I qualified that with the more innocuous, "Your movie ticket."
The officer simply barked at me, "Why don't you stay seated and not ask any questions?!" I ducked my head back into the car, and was told by Colin later that she told him that even his passenger thought this was all a big joke.
Damn right I did. I'm no delinquent, and I was outraged by what the officer said, her rudeness, and presumption of sovereignty over me just because my friend was thoughtless enough to cross two lanes of opposing traffic and drive without a license on him. It violates everything I believe in. I was ready to step right out of the car and give her a brief course in argumentation ethics, as well as to tell her how contemptible it is that the state is trying to re-educate my friend into being a model citizen who will provide a nice base of revenues to tax.
At the same moment I realized that it's illegal to disobey the order of a police officer. I was going to risk arrest and having a gun pointed in my face if I got out of that car, the justification being I came at them first.
After some more badgering, Colin got back in the car, and to my astonishment, the male officer just gave him a warning! After all that, Big Brother explained that he wasn't going to punish Colin because he had bigger fish to fry that night and because Colin had not been drinking.
I've never been so grateful to be white in my life.
Comments (24)
Stirs up memories of reading about Iran's morality police.
Published: November 19, 2006 12:50 PM
A few months ago, I got a new car. Since it was new I didn't have the plates and stickers, but I did have this paper tag on the winshield. Anyhow, I finally got my plantes and registration in the mail, but didn't have time to put them on - so I just tossed them in the trunk thinking I would put them on tommorow. After all, I had 30 days from the time of purchase, right? Well sure enough I got pulled over and the officer had a fit cause I had no plates or sticker on the car. Then I pointed out the dmv validation on my winshield, and poped the trunk that had the plates in it. I figured she would search anyhow, and since the car was new it was empty anyhow. Well the officer then threw another fit that I didn't put them on the car. So then the officer unable to nail me on registration tried to nail me on insurance. Well, I just got this car, so of course I didn't have the papers, they were in the mail. So I asked the officer to to just call the insurance company, it wouldn't take 5 minutes worth of effort to confirm. She said she could not spend "her time" validating stff like that on the phone. So then I pointed out the "protect and serve" sticker written on her car and said "My tax money pays your salary". She just frowned and wrote out the ticket anyhow.
Well I thought that was it, and so later that day I got the insurance company so send me a fax proving my insurance and went to the court house. Well long behold, I didn't have 30 days but the court house sure did. They could't help me because it takes at least 40 days to get the ticket into the system. In addition an officer needs to sign off on the insurance, but no officer will do that anymore - only an officer at the court house who is required by law to charge for it. (BTW, I live in San Diego - the most bankrupt city pension plan in the US and now they just lost another 100 million in a hedge fund collapse.)
The most ironic thing of all is that I followed every law, and did everything by the book, even though I would absolutely love to be driving around without plates, registration, and a license and they still couldn't leave me the hell alone and still took up a large amount of my productive time. These are armed people trained to beat people up, not you neighborhood ice cream man for chrissake. I agree with the parent poster though, thank God I'm white.
Published: November 19, 2006 12:52 PM
The problem with cops in North America is that the police here don't know their place because the gangs here are soft... in other countries (Brazil, Russia, Jamaica, and some other pleasant places come to mind), the gangs realize that they are at war with the cops and WILL ATTACK THE POLICE DIRECTLY (i.e. firebomb police stations, assassinate individual officers, destroy police property, etc..).
The 'respect the police' culture here is entirely misplaced, what we need is some 2 way injustice.
What we need is the police to fear for their lives as we fear for our lives every time we are given a police 'order', not knowing if they will misinterpret some action on our part as a good excuse to kill us (maybe we didn't jump fast enough when they told us to jump, or couldn't get up when our hands were cuffed behind our backs). They should fear for their lives every time they pull someone over, not knowing if this is the one that's going to take it VERY PERSONALLY. They should fear for THEIR lives every time they beat someone, not knowing if that person has the kind of friends that will gladly take retribution on the officer and his family (instead of the cops feeling safe that they're protected from legal action by whatever excuse they had for beating the person in the first place... as if legal action is all that can happen to them - the feelings of 'police authority' doesn't come from their ability to subject a person to 'legal action', but from our deep instinct to fear the extralegal, because everything else is a fiction, what's real is that it's just you and them, and they have a gun... and know that they can escape consequences).
Published: November 19, 2006 6:38 PM
That's horrible advice which would just escalate aggression on the part of police and civilians. The entire reason the cops use unprovoked, aggressive tactics in the first place is because everyone is a potential criminal to them.
Published: November 19, 2006 6:43 PM
The best course is to get rid of police altogether. I find a well armed populace is the best deterrent to criminal activity.
Published: November 19, 2006 7:08 PM
If your papers were in order, as they should be in a dictatorship, you would have had proof of insurance before you got behind the wheel. You should have faxed insurance papers. Police are blue-collar workers and are only following instructions.
Why were you stopped ? You could argue "silver platter doctrine" and have lack of evidence suppressed. Then sue the government. Hey, don't you know we live in an open society ? Secrets are no longer tolerated by career-advancing cops. Otherwise how can they "get ahead" ?
And don't you know thousands of police now spend their shifts reading these blogs looking for suspects ? So why complain over all this "safety" ? "You must have done something wrong."
Published: November 20, 2006 2:00 AM
I shut the whole Baltimore Airport down a couple weekends ago because I carry a small tripod in my bag. It took 6 TSA people to confirm that another 6 officers were required to handle me and the bag. The guy in body armor with an assault rifle set out to interrogate me about the contents of the bag. After dully reporting that it was the tripod causing all their consternation, they still kept the shrieking alarm going and the panic stricken faces in line assured them that they were in fact protecting us all. Unfortunately after they released me, I felt less safe, wondering if my fellow passengers were now stalking me as a terrorist. There's no question in my mind that a guy hiding in cave somewhere is winning . . .
Published: November 20, 2006 8:42 AM
Another reason, along with the UCLA Tasering, that has me training my children not to respect the police but fear them.
None of this benevolent respect and crap that they brainwashed me with when I was young.
And you know what, it's easy. There is tons of video and other evidence out there supporting my point: UCLA, tasers; LA Police, punching suspect on ground while SITTING on him; LA Police, Rodney King; LA Police, at infinitum; NYC, where do I start; Practically any footage from the civil rights struggle will show cops beating with their batons peaceful people (Men, women AND children). The examples are endless.
Sure, the police are in the news everyday having done something good. but that's what there supposed to do; in theory at least. When you add up all of the little negatives and positives, big and small, and then add in the insanity of the jackbooted war on drugs, the beating of peaceful war protestors, etc., the chasm between what the police are supposed to do grows wider and deeper everyday. God help the fool that comes to this conclusion too late; "41 shots..."
No sir, my children will fear the police and will not strive to be one.
And, though it should not be important, I am a college educated, business owning white man in his 40's.
Published: November 20, 2006 11:30 PM
Another reason, along with the UCLA Tasering, that has me training my children not to respect the police but fear them.
None of this benevolent respect and crap that they brainwashed me with when I was young.
And you know what, it's easy. There is tons of video and other evidence out there supporting my point: UCLA, tasers; LA Police, punching suspect on ground while SITTING on him; LA Police, Rodney King; LA Police, at infinitum; NYC, where do I start; Practically any footage from the civil rights struggle will show cops beating with their batons peaceful people (Men, women AND children). The examples are endless.
Sure, the police are in the news everyday having done something good. but that's what there supposed to do; in theory at least. When you add up all of the little negatives and positives, big and small, and then add in the insanity of the jackbooted war on drugs, the beating of peaceful war protestors, etc., the chasm between what the police are supposed to do grows wider and deeper everyday. God help the fool that comes to this conclusion too late; "41 shots..."
No sir, my children will fear the police and will not strive to be one.
And, though it should not be important, I am a college educated, business owning white man in his 40's.
Published: November 20, 2006 11:30 PM
I was waiting for my friend in a train station in Tokyo. The cops here make it a habit of harrassing foreigners, especially the slightly darker ones (confused for jihadists i guess). Anyways, I was stopped twice in a half hour by 3 cops. The first guy started asking for my papers (immigration documents) and asking if I had a knife. He thought the shiny metal object sticking out of my backpack was a knife, but it was my apartment key. I got stopped a second time by two "undercover" cops. Their tune changed when they found out I was American and looked dumb when my friend came out of the subway to meet me. Though, I realized that I was being spied on the whole time. Scary. The cops here make me nervous.
Published: November 21, 2006 12:54 AM
Only after we could eliminate the BATF, NSA, CIA, and cut in half the size of every police force will we ever have any guarantee of privacy.
Published: November 21, 2006 5:10 AM
Only after we could eliminate the BATF, NSA, CIA, DEA, and cut in half the size of every police force will we ever have any guarantee of privacy and safety.
Published: November 21, 2006 2:48 PM
A question that stems from a statement made earlier: to what degree are these blogs---that is, libertarian, anarcho-capitalist---monitored by authorities? After all, many of the individuals that post here could be labeled enemies of the state...
Oh, I didn't know Al Capone was still alive! If so, then Real Police, by all means, count me in; I've just to find my tommy gun...
Published: November 21, 2006 4:20 PM
Police brutality is not the problem, using it on people who fail to merit it given the limited nature of law enforcement resources is. Avidity to discard the aristocratic constitutional republican baby with the excessive force/massively dis-proportional response bath water is so typical of rational-philosophic anarchists though. I would have no problem with rampant police brutality in a nation exempt from the malign influence of elitists, snobs, rockefeller pseudo republicans, intelligence community types, zionists, international bankers, neo-conservatives, uppity women, domestic crypto communists, fags, the super rich, Alexander Hamilton's spiritual heirs, detractors of Michael Savage & ex post facto second guessers of the authoritarian foreign regimes America supported during the cold war til 1975 when Franco died. Just avoid seeming to be up to some thing hinky & cops would have no reason to beat you; what is so hard to grasp about that? I am sure many if not most of you grew up in environments with perfectly decent elders who held the same opinion as I do without the explicit, detailed & highly integrated intellectual grounding & justification.
Published: November 22, 2006 12:13 PM
Steven Smith said;
"Police brutality is not the problem, using it on people who fail to merit it given the limited nature of law enforcement resources is..."
Your post is very confusing!
So wait - are you in favor of rights-violating beatdowns or not?
Published: November 23, 2006 1:13 AM
State officers tasked with violating the rights of the people are fair game.
Published: November 23, 2006 7:21 AM
To clarify: the beating is more important than the rights though the beating usually is avoidable imprimis by being normal & conformist enough to indicate to police one merits far less than a beating if any unpleasant treatment at all. But given the sort of appalling social change America has experienced since the communist gramscian targeting of domestic culture & so many deviant people's amenability to said aberrence there is in my considered populist authoritarian, lower middle class, straight nordic protestant male patriarchal opinion more characters needing beaten than cops to beat them. Since early November 1968 when in second grade my attitude has been this problem that is bigger than our ability to deal with it is just what we get for failure to elevate George Wallace to the presidency any how.
By the way, Horatio, working over criminal suspects who have it coming is not the same thing as violating the rights of all the people. When as a kid I would righteously condemn some perceived injustice in such general sweeping terms within the hearing of my busy, stressed & over worked elders--much as I have been the last 15 years--I would be impatiently asked why I was so excited as the out-rage I cited was not happening to me personally.
In short I hate what America has been becoming since Alexander Hamilton took his post in the Washington administration & hate too what America would be if all you rational-philosophic anarchists got your way; you must be stopped at all costs, I refuse to anticipate life in a society where I am denied the validation of my most deeply fixed & imbedded convictions & vicarious gratification over their forcible realization only physical government of compulsory jurisdiction can provide. Police brutality must stand.
Published: November 23, 2006 12:18 PM
SS,
I understand, in response to Vince's query, that you are pro-beatdown(s).
Ok, though, for what purpose(?), to which end?
Published: November 23, 2006 9:07 PM
"I would have no problem with rampant police brutality in a nation exempt from the malign influence of elitists, snobs, rockefeller pseudo republicans, intelligence community types, zionists, international bankers,..."
Mr. Smith,
I suggest you to concentrate on the libertarian aspects involved in this article - although I believe your "deepest convictions" would be a serious obstacle to understand the general philosophy of the Mises.org website.
Your comments above, suggesting "malign influence of zionists" and other statements of similar relevance compose a clear portrait of your type of mindset.
IMHO, your text does not comply with the minimum requirement "Post an intelligent and civil comment" but, anyway, thanks for your valuable contribution.
Published: November 24, 2006 1:51 PM
I witnessed a pile up on the interestate 10 Friday with a fatality because someone crossed the yellow line. You may not agree with the police and how the state handles things but I bet if you cleaned up a few of these accidents you wouldn't be as tolerant of people such as yourself driving irresponsibly. I think it would be safe to assume that someone driving in a manner that could get someone killed is either too stupid to have a drivers license or job or is drunk. Clean up.
Published: November 26, 2006 9:38 PM
Given the bilious responses to my posts I guess I need not explicitly state I am on board sight unseen FOR police in Queens, New York in the case of the shooting from behind of the unarmed suspect in a receding car. O well.
What my pro-police brutality position has to do with austrianist praxeology escapes me, specially given the Ludwig von Mises Institute's location in Alabama, 1 of the vital confederate states that seceded from what was thitherto understood every where in America to be a voluntary & consensual thus conditional & revocable federal union as well as the institute's much appreciated--by myself I repair to stress--idealization of the confederate struggle against the despotic federal government that needed quadruple the force the confederacy could marshal to defeat it physically; like surely many of you I agree with Vin Suprynowicz that the worst act of domestic terror on American soil was not the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City but the union reduction of Vicksburg, Mississippi. What I find so interesting about the institute's location in & resolute justification of the past of such a controversial part of the nation is the fact that part of the country is where much of the police brutality so many confused & naif people deplore has EVER been sternly applied to deviants, technically innocuous vocal critics of the existing order, select out group members who needed to be made glaring examples et cetera. Am I right or wrong? bottom line, no quibbling over my personal dis-agreeability or any other extraneous issue: am I right or wrong?
By no means do I want my stated anti-zionism to be used to impute anti-jewishness or anti-semitism to myself; I learnt long ago, before I ever had an internet connexion thus long before I had access to rense.com, that zionism & judaism are 2 different things. I would be a hell of an inconsistent anti-semite with 40 1/2 years behind me of helping keep the main stream comic book industry which is jewish top to bottom in the black. Just for example. Also before Ayn Rand & Ludwig von Mises meant much to me I MET Alan Stang, already then a scarred veteran of arch conservative commentary & investigative reporting who just happens to be jewish. In the 1960s he wrote extensively for the John Birch Society organ American Opinion, back when the JBS meant BUSINESS by God, often on scurrilous allegations & accusations of police brutality, much of it in the ex-confederate south & west by the way, & ALWAYS managed to show the recipients had it coming & the anti-police agitators & stirrers of trouble were at least tinged by communist influence. Am I the ONLY paying supporter of the Ludwig von Mises Institute who has read these thinly weiled indorsements of a blank check on police conduct & LIKED them? I must be. What is likelier, most of you are MASSIVELY ignorant re the scope, depth, strength, resolve & pervasiveness of domestic communism & other subversions in nigh ALL American social problems. Do not take my word for it, read Cleon Skousen's 1966 book The Communist Attack on US Police. Or consider George Reisman's statements as a 16 year old boy in 1954 at Madison Square Garden at a McCarthyite rally; I believe the Nathan Glazer essay in the 1956 book edited by Daniel Bell, The New American Right, revized & up dated in 1962 as The Radical Right, quotes some of young Reisman's stronger comments.
I am lucky enough to afford to reside in a truly nice if la de da sub-urb of Dayton, Ohio--warm, cheerful & strenuously regulated thanks to the revenue of the high city income tax--& I would not spend a night in any thing less than 1 of the best neighborhoods of Dayton itself on a bet.
Til 4 years ago last week I spent @6 years in a far from ideal neighborhood of Dayton where there was considerable youth gang activity, incroaching illegal Mexicans, wilfully bad driving by proud members of the resolute urban under class, loud rap blaring from portable devices, much wearing of backward caps & other marks of insolence & defiance & of course puny police addressing of any of these social pathologies. Since I moved there have been several shocking crimes just at the apartment complex where I lived. Life is dirt cheap in Dayton & I fully assure you it is NOT the fault of the police.
I could continue interminably & cite successive facts of dire relevance but all my effort would net is more abuse, more dismissal of my claims & concerns based on the sort of odious person I am imputed to be, more of just why I am so unhappy with life as I bore deeper into problematic & far from assuredly affluent middle age despite working my rump off imprimis. Were I unemployed I likely would be unemployable; I have a job but it is running me into the ground & the domestic economy will crash any how. Then there will be a loud demand for immediate inforcement of law & order from many of you characters identical to mine but guess what? you will not get THAT inforcement of law & order, you will get the inforcement of law & order on corporatocratic-plutocrtatic-bilderberg-rockefeller pseudo republican terms 1 of you has so airily poo-poohed so maybe we will get lucky & it will not happen that way. SURE!
Ambrose Bierce was dead right: a cynic is a blackguard whose faulty vision makes him see life as it is, not as it should be.
Published: November 27, 2006 12:35 AM
In effort to bring some additional clarity to S. Smith's post, above, and for those who reflexively link anti-zionism to anti-semitism, see: Neturei Karta International.
http://www.nkusa.org
Published: November 27, 2006 6:59 AM
Someone should construct a "Rule of Law" index to show which places have the best police, judiciary and so on. I bet it would match up pretty well with the Fraser Institute's "Economic Freedom of the World".
Smith, I thought you were a joke when I first read your posts. Now I think you need to calm down a bit. It's certainly acceptable to get angry on certain occasions or about certain things but don't let it dominate your thinking.
On a sidenote, I'd hesitate before ascribing the UCLA tasering to racism.
Published: November 27, 2006 12:03 PM
I bet most here would be digusted by Udolpho, both in general and in his take on the incident, but he always cracks me up. He links to a video and eyewitness account of the incident.
I feel vindicated since it was the taser-wielding cop that was black and the student was an Iranian-American (Iran is just another way of saying "Aryan" you know) which makes him a caucasian.
Published: November 28, 2006 1:41 AM