If other officers are nearby, there are policies in place-official and unofficial-to encourage them to back one another up. Absent video, if the officer’s account an incident differs from that of a citizen- even several citizens- his superiors, the courts, and prosecutors will nearly always defer to the officer. At the individual level, a police officer’s power and authority over the people he interacts with day to day is near complete. But perhaps we have entered a police state writ small. And the odds of any single person being victimized by a wrong-door raid, shot or beaten by a cop, or otherwise victimized by militarized police violence are slim to nil. Generally speaking, we’re free to travel. This isn’t to say we’re in a police state, a term that’s often misused. In short, police today embody all of the threats the Founders feared were posed by standing armies, plus a few additional ones they couldn’t have anticipated. Law enforcement interests may occasionally come up short on budgetary issues, but legislatures rarely if ever pass new laws to hold police more accountable, to restrict their powers, or to make them more transparent. “Police officers today are a protected class, one no politician wants to oppose.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2023
Categories |