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Law enforcers in Dallas and Ft. Worth recently made the North Texas Metroplex proud with their high profile high idiocy high jinx in a span of 14 days. First came the report of the Dallas PD patrolman who caught up with a couple in front of a hospital after they ran a red light during a headlong rush to reach the woman's dying mother. That traffic infraction, the bully-in-blue decided, was incredibly more important than someone's mom meeting her Maker.
The badge bum lectured the couple for thirteen minutes while scribbling out a moving violation citation. Midway through, the wife made a break for it and reached her mother just before she died. The husband didn't. During the "I am God" grandstanding the public protector actually drew his gun, threatened the man with jail and told him, "I can screw you over." The fact that the man was Houston Texans running back Ryan Moats made the traffic stop national news. The dashboard video went coast to coast.
A few days later a pair of police punks decided to play taser tag with a perp when he "became combative." (Keep in mind that in today's officialspeak being branded "combative" might be nothing more than failing to instantly bellow "Sir, yes sir!" when a Serve and Protect praetorian orders you to drop and kiss the asphalt.) The patrol car's videocam recorded the mocking voice of one taser-wielding officer sneering, "take it like a man" while another derisively shouts, "Do you want another one?" Unfortunately for the enforcers, the screams of the suspect were also recorded.
Then it was the Pride of Fort Worth's turn. The city made headlines by settling a suit for 50,000 smackers after an officer smacked around a deaf man during a traffic stop back in 2007. Pulled over for speeding, the driver reached for his ID. The road warrior naturally assumed he was reaching for a gun, spun him around and slammed his kisser into the rear windshield, breaking his nose. The dashboard video caught it all.
So what's going on here? Whatever happened to those friendly neighborhood cops like Bert from "It's a Wonderful Life?" The cops of course always claim each case is just one bad apple in the barrel, but over the years the whole barrel seems to have rotted. Any libertarian worth the label will tell you that anyone committing coercion, whether king, cop or commoner, must be held personally accountable. And thanks to dashboard videocams and citizens with cell phone cameras, that's happening. But this problem goes deeper.
Cops enforce the laws. The more laws there are, the more cops there must be. So the cop shops all over the country lower their standards to reel in more recruits. But lower standards attract lower recruits. Like the kids you grew up with who bullied you and stole your lunch money and muscled you into the hallway lockers. The result is not more police on patrol but more bullies bedecked with badges. And the problem goes deeper still. Politicians. Bureaucrats. Civil servants.
Once upon a time these public poobahs knew their place; they worked for government and performed a service. Today they see it as their mission to rule, regulate and run absolutely every aspect of human existence. Politicians promulgate thousands of new laws every year. Bureaucrats relentlessly bombard us with regulations. Civil servants everywhere compel us to cope with a multitude of meaningless minutiae simply because they can. Rules, regulations and laws are meaningless unless they are rigorously enforced.
And so the Thin Blue Line becomes the Thick Brute Slime and the Free State of America turns into the Police State of the political classes. The solution is simple, but radical. As radical as the founding of America. Repeal all victimless crimes. Stop prosecuting people for committing the act of harming no one. A good start would be shoving the genie of gargantuan government back into the bottle of the Constitution. The result? Free society. Minimal government. A criminal justice system with zero tolerance for coercion, intimidation and fraud. A police force adequate to policing criminals, not citizens. Democrats won't shrink government. Republicans won't either. They're all addicted to power. Only libertarians will do it.
So forget love of money. Here's a fact you can frame and hang on what's left of your wall once the SWAT team is finished busting through your door at 3 AM and wrecking your home while clutching the wrong address in their gnarled knuckles:
Coercion is the root of all evil.
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