When I was a small child my parents continually drummed into my head: “Jimmy, if you get lost what will you do?” Answer: “I will find a policeman, he’s my friend.” Tragically that probably isn’t taught much anymore. Nevertheless, being a police officer is a noble calling – in fact, the police should be seen as the epitome of public servants. But we should insist that, just as surgery is the last option for a medical doctor, an arrest should be the last option used by the police. Why? Because bringing someone into the criminal justice system is really easy, but getting them out is often truly difficult. And that involvement can leave lasting and often unnecessary damage to a person’s ability to get a job and otherwise lead to further involvement in crime. So we should have an environment in which we trust and partner with the police as they protect and serve us! In that atmosphere, the police will protect both our safety and our freedoms, and thus be pillars for Liberty.
But that is mostly not what we have today – and we should all work to change that! How has this tragedy evolved? Many reasons, like the War on Drugs, which has caused many minority communities to see the police as an “occupying force;” so-called Civil Asset Forfeiture laws, which are often known as “Policing for Profit;” and the traffic law system, which is used far too frequently as a government revenue-gathering resource instead of a means to keep us safe on our roads. We as citizens and voters must stress that the most critical job of the police, just like with all prosecutors, is to do the right thing for the right reason – every time! Having a badge and a gun gives them enormous power over all of the rest of us. So they must be taught and mandated to stay within the law and reasonably use their discretion, and supported and appreciated when they do so. But they also should face consequences when they do not. Because we need the police to be pillars for our Liberty!
Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President,
along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President
** Here is an additional quote for the week:
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
– Winston Churchill
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Talk about an emerging and present threat to Liberty? Today the city of Guiyang, China has state of the art artificial intelligence facial recognition cameras in its surveillance system city wide. So with that technology they can, combined with photographs of every person in the city in their database, track the movements of everyone virtually anywhere in their city. And they can store the information in their memory banks for a week! Enclosed is a video of a reporter from the BBC showing us how that system works. As you can see, with the reporter’s photograph in the system, it took only seven minutes for the police to detect and detain him.
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