Police Routinely Violate Our Rights

 I want to mention up front, that I still support our police.  But I've gotten to the point about how much support I'm willing to give.  I definitely support the concept of the police and wanting law enforcement.  But I don't want that law abused while the police are doing their jobs.  They should enforce the law, not break it.  And the fact is, they routinely abuse the law.  They routinely violate our rights (because they think they're protecting us from a bigger evil).

For instance, on a routine traffic stop, police will often ask the driver where they are coming from, or where they are headed.  And this is a trick question.  No matter how you answer that, they are calculating your answers in a way that they can go on a "fishing expedition" to search your car and/or detain you longer than necessary for a broke tail light.

No matter how you answer their seemingly innocent question about where you are coming from, when you tell them something like "I've been at a friend's house and am driving home", or something like that.  They can now infer that while you were at your friend's, you might've had a drink or two (or a joint or two).  They can claim you slurred your words during the conversation. They can then claim in court that they thought they smelled alcohol, and felt that this might require the driver to do a field sobriety test and a search of the vehicle.

And there's a whole rabbit hole I can go down to cover this subject more, but the issue is that they are that innocent question, which the driver isn't even required to tell them where they are coming from.  But if the driver refuses to answer, the cop can use this as another way to further delve into your privacy; well beyond whatever the original reason was for pulling you over.

And for the record, other than the driver, no occupants in the car are required to identify themselves unless there is a probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed.  But police will routinely ask passengers n the car to identify themselves.  This is a violation of your constitutional rights to unreasonal search and seizure.  But they do it.

The police routinely violate our rights this way, and they will say that the results allow them to get more impaired drivers off the roads.  The thing is, it still comes back to violating our rights to "keep us safe".

and we've given up our rights over the years, and this is standard practice, and most police officers really believe that they are doing nothing wrong by doing it.

and if a person refuses and sticks up for their rights, the chances are very good that they are going to suffer a lot more trouble, than if they had just answered, shown their ID, and allowed the cop to do what he wanted.  Sticking up for your rights will cause your traffic stop to take much longer, and in some cases, could even land you in jail.

 

I Support Law Enforcement, But I Don't Support Bullies Who Abuse The Law

 After my recent posting about the cop who shot a miniature donkey, who was just checking to see who the people were that had entered his property.  This little donkey was less than 4 feet tall, was friendly, and was just curious.  But the people shot and killed him.  They shoot and kill about 25 to 30 dogs each day in the United States, and it becomes all too clear that they take a pretty authoritarian view of their own authority, and a complete lack of respect for the people they are supposed to be sworn to serve.

I want to support law enforcement, but I definitely do not support bullies who abuse the law, and who abuse their authority.  With the case of most of the pets they shoot and kill each day, I understand that some of these are guard dogs at sites of criminal enterprise.  I understand that some of these dogs pose a threat to the officers who are there to serve warrants.  But in a lot of these cases, it is excessive force.  And it is clear that the people have alternatives to firearms and tasers, but choose not to use them.  It is a choice.

In many cases, the police aren't even sure if they have the correct address, and as it turns out, many times, it later turns out that they shoot pets (or people) at the wrong address.  They shoot people who have done nothing wrong.  It is documented.  It happens.  And although there will be people that will claim that these cases are isolated and don't happen very often, I will say that the fact that they happen even once, is not acceptable.  It is not acceptable that the people who are sworn to serve the people and to protect the public, often take a very careless attitude towards the rights and property of the people.

So despite the fact that I want to support the police, because I want to support law enforcement, I often find myself having this dilemma.

I remember years ago when there had been a murder that was all over the local news.  Within days, innocent citizens were being mistreated by police, because the people were "shaking the trees" to get information that might lead them to the killer.

I remember my brother was going to school at the same high school that I had previously attended.  The school was in downtown Tulsa, and my family lived close to downtown, so my brother walked downtown to school.  As I think most of us have experienced in the noise of traffic, or in a crowded place like a shopping mall, my brother thought he kept hearing someone call his name.  He would turn around and look, but didn't see anyone, so he could continue on to school.  And then without warning, a cop pulled his car across the sidewalk and blocked my brother.  He got out and asked him where he was going, and asked to see ID (despite the fact that my brother was just minding his business and had committed no crime, and wasn't operating a vehicle, which means the police had no probable cause to detain him, or to demand ID).

My brother explained that he was going to school.  He was clearly going to school.  He was just a high schooler, and was carrying books.  And the high school was only a couple more blocks away.

The cop at one point, didn't like one of the answers my brother provided, and physically threatened him.  He said that he'd beat the crap out of him, arrest him and throw him in jail.

My brother was scared, but eventually was able to walk on to school  The cop followed him, and when my brother attempted to walk around to the far side of the school, where his locker was, the cop stopped him and ordered him to go into the closest door or he'd arrest him on the spot.  Despite trying to explain about the locker, the cop threatened him again, so my brother ran into the building.

That situation was over with, but I've never forgotten that.

I remember how, in investigating that same murder, the police had gone to a garage apartment that my parents rented out.  They ransacked the place.  Clearly having no respect for the property of hard working citizens.  They broke furniture.  They dumped cigar ashes on the carpet and trampled it into the carpet.

and in the end, they had the wrong man.  The guy that rented there had absolutely nothing to do with the murder, and in fact, it was later learned that the guy that was responsible with politically connected, and to this day, protected because of the bad PR it would have on the family, and instead the guilty guy was put away in some kind of mental facility.

I have had more than one occasion where bully police have treated me rudely when I've just been in a store, or coming out of a store, having done nothing wrong.  I have no criminal record.  I've never been arrested.  I'm an old white guy.  Yet they treated me that way.   So when I hear of young black men being treated the way that they claim in many cases, I often have to believe that they are not going to treat a young black man better than an old white guy.

A friend of mine used to be a dispatcher for a small town outside of Tulsa, and he has told me stories of funny things that have happened at the station, or that police officers have told him about some of the arrests they have made.  He has also told me about a couple of cops that he thought were using excessive force.  And later, he was told by other cops that "the guy is an asshole".  It was clear that the other cops even knew what he was doing.

I have another friend that in his 20s, he delivered newspapers in the morning, and also managed several other people who delivered papers on other routes in his area of town.  To this day, he still delivers papers in addition to his regular job, but he gave up managing the other routes after getting full-time employment.  But during his time managing other routes, he was training a new guy that was going to be delivering papers on one of these routes.  The guy was a young black man in his early 20s.  My friend was hispanic, in his late 20s.

My friend drove his truck around (with the bed of his truck full of rolled up newspapers) show the new guy the landmarks of his route, and what to do and what to watch for.  Eventually, he realized that he was being followed by a police car, and knew that it was only a matter of time before he would be pulled over.

When he was pulled over, the cop had already radioed his tag number in, and found no warrants.  My friend provided his ID, and had no criminal record of any kind.  Yet, after finding no record on my friend, the cop decided to question him.  My friend explained about delivering papers and training a new guy.  The cop wanted the other guy's ID too, which was illegal for the cop to ask for, but he did it anyway.  They usually do because the public are intimidated and will comply with this even though they are not obligated to do so unless the cop has probable cause, which he definitely did not have.

With no criminal record on either occupant of the vehicle, the cop was disrespectful.  He called my friend a "paper boy".  My friend let him get away with it, although I probably would've referred to the cop as a "meter maid" or "mall cop".  But my friend was intimidated and continued to answer questions when he definitely no longer needed to do.  There was no crime and there was no probable cause.

The cop at one point got agitated because he didn't like the answers he was getting, and he threatened by my friend and the new guy.  He threatened him physically and said he would beat the crap out of him and take him to jail, and no one would believe anything he reported about this because he was "just a mexican, driving around with" the n-word.

My friend was convinced that he was in danger and was going to go to jail, but kept answering questions, and the cop because frustrated because he had nothing to arrest him for, and so eventually let him go.

The new guy never returned to work that route.  My friend had to find someone else to train and risk going through this ordeal again.  I think he reported this confrontation to his boss at the newspaper company, and they might've reported it to the police station as a formal complaint, but nothing ever happened with it.

To this day, my friend is afraid of police.  And this thing happened 30 years earlier.  There are body cams now, but there weren't then.  He could've easily have ended up beaten and taken to jail and stuck with a criminal record, just for driving around being mexican.

This stuff keeps happening. 

I feel like the cops protect other cops, because an allegiance they feel they need to have, because otherwise the courts (and the media (the public)) would demand justice.  So they feel protective of themselves and feel under attack, but the truth is, the bad cops are what is causing them to be under attack.

I used to be skeptical of the citizen review boards in some cities.  These boards are made up of various citizens (and politicians) who review some of the violent altercations that the police have with citizens.  I always felt that it was unfair to be reviewed by people that were never trained on what police work is, and what police actually face when they go out on duty ever day.

But now, I feel like there are too many bullies with guns and badges, and that it might be time for citizen review boards that can provide oversight when police wont police themselves.

I think about how we judge policing based upon safety, but not on whether or not they prioritize enforcing obedience at any cost.  It's the "any cost", that I feel almost every time, is the cost paid by the public, not the police.  I feel like the police often escalate a situation instead of de-escalate.  and then when someone resists, the police justify excessive force, when de-escalation would have sufficed in at least a few of the cases. 

I hate for it to come to this, but I'm to that point. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.

When I think about the previous words from the Declaration of Independence, it becomes clear to me that this is the whole basis for our law, and absolutely nothing should supersede that.  When the police are going about their duties, even those noble effects cannot, under any circumstances, take precedence over that.  And yet, time and time again, we have been conditioned to think that public safety overrides those basic principles.  We've been conditioned to believe that these fundamental principles can be superseded by efforts of "national security".  I believe tyrannical government organizations have been manipulating us to believe this is okay.

HeeHaw the Baby Miniature Donkey Was Shot and Killed At His Own Home

 There's a story in the news, that changes slightly as I've read or heard about it over the last couple of days.  The story, as I understand it, is that Sunday morning, a little before 1:00, at a farm in Georgia, police had entered private property with the intentions of searching for a missing child.  My understanding is that they didn't notify the property owners ahead of the search or warn them, they were just on the property unannounced.  The 4 month old miniature donkey, named HeeHaw, ran out to the police, as he saw everyone as friends and wanted to play with them.  One of the officers "felt threatened" and shot and killed HeeHaw.

Understandably, the family is devastated.  As I understand it, the owner is denouncing people calling for violence against the police.  She just wants accountability.  Her beloved pet is dead, even though it never left it's fenced property.  At approximately 3 feet tall, how could any grown man feel threatened by a year old miniature donkey?

I sympathize with the owner.  It could easily have been a family dog.  In fact, I've read cases of police killing family pets (dogs) several times over the past few years, including some in the Tulsa area.  In one case, the police went to the wrong address to serve a warrant, entered the property announced, and killed the family dog.  And then afterwards, they want the family and the public to accept that they were just doing their jobs and made a mistake on the address.

My personal opinion is that more care should be taken to verify addresses before entering property, and definitely before violence against a home owner or a pet.

I feel frustrated because I think about my dog.  She's a Rottweiler.  She's big, but she's playful and considered everyone to be a potential playmate.  If police entered our property and we weren't warned ahead of time, our dog could easily be outside and vulnerable to a trigger happy cop.  I just think that if you keep your property fenced, and if you take care to keep your pets inside the fence, it's frustrating to think that this is not enough to keep your pets safe.  They can still end up just like HeeHaw.

I read about a case of a dog being shot to death recently too; I think it was in one of the Carolinas.  And it was a similar case of the wrong address.

I read about another case where a woman called the police because she saw a neighbor with a gun.  When the police finally arrived, they couldn't find the man, so they went to the woman's addressed and treated her with hostility instead.  Her little pet dog ran out of the front door while the woman was talking with police, and one of the idiot cops shot the dog, despite the fact, that it was a reasonably small dog; a yelper.

Despite being shot, the dog was still alive, but the cops wouldn't let the woman leave to take her dog to a vet.  They blocked her car so that she couldn't leave, and she had to plead with them for about 10 minutes before she was finally able to take the dog in for treatment.  Luckily, that delay didn't cost the dog's life, and my understanding is that the dog will make a full recovery.

I'll add that the current statistic is that police shoot, on average, 25 to 30 dogs a day. 

Geez.  These stories keep coming up, and each time, nothing is done to protect the public.  We should have a reasonable feeling of security for our own lives, the lives of our pets, and of our private property; especially if we are law abiding citizens and have done nothing wrong.  Yet, on and on similar stories occur.

I don't know what else can be said about this, but I hope the municipality that hired that cop are sued and have to pay a hefty sum.  I know that wont bring HeeHaw back, but maybe if these cases keep resulting in expensive lawsuits, eventually something will be done to minimize this sort of thing.  As it is, they still happen at an alarming rate. 

Was the United States Founded On Slavery?

 We often hear people who hate their own country, tell us that the United States was founded on slavery; that it was founded on racism.  Unfortunately, our public education system has done an abysmal job of teaching history.  In many cases, public education has actually perpetuated this idea of how the country was founded.  But it is not true; certainly not in the way that they are claiming.

It is true that racism has existed for centuries, but has existed this way everywhere and in every culture in the world.  It doesn't matter what color the people are, they all have racist views of the people of other colors throughout the world.

One of the first things that these people cite as reason for their belief is the "three-fifths compromise".  This has been taught in public school and has formed the opinion in the minds of millions of student, but it is a horrible misunderstanding (misstating) of what the three-fifths compromise was and what it really meant.  and the truth is, it meant exactly the opposite of what people think it meant.

First of all, the three-fifth compromise was not a statement of individual worth.  It was a compromise to deal with slave states that wanted to count their slave population in the census, and therefore have an advantage in power and representation in the House of Representatives.

The frames of the country wanted these states to join the union, but they all agreed that slavery would have to ultimately be eliminated, but if the slave states were counting their slave population, they would maintain power in Congress, and would never end slavery.  So a compromise had to be made.

At first, the framers stated that we could hardly count slaves in the census if they were not citizens and not allowed to vote.  The slave states countered that although the slaves are not slaves, they were like livestock and a part of the population.  The frames countered by stating that if that were the case, the union states would count their cattle.

This debate went back and fourth, and they finally settled on the three-fifths compromise.  And this compromise, I've still over-simplified since the ratio was different for female slaves.  But non-the-less, this was the compromise settled on.   It gave slave states extra seats in the House of Representatives and electoral votes.

The compromise had an affect of allowing the slave states to push for and elect pro-slavery presidents, but ultimately, this advantage didn't last.

After the Civil War, that compromise was nullified with the 14th Amendment.

But the three-fifth compromise is not the only reason the people that insist that the United States has always been a racist country, are wrong.  There's also the phrase "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", drafted into the Constitution by Thomas Jefferson.  The statement came from European philosophy and the current colonial discourse.

The original phase was "Life, Liberty, and Property".  The aspect of property was mentioned because of how things were in feudal Europe, where the lords, governors, kings, could take private property of the workers are any time they felt like it.   So the concept of private property being protected under this new government, was a primary concern.  However, the founders felt that this would allow the slave states to assume a Constitutional right to their property, which would include slaves.  The founders wanted to avoid anything that would ingrain slavery in the new country.

The word "property" was changed to "happiness" because they knew that not everyone owned property.  Poor people, indentured servants, slaves, couldn't claim property, but they needed to be included and have the aspirational right to happiness and for self determination.

In another case, in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote to King George III, and condemned him for waging a "cruel war against human nature itself" and keeping an open market where "men were bought and sold".  This ultimately was dropped from the declaration in order to get a unanimous vote, which they wouldn't have gotten without the slave states.  But statement shows the intention of the frames from the very beginning of the country. 

Vermont abolished slavery in their state constitution in 1777.

In Massachusetts, it was determined that slavery was illegal in 1781.

Six states had abolished slavery by the time the US Constitution took affect.

There was a federal ban on slavery in the new western territories in 1787.

There are other examples of how the country was founded with a different mindset from what we are being told over and over. 

Is Our Society Really Male Dominated

 We hear it over and over.  I've heard it all my life, and I think we all have.  We've been conditioned to believe it, but is it true?  Is our society really male dominated?

The vast majority of wealth is owned by men.

Women do more unpaid labor. (ie. house wives, mothers, etc)

However, the wealth mentioned is a tiny proportion of men, whereas the vast majority of disaffected people are men.  The vast majority of people in prison are men.  The vast majority of the homeless are men.  Most victims of violent crime are men.  Most people who commit suicide are men.  Most people who die in wars are men.

People who do worse in school are men, and there are no programs encouraging them in math in sciences like there are for women.

When you look at the fuller picture, dominance isn't quite how we've been conditioned to feel about it.

It is true that in the past, men were the bosses of companies.  They were the majority of the political leaders.  There was a day and age where women were not allowed to own property.  But the property restriction went away.  The glass ceiling has been broken in management and in politics, with women being the CEOs of some of the biggest corporations in the United States, and in some cases, the world.

Looking at the subject with modern eyes, and stepping back for a moment, it becomes clear that we've been conditioned to look at a tiny sample of highly successful people (men) and drawing a conclusion that this is male domination.  But if this were true, why are there more homeless men than women?  Why are there more men in prison than women?  And why are so many more men killed in war than women?

The whole subject seems cloudy, but looking at the broader picture and ignoring what we've been conditioned to conclude, it calls into question how true the statement of male domination in our society really is. 

EPA Rules Do the Opposite of Their Intentions

 EPA rules, when it comes to car manufacturing, and specifically, truck manufacturing, for the most part, do the opposite of their intentions.  The standards encourage manufacturers to increase fuel economy, but the rules based on vehicle size unintentionally encourage larger vehicles.

 Footprint Standards: The EPA measures fuel economy targets based on a vehicles "footprint" (the area between its wheels).  Larger vehicles are given a lower, easier-to-reach fuel efficiency, while smaller vehicles face stricter (harder to reach) fuel efficiency standards.

Since it is easier meet compliance standards with bigger vehicles, manufacturers build bigger trucks, rather than spending more money in the effort to squeeze more efficiency from smaller vehicles.

Large vehicles such as trucks and SUVs yield higher profits for manufacturers, making it easier to justify the investment of the bigger frames that satisfy the more lenient standards.

Emissions v Fuel Economy: While the EPA regulates air pollutants and greenhouse gases, heavy-duty commercial trucks have different measurement exemptions and classifications compared to cars. and this shifts manufacturer priorities when it comes to emissions and fuel economy. 

Why Do Bad Ideas Come From Academia as Well As Other Elites?

 Over the course of time, it seems that some of the worst ideas imaginable for society, have come from academia and/or other elists.  Why is this?

In short, it is because certain fields lack the immediate, self-correcting feedback of physical or economic reality.  Those ideas are developed in a vacuum immune from reality; absent of reality.

Fields in business or in engineering, on the other hand, face harsh feedback, in the form of testing, of bad ideas.  These fields have to operate in reality.  They can't exist in a vacuum.  A bridge built with faulty engineering will collapse.  An economic model based on false (or limited) assumptions fails in the market.

And the truth is, the fields that escape reality, have an endless list of ideas they think ought to be tried, and there's zero accountability if they turn out to be wrong.  Those who promote those ideas write academic papers, and get published, and many support theses; but there is never any accountability for being wrong.  No one loses their PhD for having bad ideas.  No professor loses his job for being wrong.

Whereas, in fields such as engineering, people are expected to base their statements on testing to prove their assertions.  In in the real world, anyone that consistently steers a company down a path with disastrous ideas, loses their job.  However, this is not true in government or in academia.  So bad ideas abound, and bad ideas continue.  There is no connection to reality.

 Academic careerism incentivizes high-volume output over practical use.  This rewards sensationalism and/or conformity over truth.   It pushes publishing of papers, regardless or the usefulness of the ideas or the truth in content.

Complex jargon and ideological frameworks sometimes become internal credentialing mechanisms in academia, where challenging those ideas risks professional ostracization rather intellectual correction based on facts.

Currently, it is built into the academic systems to avoid intellectual correction of ideas.  So bad ideas are perpetuated.  Challenging those ideas is strongly discouraged.

Likewise, in other fields, such as news media, challenging these promoted ideas can cost someone their job.  So for the most part, people tow the party line and avoid deviation from anything other than the approved language.