When you make decisions based on what criminals can get away with, you betray the trust the people put in government to act fairly.
I just read a news story reporting on a supreme court decision allowing law enforcement officer armed with “warrants” to enter a residence with out knocking and announcing themselves.
The case in the Supreme Court can about in a situation when officers announced themselves but did not knock at the residence, which is what law requires.
I say that the reason unreasonable search and seizure in the constitution needs to be better protected is because the constitution was not written to protect criminals. It was written to protect the citizens from their government.
I unfortunately, see many examples of the El Paso, Texas police officer violating individuals’ rights.
Officers in this city practice antagonizing the people they stop so even though they have no reason to stop them or charge them once the person reacts to being verbally harassed and physically taunted they can them charge them with public disturbance or disobeying a police officer.
I was once circled by five police officers who where yelling curse words at me. The only thing that saved me was that I did not react to them. In addition, let me tell you after they let me go I got to the internal affairs office as fast as I could and reported them. Several were reprimanded.
Therefore, my point is that many of us see examples of police officers violating the public trust.
Here are some stories that have been in the news about El Paso, Texas police officers and some incidents I have encountered when interacting with El Paso police officers.
· A police officer was arrested for taking a 13-year-old girl in to an abandoned mobile home and fondling her.
· Two police officers were arrested after they were spotted breaking in to parked cars and removing personal items from the vehicles.
· A news crew in a helicopter filmed a police office beating a suspected with the police car’s antennae. The suspect was in hand cuffs and leaning over on the police car.
· At one time, the gang task force had to be disbanded and the officer in charge had to be reassigned because of allegations of abuse against the suspect they would detain.
· I once called the police to help me with a customer that skipped with out paying and one police officer told me “you should of beat the crap out of him”.
· On another occasion, I told a female police officer that about eight people were fighting in the alley. She responded, “hey if they want to kill themselves. Let them.
I choose to stop here but the reality is that I could go on. These law enforcement officers on a daily basis show the need to protect the citizens’ rights.
I have seen an America that has become militant and repressive in the last twenty-five years.
Things that a person would never imagine happening in this country are now happening. A person can be stopped on a public sidewalk and charged with “failure to identify “himself or her self to a police officer if he or she forgot his or her identification.
Therefore, something as simple as going to the corner store for milk now requires that you do not forget your identification.
The case that got to Supreme Court shows also that police officers cannot be trusted. I do not believe that professional law enforcement personnel who know that they can loose a case or be sued if they do not follow the law just forgot that one night to knock as they announced themselves.
From what I have seen, I would say that claiming that they just forgot that night to knock is deliberate deception. My experience would tell me that they deliberately did not knock because they knew after they knocked the suspect would get rid of evidence while the police officers tried to break the door down.
To me it seems that the courts, supreme and otherwise, are becoming too chummy with the police and in the end all of us will loose.
See police do not discriminate between criminal and non-criminal. To them we are all criminals.