The law is written that way so that law enforcement officials can perform their duties without fear of recrimination for every action. If police were bound by a fear of suits, they would be impotent. Furtehrmore, let's be clear when we talk about the police and realize that when we speak of the police in this context we speak of a police department, not a policeman, as a policeman gets to keep no item seized and is liable for his actions (ie Abner Luima(sp?), NYC)

 

I'll start by saying that police have one of the worst jobs on earth, even here in the U.S. The suicide and divorce rate among cops is horribly large. I have great admiration for most of them, but that does not deter me from despising the system that allows the bad cops to act as they too often do act.

Tell ya what Mr. Non-Liberal non-alarmist. I've been practicing law for more than thirty years and if you are so ill-informed as to think that cops are ACTUALLY bound by the rule of law, then you have no experience with real life. AND I lived in and practiced law in DC, your home town. If you think that it is not possible to happen to you, you are in a dream world.

.And by the way, if they confiscate your property, why do you care that it was the police department and not the individual cop? Your property is still gone.

As to your impotence assertion, in the first place, the laws are not written the way you seem to think that they are.. For your information, only a minor part of "the law" is written, if by "written" you mean that a legislature enacted them. Rather, our entire legal system is based more on so-called interpretation of existing law.

For example, police for years decided that they had the right to shoot and kill anyone who ran from them and that was not written law. They just did it. It took the courts almost 100 years to tell them that running from cops is not a capital crime.

Second - on what do you base that absurd claim that having a means of seeking redress will cause impotence in the cops? That is the same type of reasoning used by the Gestapo in Germany and the NKVD in the old USSR.

Do you think that cops are different from the rest of us - that they cannot make mistakes - that they cannot be corrupt??? Think again.

My sister worked for the DC police dept. in the recruiting section. The DC force pays their men very well, indeed, so they can be selective. More than 90% were weeded out on psychological grounds. Unhappily, VERY few departments can be so thorough or picky. The net result is that, particuarly in small towns or rural areas, the police are unfit, untrained, and uninformed as to the law they purport to enforce.

We need to pay them more; train them better; and demand adherence to that which they claim to serve - The Law.

 

"Biased"?? Does that mean that if I have actual experience (which very clearly you do not) and an opinion that I am biased??

"Breaches of the legal system are mended through the legal system" You are a white middle class man. Try to get the legal system to help you if you are poor and particularly if you are so silly as to decide to be poor AND black.

"if you are so upset with the Louisville PD then file suit. " As it happens, the widow of the murdered man did just that, but the laws you so strongly support to prevent police "impotence" prevented her from recovering. But, I guess that's ok, because she might be a liberal alarmist.


"The dead SOB"??? Oh my, you are just overflowing with concern for him and his family.

 

Don't start with me about cops, I hate them as much as the next guy. I have been arrested twice and both times the grounds for detention were false. I have, in addition been detained five other times as well with no good cause. So, please don't patronize me. What do I do for a living? Drug Dealer? Gun runner? Rapist? No, I run a non-profit organziation that provides support to people on transplant waiting lists. Both times I was arrested had to do with driving, and no I didn't run anyone over.

Anyway, despite my disgust with 'the system' it is a creation of humantiy and therefore, by it's very nature, imperfect. However we are trying to create "a more perfect union," not a prefect one. Politics and the common good are about compromise. That's why it's called 'common law, common good,' etc... And ofcourse there are problems, but in general: just law and common good are maintained.

Please don't forget that throughout this country's history people have complained about government's [abuse of] power. Yet when there are catastrophes no one complains about how the government is helping them. So is the gov't perfect? No, clearly not. But it is not that soon-to-be-fascist regime that you claim. It is a dynamic entity subject to the shortcomings of those who run it.

And please don't make character or personality assessments as you don't know who I am, you don't know where I come from and I can do the same about you. Let's keep it civilized, huh?

 

Pixsurguy -

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you're not a prosecutor.

 

My feelings are the same as Ben Franklins.....


They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Historical Review of Pennsylvania

Benjamin Franklin. (1706

 

When he spoke of Liberty he was speaking of the right of free speech, assembly, right to a fair trial, etc... Not the the Liberty from being searched by police with a court approved search warrant. Don't you think?

 

Not the the Liberty from being searched by police with a court approved search warrant.

Except that, under the Partiot Act and several other pieces of legislation recently passed, the police often no longer need a court order, or even court approval.

In yesterday's news, I read that if police want to search a bus, they have no obligation to mention to anyone on board that they have the right to refuse search or give anyone advance warning of the search.

In the Patriot Act, there's a provision that allows police and other law enforcement entities to monitor ANYONE's electronic communications without a warrant - they only need to 'assert' to their superiors that it has something to do with terrorism.

It's these kind of developments that prompt the question posed by this thread.

JonasM

 

While those are disturbing, I think you will see such abuses challenged and consequently overturned. Perhaps that is the difference between us-- I don't see this as a downward spiral.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JonasM
[B]Not the the Liberty from being searched by police with a court approved search warrant.