Do unto others . . .

Let me be Frank with you (that's actually my middle name :-): I am a former peace officer, a former cop. I don't brag about that, because there is so much corruption and abuse of power in law enforcement these days that it makes even me gag. I do not call myself a former law enforcement officer, because it was never my intent to enforce the law. When I worked in that field, it was due to my desire to help people, to keep them safe. One of the reason I quit working in that field (I quit in 1995) is because it was becoming apparent, even then, that more and more men and women starting in the field were interested in power, in exerting their authority over the mere citizens they believed they were charged with controlling. Yes, I mean that quite sincerely, they felt it was their duty to control the "baser instincts", the bad behavior, the ill intentions of the civilians under their "care".

Please, don't bother to whine to me about all of the "good" cops out there. The deputy sheriffs, the police officers, the marshals, constables, and the Federal agents of so many agencies (most agencies in which there should not even be enforcement agents, like the Department of Education, for pete's sake) who they will claim are actually there to do the right thing. I will stipulate that there are still "a few good men" out there who want to do what is right. I will so stipulate - as long as you are willing to stipulate that those few good men don't have the balls to stand up and point fingers at all of the LEOs who abuse their authority, beat and use excessive force on citizens, kill pets and even the very civilians they are tasked with Serving and Protecting.

Can you imagine, for a minute, what it is like for a good priest - a man who loves his G-d and his fellow man, who wants to see to the hearts and souls and very bodies (when in ill health) of his parishioners cared for and protected - when he discovers another priest is a pedophile, has been molesting children, perhaps within this good priest's parish? Can you imagine the anguish and the anger a good priest would feel, knowing that a fellow priest was abusing not just his trust and authority, but the very honor and duty of the priesthood, and damaging children in the doing?

A truly good cop - a man or woman who is a peace officer, and not just a law enforcement officer - suffers the same anguish, the pain, the embarrassment, and the anger when a fellow cop abuses his authority. It is worse when they also not only abuse a citizen's rights, but actually physically abuse them as well. The thought of an LEO beating, punching, kicking, or - G-d forbid - raping a woman, is enough to engender a supreme rage in someone who knows their duty to the citizens for whom he works. The thought of LEOs actually killing innocent citizens is enough to engender a killing rage in a good cop. Not in the rare occurrence when a mistake is made, as with the transit cop in DC who thought he had pulled his taser and actually pulled his handgun, but as in the recent case where a Houston police officer shot and killed a double amputee in a wheelchair who supposedly threatened him with a pen.

Sure, in the history of keeping the peace there have been officers who have injured or even killed someone when they were in fear of their own lives being taken, when in fact the threat was not that severe. Fear of injury and death has caused some cops to kill mistakenly, in what they truly imagined was a life-or-death situation, although a more experienced cop - or one who wasn't a pants-shitting coward, as in some of those cases - would have resorted to non-lethal measures.

I am currently talking about the animals in uniform who enjoy being able to kill with impunity. Just as many sociopaths, including serial killers, begin their careers with killing kittens and puppies, so do some uniformed sociopaths begin their serial killing with shooting dogs they later claim were "threatening" or out of control. Or stomping a kitten to death, as a female Federal officer did at one incident.

That isn't a big enough rush for some of these sociopaths in uniform, though. They then go on to shoot innocent civilians. The man who comes to the door with a baseball bat or a firearm when his house is invaded at 0-dark-thirty by a group of armed men who often do not identify themselves - or not well enough to give the just-awakened homeowner a chance to understand what they are saying - gets shot, instead of given a chance to lower his weapon. A disturbed, mentally incompetent homeless man with a small wood-carving knife who could have been tasered, or the officer involved could back off until a non-lethal means of dealing with a potentially deadly situation could be arrived at, but instead the cop shoots and kills him.

These days, however, many LEOs shave their heads, slip on a pair of dark Oakleys and some black leather gloves (with the trigger finger bare, of course), and swagger around with a hand resting on
their duty weapon to let everyone know who the "boss" is on their beat. Frankly (their I go again ;-), these cretins look like neo-Nazi skinheads to me. I've been out of the business since 1995, so I don't have a clue why they started shaving their heads like that, but having known a few Aryan Brotherhood cops when I worked San Diego (although they didn't shave their heads back then), I can't help but imagine they like the skinhead image. If Doc Martins came in a "tactical" style, they would probably be wearing a pair of Doc Martin boots.

Recently, some Idaho cops rousted, abused, and injured a man and woman who did nothing wrong, but were being investigated - supposedly - because of a possible domestic violence incident, based solely on the mis-statements of a neighbor who couldn't hear worth a damn, and some damned cop's statement that the couple were "Constitutionalists". As many of us in the IIIper or Patriot movement know, local, state, and federal agencies have decided that any citizens who believe the Constitution has anything to do with how government should operate, or with how our rights should be protected and observed, are domestic terrorists. They have decided - based of the documents written by a couple of Leftist organizations (the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League) - that anyone who believes the Constitution is valid as it was originally written are armed and dangerous extremists who probably need to be shot on sight.

This situation - the determination by so many LEOs that citizens are fair game for abuse and even death, along with the determination by the Federal government and the various Fusion Centers around the country that Patriots are terrorists - has placed innocent people into the line of fire. It has caused many law enforcement agencies to permit their officers to abuse, injure and kill innocent citizens without any consequences, often without even an apology!.

To an old peace officer, this is beyond unacceptable. It is a call to arms. As I stated in the comments of another blog quite recently, it makes me long for a day when citizens will declare open season on LEOs who abuse the citizens they were hired to protect and serve. I would gladly buy a couple of tags and begin the hunt. Any "good" cops out there who don't have the stomach to clean their own house should find another line of work. Proximity to all of the bad cops - who seem to predominate the rolls these days - could be fatal, in the not-too-distant future.