The police exist in order to protect the rights of citizens from criminals.
Such a statement reflects either ignorance or extreme naivete. Let us be clear that the role of the police in a statist society is not to protect citizens, but to enforce the law. The fact that the police enforces the law is a known fact; that they protect citizens is an article of faith which is not supported by any observation.
An excellent post on the problems with the police and what to replace them with.
The post is missing a rather important component necessary to understanding the relationship between police (as agents of the court) and our (tacit) approval for the discharging of their public duties.
Yes, the duty of law enforcement officers is to enforce the law. The law is indeed created by politicians, but this is where the understanding goes astray. The legislated law is subject to the court’s approval, and the court’s approval is subject to the founding principles of the Constitution adjudicated by case law of jurisprudence. To back up the courts over and above the government is the military, which is why oaths of service are to the founding documents and the public offices they empower and not the latest government (or business – translated poorly to mean ‘the power elite’) – personnel.
The right question to ask is where do police derive their power to enforce the law and is this just, is this approved from the consent of the governed? And the answer is unequivocally yes. The post makes it sound as if this exercise of empowerment is left up to he vagaries of the personal opinion of the officers. This is simply not true in the whole. Officers are as much accountable to the same law as thee and me, but they are granted some discretionary power, and necessarily so, in the discharging of their public duties… duties, we need to be clear, empowered not by the person but by the office they hold. The office is empowered by the courts and not the legislators the post refers to.
The use of discretionary power by law enforcement officials (note the term ‘officials’ indicates what makes them ‘officials’: an office) is where we always run into problems because in spite of trying to describe exacting policies and procedures, unfolding events put these officers into positions of conflict between successfully carrying out their duties and breaking the very law they are empowered to enforce. The courts tend to favour great latitude in recognition of this ongoing and challenging difficulty. Most officers are trying to the best of their abilities to find that middle ground, not for selfish and self-aggrandizing reasons (although there are certainly many cases of this) but to do a good job. This requires a sacrifice of self in favour of the office (which is why such people wear uniforms indicating this submission of self while doing official work), which is why we call such jobs public service. Anyone who has done such a job knows exactly how difficult this division can be. To be vilified for doing one’s duty in service to the public is hardly what I would describe as “an excellent post” because it fails to adequately and accurately define what’s at issue: are the police necessary? And the answer to that is yes.
Whenever you come across such terms as ‘the power elite’ and other vague and sinister identifications of cigar smoking Big Boys in Backrooms, you know you are encountering deep bias and intentional prejudice indicating conspiracy thinking. What’s true in reality no longer matters to such people who are a priori convinced that their beliefs are sufficient to describe only the confirmation evidence they then offer. Such terminology is a dead giveaway that what you are about to read has little mooring in the reality we share.
“The right question to ask is where do police derive their power to enforce the law and is this just, is this approved from the consent of the governed? And the answer is unequivocally yes.”
And this consent is expressed… how…?
The possibility of not consenting can be expressed… how…?
And this consent is expressed… how…?
By accepting citizenship.
The possibility of not consenting can be expressed… how…?
By rejecting citizenship.
I didn’t ask you “how does one consent or not consent to all the privileges and duties of citizenship.” I asked you how does one consent or not consent to the use of police power.
Your answer is like me asking “how would you consent or not consent to going to the restaurant with me” and you answering “by becoming your best friend forever” and “by never talking to you again.” It’s a complete non sequitur.
Quite right. My mistake.
I was speaking about where the power was derived, and was this power derived justly, that is, by the consent of the governed. And my answer was yes, in the passing by our representatives of the Constitution as thedocument describing the basis for law.
You are now asking a different question: about consenting to the use of police power. My answer to that would be it is just and we consent if it is legal! (Remembering as well that there is often in practice a grey area here, and one we deal with on a case by case basis.)
How is a person consenting to anything on the basis of other people’s decisions? Sorry, but you seem to be hopelessly confused. Consent from a person P1 cannot be assumed on the basis of another person P2′s actions, unless P1 is in a coma or otherwise incapable of giving consent.
That’s why by accepting rather than rejecting citizenship, you are granting (as I already wrote) tacit consent.
You’re going in circles. You lose. Sorry.
For someone who completely missed the role of the Constitution and the courts in your headlong rush to condemn and vilify unfairly those who enforce the law, you – not I – are the one who seems to have misplaced your compass.
No, I did not “miss” that. And your reasoning is still circular, no matter what you think *I’ve* failed to do. Stop diverting the topic.
I would have jumped in earlier, but am at work. I must agree with Francois here. Any perceived consent in my life, I have withdrawn in both my writings here, and in the local paper. There is no place for those like me to go. Every other nation has the same problem. Even in the dead space of Antarctica or in the middle of the ocean, at least one national entity is going to claim authority over myself and my actions.
I live at peace with my fellow men, and I walk a fine line between my mental state of liberty and the armed coercion in my daily affairs. I will not appeal to the authority of the best armed thugs.
I understand and even share your frustration, Myrthryn. There are mechanisms in place to address abuses of the rights and freedoms all of us – public agent and private citizen – share. That these are too slow or inadequate or even insufficient can only be changed within the process of exercising your rights and freedoms within the law in order to change it legally. That’s why law is an ongoing process, always behind the times, always trying to catch up with the changing zeitgeists of civil society, always a source of great frustration to those of us who have been treated unfairly by the organs of the state. But pretending that the state is always at fault, always an enemy of ‘the people’ is irrational. The state is us. The police are us. The judges are us. The courts are us. The military are us. We are the state. We are the ones who must step up to the challenge to correct past wrongs and try to improve the functioning of the state that collectively represents us. We’re all in this together and creating mental constructs of groups of pseudo-enemies and vilifying them is a misguided attempt to lay blame everywhere but on ourselves where it properly belongs.