Last year, almost to the day, I was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with Pete. We were there to visit friends and decided to spend the day at the local Starbucks working on details for Liberty On Tour 2010 edition. That’s when I noticed officer Hood of the Portsmouth police department parking illegally, several times, outside the Starbucks.
I decided to make a phone call to the police station about the double standard police have when enforcing their laws against other ‘protectors of society.’ You can guess how that turned out for me, so, when we returned this year, I was stunned when I (thought I) saw the same officer park illegally right in front of me. Beau and I quickly ran off to ask the officer about his double standards toward parking laws.
As I approached I realized the officer was parked in a stall designated for police cruisers only. I knew for a fact that such a spot didn’t exist a year ago so I waited around to talk with Hood, who was busy with an elderly person. When he finished I asked Hood if the parking stalls where issued due to our video and he wouldn’t comment with the camera on, citing, “I’m going to tell you what I told you last year.”
I can’t be positive but I think CopBlock.org had a role in the decision to assign police officers parking stalls, so you can create change outside the system. See the first video from Portsmouth below.
Over the past few years myself and Pete Eyre have done projects, such as the Motorhome Diaries and Liberty On Tour, and activism all across the country. Sadly, when attempting to educate your fellow man or while standing up for individual rights we often encounter some sort of police presence. Above is a video with several clips of some of the statements police have made to us in the past while the camera was rolling.
Though this may be a 4 min video of the best clips we’ve got on camera, I’ve personally engaged in conversations with hundreds of officers who feel the same way as these guys. It’s just a job, they need to feed their families and ‘if the law is the law, then the law is the law’ – whatever that means? Kinda scary that you allow these people to protect you, isn’t it?
While on the road with Liberty on Tour Pete and I stopped in 13 cities in 13 weeks to embedded ourselves with local activists. Our second stop was the city of brotherly love - Philadelphia. While there we did FIJA, Uncle Sam and covered the MOVE story with local activists, it was a great stop.
Another thing that was as common as cheese steak sandwich stands in Philly, was how often the police violated parking ‘laws.’ It seemed every corner we turned there was a police cruiser parked illegally. On the sidewalks, in front of fire hydrants and in loading zones, the laws didn’t matter to them nor did they apply. See for yourself.
Now let me be the first to say that I really don’t care about parking laws either. There are bigger issues within police but the issue of parking is the easiest way to highlight the double standard police officers have. It’s a proven fact, whether you believe it or not, that police are allowed to do things others can’t. From parking anywhere, carrying weapons, using force and much more police clearly think they have more rights than you. They know it, they act like it and anyone who doesn’t believe that hasn’t encountered (luckily) an officer lately.
It doesn’t matter to me what the police are doing, I’m going to film them. Why? Because millions are forced to pay their salaries while police claim to the protectors of us. Let’s see how much protecting is going on…
HIALEAH, FL -Last week we joined FIJA super-activist James Cox in Ft. Lauderdale at not one, but two courthouses. Our intention was to inform more people about jury nullification. We did that, and we did well – a ton of people walked away with FIJA pamphlets and we had some really solid convos with folks.
But we also had some not-so-fun times and they all happened to involve people with badges. People who violate our very rights to line their pockets while claiming to “protect and serve”. Fortunately, there was a lessened learned. Many actually – how to keep safe by being aware of Statists.
While members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) generally support legalization of marijuana, former Copblock writer Brad Jardis took this idea a step further. Jardis encouraged police officers to cease enforcement of marijuana laws when he was a part of LEAP. As a result, LEAP removed him from the organization (more here).
In this video, LEAP Chairman Jack Cole, who e-mailed Jardis to inform him of his removal from the organization, discusses his views on this matter. Cole says, “One honorable thing we do is we raise our right hands and we swear that we are going to uphold the law. We don’t swear we are going to uphold the laws that we agree with….So we never ask anybody to stop doing what they swore they do. It’s an oath.”
Cole’s explanation encompasses two major fallacies – he assumes, without justification, that the act of keeping an oath is ethical. He further seems to imply that if police officers selectively chose which laws to enforce, the results would be arbitrary or unjust, and thus assumes, again without justification, and that order in and of itself is a desirable goal.
Although “keeping an oath” may sound honorable, it isn’t inherently so. It may be ethically correct to honor an oath to be faithful to your spouse or to do some good deed, but very few would argue one should be encouraged to honor an oath to the KKK or an oath to Hitler. Similarly, no one should care much if one violates an oath to pick one’s nose every Wednesday at 2pm. An oath is a promise that otherwise simply has no bearing on ethics; it is the underlying action involved in a promise that determines whether keeping that oath or promise is ethical or not.
To hold the mere idea of a promise, which is an ethically neutral concept, above the actual freedoms, rights and dignity of fellow human beings, is truly disingenuous, if not comical. Marijuana may be a particularly controversial subject, but other analogies quickly demonstrate the logical fault in this kind of reasoning. If it was illegal to drink water, no one would look too highly upon police who claimed to be against water prohibition, but nonetheless encouraged officers to continue to fine, jail and incarcerate individuals engaged in hydrating themselves.
Next, Cole states that police should not pick and choose which laws to enforce because they swore to uphold them all. Many defend this idea on the grounds that encouraging police to do so would cause arbitrary results, and would eventually lead to anarchy.
Arguably, the results are already completely arbitrary. One can be arrested for doing absolutely nothing, and minorities are disproportionately arrested for marijuana crimes compared to white people (not that if arrest was proportional, drug laws would be acceptable). Police can throw you in jail overnight for parking violations, as Adam Mueller personally experienced. Police can arrest you for feeding the homeless. In the name of following process and abiding by laws, society has in fact fallen into chaos, in my opinion.
But let’s assume this isn’t arbitrary. Let’s assume, as Mr. Cole and other police sympathizers do, that this is all perfectly orderly, and abides by due process because police are upholding oaths and correctly doing their jobs, rather than encouraging disobedience to the law, as Mr. Jardis did.
How is it a good thing that police are perpetuating racist and arbitrary arrests and depriving homeless people of food, in an orderly fashion? Due process shouldn’t make you feel better about starving homeless people, racism and unjustified incarceration of non-violent people. If it does make you feel better, you might be a sociopath. This kind of reasoning justifies legalized slavery, genocide, and a slew of other atrocities. People like Cole and his followers would be the ones berating officers who helped smuggle slaves across borders in the the pre-Civil War era, because until the law is changed, it must be obeyed.
Yet he he alleges he is honorable because he is upholding some vague oath. It is certainly understandable if a police officer is not personally willing to openly disobey laws because he could face serious personal and legal consequences. However, it makes no sense to claim to be against the systematic incarceration of non-violent offenders, but criticize someone who is taking immediate action against those very injustices.
Society’s obsession with due process is mind boggling. The fact that a process was followed is largely irrelevant to policy discourse. A process was followed to allow for legalized slavery, segregation, marriage discrimination (race and sexual orientation), and to pass all kinds of other laws violating civil liberties. Although existence of due process may facilitate a fair resolution of a particular situation, clearly, due process does not always give rise to protection of civil liberties, and in fact is often instrumental in violating those freedoms.
In another recent video from Liberty On Tour, Adam and Pete visit Philadelphia to distribute flyers with a fellow activist to promote the idea of liberty. They also find several police cruisers parked illegally and use them to demonstrate that police and other government officials are often held to a different standard than those they claim to work for.
We had a lot of great conversations and overall people – with the exception of some of those wearing badges – were really receptive.
As Mandrik points-out near the end of the video, most folks have a natural affinity for the ideas liberty, so while engaging others on the street may not be part of your normal routine, it can have a very profound impact. And it gets easier the more often you do it. So grab a couple of friends and make it happen!
Over at Liberty On Tour, Adam and Pete participated in another round of FIJA activism by helping pass out jury nullification information in Philadelphia. During the outreach, Adam took some time to talk to a few police officers who appeared to be with DHS.
ST. LOUIS, MO – Last week while Liberty On Tour was in Philadelphia we covered more FIJA activism. Which is becoming a popular form of outreach for those taking an active roll in educating folks about their rights.
While the outreach was a success the group was watched closely by up to 5 agents, presumably, from a few government agencies. I thought engaging Kennedy and Russell would help protect those distributing fliers and possibly help them realize the harms they cause while ‘just doing their jobs.’
The video below is a perfect example of the double standard those with badges hold and a scary look at how agents of the state perceive their daily tasks.
Coercive monopolies are bad. I doubt there is anyone on the planet left or right who would dare disagree with this abstract statement who doesn’t directly benefit from monopolistic government policies. Monopolies virtually always fail the consumer as they do not need to be flexible, innovative, efficient, provide good quality of service, or eliminate corruption from their ranks to stay in business. Without the cleansing forces of competition to be just and effective, firms of all kinds operate from within a disgustingly perverse incentive structure.
I ran headlong into the monopolists and their incentive structure this weekend, on the occasion of my speaking at the Drexel University Student Liberty Front’s summer retreat in Philadelphia. In the early afternoon, our friend Michael Gurrieri stepped outside to smoke a rolled tobacco cigarette. He didn’t smoke it all, so he extinguished the flame and pocketed the remains for later. As he did so, the Philadelphia police were crossing the street to accost him and determine if he was smoking the wrong variety of leafy growth.
They demanded that Mike reveal the cigarette, which he refused on privacy grounds. As a result he was assaulted, thrown against the wall, and told to put his hands behind his back or the officer would “break his fucking arms.” Handcuffed, Mike asked to speak to the officer’s superior before proceeding. Two other officers arrived. At this point I was summoned from out of Darian Worden’s presentation on Practical Anarchy to observe the situation. I came out of the building in the presence of Stacy Litz, the event organizer, with my camera at the ready to begin recording. I was immediately approached by an aggressive and plump law enforcement official who bellowed at me that I was interfering with a police investigation and needed to move and put my camera away. I stated that he was a public officer in public who had no reasonable expectation of privacy and inquired if he was making legal order. He asked me if I was willing to bet that what I was doing was legal and removed his handcuffs. He approached me from the side and alerted me that if I didn’t put the camera away he would take me down to the station. I backed up a little bit and pulled my camera up once more, at which point his temper broke and he erupted that he would “[expletive] me up and take me to [expletive] jail” if I didn’t comply with his order.
I later found out that he was bluffing. Pennsylvania does not have prohibitions against recording interactions with police officers. It didn’t matter though. I was then filled with adrenaline and more than a little intimidated. This well-armed man I didn’t know who was ostensibly there to keep the community safe was worried that I might create an accurate record of the actions of all parties. He was so opposed to my recording him and his cohorts that he threatened the brutalize me, abduct me, and then throw me in a cage.
If my friend had thereafter acted wrongly, then my video would have reflected his behavior and vindicated police retaliation, if not morally than at least in the eyes of the public. If the police had performed in an unprofessional or excessive way then the aggressors would be the subject of scrutiny. If they were going to continue in a just manner, wouldn’t they want their conduct a matter of public record to make sure that any subsequent use of force against the ‘perp’ was legitimate in case he later claimed otherwise? Their aversion to being recording clearly indicates their intentions to act maliciously against their victims and remain unaccountable for their transgressions.
Sadly, I didn’t know Philadelphia or Pennsylvania law well enough at that moment, so I wasn’t about to risk a bloodied body, obliterated or confiscated property, and a protracted legal endeavor for what very well might turn into another bogus and expensive wiretapping case for yet another liberty activist. Luckily, the ordeal ended soon, with Mike being released by his captors after a ‘good cop’ detailed him a twenty minute justification of the assault they had just committed.
Supposedly, when they saw Mike put the cigarette in his pocket they didn’t know if he had a gun (smokers are usually armed, apparently) so they needed to make sure that everyone in the community was safe. Well, except for Mike. Consciences of the cops salved, we returned to our conference and collectively decompressed from the absurdity we had just experienced.
This is a clear anecdotal example for minarchists of why having a monopoly on the most crucial services of justice and defense systems should be subject to market forces. The thugs we encountered that day in Philly could never behave so poorly in a world where the people who paid their bills could begin purchasing rights-protection services from other less abusive providers. Even with moral outrage removed from the mind of the consumer and only economic effects taken into account, firms that recklessly aggressed against innocent people would have to charge more due to their increased liability and legal exposure, and would thus continually lose market share until they ceased to exist.
Without coercive monopolistic control of this market sector, police officers may even actively seek to record their own behavior for public record, both to assure their own firm of their continued reliability and professionalism as well as to disprove any false accusations of illegitimate behavior from competitors.
We weren’t done with the monopolists that day just yet, however.
Later that night, when our reflections on the excitement of the day had nearly petered out, we went to the closing social to have a few drinks and bring the event to a conclusion. A group wanted to have a smoke, so some of us followed them outside to keep them company, spotting a few grazing cops on our way out. In front of the restaurant was a handicapped parking space occupied by, you guessed it, a squad car. Seeking some small token of justice from his assault at the hands of the blue shirt gang that morning, Mike took the initiative and told the proprietors of the restaurant that there was someone parked in the handicapped spot who did not have the appropriate credentials. They came and checked it out, then disappeared inside to presumably alert the kindly officers that they needed to follow the laws they were supposed to be enforcing.
The lawbreakers came outside and meandered up to us to inquire as to why we couldn’t have just asked them personally to move it. Mike calmly retorted that he was being righteous and following the law, to which the cop replied that he was actually “being retarded.” As he walked away, we asked him if he was handicapped or above the law. He grumbled, possibly affirming that he was both.
Police abuse of handicapped spot in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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