Well, the point of this thread had been that the more authority the police have, the more dangerous it gets for citizens. People have already demonstrated that they won’t tolerate certain kinds of abuse of police power. If the police were to increase their power to a point where it is dangerous to be pulled over, then I think it’s a very likely possibility that people will fight back one way or another.
K.
Heard about this and wondered what legal recourse one might have if pulled over, say on a deserted road. Being that police protection is not a right (many people don’t know this, but Glenn Beck goes to great details to talk about it in his book Arguing with Idiots), it leads one to believe they are–indeed–helpless on the road.
If flashing lights are behind you, you have a decision to make: 1) Pull over, risking being shot by the guy inpersonating the police officer, which is a small but possible chance or 2) Keep going, which would be good if the guy behind you was the killer, but if not you’re going to jail. So it’s a wager of sorts; unfortunately, all of the people who decide to pull over, when pulled over by the killer, will likely die after being shot.
It’s just another reason to remain armed imo, although that alone comes with a ton of rules, regulations and scrutiny by the police state. It’s a pretty disgusting scenario, one where law-abiding citizens are rather helpless.
Exactly. It’s like the stupid women who swear they’re ok to walk in the Bronx alone at night because they have their cell phone and they can call the police. Really?!?! LOL When you only have a second, the police are minutes away. It’s pathetic reasoning. It makes citizens helpless and gives a huge advantage to thieves.
In case you didn’t read the article or watch the video, the police are advising locals to call 911 when they get pulled over to verify whether or not it’s a real officer pulling them over and to try and find a well-lit, populated area to stop at. Local police are going to be notified of this development so I’m sure they’ll be expecting people to take a little longer to pull over than usual in some cases.
Mississippi carry laws are actually quite lax. You do not need a permit to carry a concealed weapon in your vehicle.
“(2) It shall not be a violation of this section for any person over the age of eighteen (18) years to carry a firearm or deadly weapon concealed in whole or in part within the confines of his own home or his place of business, or any real property associated with his home or business or within any motor vehicle.”
EDIT: It’s also important to note that authorities are not sure if these two crimes were actually committed by people pretending to be officers as there were no witnesses to the shootings. They’re just speculating based on the evidence.
Seriously, how did anatomically modern humans survive their first 299,900 years on planet Earth without police with the authority to detain suspects???
It’s only a “tradeoff” to disinterested parties, such as you and me. To the person being pulled over and victimized, it’s a complete loss. Which leads to the central question, “from whose perspective?” This is the whole problem with Western law, it’s all built on the armchair opinions of disinterested parties. When your ass is actually on the line, it fundamentally changes how you think about the problem. Experiencing the feeling of utter powerlessness that being a victim imposes on you tends to change your views regarding gun control and other issues surrounding the production of defense.
Clayton -
It is ofcourse possible that we could manage just fine without cops who could pull people over and detain people or whatever, but I have no interest in a world like that. For me the trade off is totally worth it.
I’ve been pulled over before and I did not feel powerless but that’s because I study the law, I know my rights, I know the process, I carry legal insurance with a 24 hour legal hotline, I’m clean cut, I’m well spoken and I speak to officers respectfully.
I actually had an experience where I was pulled over for an expired tag but it turned out I’d had my license revoked for getting a really high speeding ticket while under the age of 21 so I was effectively driving without a valid license. The usual procedure is to impound the car and arrest the driver but the officer was extremely gracious and friendly and gave me ample time to call my aunt. She came out, drove my car home for me and I wasn’t arrested. The officer just confiscated my license. But this story never makes the news because it’s not sensational.
EDIT: What does gun control have to do with this btw?
And it’s totally irrelevant - you’re not the one who has been pulled over and robbed by a fake cop. My point is that the opinions of people who are not affected by a matter are irrelevant and should be excluded from consideration in the matter.
Clayton -
Ook, well that means your opinion is irrelevant too, so let’s ask that one dude who got robbed what he thinks…o wait he’s not here. Now what?
Your standard basically disqualifies everyone on this forum from talking about this issue unless they say they’ve been a victim of the same type of crime, a claim that is likely to be unverifiable.
Not at all. It just disqualifies gut-check opinions on matters that have real consequences to people other than yourself. If you’re choosing whether to buy a blue or green sweater, gut-check suffices because the decision is yours to make. When you’re choosing whether police should have the power to issue “lawful orders” and taze people for failure to comply, gut-check is no longer a sufficient basis.
Clayton -
But according to your standard, unless someone has personally been given a lawful order they didn’t like or been tazed for failure to comply, they really have no standing to offer an opinion on the value of lawful orders.
Even if it has happened to them and they do have an opinion, it only relates to that specific incident, not some generalized question about lawful orders in all circumstances. All they know is what happened in that particular moment in that particular context, that’s the only insight they’ve gained.
I don’t think this standard makes any sense. I don’t think there are completely disinterested parties when we talk about the law because the law effects or stands to effect everyone at some point or another. The consequences of changing the system would effect everyone, so we all have an interest in how the system works even if we’re not all personally acquainted with every single possible outcome of the system at any given time.
Let’s be honest you’re trying to disregard my opinion on this particular case because it doesn’t agree with yours. You don’t think I’ve ever been pulled over by a fake cop and robbed. But maybe I have, you have no way of knowing. You’re just assuming that my values would be different from what they are now had such a thing happened to me presumably because had it happened to you, you’d be ready to tear the whole damn system down. Don’t just assume that we’re the same, we might not be.
Your opinion isn’t even based on what the victim is saying because he’s not advocating the abolition of lawful orders or traffic stops though presumably you think he should be.
I’m considering your opinion in terms of its implications. The obvious consequence of disallowing police to perform traffic stops, for instance, is that they could no longer detain people who are caught driving over the speed limit. The other consequence is that cases like this would be less likely to happen. So now we have an interest to weigh: pulling over speeding drivers vs the risk of abuse of authority.
How we weigh this interest is entirely personal but everyone’s opinion matters to some degree because everyone stands to be effected by the determination, not just the people who’ve already been effected. Thus I find your standard invalid.
bloomj31, you are totally missing Clayton’s point. Think of it in terms of just a regular theft. A steals from B. B decides to forgive A, but C comes along and decides to prosecute A for the theft. WHAT!!! C was not involved. B wants to forgive, but C won’t let it happen…This is probably more common with statutory rape. I’m sure you’ve seen in the papers every once in a while that the state wants to prosecute two underage teenagers for having sex even when the parents don’t want to press charges? Everyone involved in the actual act does not want state intervention, yet the third party prosecutor comes along and decides that it is a “crime” that must be punished.
Of course not everyone will arrive to the same conclusion as Clayton even if they are a victim of abuse of authority. But that’s not what Clayton is getting at. By what right do third parties have to impose their will upon the actual parties to the dispute? Sure, you might be of the opinion that people should just be tased and be done with it. And maybe even someone who is tased by police will agree that it was for the best (though I seriously doubt that this is likely). But what about the people who are tased when they shouldn’t have been? When they have committed no crime, but the police decided it was for the public safety? Why should your opinion matter? The person who was tased didn’t want it. Their opinion matters.
Here is a link to an article on police brutality. One of the videos has an old man tasered in his own home for no lawful or just reason whatsoever. Tell me, why should your opinion outweigh the opinion of the guy who was tasered?
What is the context for these considerations?
To whom is my opinion supposed to matter?
For that matter, to whom is their opinion supposed to matter?
Are we talking about this forum? A court of law?
EDIT: It sounds like we’re going back to a moral argument rather than a legal one. It sounds like you’re trying to get back to might makes right again.
I think it’s worth pointing out that the only reason any of us are allowed to express our opinions on this particular forum is because we’re allowed to. If the moderators wanted to, they could ban everyone and then no one could have an opinion. So it’s only by the grace of the moderators that our voices are even present at all on this website.
We are talking in this forum about something that would be occurring in a court of law - specifically, challenging what is euphemistically termed “the police power.” Stopping, detaining, arresting, imprisoning, use of the “continuum of force” to enforce compliance, and so on. My first response to OP was simply pointing out that crimes of impersonation are bound to increase as the power of police increases. Citizens have no choice but to “play it safe” and be as compliant as possible in the hopes that something terrible will not happen to them. This makes them much more attractive targets to private criminals.
I’m pointing out that not only is the police power morally repugnant before any consequential considerations enter the picture but it has predictable bad consequences. To characterize these bad consequences as a “tradeoff” is to either assert that we can perform inter-subjective utility comparison (false) or to assert that your opinion matters in real disputes to which you are not a party.
You are perfectly entitled to your opinion in this forum. The trouble is when your opinion encourages and is shared by politicians, for example, who have the means to actually interfere in the affairs of others. So long as you’re merely expressing an opinion, that’s all it is, an opinion. But when you or someone on your behalf acts on your opinions, that’s a different matter.
Clayton -
Well then I suppose the best way of saying it is that I hope that my opinion will be shared by those with the power to actually make a real decision regarding “the police power.”
I hope that they will make the same value judgment that I have.
I’m personally irrelevant but my support of the current political system lends legitimacy to the people with real power.
How do they get the right to tell people what “the police power” will be? By having power of their own.
As to whether or not my opinion matters in this particular forum; I’ve consistently been, for a couple years now, in the drastic minority on almost every issue so I think it’s safe to say I’m a nonfactor on these forums.
What context for what considerations?
I thought I was clear about this. You are a third party. Why should your opinion matter to the actual parties to the dispute?
I see that you and Clayton are dealing with this one.
You can pretend that morality has never entered for you, but then you would have to be of the opinion that the Jim Crow laws were good, because after all, they were the law. But you dodged that one in another thread by saying you weren’t alive then, so you don’t know how you would feel about them.
I don’t believe might makes right, but as you have amply shown, it is what you believe. You can say that you really believe might makes relevant, but none of your stated beliefs have ever actually supported that, and they all indicate that you support might makes right.
That appears to be the difference between many of us here and you. You believe in might makes right, and we happen to form our sense of what is moral, just, and what ought to be considered lawful on a different set of beliefs.
I think it’s worth pointing out that this is a pretty obvious statement. It’s also perfectly in line with the libertarian sense of justice and law. What isn’t perfectly in line with the libertarian sense of justice and law is when agents of the state beat and murder people who didn’t commit a crime. But, obviously, since might makes right, it is just and lawful behavior according to you.
There’s some kind of contradiction in this - on the one hand, you say they can take care of it themselves yet, on the other hand, you say that your support lends them legitimacy.
Anyway, you’ve never explained the connection between might and right. Might has brought about untold horrors. The only difference between the might of the State and the might of the mugger is the time of day. I don’t understand why you expect moral/efficient outcomes from this.
Clayton -
I would say that my moral system is just far more agnostic than yours. I don’t pretend to be able to really know right from wrong definitely or objectively, I see morality as being guesswork based on premises that are either accepted or rejected for whatever reason.
This doesn’t mean I cannot disagree with laws on moral grounds, it just means that I don’t rely on moral objections to make legal arguments. I try to find case law/legislative statutes to support my opinion. If there are none, I make them up and hope they stick in other people’s minds.
I maintain that moral systems are ultimately irrelevant if they haven’t the power to be enforced. Thus might makes relevant the question of moral right or wrong.
I would say that in legal terms might does make legal right as without might legal rights can only exist in the ethereal de jure sense rather than the material de facto sense. This means, in essence that while one can know what the law has been, one cannot necessarily know what the law will be until they’re in court. Even then decisions are constantly being overturned, remanded, upheld at appeal but redefined.
I think the issue of police murdering innocent people is outside the scope of this thread as it is only tangentially related to the cases presented by the OP and the second poster. If you want to talk about those I’d be glad to but only after we both acknowledge that they have nothing to do with the original thread.
EDIT: It is going to be difficult for me to carry on two conversations about similar material at once. Just saying.
Guesswork about what?
Clayton -
State agents are capable of accomplishing these things by themselves in the short run but for those efforts to be sustained for longer measures of time, they require the support of the governed. It’s a symbiotic relationship. I need them for their power and they need me to support their uses of power over time.
I am more concerned with the existence of a final arbiter than I am with the outcomes being entirely moral/efficient.
Might is just an effective means to that end.
In the system as it is now, we trade a certain amount of morality and efficiency for finality and conclusivity (if that’s a word.) It’s a balancing act that sometimes doesn’t work out for people. Is it worth it? That’s a subjective value judgment. To me, yes it is. To you no it’s not.