Cops
Anyone who reads this blog, I’m sure there aren’t many, if any besides my two friends, knows that I’m a libertarian thinker. Because of my political ideologies the concept of a police force is repulsive to me. Of course it’s part and parcel of the wider picture. I don’t propose to remove the police force at this stage in the democratic “experiment”.
For me the concept of police represents the ultimate in dualism. The idea that we are absolutely free, to the extent allowed by the law, yet are subject to the whims of a certain percent of the population is logically unsound. Allow me to give a real life example here. I have been stopped three times by police and at least that many by a program that is designed to catch drunk drivers.
The of the first three occasions two were for absolutely no reason other than personal whim of the officers. The third I received a ticket for rolling a stop sign. What does this tell us (I won’t defend the rolled stop sign because the situation itself was ridiculous and clearly initiated to fill ticket quota). This tells me that 66% of my encounters with police have been negative, the restriction of my freedom for no reason.
Let’s include for the fun of it the checkpoint stops I’ve undergone. Around the times of big celebrations such as New Year’s the local police force sets up roadblocks at which every car has to stop and answer a few questions such as “have you been drinking?” (“yes officer’???). So to the vast majority of persons this is a hindrance as the majority doesn’t drive drunk. So why am I being stopped? Right, it’s because our police force has become lazy and instead of working and catching criminals they’d rather sit and just stop everyone and see what they can dig up on sometimes poor and not well off drivers. Include these into the calculation, and I cannot remember how many I’ve gone through, and the number of negative police interaction jumps to something like 90%.
The entire idea of innocent until proven guilty or freedom and equality before the law just doesn’t seem to be working. I won’t get into the letter vs. the spirit debate. Naturally, I’m a proponent of the spirit approach. It was from the spirit that the letter derives not the other way around. We should be attempting to attain and strive for the spirit, not the letter.
This post comes about because of Canada’s recent Robert Dziekanski incident. For the sake of understanding I watched the video and it was disturbing to me, it was shocking, saddening and heartbreaking.
Well I know my perfect world won’t come about because of these persistent arguments that we need police, like we need everything else, as if people can’t do anything on their own. I will only point to history and emphasize how the world got along just fine long before police arrived. Ancient Greece and Rome had no police forces, they didn’t even have jails until later Roman times, yet they flourished and some would say were the height of civilization. The medieval European world didn’t have a police force unless you consider the Inquisition, God’s police force, and we all know how much good they did, but hey they always got their man didn’t they.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
“I will only point to history and emphasize how the world got along just fine long before police arrived. Ancient Greece and Rome had no police forces, they didn’t even have jails until later Roman times, yet they flourished and some would say were the height of civilization.”
People took matters into their own hands though. “Blood-revenge” and so on. Is that to be considered civilized and is it really a better sollution?
December 1st, 2007 at 11:09 am
Hello there, thanks for writing (and reading
)
You’re right. But law did exist. Law was administered by the victims or their families. I don’t advocate for the elimination of law or judges, just the police force. I don’t really advocate for it in reality, just philosophically.
Let’s not get barbarism-action confused with barbarism-era. Laws existed in those times and they were not bad laws, the people administering them were bad. If something did happen the victim would have to go and find the guilty party and bring them before a judge.
I still think this would be a better method. If something happens, like the theft of your car, you get your friends and family together and you retrieve it as well as take the thief before a judge. What do we need a third party (police) for?