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It's hard to predict just which date a future historian
will find significant, but when the book How America
Became a Police State
is written, last Tuesday will
doubtless get prominent mention.
On April 24, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court further empowered police by ruling that the police do not have to get a warrant before arresting someone for a minor traffic offense.
The offense at issue was committed by a Texas woman, Gail Atwater, who let her children ride in a pickup without buckling their seatbelts.
A cop noticed the unbelted kids and pulled her over. Instead of just issuing a citation, he arrested her -- the full drill with handcuffs and a trip to the police station, where she had to post bond before she could be released from jail.
Once you're under arrest, the police have the right to search the immediate premises, without the trouble of finding a compliant judge to issue a search warrant.
So, we start with a minor traffic offense, which causes
an arrest, followed by the power to search without getting
a warrant. Does this violate the Fourth Amendment, which
holds that The right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated...
?
By a 5-4 margin, the U.S. Supreme Court said there's no violation of the Fourth Amendment if a cop sees you change lanes without using your turn signal, pulls you over, cuffs you and hauls you to jail, and searches your car.
Even Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a Reagan appointee,
was appalled by this reasoning. A minor traffic
infraction may often serve as an excuse for stopping and
harassing an individual,
she wrote. After today,
the arsenal available to any officer extends to a full
arrest and the searches permissible concomitant to that
arrest.
So they search you and find some cash in your wallet. Since about 80 percent of the paper money in the United States carries traces of cocaine, the odds are high that you're transporting drugs in a zero-tolerance legal system.
They can confiscate your money and car, and the litigation to get your property returned is long and expensive.
And the beauty of this, from the police perspective, is
that they get to keep the money for their own purposes.
They can sell the car, or if it's something cool like a
Corvette or a Mercedes, they can keep it for official
purposes
like the police chief going to and from
work.
Most states recognize the possibility for abuse in this arrangement, and some require the money to go to the general fund or to fund education, not the law-enforcement agency in question.
But there's a way around this for your friendly local
cops who covet cars and money. They invite the feds to
participate in the arrest. The proceeds then go into the
Federal Drug Enforcement Forfeiture Fund,
and 80
percent of that money goes back to the participating local
law-enforcement agency.
Thus police are able to fund themselves by arrests and
seizures, and the power of the purse
that elected
bodies are supposed to exercise has been rendered
impotent.
Nor should we forget that in Denver, if a police officer dies, the District Attorney will find someone to hang, even if that someone was in police custody at the time -- just ask Lisl Auman.
But if a citizen dies as a result of police gunfire, the District Attorney starts applying whitewash by the barrel -- just ask the surviving relatives of Jeff Truax and Isabel Mena.
And there are the special rights available to the police when they're questioning you. It's illegal for you to lie to the police because you're thereby obstructing justice. But the courts have held that it's legal for the police to lie to you. Talk about a stacked deck.
Add all this up, and we live in a country where there are thousands of laws, so many that it's impossible to avoid breaking one or more of them on a simple errand like going to the post office.
And once you're seen breaking even the least of these laws, you can be arrested and searched, and be questioned by people who have the right to deceive you while holding you accountable for every word. And then your money and property can be confiscated, and the police get to keep the proceeds for their own purposes. And the courts will not protect you.
When I was a schoolboy during the peak years of the Cold War, they told us that this was how the Soviet Union operated -- it was a police state, not a nation where individuals had constitutional rights.
So you have to wonder these days just which side really won the Cold War. American police aren't there to protect your life, liberty, or property -- they're a threat to all three, and nothing appears likely to stop this from getting even worse.
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