Why is it that Government sees us all as criminals? - Granite Grok

Why is it that Government sees us all as criminals?

Barney FifeMore and more, Government workers are making us believe by their actions that we Citizens (and Parents) are the problem to be taken care of and solved.  Now, this real story I had seen before, but who can pass up and putting in a line like this from NH’s own Mark Steyn to introduce it?

I’ve written before about the psychologically unhealthy need of every tinpot makework bureaucracy to run around pretending to be Seal Team Six.

I do wonder if there is a large scale case of “projection” that goes on in Government – and they armor, weaponize, and Rambo up, do they project themselves onto ordinary citizens and go “nope, these are too dangerous for real people to have – they must be disarmed” (RE: NH’s Deputy Dawg Shurtleff)!  And then I see a story like this and go “Really?  Whose holsters should be emptied and put on the Barney Fife Bullet Rule”?  Daily Progress (emphasis mine, reformatted):

When a half-dozen men and a woman in street clothes closed in on University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, she and two roommates panicked.  That led to Daly spending a night and an afternoon in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Her initial offense? Walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream just purchased from the Harris Teeter in the Barracks Road Shopping Center for a sorority benefit fundraiser.  A group of state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents clad in plainclothes approached her, suspecting the blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water to be a 12-pack of beer. Police say one of the agents jumped on the hood of her car. She says one drew a gun. Unsure of who they were, Daly tried to flee the darkened parking lot.

Steyn had it right – tinpots.  You have a college gal shopping and a group of folks look like they are about to attack her.  Gun Time?  What if she had been carrying?  Would it have been justifiable self-defense?  Me in that situation?  Am not sure I would have done much different – but I also carry. Given their Rambo actions (really, jumping on the hood??), you BET I would have been scared too.  And given that TMEW goes with me places most evenings, I would have immediately gone into Protector Mode – what husband wouldn’t?

“They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform,” she recalled Thursday in a written account of the April 11 incident.  “I couldn’t put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were … terrified,” Daly stated.

She had water.  They thought she had a 12-pack of beer.  For THIS they start terrorizing two young females, threaten them with a gun, and breaking private property?  This is the clear thought process of our Law Enforcement?  To escalate from Droopy Dawg to snarling pit bulls in a heart beat?  And again, Law Enforcement wants to disarm US??

Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman read Daly’s account and said it was factually consistent.

Prosecutors say she apologized profusely when she realized who the agents were. But that wasn’t good enough for ABC agents, who charged her with three felonies.

I really hope there is a security camera video of this

Prosecutors withdrew those charges Thursday in Charlottesville General District Court, but Daly still can’t understand why she sat in jail.  “This has been an extremely trying experience,” she wrote. “It is something to this day I cannot understand or believe has come to this point.” … Agents charged Daly with two counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer and one count of eluding police, all Class 6 felonies carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison and $2,500 in fines per offense.

Or, maybe there was if the charges are being dropped.

“It wouldn’t be the right thing to do to prosecute this,” he said, noting that no one was hurt during the exchange, which took place around 10:15 p.m.  Daly incurred the assault charges when she “grazed” two agents with her SUV, according to court records. She drove the SUV past the agents after her front-seat passenger, in a panic, yelled at Daly to “go, go, go” and climbed into the rear of the vehicle to gain space from the men on her side of the car, the records state.

Hard not to make contact with an agent with your SUV when the cop has jumped on top of it, eh?

The woman was on edge after spending the night listening to stories from dozens of sexual assault survivors at an annual “Take Back the Night” vigil on Grounds, said Daly’s defense attorney, Francis Lawrence. The women dialed 911 as they pulled out of the parking lot to report what was happening and ask whether the agents were police officers. Daly said she was planning to drive to a police station. She stopped the SUV nearby for an agent driving a vehicle with lights and sirens, Chapman said.

I believe the operative phrase now should be “sue the bastards”.

Chapman stood by the agents’ decision to file charges, citing faith in a process that yielded an appropriate resolution.

Yup. Appropriate.  A gang of cops go after a coed and her friend over water and ice cream as if they were high level drug lords (“some case of water ya got there – and that ice cream is downright terroristic – just ask Michelle!”).  The coed has to pay out of pocket for a lawyer, spend the night in jail, gets scared out of her wits, has to fix the damage to her car, and this is an “appropriate resolution”?  Yup – “sue the bastards”.  If WE do something wrong, or as in this case, only need to have the appearance of perhaps maybe something a bit off, and overeager and overreaching government employees become judge and jury.  We have to “pay” when we break laws – and employees of the bureaucracy?

Got that security video?

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