"To Protect and to Serve"? Or "Us vs Them"? - Granite Grok

“To Protect and to Serve”? Or “Us vs Them”?

We’ve blogged about the militarization of our nation’s local police forces over the past couple of years where local cops have “weaponed up” with the “free” military goods that the US armed forces have deemed surplus or by using “free” money from the Feds.  Yes, the bad guys have “stuff” that most civilians don’t have and no, stop with the knee-jerk reactions of “What – you want cops killed”?  It just seems, however, that the Powell Doctrine (“Win by applying overwhelming and more advanced forces against your enemies”) has become the norm rather than for the exceptional cases in which it may well be needed (when even the Socialist leanting magazine “The Economist” says it is a problem, that’s sad).

One doesn’t need an up-armored Bearcat or a REAL military vehicle made for war, MRAPs (that seemingly are being handled out like candy for any LE group that asks) and a squad of LEO that are indistinguishable from my son’s 101st Airborne squad other than the latter was in Multicam uniforms and the LEOs are in all black.  Remember Boston – DHS acted just like [Obama’s] army – have we now legigitimized a national police force that we never should have?

The above observations aside, Instapundit has a snippet that tends to support the latter part of this post’s title than the former (emphasis mine):

Do you drive a car in the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area? According to the L.A. Police Department and L.A. Sheriff’s Department, your car is part of a vast criminal investigation.

Right – we are all guilty ahead of any proof – or crime.  ALL of us.  Period.

The agencies took a novel approach in the briefs they filed in EFF and the ACLU of Southern California’s California Public Records Act lawsuit seeking a week’s worth of Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) data. They have argued that “All [license plate] data is investigatory.” The fact that it may never be associated with a specific crime doesn’t matter.

The implication here is “not to worry!  You’ll be guilty of something in the future so we are just being pro-active to make sure we have the evidence.”  Sorry but this IS a change of THE basic premise of American jurisprudence: you are innocent until proven guilty.  This says “guilty already – we just don’t have enough data to convict you…yet”.

This argument is completely counter to our criminal justice system, in which we assume law enforcement will not conduct an investigation unless there are some indication of criminal activity. In fact, the Fourth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution exactly to prevent law enforcement from conducting mass, suspicionless investigations under “general warrants” that targeted no specific person or place and never expired.

ALPR systems operate in just this way. The cameras are not triggered by any suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; instead, they automatically and indiscriminately photograph all license plates (and cars) that come into view. This happens without an officer targeting a specific vehicle and without any level of criminal suspicion. The ALPR system immediately extracts the key data from the image—the plate number and time, date and location where it was captured—and runs that data against various hotlists. At the instant the plate is photographed not even the computer system itself—let alone the officer in the squad car—knows whether the plate is linked to criminal activity.

Taken to an extreme, the agencies’ arguments would allow law enforcement to conduct around-the-clock surveillance on every aspect of our lives and store those records indefinitely on the off-chance they may aid in solving a crime at some previously undetermined date in the future.

As Glen ends “Well, that’s the dream”.  Look, everyone wants to do a great job and wants to the tools in place to do it.  Police are not immune to this same want.  The problem is NOT the technology but the lack of the question of “Is this Constitutional, both letter AND spirit?”.  One of the Supreme Court’s worst decision, in this ordinary schlub’s humble opinion was that ONLY the Supreme’s are responsible for and capable of determining what is Constitutional and what is not.  And what we see now amongst the bureaucracy and the Legislative and Executive branches is a “who cares?” attitude – let the Judicial branch sort it out but until then we’ll try to get away with as much as possible until we are told to stop.  Instead, we ALL should be asking, especially our legislators and the bureaucrats who should be executing the laws they create, is this Constitutional?  Does this fit in with the spirit on which this country was founded?

Fortunately, I believe, with the rise of the TEA Party movement, ordinary people (in their uneasiness of where this country is heading) started to look at their history and their Foundational document  (without the whole OVERburden of legal decisions) of  and their plain language.  In doing so, they are realizing that “safety and security” are not an even swap for Freedom and Liberty while the Ruling Class is trying to drive us in that former direction.  The Ruling Class wants the control – the Country Class wants them to have no part of it.

NH’s House of Representatives made the right and Constitutional decision to dump the multiple requests to implement this programs here in the State.  Bravo for that, and bravo to the support of the underlying principle that we are innocent until a crime HAS been commetted AND that evidence should be collected only at that time (and not climbing in to be a future Minority Report).

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