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Well, it happened again. No sooner had one Texas police officer been convicted of murdering an innocent citizen in his own home than it happened again. The police officer just convicted was a Dallas policewoman; this latest police officer, who is now charged with murdering an innocent citizen—once again, in her own home—was a Fort Worth policeman. Why are so many big-city cops murdering American citizens?
Before we go on, the Dallas policewoman who murdered an innocent man in his own home was sentenced to ten years in prison. TEN YEARS FOR MURDER! There are thousands of people in prison who have been sentenced to that length of prison time for tax evasion. Ask yourself: If you walked into another person’s home and shot and killed the resident, how many years do you think you would be serving? Most of us would be serving 25 years to life for the very same crime that this policewoman committed. But, because she was a policewoman, she received a sentence of only ten years. Talk about a miscarriage of justice!
Continuing, I think that it’s important to distinguish big-city police officers from those in small and mid-size communities, which are the vast majority of peace officers in the country. It is rare to hear of small-town cops being involved in suspicious—or outright murderous—shootings. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
In rural or small-town America, police officers tend to be more connected to the people, more supportive of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and less inclined to be trigger-happy. That’s why when we look at national averages we rightly observe that most police officers are good-hearted, liberty-loving and peaceful. However, when we add big-city cops to the equation, we get a much different picture.
It would be easy at this point to excuse the increasing trigger-happy tendencies of big-city cops by saying they deal with more violent criminals than officers in small towns. But how does that change the Constitution? How does that change the sworn duty of police officers to uphold the rule of law? How does that change the Natural Law given to every human being that instinctively respects the life and liberties of our fellow man? Plus, the size of the various police agencies is directly commensurate to the size of the general population. In fact, in many cases, small-town police officers will be assigned to cover a much larger geographical area (thus dealing with potential violent situations all by themselves much more frequently than big-city cops, who are rarely alone) and overall population than their big-city counterparts.
Furthermore, the amount of crime per population is generally consistent nationwide—with the glaring exception that communities with strict gun control tend to have much higher amounts of violent crime. So, why are so many big-city cops murdering American citizens?
The story in Fort Worth is the case of police officers being called by a concerned neighbor regarding the welfare of a lady who the neighbor observed had an outside door ajar (but the storm door was closed) late at night. The neighbor simply asked the police department to check on her to make sure she was alright. Sounds simple and reasonable, right? Not these days.
Instead of knocking on the door to see if the homeowner was okay, a Fort Worth police officer who responded to the call started circling the house with a flashlight and looking in the windows. Hearing and seeing someone prowling around the backyard in the middle of the night, the homeowner—a 28-year-old black lady who was playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew—went to the window to see what was going on. When she did, the police officer screamed out, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” At the same moment, he shot the woman through the window and killed her in front of the 8-year-old. He never once identified himself as a police officer. Yep! The officer was white. Egad! Again!
The neighbor lamented, “If I had never dialed the police department, she’d still be alive.”
Immediately following the killing, the Fort Worth Police Department released a photo of a firearm in the bedroom where the woman was killed. Many people saw this as an attempt to justify the shooting. (Remember, Texas is known to be a “gun-friendly” State. Obviously, the woman had every right to have a gun in her home and to have that gun on her person when she realized there was a prowler outside her window in the middle of the night. But, once again, this is a big-city police department we are talking about.) However, the details of the shooting clearly showed that NOTHING justified the shooting, and the officer was rightly charged with murder.
How could this happen? The bigger question is: How can things like this CONTINUE to happen?
Almost 1,000 people are shot and killed by police officers each year. Over 4,600 people have been killed by policemen since January 1, 2015. So far this year (as of October 14), 709 people have been killed by law enforcement officers. To be sure, most of these shootings are no doubt justified. But the stark reality (a reality that most Americans are unwilling to accept) is that a sizeable percentage—and a growing percentage—of these shootings are extremely suspicious, and in some cases, trigger-happy police officers literally got by with murder.
While police shootings have escalated exponentially over the past few decades, violent crime itself is at its lowest point in decades. This disparity should not exist. Something is wrong!
Police departments and district attorneys are often extremely hesitant to charge police officers with crimes and, in fact, often allow dishonest officers to stay on the job. And juries are extremely hesitant to convict police officers. Sadly, too, the police officers themselves are oftentimes unwilling to reveal the crimes of their partners and fellow officers, and sometimes they even help guilty officers cover up those crimes. It is not uncommon for big-city policemen to carry “throw down” guns to plant on victims in the event that they wrongfully shoot an innocent unarmed person.
Again, this seems to almost exclusively happen in big-city police departments. Why?
First of all, rural areas and small-town communities rely more heavily on sheriff’s offices rather than police departments. And while there are anti-gun, anti-Constitution, pro-police-state sheriffs around the country, the vast majority of sheriffs tend to be liberty-loving, law-abiding men and women who value the Constitution and hold their deputies to a standard upholding those values.
Chiefs of police, however, are a different story. Of course, there are pro-Second Amendment, pro-liberty chiefs of police, but a sizeable percentage of police chiefs (especially in larger cities) are anti-Second Amendment and pro-police state. The obvious difference is that sheriffs are elected directly by the people, whereas police chiefs are appointed by city councils—many of whom carry anti-Second Amendment propensities.
As an aside, I actually subscribe to the point of view that police departments (NOT sheriff’s offices) are mostly unconstitutional. But it is useless to belabor that point. (I strongly urge readers to obtain my friend Dr. Edwin Vieira Jr.’s masterful and exhaustive CD-ROM study The Sword And The Sovereignty.)
Secondly, the training that big-city police officers often receive is more and more applied with a military/police state mentality. Officers are often trained to fear and even loathe armed citizens. Firearms by themselves are deemed to be “criminal” as is any citizen who possesses them. Officers often develop attitudes of resentment against constitutional liberties such as the 2nd and 4th Amendments.
Over the years, I have received scores of responses to my columns from law enforcement personnel in large cities. And I can honestly tell you that the vast majority of those responses are hateful and vindictive toward the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They have expressed intense opinions that the 2nd and 4th Amendments need to be expunged. I realize it’s difficult for people—including police officers—in small-town America to believe what I just said, but it is absolutely true.
Consider this fact: Every policeman who is willing to obey orders to confiscate the arms of citizens in the 17 states that have enacted “red flag” gun confiscation laws has violated his or her oath to the Constitution. In the State of Florida alone, almost 2,500 “red flag” orders have been issued (including against children and the elderly) since the law was enacted in March of 2018 (that comes to almost 5 “red flag” gun confiscation orders every day). That means 2,500 police officers (assuming each order was issued in a different district) violated their oath to the Constitution. You can be sure that the vast majority of these gun confiscation orders were issued in major metropolitan areas. See what I mean?
Thirdly, big-city police officers are often taught that anything they do is lawful because “they are the law,” and it’s up to the judges to worry about the Constitution. You’d be surprised if you knew how many big-city cops have never even read the Constitution and Bill of Rights, because they have never been taught that the Constitution is important. If anything, the Constitution is often downplayed and disparaged by law enforcement instructors.
Fourthly, big-city police officers are often taught to believe that their lives are more valuable than the lives of ordinary citizens. They might not say it in exactly those terms, but that is the essence of the instruction. They are taught that in order to “protect” the citizenry, they must stay alive—and are, therefore, not obligated to engage active shooters, for example, if they believe they have a chance of not surviving the encounter.
On this point, the American people are being hoodwinked beyond belief by anti-gun media and law enforcement. On the one hand, we citizens are told that we should not be allowed to defend ourselves with our own arms, that we must depend on law enforcement to protect us, while law enforcement officers are being instructed that it is not their job to trade their life for the citizen’s.
Indeed, the courts have consistently ruled that it is NOT the responsibility of a police officer to protect the life of a citizen and that it is the responsibility of the citizen to protect himself or herself—hence the 2nd Amendment. Read the report in that link above and note what fired Broward County Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson said about his failure to confront the Parkland shooter. He said that it was not cowardice that made him act the way he did but his TRAINING. I’m confident he was truthful about that.
But the American people are being led to believe that they must not defend themselves but let law enforcement protect them. The result of this propaganda is an unarmed, unprotected citizenry (especially in big cities) that is left to the mercy of merciless killers. It’s insane!
We hear police spokesmen talk a lot about the necessity of the officers coming home at the end of the shift. No one argues that point. But what about the necessity of the citizen to come home at the end of his or her day? One life is as valuable as the other. And as we have seen by the cop shootings in Dallas and Fort Worth, the fact that one is safely and peacefully in his or her home is no guarantee that the long arm of murderous cops will not reach them. And if you think it’s bad now, just wait until “red flag” laws are instituted nationwide.
Fifthly, a growing number of big-city police agencies are subjecting their officers to the training and instruction of a foreign government: the Israeli military. And in this column, Paul Craig Roberts does a terrific job of explaining the connection between Israeli police procedures and the rise of police killings in America. He also connects the dots in showing how police are often institutionalized (and, again, I believe this to be the case in big cities) into an underlying racism in which American blacks are seen in the same light as Israelis see Palestinians.
Remember, Israel is a military police/apartheid state. It has no Constitution or Bill of Rights. The Israeli military performs law enforcement duties in Israel under rules of engagement that relate to WAR. For U.S. police personnel to be subjected to such training is antithetical to everything that America is built upon. Such training has absolutely no place in U.S. law enforcement. The American people are not “enemy combatants.” But the Israeli training of U.S. law enforcement is taking place more and more frequently.
Most conservatives will dismiss my concerns by accusing me of focusing on a few “bad apples” that don’t represent the majority. While the “bad apple” argument is certainly legitimate to some degree, these conservatives are missing the obvious fact that America has an institutional law enforcement problem. As this report asks, Why Are So Many “Bad Apple” Police Officers Bad In The Same Way?
I keep track of much of the ongoing emergence of an American police state here. Read it for yourself.
If you take this column to mean that I am “anti-cop,” you could not be more wrong. I deeply respect the office of policeman, highway patrolman and sheriff’s deputy. I have never been disrespectful to a peace officer. I have made scores of friendships with peace officers. I have relatives who are peace officers. Two sheriff’s deputies live in my neighborhood. When I lived in Escambia County, Florida, Sheriff Ron McNesby made me an honorary deputy sheriff in appreciation for my friendship with his office and for being a leader in our community for law and order and constitutional government.
Years ago, I won a city police lieutenant to Christ, and we became good friends. I rode with him and several of his officers as they patrolled the city. On one occasion, an officer called in an attempted suicide in progress. When the lieutenant and I arrived at the scene, he asked if I would go talk to the distressed man. I’m happy to say I was able to convince the man to not kill himself. I could tell many other stories of my time with policemen and sheriff’s deputies. I’m anything but “anti-cop.”
But there is a HUGE difference between constitutional law enforcement that upholds the Bill of Rights and a burgeoning Police State that destroys it. And, tragically for freedom, the latter is what many big-city police agencies are currently becoming.
Our Founding Fathers feared criminal government far more than criminal citizens. So should we.
Plus, true freedom-loving police officers who value the Constitution and Bill of Rights will absolutely agree with the point of this column—even if they believe that I’m off on a specific detail or two. (They would doubtless draw conclusions based on their personal experiences, while I draw conclusions based on reports and studies nationwide.) The ones who would take umbrage with this column are demonstrating that they are indeed the ones I’m talking about.
P.S. My constitutional attorney son delivered an extremely important video address entitled Police Contact: How To Respond.
Tim has worked as both a Florida State Attorney (called District Attorney in many states) in which he prosecuted hundreds of both felony and misdemeanor cases. He has also worked in the Montana Public Defender's Office and as a private criminal defense attorney. So, Tim has seen both sides of the judicial system up close and personal.
This presentation focuses directly on the "Dos and Don'ts" of dealing with police contacts. Tim discusses how to—and how not to—react to police traffic stops and other contacts. He shows citizens their rights and duties under the Constitution and why it is so important that citizens understand these rights. This material will help citizens preserve liberty in their communities, and it will help policemen be better peace officers. Plus, what you learn might keep you out of jail—or worse.
Find Tim’s presentation Police Contact: How To Respond here.
© Chuck Baldwin
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