re: #290 JustMyView

It’s kind of fascinating that conservatives who are generally concerned about excessive power of the state find it to be OK for the police to arrest people for, essentially, the crime of annoying them. Is giving people time to reflect really something we want the police to do?

It’s about controlling the situation. For the officers, public’s and the arrestees safety, both short term and long term. When someone escalates and doesn’t follow officers instructions, you don’t know where it will it, so it’s best to control the situation. If that takes cuffing the person and tossing them in the back of the cruiser to cool down fine.

Public safety and order depend, on people during a incident on following officers instructions, time for a debate isn’t during the middle, and the street is not a court room.

If every Tom, Dick and Gates thinks they have the right to disregard an officers instructions we have anarchy.

All Gates had to was say, “Officer this is my home, here is my ID, thank you for responding to a report of someone breaking in, Thank you.”

Instead his first reaction is to launch into a tirade on racial profiling, and the President did essentially the same thing.

I’ve seen it my self on a number of occasion, doing ride alongs, and commercial vehicle enforcement. Stop a vehicle for proper cause, approach the driver, who turns out to be black (next time you are on the road, look 10 cars ahead and tell me the drivers race), and the first thing out of their mouth is, “you stopped me because I’m black!”