2 DPD Officers Fired Over Beating Are Reinstated

[Byte Stryke]

Here is an interesting paper on that very subject: http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm

I am sympathetic to this view, but I think of course it would need to be updated due to the march of technology, the need to have people with at least a modicum of training in forensics go over crime scenes and access to labs, etc.

However, I genuinely believe these to be solvable problems. I don't have any such confidence in these problems (which seem to be a regular occurance in departments across the nation, not just DPD) that give rise to bad cops acting inappropriately can be solved without a huge overhaul of the entire system police operate under. What bothers so much isn't that the particular police officers acted inappropriately, but the tremendous amount of leeway and benefit of the doubt they get. I think good, honest cops get a minimum benefit from all this, but bad cops get a ton of benefit.

The system bothers me a tremendous amount more than the existence of bad cops.

I think the entire concept of police stems from collectivist premises, as well - the idea that there is a special class of people endowed by whatever power, God, Genes or whatever you wish, as superior beings who do not need to play by the same rules. These are our enlightened rulers, who know better than us how to run our own lives, or the police, who are better equipped to judge when the use of force is appropriate and so need not be held to the same standards as typical citizens.

Keeping the peace and fighting crime is properly a function of the entire community, not a special elite held separate and above citizens at large. I don't care to accuse any particular cop or police in general as corrupt; but I do think the system they operate under is.

A good first step, I think, would be to simultaneously overhaul the legal system to make frivolous lawsuits harder on the claimant vs the defendant (ie loser pays,) to protect cops from people suing them only to bankrupt them (hell, to protect everyone from that,) and to make police officers personally responsible for any misconduct vs being granted immunity as members of a special class of people.

I like that paper and would have to agree that I too share that viewpoint.
in particular:

RESISTING ARREST

Nothing illustrates the modern disparity between the rights and powers of police and citizen as much as the modern law of resisting arrest. At the time of the nation's founding, any citizen was privileged to resist arrest if, for example, probable cause for arrest did not exist or the arresting person could not produce a valid arrest warrant where one was needed.92 As recently as one hundred years ago, but with a tone that seems as if from some other, more distant age, the United States Supreme Court held that it was permissible (or at least defensible) to shoot an officer who displays a gun with intent to commit a warrantless arrest based on insufficient cause.93 Officers who executed an arrest without proper warrant were themselves considered trespassers, and any trespassee had a right to violently resist (or even assault and batter) an officer to evade such arrest.94

Well into the twentieth century, violent resistance was considered a lawful remedy for Fourth Amendment violations.95 Even third-party intermeddlers were privileged to forcibly liberate wrongly arrested persons from unlawful custody.96 The doctrine of non-resistance against unlawful government action was harshly condemned at the constitutional conventions of the 1780s, and both the Maryland and New Hampshire constitutions contained provisions denouncing nonresistance as "absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind."97

By the 1980s, however, many if not most states had (1) eliminated the common law right of resistance,98 (2) criminalized the resistance of any officer acting in his official capacity,99 (3) eliminated the requirement that an arresting officer present his warrant at the scene,100 and (4) drastically decreased the number and types of arrests for which a warrant is required.101 Although some state courts have balked at this march toward efficiency in favor of the state,102 none require the level of protection known to the Framers.103

But the right to resist unlawful arrest can be considered a constitutional one. It stems from the right of every person to his bodily integrity and liberty of movement, among the most fundamental of all rights.104 Substantive due process principles require that the government interfere with such a right only to further a compelling state interest105 — and the power to arrest the citizenry unlawfully can hardly be characterized as a compelling state interest.106 Thus, the advent of professional policing has endangered important rights of the American people

Oddly enough, I have even shared this same premise in my Sig line well before this thread