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Recently, you have probably read a spate of
justifiably angry Internet commentaries and watched some truly shocking and
sickening videos reporting on and recording the scandal of the
ever-increasing instances of senseless, sadistic rogue police brutality
throughout the United States. Being provided with a badge, a gun, and a
para-military uniform has apparently become a license for their holders to
run amok—intimidating, threatening, terrorizing, assaulting, even
killing innocent citizens. Disquietingly, most of the thuggish culprits in
the episodes that have received widespread publicity seem to have suffered
little or nothing in the way of punishment that fits their
wrongdoing—certainly nothing anywhere near the punishment mere
“civilians” would have received for the selfsame misbehavior.
There
are several reasons for this appalling situation.
First,
police forces seem strangely reluctant to purge from their ranks, on their
own initiatives and in thoroughgoing fashion, the brutal, the sadistic, the
semi-moronic, and the other degenerate creatures who somehow contrive to join
“the Force”—apparently, from the Dark Side—in order
to acquire badges and guns wherewith to lord their misbegotten
“authority” over other people, even unto killing them.
Out
of charity, one does not want to conclude that policemen in large numbers
lack sufficient personal honor, integrity, and sense of duty to act on their
own accord to clean out their own stables. Yet, the fact remains that
wielding the shovels would not require the labors of Hercules, because the
hard-core undesirables are relatively few, and surely are readily
identifiable (especially, after all, by police trained in the latest
techniques of “profiling,” reading aberrant facial expressions
and body language, and so on). So, after some notable examples were made
within the ranks—and, even better, within the higher echelons of
command—the problem would be largely attenuated, if not eliminated.
But, as far as is being reported, no such self-policing is apparently taking
place—or, if it is, it is being rapidly outpaced by new eruptions of rogue
police brutality. The adage “physician, heal thyself” is seldom
heeded among the police, even though nowhere else in society is its
application more needed. Crime seems to be unabated, even accelerating, among
the supposed crime-fighters themselves!
Second,
if personal honor, integrity, and sense of duty do not impel the police to
police themselves, they have little other incentive, because they earn few
institutional rewards for doing so and especially suffer even fewer
punishments for sitting on their hands. In the face of mounting
reports—documented with photographic evidence—of increasingly
revolting instances of rogue police brutality, one searches in vain for
numerous examples of systemic accountability swift, sure, and severe in
nature. Where are the well-publicized investigations, arrests, indictments,
prosecutions, convictions, and above all stiff sentences for the
perpetrators? For such bestial misbehavior, “civilians” would
already be behind bars. But, instead of dishonorable discharges and felony
convictions, all too many rogue policemen still tote their badges and guns,
looking to accost new victims.
Third,
the absence of strict, or even any, accountability is no accident. The only
plausible explanation for why these excesses are occurring simultaneously all
over the country—with ever-increasing frequency, intensity, animosity,
ferocity, and even perversity—and are going largely unpunished, is that
the Establishment wants things this way. The Establishment does not consider
these incidents to be abuses of office, but simply exercises of power. And
the more ordinary and widespread these incidents become, the better. Because,
simply put, the Establishment hates common Americans’ freedoms and
wants to eliminate them. And not only the freedoms, but common Americans
themselves, too, if they resist.
The
Establishment desires, encourages, facilitates, protects, and covers up rogue
police brutality—lawlessness under color of law by the supposed
enforcers of the law—because this official misbehavior separates the police
as a whole from the citizenry by the barrier of mutual animosity, and links
rogue policemen and the Establishment with the common bond of criminal
complicity.
If
rogue policemen are encouraged and empowered to oppress the citizenry with
physical violence, they will imagine themselves to be, not the people’s
servants, nor even the people’s social and political equals, but the
people’s absolute superiors—a “master class”the
members of which can do almost anything they want, as long as they are
careful to “follow orders” from above.
This
situation, of course, is inconsistent with the “democracy” the
Establishment keeps praising, and at odds with the “Republican Form of
Government” the Constitution guarantees to every State. But the
Establishment does not want “democracy,” in the sense of
political and social equality between public officials and common citizens,
let alone a “Republican Form of Government” in which We the
People are the sovereigns and public officials their servants. The
Establishment wants a “government” the powers of which derive,
not from the consent of the governed, but from the caprices of the governors.
It wants a “government” not limited to the “just
powers” to which the Declaration of Independence refers, but capable of
exercising all conceivable powers. A “government” with total
power over, but no accountability to, the people.
One
key method to achieve this result is to render as many policemen as possible
the Establishment’s willing tools. If rogue policemen are not punished
for their oppression of the general public, they—and others with
similar inclinations—naturally will be loyal to the Establishment that
protects them, not to the people they persecute. Granting immunity from
punishment is not just a reward the Establishment bestows for rogue
policemen’s past misbehavior, however, but also a means of inciting and
controlling the perpetrators thereafter. For once rogue policemen have
terrorized the citizenry, they find themselves estranged from the
community—even despised as enemies—and therefore have nowhere to
turn but to the Establishment. All too often, crossing over to the Dark Side
of the Force is a one-way street.
The
purpose of separating rogue police from the people and tying them to the
Establishment in what amount to criminal conspiracies to suppress civil
rights is to exercise extreme social control. That “the
government” does next to nothing about the brutality of its own
police—notwithstanding that such misbehavior occurs openly on a
widespread basis—engenders fear among the citizenry. Long continued, it
spawns a feeling of helplessness, which soon evolves into resignation and
apathy, which results in acquiescence in oppression and even the
psychopathological state of “identification with the aggressor.”
Persecution
of those who actually demand their rights—coupled with random crack-downs
on other, completely innocent people who somehow “step out of
line” or simply “talk back”—demonstrates that no one
is safe, and thereby deters dissent and opposition, let alone active
resistance. The very randomness, senselessness, vindictiveness, and
limitlessness of these lawless attacks—the lack of protection for the
citizenry—the victims’ inability to engage in self-defense
(usually mislabeled as “resisting arrest” or “obstructing
justice”)—and the unavailability of timely and meaningful redress
in the courts and legislatures pressure more and more people into sheepish
compliance with the three rules of contemporary socio-political
subordination: “Know your place!,” “Keep your mouth
shut!,” “Do as you are told!”
Except
in its frightening scope today, rogue police brutality is nothing new in
America. Years ago, in chronically dysfunctional cities such as New York,
heated demands for “citizens’ review boards” arose,
especially from minorities who believed—and not without good and
sufficient reasons—that they were being singled out for repressive
treatment. Such of these boards as now exist are not widely enough
operational to deal adequately with the current epidemic of rogue police violence.
And, at best, all such boards are only ad hoc, makeshift solutions to the
problem. There does exist, however, a better, because a constitutional,
answer—an answer that would be of unassailable authority, ubiquitous
applicability, and undoubtable efficacy. That answer is revitalization of
“the Militia of the several States.”
During
pre-constitutional times, no professional police forces existed in the
Colonies and independent States. Sheriffs, constables, and other minor
officials were few in number, limited in authority, and without much
assistance unless they called out the posse comitatus. The major institutions
for law enforcement and social protection, “settled and
regulated” by numerous statutes, were the Militia. These were supremely
powerful establishments, because they enrolled almost every able-bodied free
man in their communities from 16 to 60 years of age, and required them to be
fully armed with their own firearms, and to train on a regular basis.
Moreover, because of their composition, they were quintessentially
republican, and even democratic, institutions. No one worried about suffering
systematic, unredressable brutality from rogue Militia oppressing the
citizenry on behalf of corrupt special interests.
Today,
the same would be true. The only institutions the Constitution explicitly
recognizes with authority and responsibility “to execute the Laws of
the Union” are “the Militia of the several States.” No
sheriffs, constables, police forces, or other officials—with the
exception of the President of the United States, upon whom the Constitution
imposes the duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”—have
such, or even any, constitutional status. And the President is
“Commander in Chief * * * of the Militia of the several States, when
called into the actual Service of the United States”—which
plainly points to the forces he should employ to “take Care that the
Laws be faithfully executed.” Moreover, “well regulated
Militia” are the only establishments the Constitution recognizes as
“necessary to the security of a free State.” (Representative Ron
Paul, please take note.)
So,
on constitutional principle, State and Local police forces should be turned
into sub-units, or otherwise placed under the jurisdiction, of the
revitalized Militia. They would remain “professional” forces, in
that they would be paid for their work. They would retain distinctive uniforms
and exercise authority assigned specially to them. And, to the extent that
they performed their duties properly, they would be entitled to promote their
own unique esprit de corps. But they would always be subject to close
scrutiny by, would be responsible to, and would be controlled by We the
People directly.
This
arrangement would prevent, or at least minimize, the problem of rogue police
brutality.
For,
inasmuch as the Militia consist of We the People, they would never overlook,
tolerate, or excuse such brutalization of themselves, their families,
friends, neighbors, or co-workers.
This
arrangement would also guarantee real accountability, which requires
sanctions for misbehavior. Rogue policemen would find themselves subjected to
Militia discipline, which would be swift, sure, and severe. And rightly so.
No one needs to have the law more stringently executed against them than
those who have been entrusted with badges, guns, and police
powers—simply because they are in unique positions to misuse those powers;
they are exposed to strong temptations to do so; and they can inflict great,
even irremediable, damage on their fellow-citizens in a very short period of
time if not deterred and, when deterrence fails, punished.
Moreover,
Americans are now witnessing—and suffering from—what happens when
police forces are not subject to real accountability. Americans have been the
guinea pigs of the Establishment’s experiment with the creation of a
para-militarized police state, and are now all too often victimized by the
Frankenstein’s Monsters the Establishment has created and set at large.
Therefore, in the future, police accountability must be made a priority, as
matters of both individual self-defense and social survival.
So
here, patient readers, is yet another timely, compelling reason to revitalize
“the Militia of the several States.” Even the most persistent
advocate, however, tires of bringing so many owls to Athens. The need to
revitalize the Militia is so obvious, the benefits so self-evident, that
after a few iterations and examples the argument becomes trivial. But for
those nay-sayers who complain about the supposed difficulty of actually doing
it, one can only add that the task will be easy, compared to continuing to live—if
in the future common Americans who “step out of line” are even
allowed to live—under an increasingly manic and even maniacal
para-militarized police state.
Yet
the decisive question still remains: How many people have to be pushed
around, falsely arrested, beaten, tazered, or even gunned down in the streets
before enough common Americans finally take action to end this insanity once
and for all? The leashes with which to restrain the mad dogs you hold in your
own hands. You have
only to use them.
Edwin
Vieira
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