This article was originally published by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead at The Rutherford Institute.
“If you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you.”—Officer with the Los Angeles Police Department
Police violence has not lessened.
Police shootings have not abated.
Police reforms have largely failed.
In fact, according to the latest research, police violence kills three people a day.
Despite all of this, President Biden wants to throw more money at America’s police forces.
Biden’s $30 billion “Fund the Police” program, a signature part of his administration’s $5.8 trillion budget proposal, aims to expand law enforcement and so-called crime prevention at taxpayer expense.
Essentially, Biden wants to fight gun violence with more gun violence.
What Biden is really looking to do is score points with voters and police unions. Hence, Biden’s political push-back against a call by activists to “defund the police,” would pay for state and local governments to hire more cops, double the funding for community policing, bring on 300 new deputy marshals, staff gun-trafficking strike forces, and investigations into gun-dealer compliance, prosecute hate crimes, and purchase more police body cameras.
The problem, as far as I can tell, is not that police agencies lack money or cops on the beat. Indeed, as Jamelle Bouie writes in the New York Times, “there is no pressing, national need for greater police funding. If anything, police departments and their allies have skillfully used anxiety over ‘defund’ to successfully lobby for even larger budgets, despite the striking inability of many police departments to solve crimes and clear murders.”
As much as Biden and the police unions want us to believe that more police funding will translate to a decrease in violent crime, research shows there is no real correlation between crime rates and police budgets.
While the “Defund the Police” movement was misguided in their messaging (it was never about stripping police of their funding; rather, it was a call for greater accountability, better training, and overall reform), Biden’s push to expand funding for the police without any assurance of significant reforms in place could well encourage further police brutality.
The unfortunate reality we must come to terms with is that America is overrun with militarized cops—vigilantes with a badge—who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”
It doesn’t matter where you live—big city or small town—it’s the same scenario being played out over and over again in which government agents, hyped up on their own authority and the power of their uniform, ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry.
These warrior cops, who have been trained to act as judge, jury, and executioner in their interactions with the public and believe the lives (and rights) of police should be valued more than citizens, are increasingly outnumbering the good cops, who take seriously their oath of office to serve and protect their fellow citizens, uphold the Constitution, and maintain the peace.
Indeed, if you ask police and their enablers what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with law enforcement, they will tell you to comply, cooperate, obey, not resist, not argue, not make threatening gestures or statements, avoid sudden movements, and submit to a search of their person and belongings during encounters with the police.
In other words, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the right, it doesn’t matter if a cop is in the wrong, it doesn’t matter if you’re being treated with less than the respect you deserve: if you want to emerge from a police encounter with your life and body intact, then you’d better comply, submit, obey orders, respect authority and generally do whatever a cop tells you to do.
In this way, the old police motto to “protect and serve” has become “comply or die.”
This is the unfortunate, misguided, perverse message that has been beaten, shot, tasered, and slammed into our collective consciousness over the past few decades, and it has taken root.
This is how we have gone from a nation of laws—where the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and respect as the next person (in principle, at least)—to a nation of law enforcers (revenue collectors with weapons) who treat “we the people” like suspects and criminals.
As a result, Americans as young as 4 years old are being leg shackled, handcuffed, tasered, and held at gunpoint for not being quiet, not being orderly, and just being childlike—i.e., not being compliant enough.
Americans as old as 95 are being beaten, shot, and killed for questioning an order, hesitating in the face of a directive, and mistaking a policeman crashing through their door for a criminal breaking into their home—i.e., not being submissive enough.
And Americans of every age and skin color are continuing to die at the hands of a government that sees itself as judge, jury, and executioner over a populace that have been pre-judged and found guilty, stripped of their rights, and left to suffer at the hands of government agents trained to respond with the utmost degree of violence.
At a time when growing numbers of unarmed people have been shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety, even the most benign encounters with police can have fatal consequences.
The problem, as one reporter rightly concluded, is “not that life has gotten that much more dangerous, it’s that authorities have chosen to respond to even innocent situations as if they were in a warzone.”
Worse, militarized police increasingly pose a risk to anyone undergoing a mental health crisis or with special needs whose disabilities may not be immediately apparent or require more finesse than the typical freeze-or-I’ll-shoot tactics employed by America’s police forces. Indeed, disabled individuals make up a third to half of all people killed by law enforcement officers. (People of color are three times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts.)
If you’re black and disabled, you’re even more vulnerable.
Specifically, what we’re dealing with today is a skewed shoot-to-kill mindset in which police, trained to view themselves as warriors or soldiers in a war, whether against drugs, or terror, or crime, must “get” the bad guys—i.e., anyone who is a potential target—before the bad guys get them.
This nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat has all but guaranteed that unarmed Americans will keep dying at the hands of militarized police.
Making matters worse, when these officers, who have long since ceased to be peace officers, violate their oaths by bullying, beating, tasering, shooting, and killing their employers—the taxpayers to whom they owe their allegiance—they are rarely given more than a slap on the hands before resuming their patrols.
This lawlessness on the part of law enforcement, an unmistakable characteristic of a police state, is made possible in large part by police unions which routinely oppose civilian review boards and resist the placement of names and badge numbers on officer uniforms; police agencies that abide by the Blue Code of Silence, the quiet understanding among police that they should not implicate their colleagues for their crimes and misconduct; prosecutors who treat police offenses with greater leniency than civilian offenses; courts that sanction police wrongdoing in the name of security; and legislatures that enhance the power, reach and arsenal of the police, and a citizenry that fails to hold its government accountable to the rule of law.
Indeed, not only are cops protected from most charges of wrongdoing—whether it’s shooting unarmed citizens (including children and old people), raping and abusing young women, falsifying police reports, trafficking drugs, or soliciting sex with minors—but even on the rare occasions when they are fired for misconduct, it’s only a matter of time before they get re-hired again.
Much of the “credit” for shielding these rogue cops goes to influential police unions and laws providing for qualified immunity, police contracts that “provide a shield of protection to officers accused of misdeeds and erect barriers to residents complaining of abuse,” state and federal laws that allow police to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing, and rampant cronyism among government bureaucrats.
It’s happening all across the country.
This is no longer a debate over good cops and bad cops.
It’s a power struggle between police officers who rank their personal safety above everyone else’s and police officers who understand that their jobs are to serve and protect; between police trained to shoot to kill and police trained to resolve situations peacefully; most of all, it’s between police who believe the law is on their side and police who know that they will be held to account for their actions under the same law as everyone else.
Unfortunately, more and more police are being trained to view themselves as distinct from the citizenry, to view their authority as superior to the citizenry, and to view their lives as more precious than those of their citizen counterparts. Instead of being taught to see themselves as mediators and peacemakers whose lethal weapons are to be used as a last resort, they are being drilled into acting like gunmen with killer instincts who shoot to kill rather than merely incapacitate.
Even so, the answer is not to de-fund the police.
What we really need to do is de-fang the police: de-militarize, de-weaponize, and focus on de-escalation tactics, better training, and accountability.
We’ve allowed the government to create an alternate reality in which freedom is secondary to security, and the rights of the citizenry are less important than the authority of the government.
The longer we wait to burst the bubble on this false chimera, the harder it will be to return to a time when police were public servants and freedom actually meant something, and the greater the risks to both police officers and the rest of the citizenry.
The police state wants the us vs. them dichotomy. It wants us to turn each other in, distrust each other, and be at each other’s throats, while it continues amassing power. It wants police officers who act like the military and citizens who cower in fear. It wants a suspect society. It wants us to play by its rules instead of holding it accountable to the rule of law.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, something must be done and soon.
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.” ― No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority
Free your mind. A slave asks if it’s legal. A free human asks if it’s right. Is it right (moral) to steal the fruits of one’s labor (slavery) to employ the punishers/enFORCEers (police) if someone disobeys the master (government)?
Meanwhile black violence kills probably over 100 people a day. Morons texting and driving probably more. Pharmacuticals even more. Medical malpractice even more. So what’s your point again?
Well said my friend!
I am not forced to pay for the things you mentioned. I am forced to pay the bloated salaries of the snowflake cops if I want their services or not.
I can defend my self and my family against black thugs. Not so against the gang of thugs in blue.
Defund and disarm the cops. They have been at war with the American people for decades now.
As for your 100 people a day killed by blacks, there are only 67 murders a day committed by all races.
Now run along and lick some cop boots you anti American piece of trash.
The main point was “We’ve allowed the government to create an alternate reality in which freedom is secondary to security, and the rights of the citizenry are less important than the authority of the government.”
Did you miss this?
Some of us do not want to live in a police state, regardless of how many deaths may occur from other genocidal methods. For instance, we the people can choose whether to submit to a medical doctor’s “treatment,” but we have no say in interactions with thug cops in a police state. Something seriously needs to change here. .
Very good points. I disagree strongly with this article because it is exaggerating police violence and ignoring far greater violence in the civilian population.
The police have to be tough because:
1) They encounter a heavily armed population
2) We have never had such a large population of people with serious mental health disorders whacked out of their minds on drugs
3) We have never had so many jacked up on race hate and imbued with the notion they can do whatever they like because of the color of their skin
4) We have never had so many organised crime gangs who are heavily armed
5) We have never had so many militant Muslims who are also heavily armed
The police do a tough job and need the public to have their backs.
Right on! Every point you mentioned is true. Besides which, most of those shot by police are serial, violent criminals whose presence will not be missed, as they are a dead weight on society.
While I am not in favor of these ‘de-fund the police’ movements – and I do believe that cops do serve a valid function in our society – but, at the same time, I am not one of these blind idiots who believe that cops are all Saintly creatures and who can walk on water.
Frank mentions that the USA has never before had such a huge percentage of people who suffer from one or more forms of mental illness – well, I contend that these cases of mental illness are also rampant and widespread within the ranks of our law enforcement agencies, as well. We see examples of this on a daily basis – cops beating the snot out of grannies alongside the road for some trivial reason, multiple cops ganging up on someone who they have handcuffed and proned out on the sidewalk and taking turns beating them with their nightsticks and fighting with each other for the best angle to stomp them in their gonads.
Or, how many youtube videos have we seen where some 235lb male cop will have some 115 lb teenage girl in an interrogation room – knowing full well that they are being recorded on video – and the cop will snatch the girl by her hair and start banging her head against the wall? And, what about the thousands of news stories we see about cops deciding to shoot people’s dogs – even when they are on a chain or behind a fence, because the dog barked at the cop and made the cop pee his panties?
My attitude toward cops can be summed up:
Cops are to be tolerated, because they are a necessary evil; without them, criminals would soon rule the streets.
Cops are to be avoided by law abiding citizens because they are NOT our friends and they are not affable and friendly versions of Sheriff Andy Taylor.
Cops work for the politicians, not for the citizens, even though we pay their salaries and subsidize their benefits. Politicians are inherently evil and dishonest and not to be trusted, hence, since Cops take their orders from politicians – they, by default, inherit the scorn and distrust we harbor for politicians.
One last comment. Applicants for law enforcement positions are usually required to be tested for indications of psychopathic tendencies. In decades past, these tests were used to weed out applicants who showed these kinds of tendencies. I am convinced that these tests are now being used to determine which applicants have psychopathic tendencies and those who do, are now being deliberately hired.
Our politicians want the citizenry to be terrified of law enforcement thuggery and they’ve discovered the best way to intimidate the people is to staff up police departments with psychopaths.
@Tucker,
I agree with everything you said. The few that would be considered the “ good ones” have left and we are now stuck with the rest.
Times have changed and now that we have cell phone video, dash cams and body cams we can clearly see that the majority are lying pieces of crap.
I live in a county where the cops are famous for their aggressiveness and even when they are caught lying, suppressing evidence, charging innocent people, planting evidence, you name it, they double down- never admitting to anything and everyone keeps their jobs while the city pays out big to the wronged. They are for the most part ego-driven little people who like to show how insecure they are by asserting their power.
Everything in and around my suv is taped for my safety. I can cover my own ass and would be very hesitant to call them for anything. I’m a law abiding citizen but if anything the last two years have taught me is that we are on our own.
This was the point moron:
“We’ve allowed the government to create an alternate reality in which freedom is secondary to security, and the rights of the citizenry are less important than the authority of the government.”
Fertilizer giant warns RAIL carriers now HALTING fertilizer shipments
in USA during spring planting season, engineered food collapse now accelerating.
Good article at naturalnews. Blatant elimination of the food supply. Better get ready quick. Halting shipments of DEF diesel fluid too. Doesn’t get any more in your face than this…
They wouldn’t have interreacted with the Police if they weren’t breaking the law, and acted like D*&^head. Stupid is as stupid does. Check their rap sheet. 10 pages or better. Shit happens to those that desire shit. Live by breaking the law die by breaking the law. That’s just natures way.
Aim Small Miss Small
Hey Sgt. Good to see ya! Stop by more often.
Victimless crimes and counting coup against the civilian are not examples of natural law.
That would depend on what the definition of a victimless crime is.
Is there a chapter and verse?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup
They’re playing sports with you.
How about those eight Marseilles elementary school boys, Dale?
Did they deserve to be strip searched?
I take it Sgt is probably from one of the thugs un blue organizations not the military. People interact with the police without doing anything often iv had it happen several times. Since your at minimum a bootlicker tell me this, why don’t the police automatically release body cam footage instead of trying to suppress it or give it up? After all as the thugs in blue say if you have nothing to hide why not?
I’ll respect them if they do the same. If they want to violate my constitutional rights or hurt me I’ll already have my rifle handy anyway and we can dance. I cannot tell good ones from bad any longer and I don’t want to but I’ll use my training and experience acquired through uncle Sam to explain to them that not only I can die, but so can they. Lots are gonna screw us for the paycheck from their overlords. Some of us will screw back and keep on coming to their door if the reason is valid enough. Peace can be had if you leave us alone
Really good article. On point. Rarely seen perspective in the shtf community. Thank you.
“Police Violence”? As in: Police self-preservation from violent, armed thugs, or idiots with outstanding warrants that choose to violently escalate their attempted arrest by grabbing the officer’s weapons or vital bodily areas?
99.9% of these are justified shootings of lawless thugs. Point a gun or hold up a knife to a cop, guess what you deserve to die. Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
That’s all?
This is why Indiana passed constitutional carry. Now the cops can legally assume that everyone is carrying a firearm. When they pull someone over that is a political enemy of the State they can just walk up to the car and execute them. They just have to say in their defense “I thought the person was reaching for a gun and I feared for my life.”
Remember there are no good cops, because if there were, there would be no bad cops.
Ban police and replace them with social workers.
That will make you safe from police violence.
Another option might be to just cooperate with the police and don’t try to kill or injure them if they find need to detain you.
Oh yeah, a federalized police force in local communities will be the enemy.
Exactly M – Local police, no matter how corrupt or incompetent, are sooner or later answerable to the locals at some point. Fed police would be heavily politicized, and answerable only to some bureaucracy faraway in washdc. And, fed police would employ fed laws and policies policies to supersede local laws and policies. Fed police would in effect be an occupation force.
Which is why I call them the “ Thin Blue LIE “…
Ya done gone full retard.
Never go full retard
See ya shtf.
Yep Obozo wants a federal police force! However police departments across the nation are at all time morale Lowes and employment numbers.
Who would want to be a cop now, put your life on the line and politicians don’t have your back and use you for there own political left wing gain!
Maybe they plan on hiring those invaders pouring in at 15k a month or more from the southern border!
this is 2nd such article in short order here. I’ve come to this site from very many years back when it was a prepper site. This style of writing is more activism than eye opener or info for preps.
The last puff piece like this recently here again tried to spin a boilerplate dindu fail into yet another George Floyd, Freddie Grey or saint skittles.
This one too fails to see what’s under the hood (or even who’s in the hood). Import masses of unassimilable people and by necessity you end up with a police state. This has been known here for eons, so what is this kind of writing doing here? Better off over at The Atlantic or Salon, or has the wind changed here in editorial direction?
Early in the CV-19 situation, the subject of law enforcement reform was covered tangentially in a series of podcasts by Chris Martenson, of Peak Prosperity, and in associated forum traffic. The community sentiment was that the following steps are needed for true LE reform.
1. Shut down the Section 1033 program. When I searched for what LEAs in Pima County AZ got through 1033 I discovered that two of the dominant transfers at the time were brassieres and bayonets. ?!?!
2. Remove qualified immunity. You can’t be “a little bit out of compliance” any more than you can be “a little bit pregnant.”
3. Require all LEOs to carry liability insurance. Many professional occupations have long required it (e.g., insurance agents, financial services agents, medical personnel), and not all of them often deal with instantaneous life-or-death matters, so why not LEOs? Misbehavior invites higher premiums, which adversely impacts a rogue LEO’s ability to get or keep a law enforcement position.
4. Successful lawsuits against an *individual officer* would then be paid out of their liability insurance.
5. Successful lawsuits against an *employing entity* should be paid out of LEO retirement funds. (If their retirement income is threatened, retired LEOs will not hesitate to throw a rogue officer under the bus.)
6. Shut down seizure and forfeiture actions. This situation is an obvious positive feedback loop and a conflict of interest.
Just a few neurons cooking off….
Most Conservatives:
Governement employees are untrustworthy, unfirable, and use their powers the violate your rights.
Most Conservatives also:
Governement employees when given a gun, a badge, the ability to violate your rights at will, and the right to end your life without consequence even when you are unarmed. are AUTOMATICALLY HEROES.
For every percent of the population that are selfish and corrupt, that sake percent is equal or higher in cops.
The two people from my highschool that went into law enforcement were bullies in high school. Now I am sure most copa are decent people, but if 10% are bullies/terrified and pull a gun over a taser on unarmed people for no justifiable reason, it disgusts.
However they are not racist, the cops I know personally are good people, but they avoid black neighborhoods as they don’t believe they can legimately defend themselves there without risking their career and/or freedom.
Cops are as fallible as all other people, but their government-job just so happens to enable to point guns at people without consequence – and in situations where 8f any of us did the same thing, that alone would put us in jail. Also they can pull the trigger on situations that will result 100% of the normal populace would end up in jail.
I always think about the white guy in the hotel hallway begging, whole lying face down on the ground, “please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me, I’m not armed”… the cop then executes him and the only weapon he had was his pesticide gear for exterminate pests in the hotel. The officer was cleared by the courts because, a “reasonable officer” would have also feared for his safety…
…but the victim was white, so no one cared. The cop brought his personal AR15 emblazoned a custom logo saying something similar to “YOU’RE DEAD”.
Cops are human, and the job attracts people who want to have unrestricted power over people. That is an undeniable fact. They are not automatic heroes.
@ thelastcaucasiin,
You are absolutely right!
I remember when I started questioning the police and their behavior when everyone was backing the blue, and my opinions weren’t super popular. They say the have them most dangerous job but they absolutely do not. I see them escalate minor infractions all the time.
Actually, it’s not the police departments, it’s the judges who let them get away with it.
Most don’t seem to understand the basic truth “all power derives from the barrel of a gun”. Judges almost carte blanch ignore problem police officers because the corrupt in the ranks are the easiest to get favors from. Without corrupt, unaccountable, judges and DA’s being held criminally accountable personally, nothing else will ever change.
The justice system now is literally free wheeling with the “laws” being more closely related to whatever the judge’s opinion is. Even the fact that we are assumed guilty and must prove our innocence should cause a major pause.
The police really haven’t been the good guys for more than 25 years, it’s just that the average citizen is finally noticing it.
If you’re a “good” cop, and you’re not fighting the corruption in your department every single day, you’re not a good cop, you’re at best complicit. The thin blue line is actually the ENTIRE justice system as a whole. Government protects itself first, always.
Anyone ever wonder why it seems that almost all judges are very wealthy, even though their salaries aren’t high? Maybe that should be investigated by the intrepid here. Don’t blame me when the remaining delusion is forcefully ripped from you.
We have no rights, and that isn’t ever going to improve under the current system.
Great points. I’d like to add that our society (in general) seems to suffer from some type of mass psychosis. Look at the awful behavior around our nation – the cops have to deal with that every day & some idiot-judge frees the culprit before the arrest-report is finished. Comply with the police, try to survive the arrest, then use the media & legal system to search for justice. The system is broken, but those that prevail help the whole community.