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More Rights Info
Jul. 9th, 2009 12:09 amIn addition to the videos from earlier, check this one out. It's from the ACLU and it goes specifically into what you should say and do in order to keep your fourth and fifth amendment rights intact when interacting with the police. Be polite, but do not let them see inside your house or vehicle any more than they can simply from you opening your door and exiting. Do not invite them inside-that's giving them consent to search.
I know there are those who would argue that if you have nothing to hide, you should just cooperate. This is wrong. We all need to stand up for our rights whenever possible. Our attempts to prove our innocence outside of a court of law can actually cause us to end up in trouble as police twist our words for whatever reason.
Are there good cops out there? Absolutely. However, they have a ton of power and we all know that power corrupts. Additionally, due to their jobs, many cops tend to see the worst in people because of dealing so frequently with those of varying levels of evilness and wrongdoing. My stepdad Bruce used to be a cop in a relatively small town that even now, despite the population boom it's experienced since then, is often listed among the safest cities of its size in the entire country. So even though he was working in a relatively crime free area full of good people, he quit because he didn't like what it was doing to him and what he saw it doing to other officers. On top of all that, given the extremely dangerous nature of the job, it's only natural for them to be more concerned with dominating and intimidating people in hopes of cowing the accused into not acting violently rather than preserving their rights.
When the Constitution was being written, some of the Founders argued against having a Bill of Rights, asserting that such God-given rights were self-evident and that if things were laid out specifically, that people would assume and act as if those were the /only/ rights a person had. Given how much the government and its agents assault our rights as laid out in the Bill of Rights, it's a very good thing it was written, otherwise all of our rights could be justified away easily. We all must stand up for every right we are granted. It's part of our responsibility as citizens of this country, because if we don't, we will lose those rights regardless of what's written in the Constitution. Just look at what's happening regarding gun laws and animal rights laws for examples.
I know there are those who would argue that if you have nothing to hide, you should just cooperate. This is wrong. We all need to stand up for our rights whenever possible. Our attempts to prove our innocence outside of a court of law can actually cause us to end up in trouble as police twist our words for whatever reason.
Are there good cops out there? Absolutely. However, they have a ton of power and we all know that power corrupts. Additionally, due to their jobs, many cops tend to see the worst in people because of dealing so frequently with those of varying levels of evilness and wrongdoing. My stepdad Bruce used to be a cop in a relatively small town that even now, despite the population boom it's experienced since then, is often listed among the safest cities of its size in the entire country. So even though he was working in a relatively crime free area full of good people, he quit because he didn't like what it was doing to him and what he saw it doing to other officers. On top of all that, given the extremely dangerous nature of the job, it's only natural for them to be more concerned with dominating and intimidating people in hopes of cowing the accused into not acting violently rather than preserving their rights.
When the Constitution was being written, some of the Founders argued against having a Bill of Rights, asserting that such God-given rights were self-evident and that if things were laid out specifically, that people would assume and act as if those were the /only/ rights a person had. Given how much the government and its agents assault our rights as laid out in the Bill of Rights, it's a very good thing it was written, otherwise all of our rights could be justified away easily. We all must stand up for every right we are granted. It's part of our responsibility as citizens of this country, because if we don't, we will lose those rights regardless of what's written in the Constitution. Just look at what's happening regarding gun laws and animal rights laws for examples.
