It’s Hard For Collection Agencies With Badges and Guns To Gain Our Respect – Or Trust

(Fred Weinberg) – If you are a cop or a law enforcement supporter, you’re probably not going to like what I’m about to say.

Similarly, if you are a race baiting poverty pimp—or even a member of the ACLU tilting to the left, you’re probably not going to like it either.

Which probably means I have it about right.

• Point 1)    Only animals burn down their own house.

• Point 2)    We have way too much “law and order” and it is just like totally unfettered capitalism—sooner or later it runs off the rails. It has run off the rails.

In short, everybody has dirt on their skirts and needs to be ashamed of themselves.

Let’s start with what the Department of Justice discovered about the Ferguson, MO police department, municipal court systems and judicial structure.

They were running the oldest government scam in the book since middle-class people were able to buy cars.  Using traffic tickets and arrest warrants to enforce those tickets as a money-raising scheme.  A hidden tax if you will.  And those “taxes” were clearly levied disproportionately on the black community. It was Boss Hogg in suburban St. Louis.

So, when a large black kid charges a police officer and that officer acts—well within his training and normal policies—to protect himself, how much sympathy do you think there was for the police officer among the citizens of Ferguson, two-thirds of whom are black?

When most of us in the post-WWII baby boom generation were growing up, the police officers on the street were our friends.  Our parents wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Somewhere along the way, law enforcement has morphed into a collection agency.

And that was the beginning of a lack of respect for the police.

The difference between the white community and the black community is that the black community doesn’t have generations of trust in the police built up and, in many cases, as much to lose.  So, when a police officer make an outrageous demand of a white person, that person is likely to first comply and then go to his lawyer.  Many times, a black person will not do the same thing under the same circumstances.

But, make no mistake, it’s not like law enforcement just leaves white folks alone.

If you are white and don’t believe that, ask yourself to answer honestly what your reaction was the last time you were driving and a squad car was in your rear view mirror.

Now do you get it?

This is the oldest experiment in self-governing democracy still operating.

Most of the compliance we have with the law is voluntary.

It is based on respect for the law, the system of government and your fellow man.

It is grounded in the reality that you cannot put a policeman on every corner and behind every car.

It is also based on freedom and liberty. Dictatorships only work when people allow themselves to be ruled.

When the government overreaches, law enforcement, by definition, becomes more oppressive.  And there is no place that the government has overreached as far as in turning our law enforcement agencies into collection agencies.

If you don’t believe that, look at the inventories of the inmates in most urban county lockups.  You will discover that a large percentage are there because of monetary reasons—usually that they didn’t have enough money to pay a fine which was set by a government official making enough to afford such a fine or couldn’t make bail.

And, we in the United States have always been proud to tell you that we do not have debtors’ prisons.

All of that said, the way to fix this is not by shooting the messenger.

We do have a system which can be changed.  All it would have taken in the case of Ferguson, would have been those race baiting poverty pimps organizing the vote, changing the city’s leadership and throwing out the current administration.

That should have been, given the numbers, relatively easy.  But how could Al Sharpton profit from that?

Decisions are made by those who show up.

If you don’t participate in the decision making, don’t show up with a gun and expect to make a positive change.

And, by the way, that is the case for both sides of this issue.

Mr. Weinberg is publisher of the Penny Press. Get to know more about him by visiting www.PennyPresslv.com.