Loki

on an aside... just out of curiosity, what does 911 have to do with this discussion? the police have existed and performed the same duties befure, during and after the event.


Back to the original question, you forget one thing. It is optional to listen to a police officer. By this i mean you have an option as per your reaction. You can listen to him, or ignore him, which may of course lead to further actions being taken against you. What im saying though is that it is not compulsory to listen to the police.

I can liken this to perhaps a doctor. Lets say that a doctor has been seeing a particular patient for a while now, and tells the patient that, in the interest of his health, either give up the booze, or give up any chance of living beyond 50. The patient has two choices, to ignore him and subsequently die before he reaches 50, or to listen to the doctor, or the experts advice and live beyond 50.


The point im trying to get across here, is that perhaps you should think of a police officer as an expert on the law, more than an enforcer. The law may be defined as socially acceptable behaviour as decided by the people (i know you'll hate this comment, but i can think of no other way of putting it).

And the laws cover everyone. No individual or group should be above the law, not even the police. For instance, lets consider the following encounter:


Two police officers are walking down the road, when they see Mr X. Now, they know that Mr X is a dodgy bastard, so they go up to him and start making small talk. Mr X responds to the small talk, but suddenly one of the officers crash tackle him and starts searching Mr X. Lo and Behold, they find a huge cache of drugs in his pockets.

The police officers, being experts in the law, know that drug carrying has been deemed illegal, so they throw Mr X into jail. Mr X however, believes that the arrest they made was illegal. So, Mr X decides to use one of the laws made to protect him, and contacts a lawyer, or another expert on the law.

The lawyer researches the relevant information, and comes to the conclusion that Mr X was in fact correct, and that its illegal to arrest someone based on searches made without warrants.

So, the lawyer knows Mr X was right, but the lawyer still has to convince two other experts of the law about this as well, namely, the judge, and the jury.

The case comes to court, and the lawyer successfully demonstrates that Mr X was illegally arrested. The judge and the jury agree with the lawyer, and the case is thrown out, and Mr X walks out scot free, even though he is guilty of another crime, because the procedures used by the police were, as it were, illegal. Chances are, the police would be reprimanded as well, for breaching the law.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the police are not better than us, and are just as restricted as us.