Legalese by Bethany Stephens
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Defund the police?
The latest war cries of those looting and burning American cities is that they want to “defund the police”. That’s an incredibly stupid idea.
First, crime will not stop this side of Heaven. The rioters are doing an excellent job of proving that fact. So who exactly would we call for help if the police were “defunded”? The only option would be to privatize security in every town, city and state.
Second, if we were to privatize security, We the People, would forfeit all of our Constitutional protections. The Constitution serves to protect We the People from governmental abuses. Police are part of the executive branch of the government and are therefore restrained by the Constitution. If we privatize security, then those private officers would not represent the government and would not have to honor our Constitutional protections.
So what exactly would we lose?
We’d lose all of our Miranda rights.
We’d lose the right to remain silent. Right now, if you tell an officer you want to remain silent or want an attorney, they must immediately stop the interrogation. If you told a private officer that you wished to remain silent or wanted a lawyer, not only could the interrogation continue unimpeded, they could beat you with rubber hoses or bags of oranges for even asking.
We’d lose the right to have an attorney present during questioning. Right now, if an attorney shows up for you while you are being questioned and asks to see you, the police must let you speak to that attorney. However, if you are being questioned by a private officer, they could lock your attorney outside and never even tell you that your attorney had come by.
We’d lose the right to have interrogations conducted in a civil manner. Police officers cannot interrogate anyone for hours on end without significant breaks. Private officers could question you for days and deny you bathroom breaks, sleep, water, or even a chair to sit on during those days of non-stop interrogation.
We’d lose the right to be free from illegal searches. Private officers could kick your door in with or without probable cause and search your house and/or arrest you on a whim.
With private officers, it would only be a very short matter of time before our security system would look like North Korea’s or Iran’s or China’s.
It’s obvious that the Murderer in Minnesota didn’t care about Mr. Floyd’s Constitutional protections, but the vast majority of police officers in this nation are good men and women who truly want to serve and protect us and they are willing to operate inside of the legal limits placed on them… even though they may grumble about those limits from time to time.
The problems in Minnesota also seems, as we get more information, to be systemic. There was a report of the Murderer in Minnesota stopping a white woman with her toddler and baby in the backseat of her car. He pulled her out of her car and put her in the backseat of his car without ever uttering a word while her children screamed in terror. Eventually, he let her go after mumbling something about a car they were looking for. Just like kneeling on a man’s neck isn’t standard operating procedure anywhere, neither is taking anyone from her car in without telling her why she was being stopped. When I heard about it, I personally wondered if maybe he’d planned to sexually assault her, but was prevented from doing so by too many witnesses or something like that. Unfortunately, that’s not the only bad report coming out of that police department.
Imagine how much worse the Murderer in Minnesota’s behavior would have been if he’d been a private officer without any constraints on him at all. How many more people would he have murdered in cold blood?
Perhaps Minnesota’s police departments need a severe and swift overhaul, but we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Personally, I’d prefer to take my chances with any police officer in America any day of the week, than with a private officer who didn’t have to honor any of my Constitutional protections… and wouldn’t be able to be held accountable for their violations.
Disclaimer: Nothing in this or any other article should be construed as legal advice or as creating an attorney-client relationship. If you need help, please call me at 940-937-4050.
