Criminals with guns and badges: It wouldn't be prudent. | Daily readers of newspapers note that police officers (and prosecutors and judges) are routinely arrested and convicted for crimes such as drunk driving, drugged-driving, hit and run, rape, drug dealing, arson, car theft, burglery, armed robbery, assault and murder, to include cop-killings. Yes, it is hard to believe, but government employees really are human. As New York City Detective Frank Serpico testified to the Knapp Commission, "10% of cops are honest, 10% are dishonest, and 80% wish they were honest." America's most-famous detective also noted that 30,000 New York City cops loved to say, "The public, what does the fucking public know?" By Detective Serpico's estimate, that means only 100,000 out of America's 1-million cops are "honest", which is certainly a scary thought. In government prisons drug use and rape are rampant (290,000 prison rapes every year, according to the government), and contribute greatly to the spread of deadly AIDS when those infected and "rehabilitated" prisoners are returned to society. Many police departments do NOT run criminal background checks on police applicants. In Tennessee, the legislature passed a law PROHIBITING criminal background checks on big-city police chiefs and sheriffs, perhaps to counter reports that the state led the nation with dozens of sheriffs convicted for drug dealing. If cops can't police themselves, and are impotent to even protect citizens under the strictest of "protection", why does society allow itself to be policed by criminals? Who's going to cop the cops?
Even "good" people working for the government can wreck havoc upon society. In their book Corporate and Governmental Deviance, professors M. David Erman and Richard J. Lundman describe how large groups of people working towards a common goal become different than the individuals composing those groups. Individuals become anonymous and replaceable, no matter their position on the organization's ladder. Turnover is not a problem since recruitment and training are well-organized. Individuals "are told what to do and usually do what they are told," even when it goes against their personal morals. Everyone has a boss to fear, and most everyone fears loss of a job and loss of financial security. Traffic cops answer to a commanding officer, who answers to a politician, who answers to whatever corporate powers financed his or her election by 2% to 10% of the total citizens. Erman and Lundman write: "Tasks... are typically divided into small parts, and no single person can complete any job alone. Moreover, people are generally not encouraged or rewarded for doing other than their assigned jobs or for undertaking actions independent of their supervisors.... [I]t is possible for individuals... to do their jobs well and still produce a deviant action." Police officers routinely fail to personally believe in the laws that they enforce on others. In the case of traffic cops, such individuals routinely arrest other drivers for the same "crimes" that cops routinely commit. Likewise, vice cops extort free sex from "working women and men" ("rape"), narc cops use and sell illegal narcotics, burglery cops loot homes and businesses while "investigating" burgleries, etc.
In the book, Police on Patrol -- The Other Side of the Story, by Linda Kleinschmidt, anonymous police officers are quoted on a variety of topics. Although the individual cops were speaking for themselves, perhaps with a touch of dark humor thrown in, their opinions probably reflect the general views of hundreds of thousands of fellow cops. For example:
- "Police are a necessary evil."
- "We are the only profession that goes looking for trouble."
- "As a regular law-abiding citizen you have no legal rights until you break the law. Then you have all the rights in the world."
- In the chapter, "Create Your Own Law," choices include: "Stupidity: [citizens] having [a] terminal case of their head up their ass."
- When descibing the infamous "police mentality" that citizens wonder about, one cop was brutally honest: "An officer goes through three different stages while working on the force: first, they're gung-ho, then they become very cynical, then they get to the point where I am -- you just don't give a shit."
Pinto Madness | For a corporate example of deviance, in its greed to produce an economical car in the 1970s, Ford Motor Company produced 3-MILLION exploding Pintos and Mustangs. The professors explain: "Nobody at Ford, including [president Lee] Iacocca, ordered that a car with a serious design defect be built. Instead, Mr. Iaccoca perceived a problem, devised a solution, established a goal and operating rules, and delegated to others the day-to-day responsibility for design, building and testing. The unintended result of these routine procedures was an unsafe product." Today, traffic safety still suffers an abyssimal standard of engineering, as General Motors discovered when a jury spanked them with a $5-billion verdict in 1999. GM tried to blame its exploding vehicles on drunk drivers, but the jury didn't buy it. (Appellate judges were expected to show their contempt of the jury by nullifying the amount of punishment -- and thus nullifying GM's incentive to make its vehicles safer.) Every year, about 400,000 vehicles burn up, according to the Department of Transportation, killing about 3,000 people every year. Fire-proof rubber-bladder fuel cells, as used in aviation and auto racing, could be added to road vehicles at a cost of $5 each, according to Ford. The Pinto could have been fixed with a strip of plastic for ONE-DOLLAR each, saving thousands of lives and tens-of-thousands of burns, but Lee Iacocca alleged that "safety doesn't sell." So Ford felt a human life was worth less than 1-dollar. As an anonymous Ford engineer explained: "We don't talk about it much. It isn't a popular subject. I've never seen safety on the agenda.... I really don't think the company wants American consumers to start thinking too much about safety -- for fear they might demand it, I suppose." No criminal arrests were made in either of these murderous examples of corporate criminality, even though such laws exist. As Mark Dowie wrote in Mother Jones, "There probably isn't a car on the road without a safety defect known to its manufacturer.... One wonders how long the Ford Motor Company would continue to market lethal cars were Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca serving 20-year terms in Leavenworth for consumer homicide." When Ford finally got the Pinto certified as "safe" in America, it installed the $1 plastic part, but had to use a Canadian Pinto for the crash test since Canada required "stricter" rear-end crash regulations. No recall was made of the millions of exploding cars already on the road.
Governmental and corporate deviance go through (hopefully) three stages: (1) the deviance is "introduced" through authorization or commission; (2) the deviance "takes on a life of its own" and becomes "institutionalized"; and (3) "termination" happens only after the public learns about the deviance. The profs say: "Courageous insiders may blow the whistle and alert the rest of us, or suspicious outsiders may take a careful look and reveal what they have found."
Crimes in the suites are are typically overlooked by the public, since the "news" and entertainment media sensationalize crime in the streets. Doctors Erman and Lundman point out that "When people think about... theft, for example, the probable image is of being burglerized, not of being the victim of illegal corporate price fixing. When they think about being physically injured, most people imagine being physically assaulted, perhaps by someone high on or desperate for drugs, not about dying in the crash of a plane caused by a known safety defect. And when people act to protect their privacy, they are much more likely to install a dead-bolt lock than to insist on meaningful restraints on the local police, FBI or the CIA." Judging by the whistleblowing books written by cops and the occasional news reports, citizens ought to beware their local traffic police, since those police routinely commit both predatory crimes (theft, rape and murder) and institutionalized crimes (highway robbery with illegal quotas that injure highway safety). This does not even count damage caused by police tasked with "criminalized" social ills that are more effectively and cost-effectively cured via social and medical services, such as "addictions", malnutrition, poverty, homelessness and mental illnesses.
Ordinary cops murdered hundreds of thousands of German citizens. | People too-quickly forget that ORDINARY German police officers murdered hundreds of thousands of German citizens for the Nazi Party during World War II, even bringing their families to watch the slaughter. This included so-called traffic police. That wasn't very long ago, and not so very far away. And German genetics and attitudes permeate American society today. Taking a look at the typical American traffic cop conjures up the image of Nazism to millions of Americans, and the uniforms are not dissimilar. Anyone who attempts to "reason" with a traffic cop quickly realizes the mental defect of the typical American cop, who considers any such effort to be "contempt of cop" and "resisting arrest". Such "concrete thinking" by police officers is a common symptom of mental illness, according to mental health professionals. President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) warned, "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism, ownership of the government by the individual, by a group, or any controlling private power." Democrat Roosevelt overthrew America's first national Prohibition, as well as defeating American fascists in Wall Street and in the banking industries. He almost lived long enough to witness his defeat of Adolf Hitler. Yes, it's politically correct and even patriotic to use the "F" word to describe corruption and greed in America, as America's most-loved president proved. At least the Germans learned their lesson in personal freedom with Autobahns that have no speed limits -- just limits on incompetent drivers -- and they enjoy highway safety that's 15% better than America's (despite the Germans having inferior roads and having inferior vehicle-safety regulations).
America has fared no better, especially when one finally learns the secret history of American genocide of 10-million Native Americans and 50-million kidnapped African American slaves. Katharine Graham, chairman of the board of The
Washington Post Company, explains why we Americans aren't taught such history in government schools and why the media fails to correct our ignorance of important "trivia": "There are some things the general public does not
need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy
flourishes when the government can take legitimate
steps to keep its secrets and when the press can
decide whether to print what it knows." U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark dittoed: "The United States is not nearly so concerned that its acts
be kept secret from its intended victims as it is that the
American people not know of them." Philip Purpura, in his college textbook for cops, Criminal Justice, An Introduction, wrote: "[D]uring the 1800s, with police underpaid and untrained, police work, with all
its opportunities for extortion and bribes, led to corruption. The police of many
cities earned a reputation for being ruffians who constantly guzzled free beer.
Burlesque sketches typified the cop as a bully or villain." This is American "law enforcement" the professor is referring to. It is no better today, to say the least. Detective Vincent Murano, NYPD Internal Affairs,
said in his audiotape Cop Hunter: "My job was to root out and investigate police corruption, and criminals who've
infiltrated the police department.... Sure I went after other policemen. After
other policemen that were criminals who happened to join the police
department. There were drug dealers, murderers, rapists. These are the types
of policemen that I went after. The general public should know there are real,
serious criminals in the police department. I don't believe that it should be
hidden. Let the policemen know that someone they worked with was a
murderer, or a drug dealer." Yes, individuals hired by our government are actually capable of illegal activities. Believe it or not.
Space Shuttle Challenger: Americans die every day from government screw ups and corporate greed. | Police aren't the only culprits. Corporations can commit mass murder on a scale that would make even a Nazi blush, "earning" a handsome profit at the same time -- while their oblivious employees try to feel good for living the American dream and while Wall Street investors applaud their initiative. News journalists routinely censor useful and life-saving news in order please their superiors, who themselves seek to maximize advertising profits (and don't flinch at publishing advertising lies to do it). Educators routinely censor life-saving, legal and historical knowledge from their ignorant students, who then grow up to be gullible and ingnorant citizens (but not necessarily stupid citizens). Transportation engineers may be decent folk, but cave in to corporate pressures. As one B.F. Goodrich employee confessed after designing a potentially deadly mechanical system for an over-budget military contract, "I know now how a whore feels, because that's exactly what I've become, an engineering whore." Engineers who try desperately to improve transportation safety are crushed by their bureaucratic "superiors", as occurred to Morton Thiokol employee Roger Boisjoly who repeatedly warned of danger in NASA's space shuttle program back in 1985. He even begged help from the Society of Automotive Engineers, which supervises all transportation "safety". One year later, the result was the spectacular fireworks of Challenger's shredded astronauts dying -- and silently screaming -- on live T.V. Being awarded the Prize for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility
from the American Association for the Advancement of Science was small consolation for a heart-broken Boisjoly. Challenger's disaster is a thoroughly documented example of an engineering fuck up. Such government-caused calamities happen to Americans every day. Thanks to corrupted governmental regulations, approximately 100 drivers die every day.
No one wants to be a dummy. | As Ralph Nader says, such loss of the human element produces a lifeless organizational entity that is incapable of caring about human (or any other) life. As this author says, in the case of "law enforcement", cops volunteer for organizational slavery and arrested citizens become unwilling slaves to the prison-industrial complex. Literally everyone is a criminal since normal human behavior is prohibited with endless Prohibitions on non-predatory "crimes". Cops know their power, and routinely brag that everyone breaks the law every time he or she gets behind the wheel.
Uncle Thug wants YOUR money! | California Highway Patrolman David W. Kelley, author of How to Talk Your Way Out of a Traffic Ticket -- Plus, How to Win in Court, justifies his book: "It is. . . impossible to obey all traffic laws." Attorney Mel Leiding, author of How to Fight Your Traffic Ticket and Win! advises, "With 1000's of pages of traffic laws it's inevitable that even safe drivers will eventually get stopped. In fact every time you or I drive we will technically break at least one traffic law." Secret laws are not the only secret weapon used by a corrupt government during Prohibition. Now alleged technology and junk science is utilized to mystify and sedate its victims. Dale Smith and John Tomerlin, authors of Beating the Radar Rap, note that, "[M]odern traffic radar no longer relies on direct measurement of frequency changes to determine target speed." In plain language, police radar does NOT measure speed, it measures distance. That's why police radar can measure trees "traveling" at literally 86 MPH, and can double or even triple a driver's real speed (Florida vs. Aquilera). The Radio Association Defending Airwaves Rights (RADAR) says: "Speed traps are twentieth-century's version of highway robbery and there is no need to roll over and play dead. You have the right to defend yourself in a court of law, where the burden of proof lies with the officer pointing that radar gun at you" (from Case Dismissed II). So-called blood-alcohol testing machinery can prove equally erroneous, and are subject to the inherent failures of any other electro-mechanical gizmo. Attorneys William Head and Reese Joye, authors of 101 Ways to Avoid a Drunk Driving Conviction, report that "the Smith and Wesson Breathalizer® 1000 machine was found to be inaccurate in 69% of the NHTSA tests." Most so-called breath-alcohol testors don't even measure alcohol, so many chemicals can give a false reading. According to Alcohol and Highway Safety: A Report to the Congress from August 1968, even with a perfectly functioning breath- or blood-alcohol test machine with perfect human operation, a driver can show an alleged alcohol reading TEN TIMES HIGHER than the real alcohol level while driving. With police using their guns, junk-science machines and arcane laws to subdue the American people, governmental and corporate criminals can prosper. "Drug kingpins" can't hold a candle to deadly governmental and corporate "kingpins", who are protected and empowered by police armies who are slaves to illegal quotas and feudal power struggles with other "law-enforcement" fiefdoms.
These police armies are most effective in harassing, taxing, assaulting and murdering responsible American citizens. Police are ineffective against predatory crimes, since these are not profitable to investigate. Also, police employ career criminals as "informants", and police "must" look the other way when their "employees" commit millions of crimes. Police give $1-BILLION to these criminals every decade. Utilizing career criminals as "civil-service" employees saves police from having to work too hard at detective work.
Lifesaving skid school costs less than one traffic ticket, and is infinitely better value for one's tax dollar. | The Departments of "Safety" -- as violent police armies are euphamistically called -- are also tasked with driver "skill certification", while government schools are entrusted with novice driver "education". While police use guns to "certify" drivers and schools build tens of thousands stick-and-ball athletic stadiums to "educate" driver skills (the only "gladiatorial sport" that 99.99% of students will "play" as adults), only postgraduate driver education teaches drivers how to drive with safety and competance. Where are the "driver stadiums"? Even colleges participating in the Collegiate Racing League don't build stadiums and allow only engineering students to play the sport. In Sweden, every driver in that nation is required to get "skid training" before he or she is licensed to drive. In America, many race car and performance driving schools make use of such training to educate drivers in simple emergency techniques. Every government high school ought to do the same. "Skid pads" made slippery with soapy water allow low-tech skid training, while simple hydraulic castor-wheeled frames can be attatched to the underside of any type of car, and controlled by the instructor sitting in the passenger seat. Skid training can be done in any asphalt parking lot at low speed and with infinitely greater safety that any school sport. What does America get from the government instead? Recklessly driving police who kill drivers, passengers and innocent bystanders and who literally steal billions of dollars every year from American motorists while at the same time censoring emergency safety skills from the public. A single large city can literally have thousands of crashed police vehicles every year. Madness.
As Dr. Daniel Moynihan, Assistant Secretary of Labor and member of the U.S. Senate, said: "The typical bureau of motor vehicles is filled with deservedly
low-paid clerks and run by an assortment of genial "pols" with
utterly no training or interest in traffic safety."
When it comes to traffic police "detectives" tasked with "solving" the automobile crash "crimes", zero investigative effort goes into the real causes of crash injuries and fatalities. As Ralph Nader wrote 35 years ago in Unsafe at any Speed -- The Designed-In Dangers Of The American Automobile: "The law embodies an invincible rationale: "He had an accident; therefore he violated the law." No distinction is made between responsibility for the accident and responsibility for the injury due to unsafe vehicle design or construction. Manslaughter charges are filed routinely against drivers; there is yet to be recorded any similar charges against the manufacturers for vehicle defects.... A typical police traffic accident report has a list of "contributing circumstances" which the officer is to check off: "Speed too fast; failed to yield right of way; drove left of center; improper overtaking; passed stop sign; ran traffic signal; improper lights; had been drinking; and other improper driving." ...Thus the driver is heir to all the dangers created by the automobile designers, not only in terms of bodily injury but also in terms of legal exposure. The result of this drastic imbalance in the law is the very poor quality of accident investigation in this country.... Consequently, enforcement of the law brings no pressure on the car makers to increase the safety of their vehicles." Nader's little book single-handedly embarassed General Motors to redesign the Corvair's Volkswagon suspension that caused it to roll upside down at 30 MPH, replacing it with a Ferrai-type suspension (but it still gassed people to death with carbon monoxide). Out of the 350,000 or so highway deaths every decade (out of 20-million total American deaths per decade), Nader estimates that about 250,000 are preventable by the manufacturers alone. No, traffic police are not America's salvation from death and destruction on the "King's" ticket-toll highways. Until average Americans learn this lesson, nothing will ever change except the few safety improvements that evolve at the slowest rate the manufacturers can get away with -- "Trickle-Down" traffic safety. Citizens at the driving "table" can settle for safety crumbs or demand a full-course of highway safety.
Henry David Thoreau wrote in his Essay on Resistance to Civil Government (Civil Disobedience) that good citizens MUST have "undue respect for law". Thoreau wrote: "The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones, and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others -- as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders -- serve the state chiefly with their heads; and as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A very few -- as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men -- serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be 'clay'…." Edmund Burke warned that, "The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.... The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Americans are currently under the schizophrenic delusions that we live without alcohol Prohibition and that a Drink-Driving War is a necessity, and that we both demand civil liberties while denying civil liberties to all citizens accused of Prohibition "crimes".
The world is a corrupt place. Has been for thousands of years. Sure it hurts. For sure we all wish it wasn't so. Get over it. Shake it off. Take your intelligence to the next level. As one of America's founding fathers, Thomas Paine, observed: "Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." Fear not, gentle citizen, for is is possible to survive the government's Prohibitions with just a little "top secret" knowledge. With extra effort, it is even possible to profit from the government's corruption. Lawyers, ex-cops and private detectives can earn an honest living from such a cottage industry.
When it comes to drink-driving laws, virtually nobody knows how to be law-abiding -- including cops, lawyers, judges and politicians -- since that has been legislated to be impossible. Such individuals cannot see the "Prohibition" forest for all the "Drunk-Driver" trees. This is an ancient problem of so-called civilization. President Thomas Jefferson could have been describing today's alcohol Prohibition rules: "It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow." Any person who walks into a law library instantly realizes the impossibility of being a "law-abiding" citizen -- one's only prayer is to study whatever areas of the law he or she uses the most. For the average citizen, that means motor-vehicle law.
Like lemmings running over the cliff... | We do require government and police, unfortunately. The trick is learning how to keep them human. Either we can figure out how to make government responsive to the will of the people, or we must overthrow it -- or continue to suffer the deadly consequences of inaction. America's first Republican president (and taverns owner) Abraham Lincoln encouraged: "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better." Bloody revolution would be possible with police and military leadership simply enforcing current laws at the elite levels. Our nation is founded upon that principle (as are all other nations).
Fortunately, American Justice really does provide a peaceful solution, if only 10% of American citizens were to assert their intelligence and legal rights in a court of law. This would bring the Prohibition courts to gridlock, necessitating emergency legislative meetings to eliminate Prohibition, thus forcing the courts to concentrate on real crimes. Failing that, Americans can still survive and prosper during Prohibition. As a U.S. Air Force Inspector General and staff judge advocate (fancy title for "government prosecuting lawyer") said to this author: "If you want to play with the big boys, you have to know how to play the game." Sure, that was a threat at the time, but time proved who had the biggest spheres, and who got the offer of promotion from the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon and who got the axe. As FDR proclaimed, "[T]he only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." Sure, it can be terrifying to imagine one's self in a drink-driving traffic detention or in a drink-driving courtroom situation. Fear of the unknown is the greatest fear. Knowledge is the simple cure. It is a running joke among politicians that the citizens of any nation "get exactly the kind of government they deserve". What kind of government do YOU feel that you deserve? For those who wish to "play the game" of being a "free" U.S. citizen in the Y2K, read on.
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