Sacrificing for Social Order
A previous writer commented on the fact that the law and in particular civil rights law is worthless for making government officials responsible for their incompetence. However, I submit that such may not be a bad thing but may in fact be necessary to control government power through the only way that this world allows for such control: by sacrificing some of the powerless to this thirst for power.
As any experienced trial attorney knows, there is very little difference between most police officers and the criminals that they arrest. They are essentially the same type of person: however, at some point in their life, the person who becomes a police officer decided that it was easier and safer to be in the service of the government with a guaranteed pension at the end of 20 years of bullying people. The best way by which the modern concept of uniformed and military- type police departments solves crime is by taking potential criminals and giving them a salaried government job and a pension to look forward to if they restrict their criminal activity to the type approved by the government — in short by making potential criminals police officers, crime is significantly reduced.
The unfortunate reality is that the most efficient and idealistic type of police force is the type that patrolled Germany and Italy in the mid-Twentieth Century making it possible for Germany to take on the world for several years of war and for Italy for a short amount of time to actually run in an organized and efficient manner. Is the price for maintaining civilian control of a militaristic-type police force the sacrificing of some poor and other outcasts to be the victims of police inefficiency and abuse? Is it possible that unsolved murders of the poor and powerless and high crime areas are the price that we pay so that the vast majority of people can live with little or no crime while also free of concern that the police will be turning their community into a police state? I submit that it may be so.
There are over 200 unsolved murders in the poor areas of Boston in the last few years. If this were true of an area such as Weston or Newton, we would be already a police state with military checkpoints and uniformed police routinely knocking down doors to solve these crimes — constitutional safeguards would mean nothing to the politically correct who live in such places if their physical safety were required to be put at risk to protect those safeguards. Such sacrifice for the “Constitution” is not required of them, but of those too poor, too ignorant, or whatever to live in Newton, Weston, or the like. In such cases, constitutional safeguards must be maintained at the price of physical safety. If the police are so well-trained and efficient that they start solving crime in poor areas, they will have nothing to do and will then look to expand their efficient police powers to other areas — freedom would then be in danger of being lost by everyone.
Maybe academics in law school should start to statistically and rationally discuss and study these issues — Not! They are too busy doing their mental masturbation of writing mindless, ivory tower law review articles.