As a thought experiment, I will sometimes ask people what their first impression is when they see a police car (here, in Ontario, an O.P.P. vehicle).\u00a0 Almost invariably, the answer is \u2018fear\u2019.\u00a0 I find this curious, that we fear those who are deputed by the State to \u2018protect and serve\u2019, as indeed they should, for they are our employees, who should stand in harm\u2019s way when harm comes our way.<\/p>\n
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I think this fear has two principal causes: \u00a0The hyper-militarization of the police, and the growing extent of law to cover more and more of our daily lives.<\/p>\n
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Consider the first: \u00a0I would have no real problem with the police dressing and acting like Robocop if indeed a significant segment of the population were wreaking harm and havoc, and had to stopped by brute force, with the real danger of immediate and violent death, as we may witness daily in northern Iraq.<\/p>\n
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Most of us here in Canada have little cause for such militarized police protection; we are blessed to live rather tranquil lives (outside of certain urban locales, like Jane and Finch in TO).\u00a0 The murder rate in Canada, and the rate of violent crime in general, is lower than almost anywhere else in the world, with the exception perhaps of a few geriatric European socialist states like Denmark and Sweden. \u00a0Most of us, however, generally law-abiding citizens that we are, just want to get on with our daily lives, yet find ourselves living in a state of almost perpetual tension whenever a cop car drives by. \u00a0The police, in general, spend most of their time policing about 2% of the population, and the rest of it policing \u2018us\u2019, their employers.<\/p>\n
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The second problem, the growing extent of law to cover more and more of our daily actions, exacerbates the first. \u00a0Thomas Aquinas asks whether the law of the State should forbid all vices; when I ask my students this question, many respond with an \u2018of course!\u2019, not realizing that \u2018vice\u2019 implies any<\/em> deviation from the moral law.\u00a0 The State, of course, cannot possibly forbid every single ‘sin’, for the obvious reason that such a task would be impossible or at least far outreach the proper sphere of the State.\u00a0 Imagine a law against \u2018lustful thoughts\u2019 (although we may be getting close with some extreme sexual harassment lawsuits).\u00a0 What of cussing?\u00a0 (Although even here we have censorship laws in public broadcasting).\u00a0 Or of smoking in public? \u00a0This problem is even worse in the U.S., where the government department responsible for collecting student tuition debt apparently has its own S.W.A.T. team. \u00a0And don’t forget, that student debt is the only kind not open to being forgiven by declaring bankruptcy. \u00a0They will find you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The difficulty with the any law of the State is that the whole power of the State stands behind them (which include the capacity and right to inflict harmful and ultimately lethal punishment).\u00a0 Some things we do not want enforced by men (and, alas, now women) with 9mm semiautomatic SIG Sauer P226 handguns and bulletproof vests (just for starters; their arsenal includes far more than this). \u00a0Robocop should be reserved for situations that require, well, robocop.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One may recall the scene from the eponymous 1987 film, wherein the cyborg police officer (who looks a lot like a modern cop in riot gear, but with a bit more ‘artificial’ intelligence) fires upon a perpetrator breaking public smoking laws. \u00a0In the movie, it’s due to a flaw in the hierarchical nature of his circuitry in distinguishing ‘real’ crime from indiscretions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In modern policing, the problem\u00a0is more complex, as there are real humans involved, with their own conscience, fears and insecurities. \u00a0But a big part of the difficulty\u00a0lies with the fact that all laws must, in the end, be equally enforced, for to ignore one law is to ignore them all. \u00a0 Back to Thomas:\u00a0 He answers his own question\u00a0on the extent of law\u00a0by stating that public law should only forbid those things which truly harm other people, without which society could not function, such as ‘murder and theft and the like’.\u00a0 Otherwise, if the people are kept under too strict control by a multitude of\u00a0minute\u00a0laws, they will burst forth into even greater evils, either in secret, fostering a black market and hoping not to get caught, or eventually in public, citing rebellion and, ultimately, revolution.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ponder my previous entry on underage and public drinking laws which, like the more draconian Prohibition earlier this century, simply drove drinking underground, and made everyone a criminal.\u00a0 Now, if you are like most of us and drive a vehicle, you are basically always breaking the law.\u00a0 How many of us actually drive 100 km\/h on the 401, or 80 on the secondary highways?\u00a0 Try setting your cruise control at those speeds, and feel the angry wind, and gestures, of all the cars blowing past you. \u00a0Someone I know was recently stopped here in the sleepy small town where I live for not stopping for a full three seconds at a stop sign. \u00a0Do we really want Robocop enforcing children’s bicycle helmet laws? (to say nothing of the coming adult helmet laws, already in force out east)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As one police officer in the U.S. put in during an apparently illegal and reckless military-style bust of a hairstyling salon, for some unidentified violation, when confronted by one of the owners with the question \u2018what did we do?\u2019, he replied \u2018It\u2019s a big book, m\u2019am, and we can always find something to put you in jail\u2019. \u00a0The miseducated officer unwittingly summed up the problem.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By putting the law back into its proper perspective, the actions of the police will, hopefully, follow, for they are deputed, one presumes, to uphold the law. \u00a0 Growth in the extent of law, has led to a metastization of policing in this country (and, indeed, throughout the world), as we pay \u00a0their (our?) expensive military-grade equipment, along with the ever-increasing and unsupportable salaries, perks and early pensions. \u00a0 If this uncontrolled growth is not halted, Robocop may well show up one day at your door, demanding you put out that cigarillo. \u00a0Who knows? \u00a0As Saint Thomas more or less warns, he may one day find there’s a Clint Eastwood behind that cigar, ready to live free or die.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Or to use an analogy from Marvel comics, society itself may become like Bruce Banner pushed too far, turning into some raging green monster.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But, then again, perhaps that is just what they are preparing for.<\/p>\n October 13, 2014<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a thought experiment, I will sometimes ask people what their first impression is when they see a police car (here, in Ontario, an O.P.P. vehicle).\u00a0 Almost invariably, the answer is \u2018fear\u2019.\u00a0 I find this curious, that we fear those who are deputed by the State to \u2018protect and serve\u2019, as indeed they should, for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1495,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/1495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}