Us conservatives love law and order. As a result we naturally side with cops, prosecutors and hard-boiled judges. Normally I am no exception. On the flip side, we are also predisposed to personal responsibility and are inherently suspicious of big government as it accumulates more power. The trial surrounding David Chen citizen’s arrest case detailed yesterday’s post is what Barack Obama might call a ‘teachable moment’ for us. What it teaches conservatives is that the justice system is not immune to the flaws inherent in other Big Government departments so that we should never uncritically embrace the expansion of police power.
The truth of the matter is that the justice system behaves like every other government entity when their monopoly is being threatened. Normally cops and citizens are united in their hatred of bad guys, but the interests of the two groups diverge when it comes to self-defence. The average law abiding person loves it when his fellow citizen gets the better of a hooligan. But not the police, as evidenced by the ubiquitous police department spokesman who warns us on TV that people should not resist criminals: “It’s dangerous,” he intones, as if obeying psychopaths is safe. The existence of plenty of sociological studies, which conclude just the opposite (that resistance is at least marginally safer than obedience, and that the armed citizen is a better deterrent than even capital punishment), is neither here nor there to him. Public safety is not the main motivating factor in the police department’s disapproval. Rather, cops don’t like spontaneous citizen action because it infringes on their monopoly on force. They look at citizen arrests the way unionized city garbagemen view private contractors who haul away the trash for less money.
The David Chen incident also teaches us is that ordinary citizens can sometimes be far more effective than the government. David Chen caught the thief as soon as he attempted it. The Metro cops, who are paid 70+K a year to serve and protect him, were stumped for years. As Glenn Reynolds likes to point out, the self-organized citizenry is a pack not a herd.
This whole case is sickening, Canadian justice is an oxymoron and the police in this country are more and more starting to look like the enemy not our protectors.
Any comments on Vanc. Police, beating up a guy while off duty, or the Victoria police thumping a guy sitting on the ground.
I used to be really pro-law, pro-police, now I am rethinking that positions. How about that Polish guy in Vancouver.
Posted by: bmatkin | October 16, 2010 at 03:02 AM