Two sets of rules: One for the public and a very different set for police

By David McElroy · May 24, 2012

As I was approaching the ramp to get onto I-59 in Birmingham Wednesday, I noticed in my rearview mirror that there was a police car behind me. I don’t know about you, but I start worrying a bit while they’re behind me. Is it past time to renew my tag? Do I have a tail light out? What’s the speed limit on this little road?

I was hoping he wasn’t turning onto the interstate, so I was watching his turn signal in my mirror to see if it came on. It never did — but he turned behind me anyway. Part of the way down the ramp, the asphalt widens, but the lane for the interstate hasn’t started, so you’re supposed to stay on the ramp. He didn’t. Part of the way down the ramp, he floored his engine and went around me, going through the striped lines you’re supposed to stay away from.

In the time I could still see him, he impatiently tailgated a car and then passed it way too close to a car in the other lane. He lost me after that, but it doesn’t really matter what he did. He has a gun and a badge, so he can do whatever he wants.

Have you ever noticed how flagrantly many police officers violate the traffic rules we’re supposed to obey? I routinely see them speeding (without emergency lights), tailgating and failing to use turn signals. There’s one set of rules for us, and there’s another set for them. Is there any wonder that more and more people are losing respect for police?

Police almost never get into trouble for what they do driving. Even when they do get stopped for something — even for more serious offenses such as drunk driving — other officers routinely let them go. The euphemism for it is “professional courtesy.” In reality, it’s a “Get out of jail free” card for police who do almost any offense that another officer can justify as minor.

When I noticed the officer Wednesday afternoon driving in a way that would get a citizen ticketed, I mentioned it on Facebook and immediately got a flood of responses from people who see the same thing routinely. My friends seemed irritated at the double standard, but resigned to the reality that we can’t do anything about it. Isn’t this a perfect recipe for loss of respect for police?

I wrote about a New York City officer who was caught on video making serious threats to local men. There were other officers with him, but if this video hadn’t existed, it’s a sure bet that they would have sworn none of this ever happened — because that’s what many police officers do. They lie and break rules for each other. They hold themselves above the law in the interest of what they see as a higher good. They see themselves as something like vigilantes on the street protecting us — and they frequently see the legal rules as getting into their way.

More and more, police are willing to break the rules — sometimes about small things and sometimes about big things. Quickly, the problems are bigger than just flagrant disregard for traffic rules. Soon it’s beating suspects and planting evidence and lying about what happened in order to get a bogus search warrant.

The Cato Institue has just taken over a project to report on this kind of misconduct — to shine a light on something that’s a cancer for a free society. It’s at PoliceMisconduct.net, and it promises to be a good resource for anyone who is naive enough to believe that police in this country aren’t out of control.

It’s still true that police in totalitarian countries are far worse than our police. There’s no question that we’re safer from our police than many people are from theirs. But I’m honestly worried about the direction in which things are going.

I don’t trust police and I frequently have no respect for them today. Respect is something that’s earned, not something that’s given just because you have a uniform and a gun. Many of today’s police seem to believe they’re the masters and we’re the underlings. It’s way past time to force them to remember that they’re our servants, not the other way around.

Share on Social Networks

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a possibility that I might be taking in a fourth feline. A couple of months ago, a cat-loving neighbor asked whether I’d seen a “tuxedo cat” hanging out in the neighborhood. I hadn’t, but this guy eventually wandered past my house a few weeks later — and we haven’t been able to find evidence that he has a home. I’ve been giving him water and food for the last week and he finally let me pet him two nights ago. He’s purred for me two nights in a row and he let me take a low-quality selfie with him Thursday night. Tonight, though, he let me pick him up and bring him inside to look around. This went surprisingly well, as you can see from this photo. I don’t know whether he’ll be joining the family, but I’m certain that Alex, Oliver and Sam would vote no, at least until they get to know him. I’m trying to make certain he doesn’t have a home, but if he does join us, what do you suppose his name will be?

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

Related Posts