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Letter to the Editor

The Issue About Police, Guns

Posted

There are no laws which properly cover the prosecution of police officers, and it would be very difficult to create laws which could.
Police are protected by the fact (ideally) that they act at the behest of the State to enforce its laws. This requires that they sometimes must use force (sometimes lethal force) against others, (almost always against those who don’t cooperate with them) and so they are generally protected against charges such as assault and manslaughter unless it can be proven that they intentionally acted far outside their duties.
This is a requirement for having police. Without that protection, they would be unable to enforce the laws.
All anyone would have to do is walk away and the police would be unable to arrest him/her for fear of assault and battery charges. This is why it’s so incredibly difficult to get convictions such as the case in the Freddie Gray incident, where all of the charges resulted in either acquittals or were dropped.
That said, how do we go about “fixing” what is in and of itself a fundamental requirement of the police? You can hire all the “good” people you want, but eventually they will have to be the “bad cop” and force compliance because there will inevitably be a situation where talking doesn’t work. That’s the nature of the beast.

Physically restraining another individual involves risk. You could probably develop a set of laws specifically governing law enforcement, which require certain minimum standards of safety be maintained, and have punishments associated with not meeting those standards. But if you tie the hands of law enforcement too much, laws will not be enforced.
On the issue of eliminating police...This puts the anti-gun crowd in a bit of a pickle. Their claim is you don’t need a gun because the police are there to protect you. Now there is talk of eliminating police in some cities. Will they then claim everyone needs guns?
Concealed Carry Permits and Castle Laws enable a lot of people to police themselves. Where I (we) live CC Permits are relatively easy to obtain. Along with that your car is also considered part of your castle. It is legal to have loaded handguns in your cars and any loaded legal guns and any number of them in your house. No permit(s) required. That is not the case everywhere. Criminals are not all stupid. They know the difference between easy and hard targets. If you think cities are lawless now, wait till you take away the police.
Brian Schneider
Trezevant