In
Florida recently, police pulled up to a young boy playing in the park
and asked where his mother lived. According to a report on WPTV, the
mom was then arrested for "allowing her son to go to the park alone."
Her son had a cellphone, and she would check in with him along the way.
The mom believes "he's old enough, but Port St. Lucie Police disagree."
There
is a tendency to dismiss stories such as this as a silly mistake by an
overzealous police officer, but sadly it's part of a larger problem. In
fact, a similar story of arresting a mom for not supervising her child
24/7/365 took place a few weeks back in South Carolina. A Washington
Post column reported these incidents as part of a series on "the
increasing criminalization of everything and the use of the criminal
justice system to address problems that were once (and better) handled
by families, friends, communities and other institutions."
This abuse of governmental authority is the natural extension of
nanny-state efforts such as the crusade to ban large sugary drinks.
Once you accept the premise that so-called experts should decide what's
best for the rest of us, the only question remaining is how to deal
with people who don't comply.
It's the same mindset that believes the National Security Agency should
be allowed to read all our emails and monitor our phone calls in the
name of national security. Just trust us, they say. We're from the
government, and we're here to help.
How's this for help? In Georgia, a SWAT team broke into a house
searching for drugs and threw a flash-bang grenade inside a child's
crib.
The excessive force was disgusting to begin with. Even worse is the
fact that the police had the wrong house and there were no drugs. The
child is in critical condition.
Amazingly, the local sherriff and other Georgia authorities said the
officers didn't do anything wrong. That's ludicrous. They deployed a
grenade developed for war in a private home and sent a child to the
hospital fighting for his life. Something is terribly wrong.
It's important to note that most police officers are great public
servants. Just a few years ago, a local officer in my hometown
literally saved my life and the lives of my family. We called him a
hero. He said he was just doing his job. Naturally, we have tremendous
respect for the job that such officers do and the courage they display.
However, a National Review article correctly notes that "respecting
good police work means being willing to speak out against
civil-liberties-breaking thugs who shrug their shoulders after
brutalizing citizens." That means speaking out against stories like
this:
"On Thursday in Staten Island, an asthmatic 43-year-old father of six,
Eric Garner ...
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