Police state interferes with freedom

Wednesday, February 3, 1999

Police state interferes with freedom

LAWS: Constitutional rights shouldn’t be violated, even at noisy
Westwood parties

Damn, someone is shining a really bright light in my eyes.
Alright, who’s the silly prankster that brought a flashlight to the
party? Oh wait a minute … that’s a cop. Oh man. C’mon, it’s 11
o’clock on a Friday night. This is Westwood, if it’s too loud you
are probably just too old to be living here.

Whoa, hold on Mr. Officer, you aren’t supposed to be in here. I
don’t think you’re following the rules.

And suddenly that inflated sense of self-confidence and that
reduced capacity to make intelligent decisions, which all those
public service messages had been warning me about, took over. I
decided that I could no longer ignore the blatant disregard these
officers had just displayed for the law.

You see, it is illegal for police officers to walk through your
front door without having been invited in. It has something to do
with unlawful search and seizure, you know, one of those frivolous
little amendments in that Constitution-thingy we all had to study
in sixth grade.

So I approached these officers, who had already made themselves
busy strutting about the apartment barking orders at all of the
menacing merrymakers who, just moments ago, had been displaying the
audacious depravity of dancing to the seditious sounds of, gulp,
The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. And I asked them to reveal to
me on exactly what grounds they felt there was a need to break up
our party. Their reply followed somewhere along the lines that our
party was a source of unnecessary and excessive noise, outlawed by
the California ordinance blah, blah, blah. And so, teamed up with a
few other inebriated wise asses, we took it upon ourselves to
haggle a little with this "law enforcement agent" (for the sake of
liberty and justice for all, of course). As we saw it, if the only
offense we were guilty of pertained to excessive noise, there
really should be no need to completely break up the party without
at least one prior warning.

As citizens of the United States of America we have been given
the right to assemble, and frankly it should take more than being a
little too noisy for police officers to have the jurisdiction to
breach these rights. Fortunately for us, this good-hearted officer
conceded, only after having threatened us with arrest a mere three
or four times, and he left us with a warning. And you know
what?

We quieted down, and everyone was happy.

The fact is the whole issue of personal freedom and
Constitutional rights is not an easy one. There are so many little
laws in place to make sure no one’s personal freedom is infringed
upon, that, in this land of the free, there are even laws in place
to mandate who you can or cannot marry.

I’ve even heard that in some cities dancing is illegal! Could
you imagine living in a place like that? Did you know that it is
even illegal to burn potatoes in the state of California?

In America the Beautiful, we have been given certain
substantial, fundamental rights, which are not available to the
citizens of many other countries. And for these I am grateful,
without them I would probably already be in jail.

But, nonetheless, it would be naive to presume that this
country’s complexities could be summed up as simply as apple
pie.

I doubt that I need to expand on our country’s shady past. I’m
sure you’ve heard about that whole slavery thing, you’re probably
sick of hearing about the genocide of the Native American race, and
we all know that women in this country did not have the right to
vote until about 70 years ago. So I won’t waste your time with any
boring details, except to say that no matter how lofty this
country’s professed ideals may be, any country founded on the
usurpation and destruction of one race and the slave labor of
another will have inherent faults and contradictions.

I could also now take a different route and argue that in a
capitalist country there is no room for any real sense of
community. I could purport that capitalism disallows any sort of
true equality, and instead allows those with the largest checking
account to control and mold this country’s legal system to their
own liking.

But that would make me a dirty, filthy, no-good communist. Not
communism! Is there any greater evil in this world? The pain …
it’s too much to bear!

OK, I’m alright. I got a little caught up there, but I’m back.
The fact is, our Constitution has provided this country with an
exemplary platform to start from. But when such ideals are carried
out by human beings, who needless to say are less than perfect, it
is highly likely that those ideals will inevitably become twisted
and contorted.

Our breed, by nature, has a tendency toward selfishness. At
times, we’ve even been prone to fear and egotism.

And unfortunately these flaws have at times caused unnecessary
and unjust suffering, grievous discrimination, and convenient
favoritism.

But that’s not all there is to it. We’ve obviously got a few
things going for us. Man is quite a piece of work, and in an effort
to avoid getting too sentimental I will summarize by admitting that
there have been more than a few people out there fighting to make
America a country truly deserving of our patriotism.

So, I guess I just have a problem with those people who prefer
to ignore our country’s vices by insisting that all of America’s
imperfections can be righted by simply putting thousands of inane
little regulations and laws into effect.

The issues that plague our country need to be addressed on a
deeper, more communal, more palpable level. The fact is, we are a
young nation. We’ve got a lot to learn yet, and all of this
bragging and swaggering isn’t really fooling anyone.

So before we get all cocky about ourselves, we need purge
ourselves of (more than) a few shortcomings. We could start by
making opportunities for education more proportionately available
to all of America’s citizens, rich or poor. For this is truly the
road to insuring that we are all truly treated equally under the
law.

And then let’s take the responsibility onto ourselves to stop
the deterioration of the American family, let’s take an active role
in our communities, and let’s all figure out a way in which we can
all get along.

I realize that I didn’t really provide you with any substantial
answers, and really all you got was the bellyaching of yet another
soft-hearted quasi-liberal (until this country fixes a few things,
that mean streak of conservatism in me will continue to support the
death penalty). But let’s make a deal. If you’ll admit this country
has messed up in more than a few ways, I’ll admit that we’ve
definitely got some positive things going for us. And then, maybe
together we can begin to address those not-so-American parts of
America.

It’s our turn now, so let’s take this into our own hands before
this country is reduced to a state of heavy, incessant policing in
the name of freedom. Because pretty soon we’ll have to raise kids
in this world, and I’d like to be able to let them out of the house
before they turn 25.

Catie Snow Bailard

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