Policing A Nation of Criminals

THE REASON I truly believe that the the officer shot the gentleman mistakenly, "accidentally", assuming  that the service revolver in her hand was a taser, is that I have on at least one occasion pointed a cell pone at a television flat screen, pushed a button, and wondered why nothing happened. I suspect nobody is immune to moments of complete thoughtlessness, what we call "brain dead". this one happened at a particularly bad time; most of them seem to. Goethe said: "since everyone has erred, since even the greatest among us have made mistakes, we have no basis upon which to regard our own mistakes as inexcusable". He also said: "Only by errors which really irk us do we advance". That's probably why I tried to change channels with a cell phone more than once, absent mindedly. My silly brain dead thoughtless mistake didn't irk me. I was too busy laughing. The lady who tragically shot the young gentleman instead of tasering him has doubtless already learned from her horrible mistake, and advanced. May she forever advance, and share her new wisdom. the police need a more effective weapon, something less lethal than a revolver, but more disabling than a taser, something like a stun gun "phaser"from the old Star Trek series. And maybe police need less power. an officer in Washington D.C. demonstrated this by inviting journalists to ride with him as he drove his beat. his purpose was to demonstrate everyday policing power. As the officer drove around the city, he pointed to pedestrians and to cars in motion. he explained to his passengers that he could, if he chose, approach and detain every pedestrian and every motorist each on a specific, legal pretext. Every drive, he went on, commits several moving violations every time he or she gets behind the wheel. Amazingly, almost the same is true of pedestrians; from jaywalkers to gum droppers to juice spitters. So awash is our criminal law cod with technicalities, so pervasive are the powers of the police, that in America, everyone is vulnerable and exposed to police power, all the time. Not only are all motorists guilty of multi vehicular infractions, every adult citizen in the United states has almost certainly committed multiple felonies, research has shown. We are, alas, a nation of criminals, with a broken policing and criminal justice syste,. a system which has resulted in the highest incarceration rate in the world, many being incarcerated for crimes which should arguable not be crimes. Our culture is chaotic, ans w lack even the most basic idea on how to monitor and reasonably control our destructive behavior. when the republics was founded, there were a few million Americans, three federal crimes (treason, counter fitting, piracy) and no police. The situation is somewhat different today.