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Sunday, February 8, 2015

Legalize Drunk Driving


by Jeffrey Tucker

Most people have been there: a few drinks at a restaurant or bar and then into the car to get home. Am I over the legal limit? Hard to say. Is my driving impaired? It doesn't seem to be. But what if I get stopped? Will I lose my license, go to jail, and be disgraced in front of the community? It's a frightening prospect.

What's especially strange about this is the reason I fear. My arrest and punishment would not be for driving recklessly or for endangering other drivers. It would be because I failed a test of something that is not materially related to my actual driving.

The law is arbitrary and shifts with the political season. The perpetrators can't really be sure if they are over or under the limit. And we all have vast experience with people who drink surprising amounts of liquor and drive all the time, but never get in accidents and do not seem to be driving in an unsafe way.

Then there are the frequent cases in which cops arrest people for DUI who are stopped for something else, like a burned-out tail light. I've known of people who have been arrested in their own driveways, having gotten home safely and harmed no one. They are arrested and imprisoned, a humiliating and terrible experience for anyone to go through.

Clearly, this DUI enforcement has been a boon to the police but has it really curbed drunk driving? You might consider staking out your local bar, following how much people drink, and observing how many get in cars after. I'll just state what most everyone knows but hardly anyone says: drinking and driving is a national sport in the U.S. In the vast, vast majority of cases, no harm is done.

Murray Rothbard once told me that he thought drunk driving should be legal. I was stunned and shocked that anyone would say such a thing. But over time, I began to see his point. It is not outrageous at all.

He was exactly right.

With laws against DUI, what's being criminalized? Not reckless driving as such. Not aggression against anyone. What's being criminalized is the chemical make up of the blood in your body. That itself should be no crime. To make having a certain blood content illegal is essentially totalitarian.

But you say that drinking is associated with bad driving. Well, enforce the laws against reckless driving. Many more people drink and drive than drive recklessly. Some people drive even more safely after a few drinks, correcting for their delayed responses. We do this all the time, e.g. after a workout, when we are sleepy, when we are angry, whatever. Human beings adapt with rationality.

And you know what happens on New Year's some other holiday. People always say "be careful, there are lots of drunk drivers out there." Just the prospect alone makes everyone drive more defensively.

Regardless, the law has no business criminalizing associated peaceful behaviors rather than real crimes against person and property.

For example, grudges are associated with murder in the sense that a vast number of murderers are carrying a grudge. Do we make grudges illegal? That would be crazy and unenforceable, even if there were some chemical way to measure what constitutes a grudge. But we make driving under the influence illegal though it is roughly the same thing. It targets an associated condition rather than the crime itself.

Laws against drunk driving have vastly expanded police power and done nothing to stop the practice. The best prevention against unsafe driving from drinking has been provided privately: friends, services offered by bars and restaurants, community interest groups, etc. This is the humane and rational way societies deal with social risks. The police have only messed up this process by adding a coercive element that targets liberty rather than crime.

And we can see where this is heading. Texting is now illegal in most places. So is talking on the phone. Maybe talking itself should be illegal. Some communities are talking about banning eating. All of this is a distraction from the real issue.

As Radley Balko has said:

If our ultimate goals are to reduce driver impairment and maximize highway safety, we should be punishing reckless driving. It shouldn't matter if it's caused by alcohol, sleep deprivation, prescription medication, text messaging, or road rage. If lawmakers want to stick it to dangerous drivers who threaten everyone else on the road, they can dial up the civil and criminal liability for reckless driving, especially in cases that result in injury or property damage.

Doing away with the specific charge of drunk driving sounds radical at first blush, but it would put the focus back on impairment, where it belongs. It might repair some of the civil-liberties damage done by the invasive powers the government says it needs to catch and convict drunk drivers. If the offense were reckless driving rather than drunk driving, for example, repeated swerving over the median line would be enough to justify the charge. There would be no need for a cop to jam a needle in your arm alongside a busy highway.

Scrapping the DWI offense in favor of better enforcement of reckless driving laws would also bring some logical consistency to our laws, which treat a driver with a BAC of 0.08 much more harshly than, say, a driver distracted by his kids or a cell phone call, despite similar levels of impairment. The punishable act should be violating road rules or causing an accident, not the factors that led to those offenses. Singling out alcohol impairment for extra punishment isn't about making the roads safer. It's about a lingering hostility toward demon rum.

_
Jeffrey Tucker is Chief Liberty Officer of Liberty.me, a subscription-based, action-focused social and publishing platform for the liberty minded. He is also distinguished fellow Foundation for Economic Education, executive editor of Laissez-Faire Books, research fellow Acton Institute, founder CryptoCurrency Conference, and author six books. He is available for speaking and interviews via tucker@liberty.me

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As I understand, the major force promoting DUI punishments is MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. It's so powerful that Google put MADD as the 1st hit as soon as I typed word "mothers", think about it. From what I heard, political pressure by MADD far exceeds anything that could be subject of the logic and common sense. MADD is famous for spending basically nothing on actually pushing their cause and almost everything on "expenses," aka salaries etc.

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Saturday, February 7, 2015

Police: Entitled Bullies, Specially Protected 'Victims'


William Norman Grigg

The advertised purpose of the Support Your Local Police Committee (or SYLP) is to keep "local" police departments independent of federal control. Will SYLP oppose efforts by the Fraternal Order of Police to define police officers as part of a "special protected" category under federal "hate crime" laws?

Citing the high-profile murders of six police officers in 2014, Chuck Canterbury, National President of the Fraternal Order of Police, demands that Congress "expand Federal hate crime laws to protect law enforcement officers and punish those who target these dedicated public servants."

"All these officers died because of the uniforms they were wearing," insists Canterbury. "They were killed because their murderers had one purpose -- to kill a cop. Enough is enough! We demand Congress act."

Several years ago, following the attempted murder of Arizona Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the FOP lobbied for federal legislation that would expand the use of the death penalty by "adding the murder or attempted murder of a law enforcement officer at any level of government" as an aggravating factor "when considering a capital charge," points out a press release from the union.

To its credit, the SYLP Committee's literature (some of which I helped write many years ago) describes criminal law as a local, rather than federal, concern. Its statement of principles urges citizens to "Oppose any and all efforts to subsidize, regionalize, or federalize our local police, since any loss of their independence from outside controls will inevitably lead to a loss of our protection and safety as well" (emphasis added).

Will the organization condemn police union's self-serving efforts to expand federal hate crimes statutes, or would doing so contradict the categorical imperative (also mentioned in the group's statement of principles) to make police "proud and secure in their vital profession, and to offer them our support in word and deed wherever possible"?

It should be remembered that the NYPD has already pioneered the use of "hate crimes" statutes to criminalize anti-police sentiments: Last summer, a graffiti artist named Rosella Best was charged with "criminal mischief as a hate crime" for tagging police vehicles and a public school with slogans condemning the department. The relevant statute, significantly, didn't mention occupation as a "protected category." The FOP's proposed federal legislation would do so -- but the police would be the only beneficiaries.

Even with a slight increase in the number of on-duty fatalities last year, law enforcement remains a much safer occupation than many worthier jobs in the productive sector. The violent death of a police officer is somewhat similar to a plane crash: It is an infrequent occurrence that attracts intensive media coverage, thereby distorting public perceptions of risk. Plane crashes are rare; highway fatalities happen every day. A similar comparison could be made between the murder of police officers and police killings of citizens.

Police already constitute a specially protected class. Cops who injure or kill people without cause are protected from individual accountability by the doctrine of "qualified immunity." Thanks to statutes that define resisting arrest (a common law right) as a crime, police are privileged aggressors who can inflict summary punishment, including the death penalty, on victims who refuse to cooperate -- or even on those who readily submit.

A measure being promoted by police unions in the New York legislature would destroy "civilian" oversight of police disciplinary procedures. E.J. McMahon of the Manhattan Institute points out that the bill "would allow unions representing police "? to insist on collective bargaining of disciplinary procedures affecting their members." This bill is intended to codify a provision in the union's proposed contract that would require internal affairs investigators to wait at least 48 hours "before questioning police officers accused of misconduct."

McMahon describes this bill as an effort by unaccountable police unions to usurp local control of police by elected municipal officials. The "L" in SYLP stands for "Local." Will the "Support Your Local Police Committee" condemn the praetorian ambitions of police unions, or be their silent accomplices?


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Friday, February 6, 2015

Is This What The NYPD Has Been Doing After Refusing To Do Their Jobs?


By Matt Agorist

New York, NY ? As we reported last week, the NYPD has basically stopped doing its job since the murder of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.

A new video shows that they have apparently found a new way to spend the extra time they have after not doing their jobs.

The video, obtained by the website, Breaking 911, shows a police officer riding on the hood of a patrol car.

According to Breaking 911,?the incident happened at Seton Place and Parkville Ave in the confines of the 70 Precinct.

The officer was rushed to Lutheran Trauma Center with a police escort and chopper overhead.

If this wasn?t a case of officers wasting time and idiotically horsing around, then the NYPD has some serious explaining to do.

Why on earth would a cop get on top of a cop car and get driven down the street?

Below is the video of the incident which happened just around the corner from the precinct located in Brooklyn.


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rofl...OMG This is great! Thanks for a good laugh in the middle of all of our national depression and rage.... The irony is that if a non-cop did that they would be tazed, arrested, and charged with endangering the public and themselves. We don't need the police, we don't need the government, and we don't need every stupid law that is designed to make people criminals and generate revenue. It's time to take back our country from the terrorists that are our current politicians.

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Thursday, February 5, 2015

How Lithuanian Cops React to a Drunk, Aggressive American Girl


Amanda Warren

Lithuania has their own version of the TV series Cops as made apparent by this insightful Live Leak video. When watching Cops in other countries, a stark difference from the United States is so eye popping that it feels counter-intuitive at first, to the person who's used to American television.

An obviously intoxicated and distressed American girl is in Lithuania trying to get into an abandoned apartment building basement. It's 4 a.m. and she's waking the neighbors. But her problem might go beyond mere beverage spirits - she believes World War 3 is coming and that everyone will die soon. Thus, her insistence on getting into the door even though there is nothing there.

Any number of things could have happened to her to bring her to this state of distress, aggression and destructiveness. Or, as the cops commented - "she's just very drunk." So her defensiveness is little wonder as she makes the mistake of thinking that the cops will harm, maybe kill her - as one might imagine happening to her in the U.S.

"We just know that her name is Alison. We didn't have a reason to ask for her ID."

What do you think of how Lithuanian cops treated the American girl?


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It would be interesting to find out how cops in other countries view our police. That is how a peace officer acts....
Unlike our stazi that would have brutalized her on the US CORP(SE) Those cops were perfect gentlemen and gentle ladies. I think that this film should be shown in every U.S. Police station as a how to on how to subdue an unreasonable, out of touch person without brutality. All it takes is patience, empathy and intelligence. If Alison behaved this way in the U.S., it is very likely that the "abuse " that she feared so much would have actually been perpetrated on her. well to be fair they put the nicest cops on this show.
and the translation is not accurate, for example ""We just know that her name is Alison. We didn't have a reason to ask for her ID."" the cops said that her name is alison, but they dont have her ID because they cant search a woman (as in a male cant do a search on a female)
'Hopefully, they can do something to stop the WW3 from starting' !!
Damn they are smart them ruskie-commies - Pretending to be peaceful decent humans and what not ..
(Sorry Lithuanians, I know you think you are not Russians :) ) On the flip side, on COPS the American show every time I see a clip from an old re-run it's frankly newsworthy criminality. The police are always utterly despicable cretins reveling in busting some poor person for using a meager amount of some illegal drug. From watching the show you'd think their job was to rustle up poor people to be thrown into cages.

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Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Multiple Eyewitnesses Claim Unarmed Wichita Man had Hands Up Prior to Being Killed by Cops


By Jay Syrmopoulos

Wichita, Kansas ? Witnesses in the shooting death of unarmed 23-year-old John Paul Quintero have come forward to refute police statements regarding the shooting death of Quintero.

The incident, which took place on Saturday night, began when Quintero's family called 911, saying Quintero was under the influence of alcohol and had threatened them with a knife at a party.

According to police, Quintero was "belligerent" and wouldn't comply with the two officers who arrived at the scene eight minutes later, while seated in an SUV with his father, parked in front of the house.

Ted McAdams and his wife live in the unit behind where the party was going on. They ran outside after they heard screaming. McAdams claims to have witnessed the tragic events leading up to the death of Quintero.

According to McAdams, Quintero was "trying to talk to the male officer with compliance" and "had his arms up until he got tasered, [when] his arms went down to his side."
Multiple witnesses have stated that Quintero had his hands up and seemed to be compliant, until another officer employed a taser on him, subsequently causing Quintero to lower his hands, which then lead to Martin shooting him in the chest with an AR-15, according to KAKE.com.

Police claim Quintero reached toward an officer?s waistband, but McAdams refutes that statement, claiming that he saw the incident and never saw Quintero make such a move.

It must be noted, that claiming a person reached for an officer?s waistband/weapon, is one of the standard police refrains when attempting to justify use of deadly force in the killing unarmed citizens.

A former state school board member from Wichita and vice chairman of the city's Racial Profiling Advisory Board, Walt Chappell, told the Wichita Eagle he had a feeling the officers "made a conscious decision to escalate rather than de-escalate."

The mere fact that the female officer walked up with a rifle "would indicate to me they were already loaded for bear," Chappell said.

McAdams says he?s not alone in thinking this situation was taken too far.

?After that all the neighbors and I threw a little fit at the cops because I?ve got a wife and a newborn and the safety issue and not just that, the way the cops handled themselves.?

He added, ?If he was told to do something, yeah he should?ve done it, but that officer had, to my advice and my suggestion, she shouldn?t have ever shot him.?

Another witness, Dustin Deckard, was driving home on Saturday afternoon when he witnessed a cop aiming her rifle at an unarmed man with his hands up.

"It was clearly a younger man in his early 20s of Hispanic descent, and he was wearing a blue jersey and he had his hands up," said Deckard, referring to the Wichita Police.

"He was behind the SUV, and the female officer was mostly directly in front of him, a little bit to his left. Both the officers were on either side of him, but he was facing the female officer who had her rifle up, and she was looking down the sight."

Deckard added, "It was very eerie, because the shooting must have occurred seconds after. When I passed, I slowed down, so I only got a couple seconds of a view."

Chappell made a very clear point when he stated,
"You don't go in ready to shoot first and ask questions later. There's a lot of things you can do before you ever pull out a weapon.?
The militarized, us vs. them, mindset of US cops, which escalate already tense situations into outright violent altercations, is a plague upon law enforcement and the public that they claim to serve.

Here is audio of the initial 9-1-1 call by the family. All they wanted was help in stopping a fight, instead, a young man was gunned down.


_
Jay Syrmopoulos is an investigative journalist, freethinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jay?s work has previously been published on BenSwann.com and WeAreChange.org. You can follow him on Twitter @sirmetropolis, on Facebook at Sir Metropolis and now on tsu.


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Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Police Use Battering Ram, Tasers During Raid On 'Young Looking People With Beer'

A birthday party turns into a nightmare when beverage cops violently show up to a private residence.

DAMASCUS, MD ? Police performed a violent raid on a birthday party based on a suspicion of ?young looking people with beer,? then dubiously confiscated guests? cell phones when they were used to record the police.

The incident occurred on January 4th,? 2014, at the home of George and Cathy Magas.? The couple?s son, Nicholas, was turning twenty-one years old, and he was allowed to invite a number of his friends to the home for a party.? Both his parents were present.

During the party, the crowd opted to order pizza.? Things went downhill when the delivery driver took it upon himself to pass a tip about the party to a friend ? Officer Finch of the Montgomery County Police Department.

?Hey man not sure if you're working but if you're not busy there I just delivered a pizza to a party at 9*** Damascus rd and saw some young looking people with beer,? the pizza-delivering snitch wrote in a text message.

Officer Finch then relayed the information to members of the county?s ?Alcohol Initiatives Section? to investigate.? Subsequently, MCPD Officer Jeremy Smalley and Montgomery County Sheriff?s Deputy John Durham arrived together to scope out the party.

Having no other information besides the text message tip, the two beverage cops drove past the residence and ?observed numerous vehicles? and could ?hear the sounds of a party,? according to charging documents.? They claimed to witness some males urinate behind a detached garage.? Having no evidence to stand on, the officers assumed that the party contained underage drinking and called for reinforcements.

THE PROBLEM WITH ASSUMING

The investigation was flimsy from the start.? Officer Smalley and Deputy Durham made multiple unsubstantiated assumptions and fabrications of fact.? Just by observing individuals carrying ?red Solo style cups,? they surmised that the party-goers (1) were consuming alcohol and (2) ?appeared to be under the age of 21.?

These assumptions were used as probable cause that a crime was being committed ? underage consumption of alcohol.

An excerpt of the police report from the investigation of George and Cathy Magas in Damascus, Maryland.

The police were challenged on their remarkable ability to verify the ages of the guests just by looking at them.? This was not an insignificant detail, because anyone above the age of 21 would not have been breaking any laws.

When asked how he could tell the difference between a 20-year-old and a 21-year-old, Deputy Durham later testified, ?The loudness, just the way they presented themselves, was consistent with being under 21? They kind of exaggerate their movements, like ?hey look at me?"? rather than adults standing around drinking.?? Durham conceded that ?It's not 100 percent.?

DISPERSING THE PARTY

Filled with assumptions, Officer Smalley and Deputy Durham approached the basement stairwell and were met by one of the younger residents of the home, Marc Magas.? According to the police report, Marc was ?very cooperative? and inclined to grant them access to the inside of the home.? However, that idea was nixed when his mother, Cathy Magas, allegedly said, ?We have dealt with you guys before, and I don?t want you coming in the house.?

At that point, police were close enough to see cases of beer and a keg.? Despite having no verified proof of anyone?s age, police entered and began to pick up cases of beer and haul them to the top of the steps outside the home.? This confiscation of property was met with angry shouts from homeowner George Magas.? Backup units had arrived and helped to seize the beverages.

According to the police report, 21-year-old Nicholas Magas exited the basement door and attempted to retrieve his property by picking up a case of beer.? The report says that Officer Smalley grabbed him, but Nicholas ?attempted to pull away.?

The events that followed were chaotic and have been described through conflicting reports.

Police reported that Officer Smalley was ?pulled? into the doorway and residents slammed his arms in the door.? A struggle ensued, and police alleged that homeowner George Magas assaulted three officers, and that he even tried to take Deputy Durham?s weapon from its holster.? Eric Magas became involved, and police claimed that he too assaulted an officer.

?Deputy Durham then struck Eric Magas in an attempt to change his behavior,? the report states.? Eric was tased by police on the steps.? Cathy Magas attempted to render aid to her son, and in doing so, police claimed she elbowed a deputy.

Meanwhile, George Magas was outside being forcefully subdued by police with tasers, as his guests filmed with their cell phone cameras.

The footage ?shows police dragging the homeowner out of his house, handcuffing him and repeatedly tasing him while he offers little to no resistance,? according to Montgomery County Sentinel editorialist Brian Karem, who was allowed to see the video.

George, Cathy, Nicholas, and Eric Magas were arrested.? George and Eric had to be transported to the hospital for their injuries.

BATTERING RAM

Some time after the Magas family was arrested, there were reportedly a number of guests still inside the house, which the ?Alcohol Initiatives Section? intended to search and arrest.

Police deployed a battering ram and broke down the basement door, then rounded up the remaining terrified guests, ranging in age from 18 to 21.

Records showed that the police did obtain a search warrant to enter the home. However, it was not obtained until 5 hours after the initial contact with the Magas family, and did not bear any mention to the multiple assaults that the police officers had supposedly sustained in the course of the initial arrests.

According to the officers, their stated goal this dramatic use of force was to ?stop the party and make sure everyone gets home safely.?

AFTERMATH

The four family members were nailed with a multitude of charges which could have resulted prison time for each of them.
George Magas, 55, was charged with attempting to remove a firearm from the possession of a deputy sheriff, attempting to incite a riot, three counts of second degree assault, obstructing and hindering a police officer, and 22 counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor.Cathy Magas was charged with second degree assault, obstructing and hindering a police officer and 22 counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor.Nicholas Magas, 21, was charged with attempting to incite a riot, obstructing and hindering a police officer, and 22 counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor.Eric Magas, 18, was charged with second degree assault, attempting to incite a riot, obstructing and hindering a police officer, 22 counts of furnishing alcohol a minor, possession of a fake ID, possessing more than one driver's license, knowingly and fraudulently obtaining a license by misrepresentation, and three counts of possessing a fictitious license.An additional twenty-two adults were cited for underage consumption of alcohol, despite evidence that some of those cited did not even have anything to drink. Several guests had their cell phones confiscated after videoing the police getting physical with members of the Magas family.

?I don't know why the police acted in the manner in which they did, including taking the phones of those who were in the home,? family attorney Rene Sandler told The Montgomery County Sentinel.

After having their family name dragged through the mud and forced to hire attorneys to defend themselves, the Magas family caught a break when their case came before Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Steven Salant.? The Magas family contested that their Fourth Amendment rights had been violated, and that police had no lawful justification to be on their curtilage, snooping around in the rear of the house.?? The judge agreed.

?I do find an unlawful invasion of the defendants? property? the defendants were entitled to an expectation of privacy in the area officers went in the back of the house,? Judge Salant said following a suppression hearing. He cast doubts on the officers? probable cause statement and called some of the police testimony ?not true.?

Judge Salant was incredulous that the raid was performed legally.? The search warrant wasn?t obtained until five hours after police arrived on scene, and left out key details which the police later used as the basis of criminal charges against the family. Critics have doubted that the warrant was obtained prior to entering the home.

In November 2014, Judge Salant threw out most of the prosecution?s evidence obtained during the raid ? including several guests? cell phones ? and said the police had violated the Magus's civil rights.

FOLLOW-UP:

As of late 2014, the state was still considering ?a myriad of options, including appeal,? according to Maryland state?s attorney's office spokesperson Ramon Korionoff.

Officer Jeremy Smalley, nor Deputy John Durham, nor any other officer who participated in the sloppy investigation and dubious search have received any form of public discipline or legal consequences as of this writing.

A truly free society would never tolerate this form of harassment on private citizens for drinking beverages of their choice. Americans need to stir up a demand for repealing draconian alcohol laws and pressure law enforcers to stop wasting tax resources on such oppressive endeavors.


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Monday, February 2, 2015

Pedestrian Hit By Car Dies After Responding Cop Hits Him A Second Time


Chris | InformationLiberation

KAUMAKANI, HI - 19-year-old Michael Kocher Jr. of Hanapepe, Hawaii died this past Friday night after a Kauai police officer responding to a report of a pedestrian being struck by a car hit the young man a second time.

Kocher was initially stuck by a Toyota Carolla while walking along the Kaumuali'i Highway at around 9:35 p.m. in the evening.

Kocher's niece Rayne Banasihan told the Garden Island newspaper Michael ?was alive and responsive? after being struck initially by the Toyota driver, yet after the responding officer smashed into him, he evidently showed no vital signs and was presumed dead at the scene.

The Kauai police say they're investigating the crash, but they haven't even released the name of the officer who hit him, instead they're asking for information on the young man's "whereabouts" prior to the crash.

It'd be more interesting to know where the officer was prior to the crash and was he or she in any way distracted or inebriated.
_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.


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