Police officers in this country enjoy more authority than ever. The profession is naturally attractive to the control freak, thug, and bully. It provides almost limitless power to do whatever one wants to the civilian population with little or no recourse. Even cold-blooded murders committed by officers are rewarded with months of paid vacation. Sure there are rules, limits, but they are not taken seriously. The word of an officer is absolute truth in the court of law, untarnishable, not matter what the accusation. Even while an officer is committing a crime against you, resisting him or her is against the law. In this country it is a crime to resist arrest.
I often wonder what the purpose of this law is, aside from the fact that it is often used to tack on more fines and jail time at sentencing. I have come to the realization that there needs to be a clarification of this law, a new constitutional amendment. So I propose the following for Amendment 28:
The Right of a Citizen to Resist Unlawful Arrest and Imprisonment
If an officer of the law orders a citizen to engage in behavior that is unlawful and physically hazardous to the public or to himself, the citizen has the right to refuse the order and no adverse action may be taken by the officer.
This protects a citizen from being ordered to engage in something illegal so the officer has reason for arrest.
If an officer of the law attempts to detain a citizen who has not committed a crime, the citizen has the right to physically resist.
Obvious in it's wording. This law would have protected the taser victim at the John Kerry speech from prosecution and would have taken away the "right" of the officers to engage in torturing him.
Now there are obviously potential issues with this. One being what about those who have committed a crime? Won't they cite this law as reason for their resistance? This is something that must be decided by a court on a case-by-case basis. No one should be able to use the excuse that they "thought" their rights were being violated when they actually weren't.
What we need is a balance to police authority, the power to overrule an officer who abuses his power. Too often are people tortured and wrongfully arrested by bad cops. We can no longer wait for our lawyer to handle it in court, we need the power to resist unlawful arrests now!
human rights
