The Police State’s 'Cardinal Rule': The Mundane Must Submit

British officer: You call yourself a patriot, and a loyal subject to King

George?Hawkeye: I don’t call myself “subject” to much of

anything.Hawkeye explains the foundational tenet of the American worldview to a self-important armed government functionary offended by the frontiersman’s principled defiance; from the 1992 version of Last of the Mohicans.

Marilyn Levias, a 19-year-old Seattle girl involved in a jaywalking incident during which a police officer assaulted another 17-year-old girl, displayed “a dangerous refusal to observe a cardinal rule that civilians simply must comply with instructions from police officers,” insists Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes.

For this, Miss Levias faces a gross misdemeanor charge of “Obstructing a Police Officer.” During the confrontation, Levias’s 17-year-old friend, Angel L. Rosenthal, intervened on her behalf and was punched in the face by officer Ian P. Walsh. As is typically the case when a Mundane’s face obstructs the trajectory of a police officer’s fist, the victim is the one facing criminal charges.

In announcing the criminal charge against Levias, City Attorney Holmes offered the mildest possible limp-wristed swipe at the Seattle Police Department by saying that the incident illustrates the need “for de-escalation training for officers.” Holmes also cited an observation by Judge Michael Spearman, auditor for the police department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, that “The use of force in a [jaywalking] situation as a best practice is questionable.

“Even this timid and tentative criticism was an unbearable affront to the delicate sensibilities of Rich O’Neill, president of Seattle’s Armed Tax-Feeders Guild.

“Force was not used in a jay-walking incident! Force was used because the individuals involved assaulted a uniformed police officer,” protested O’Neill.

The “assault” in question occurred when the teenage girls tried to free themselves from Walsh’s clutches after he had needlessly laid hands on them. They were uncooperative, not threatening.

Yet to O’Neill, who is apparently so Emo that his last name should be Philips, jaywalking occupies the same continuum as violent crime.

Accordingly, the use of overwhelming force is entirely appropriate: “Officers are trained to enforce the law and not to ‘de-escalate’ walk away simply because a violator objects to being stopped. That would simply lead to lawlessness.

“Indeed: If we don’t permit police officers to slug jaywalking teenage girls in the face, the terrorists will win.

There are evil axioms embedded in the statements of both Holmes and O’Neill. First of all, both assume that there is a dichotomy between police and “civilians” – which of necessity means that the former should be regarded as military, or at least para-military, in nature. Holmes reinforced that assumption by referring to the Mayor of Seattle as “commander in chief” of the city’s police.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, the idea that “civilians” are to render instant, unqualified obedience to any armed individual in a government-issued costume is the chief characteristic of the martial law mind-set.

Read the Full Article by William Norman Grigg: The Police State’s ‘Cardinal Rule’: The Mundane Must Submit by William Norman Grigg.