From: Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 07:58:28 +0800
To: cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: I saw the craziest thing last night...
Message-ID: <199810142343.SAA14539@einstein.ssz.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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I wanted to share with you an experience perhaps worth contemplating...

Around 8pm or so last nite I got hungry and the dogs looked at me with those
big brown "Help me" eyes and off we trundle to the golden arches. I drive
over the 5-6 blocks to N. Lamar and head north. It's about 2 miles or so
max. As I get to Mickey Dee's I realize that there is a street bum in the
road. There is S. bound traffic and he's about halfway across when I notice
the cars are getting pretty close. Well about this time a vehicle with no
lights (yet it's after dark) but yellow running lights (I believe that's
illegal in this state) begins to continously sound its horn as it approaches
the crosser. No apparent attempt to slow down or change lanes was made. The
car ended up missing the guy by less than 3 ft.

What was really a riot was it was an Austin Police car.

Unfortunately I don't read well backward at night so I didn't get a vehicle
id or a license so this qualifies as nothing more than another net rumor.

It's pretty damn bad when the police resort to assault with a motor vehicle
to control street people.

Can the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing police to kill you in a
high-speed chase as an innocent bystander to protect you from the perp with
complete immunity be extended to pursuit of an unrepentant donut?

When I was a kid it used to say "To Protect and Serve", not "To Protect or
Kill". Isn't the point of a public servant to *serve* the people in a
decent, respectful manner? If taken as a given then it's clear that public
safety *always* takes precedence over 'catch the crook'. It's better to let
the perp run through a neighborhood he's already going to go through and
spend resources getting people into their homes and out of the way than it
is to prove what a dairing-do bunch of local boys can do catching outlaws,
but killing some of the local folks in the process. I appreciate the
potential for hostages (even entire neighborhoods) but please explain how
this ruling changes those instances in any way?

Perhaps we need an amendment that provides a proviso on the rulings of the
Supreme Court. Instead of these sorts of dicta having the weight of law,
which it shouldn't have since it's not legislative, they should be required
to be handed over to Congress for resolution via the normal law making
process. This would limit the Supreme Court to interpretations of existing
law (per the 9th & 10th Amendment).

We definitely need an end to the post-Vietnam, post-Cold War testosterone
rush we're living in now. Like it or not, the more initialy confrontational
the government gets the more violence it will beget. And trying to justify
those strategies by claiming a responce to a rise in violence only begs the
question. Perhaps this realization is at least one reason that the equality
of the federal level, state level, and individual civil rights has become so
critical and so ignored.


    ____________________________________________________________________
 
       To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.

                                                     Confucius

       The Armadillo Group       ,::////;::-.          James Choate
       Austin, Tx               /:'///// ``::>/|/      ravage@ssz.com
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