XPost: alt.tv.pol-incorrect, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.law-enforcement   
   XPost: alt.politics.liberalism, alt.politics.usa   
   From: weberm@polaris.net   
      
   I’ve been a cop for nearly 40 years. For the last 20 of them, I’ve had the   
   good fortune of being granted the platform, first at National Review Online,   
   later at City Journal, Ricochet, and here at PJ Media, to write on behalf of   
   my fellow police officers when their actions came under what I considered to   
   be unfair criticism. Police work has grown more difficult since I began, all   
   the more so when cops’ split-second decisions are scrutinized by an   
   uninformed public after having been mischaracterized in the media, sometimes   
   deliberately.   
      
   So it saddens me to observe some of the asininity on display among some of my   
   fellow police officers in recent days as fear of the coronavirus pandemic   
   brings the country to its knees. Reason and common sense have in some places   
   been abandoned in favor of a level of social control rarely seen in any   
   country that calls itself free, much less in the United States of America.   
   Here in Southern California, we have seen police officers ticketing a surfer   
   on an otherwise empty beach, citing people for sitting in parked cars while   
   watching a sunset, and, in what may be the most farcical display of them all,   
   using not just one but two boats to corral and arrest a lone paddleboarder   
   off the coast of Malibu.   
      
      
   I do not discount the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, I am   
   of a sufficiently advanced age to be considered a high-risk patient if I were   
   to contract the disease. But neither do I discount the genuine threat to   
   liberty posed by the various orders, decrees, edicts, and mandates lately   
   imposed by the nation’s governors, mayors, health commissioners, and every   
   other sort of government functionary exercising their newly discovered power   
   to limit the freedom of their fellow citizens. In the case of the people   
   being hassled for watching the sunset, cited above, the San Diego County   
   Sheriff’s Department was so proud of this exercise of authority that they   
   made it their pinned tweet on their Twitter account.   
      
   Surely the publicity that has attended these enforcement actions will reduce   
   the incidence of surfing, sunset-watching, and paddle boarding up and down   
   the coast of Southern California, but at what cost to the already eroding   
   level of respect for law enforcement? Making matters worse is the decision to   
   grant early release to 3,500 inmates in California so as to avert a   
   coronavirus outbreak in the state’s 35 prisons. That’s right, while   
   ordinarily law-abiding people are rousted by the police for daring to engage   
   in harmless activities so as to avoid going stir crazy, convicted felons are   
   being sprung from prison. Yes, we must release all those burglars, car   
   thieves, and con artists to make room for the expected wave of surfers,   
   paddle boarders, and sunset watchers. One feels safer already.   
      
   Regular readers will know I spent more than 30 years with the Los Angeles   
   Police Department and am now working for a much smaller agency in Southern   
   California. My duties occasionally take me back to Los Angeles, and they did   
   so recently, offering me a glimpse at how police and sheriff’s deputies are   
   enforcing the law during this pandemic. I passed through Malibu, where the   
   notorious paddleboarder was captured, and I saw miles and miles of no-parking   
   signs posted along any stretch of Pacific Coast Highway that offered access   
   to a beach, at some of which were sheriff’s deputies posted to deter any who   
   might be tempted to stop and dip their toes in the ocean. It’s interesting to   
   note that on a typical summer day along those same beaches, one finds groups   
   of deputies patrolling on foot and on ATVs while issuing citations to people   
   smoking or drinking beer. It’s hard to imagine why those same deputies   
   couldn’t be used to enforce a level of social distancing on beaches where in   
   almost every case it occurs spontaneously.   
      
   It was when I got to downtown L.A. that I beheld evidence of the moral   
   inversion that was occurring well before the term “coronavirus” entered the   
   lexicon but has been made even more starkly clear since. While sheriff’s   
   deputies, police officers, and park rangers made sure the beaches and   
   recreation areas of Southern California were kept free of people, the skid   
   row area was just as teeming as ever, with tents lining the sidewalks in   
   unambiguous violation of the law, and with the denizens free to roam and   
   congregate as they please, undeterred by the prospect of arrest for their   
   drug use or any of the other crimes they so routinely commit. One such   
   encampment thrives along the 101 Freeway where it can be viewed from the   
   nearby Hall of Justice, the headquarters for both the L.A. County District   
   Attorney and, yes, the Sheriff’s Department.   
      
   This, gentle readers, is lunacy. I pray wiser heads emerge from the madness.   
      
   --   
   Every American should want President Trump and his administration to   
   handle the coronavirus epidemic effectively and successfully. Those who   
   seem eager to see the president fail and to call every administration   
   misstep a fiasco risk letting their partisanship blind them to the   
   demands not only of civic responsibility but of basic decency.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)