Police State

I am always pleased when I discover new blogs that deal with the issues of freedom in a serious, thoughtful manner. Yesterday I discovered Pro Libertate, the blog for the webzine of the same name. The editor is William Grigg, and his writing is thoughtful, well-researched, and cuts right to the chase. Mr. Grigg is a true iconoclast: a black man, libertarian in his politics, living in Idaho. It doesn't get any more iconoclastic than that.

I read a blog post by Mr. Grigg regarding the epidemic of shootings (police shooting innocent civilians/innocent civilians shooting police) resulting from no-knock warrants executed by police. Specifically, he asks the very pertinent question: should we exercise our Constitutional right to resist unlawful arrest or not? Given this example, I don't know if I would.

It was well after midnight when armed strangers burst into the Houston apartment Pedro Oregon Navarro shared with his family. Adrenaline surging through his veins, Pedro grabbed a handgun and fled toward his room, the intruders pounding after him.

One of the assailants later claimed that Pedro pointed his gun at him. A short while later, the 22-year-old father was dead. Some 33 shots had been fired, twelve of which found their way into Pedro’s body. This wasn’t a case of “contagious gunfire”; one of the attackers took the time to reload and empty a second clip. Pedro’s gun wasn’t fired a single time.

The invaders were police, of course. They stormed into Pedro’s home without a warrant, acting on a tip from an informant that narcotics commerce was being conducted there – a charge regarded as sufficient justification for a raid by the kind of people who believe the State has jurisdiction over the individual’s bloodstream. The informant wasn’t “registered” with the police department, an omission that may be significant to the kind of people who can countenance working with compensated snitches.

More importantly, several searches of the home failed to produce so much as a particle of evidence that narcotics had ever been present therein.

So the police, who raided a home without a warrant or any semblance of probable cause, were arraigned on charges of murder, or at least manslaughter, for the needless death of an innocent 22-year-old man -- right?

Well, no.

“I don’t know of any authority at this point that gave them [the police] the right to be in that residence,” conceded John B. Holmes, Jr., the District Attorney for Harris County. “But that doesn’t make the shooting a crime.”

33 shots. Nice. And no charges against the police, the informant, or anybody. But you can bet that, had he survived, Pedro Oregon would have been charged! Don't you DARE defend yourselves against the Schutzstaffel!

Holmes told the Houston Chronicle that, in effect, Pedro had committed a capital offense by arming himself when the police broke into his home illegally.

Okay. Let me get this straight. Pedro committed the crime here. Not the brown shirts. Pedro.

Now do you understand the kind of environment that has been created as a result of the runaway growth of the State? As der Staat grows more and more powerful, its agents, in the guise of police and investigative agencies, also grow more powerful. When I was a child there was no way that cops could bust into the house of a citizen who had NOT EVEN BEEN ACCUSED OF A CRIME as was the case here. Now it's commonplace. It's the "drug war", so that makes it okay. Tomorrow it will be terrorism...and that will make it okay. When do we as a society decide that it's NOT okay? Or is it now too late for us to decide?