. . . a sheriff’s deputy in Imperial County, Calif., made a traffic stop and arrested the driver. The female passenger evidently was not a licensed driver, and so the car had to be towed. When the deputy asked the passenger to exit the vehicle, however, she began to rant crazily about her status as a “free inhabitant” under the Articles of Confederation (???) and shenanigans ensued:
Let me explain, for the benefit of any fool who doesn’t understand, what this squeaky-voiced crazy woman did wrong. The man with a badge is called “law enforcement” for a reason. There is a law, and his job is to enforce it. As a Roman centurion said to Jesus, the policeman is “a man under authority” — he is answerable to his superiors, who are responsible to officials elected by the people, whose authority he exercises by proxy. A good officer is sensible of his duty, and is therefore scrupulously fair in upholding the law. There are bad cops, and there are also bad situations where even a good cop may make a mistake. However, the law-abiding citizen has no reason to fear the police, and there is no reason why any honest person should exhibit the kind of hostility toward law enforcement that results in an angry confrontation like this. We may summarize the proper protocol very simply:
- Every citizen must obey the law.
- At the moment a citizen is confronted by a police officer, the officer is the law, for all practical purposes;
therefore - Do what the officer says.
Comply with the officer’s orders. Keep your hands where the officer can see them, and do not make any sudden moves. He’s got a pistol on his hip, and he’s got a wife at home praying that he comes home alive, so if you do anything that a police officer perceives as a threat to his safety, guess what? You lose. And we may add this to proper protocol:
4. Never try to lecture a cop about your “rights.”
The cop has been trained in criminal law, and if there is one thing that every experienced cop knows, it is that anyone who starts yammering about his “rights” is an obnoxious dirtbag who deserves zero tolerance. Whatever the situation, anyone who takes the kind of chip-on-the-shoulder attitude where he starts in on a “rights” lecture is going to be charged with everything the cop can plausibly charge him with. He pulled you over for a busted tail light, and maybe it would have been just a warning or at most a $50 ticket, but you want to imply the cop is violating your “rights”? Well, buddy, you better not have a dime bag of dope or an empty beer can anywhere in your car.
“Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”
— Romans 13:1-2 (KJV)
Watch the video again. Notice how the deputy is polite, but firm? Notice how he keeps his cool and talks reasonably to the crazy lady? This ain’t his first time at the rodeo, my friends. An experienced cop is a sort of expert in behavioral psychology. He knows that crazy people can’t handle the polite, reasonable approach, so he just gave the crazy lady enough rope to hang herself — impeding an investigation, resisting arrest, etc. All she had to do was to comply with the deputy’s instruction to get out of the car and she could have walked away, but she chose to escalate it into a confrontation she could not win.
#CrazyLivesMatter https://t.co/fyg8BcwSr0 @ulisesjorge
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) October 16, 2015
The majesty of the law is a beautiful thing to behold, really.
(Hat tip: @ulisesjorge on Twitter.)
Schadenfreude is quite delicious first thing on a Friday
You can politely assert your rights (as not agreeing to a consensual search, etc.) but never get in an argument with a cop. Beyond that, shut up and follow his direction. If you are arrested request an attorney.
If you think your rights were violated by a cop during a traffic stop, there’s this place called a courtroom where these things are resolved.
A judge will ask the officer if you were polite or belligerent. Guess what? If the officer says you were an asshole during the stop, you lose even if you were in the right.
So much for trying html on my phone.
You have the right to remain silent. So did she. Maybe she should have exercised that right.
Not unusual. I dealt with these types 20+ years ago. I recall one guy showed up to represent himself in court when I was a prosecutor. He was charged with driving without a license. He wore a purple tux, with tails and sported a top hat. Good times, good times.
That’s an extra ten hours in internet purgatory for you.
To be fair, the far end of the starboard-side of the political spectrum sports a good number of “Sovereign Citizen” loonies who use similarly self-serving rhetoric when dealing with the law. Most of them, however, aren’t as obnoxious as this whiny, victimhood-mongering brat.
As my tough, working-class dad used to tell me, “Son, NEVER smart off to a cop — even if he’s obviously in the wrong. Keep your mouth shut, go along quietly, get an attorney, and let HIM fight the charge.”
I’d give anything to see a video of her arraignment with the judge.
What feminists see, hooked up to their Matrix machine, is different from what the rest of us see here in reality.
Not sure if you’ve seen this, seems ripe for a column:
Anti-Rape Activist Resigns After Raping Somebody
http://dailysurge.com/2015/10/anti-rape-activist-resigns-after-raping-somebody/#
Now I know what a special snowflake getting a practical education sounds like. Thanks! In the past I might have taken that nerve-jangling screeching to be a faulty wheel bearing or some sort of lower primate caught in a steel trap. I learn so much here.
I guess it’s safe to assume after the entire courtroom finished laughing their asses off, the guy lost his case.
Been there more times than I can count.
After watching the video, that was a Tasing waiting for a time to happen. Kudos to the officer for keeping his cool.
If a cop has violated your rights, don’t tell him about it, because he won’t listen — instead watch, listen, and remember, and tell your lawyer. And yes, telling your lawyer is hard to do with a massive GSW to the head.
I’m not sure how exceptional it makes me that I’ve had a sworn officer’s gun pointed at me, but the club I was carrying, I got back, along with advice from that same officer on how to use it most effectively.
That’s not how it would have ended if I’d argued with him.
You were doing okay until:
“The cop has been trained in criminal law”
Nope. Nope. Nope. You can stack issues from here to the moon where cops have been completely oblivious to the actual legalities of a situation.
While yes, you’re not going to win any confrontation with a cop, don’t assume they know what the hell they’re talking about.
“It’s Not Against the Law to Be Crazy in California, However …”
It’s my impression that it’s mandatory
I can’t believe he just did that to a Free Inhabitant! I mean she’s of the earth and everything. That’s flat out rape. Free inhabitant lives matter, people. I guess the days are gone when a Free Inhabitant can just break the law and invoke Free Inhabitant privilege. I long for the days when the other Free Inhabitants and I used to stroll into banks and walk out with all the cash proclaiming that “your puny laws have no sway with me and my kind”…as the police stood by like impotent children watching their pet pony walk away with the neighborhood bully… What has this crazy world come to?
Remarkably professional deputy right there. Makes you proud of our police force.
On another note, I love this ‘free inhabitant’ concept. You get all the rights, but none of the responsibilities of citizenship…kind of like progressivism.
I’ve heard a few “youths” screaming about their rights outside my building. It’s repulsive.
The policeman handled that really, really well. Kudos Imperial County deputy.
“Officer, the voices in my head say I don’t gotta do nuthin’ you say!”
This is why I could not be a cop.
Actually, as a Free Inhabitant you were not breaking any laws, because they did not apply to you.
#Winning!
I have not had a traffic citation since… um, sometime in the mid eighties. I have been stopped a few times, but always got to drive away with nothing more than a warning.
Not being a d-bag, and in fact being courteous and polite goes a long way.
So you are saying this officer was not aware of the powers of the magic “Free Inhabitant” talismanic word of power?
He must have missed the day they covered that at the police academy.
Yeah, but that would have been smart, and smart is boring.
You should never consent to the cops entering your property without a warrant. However, nothing says you have to be a jerk about it. You can say “no” and still be polite.
I’m not really certain those are “starboard-side.” There is a lunatic fringe of the libertarian movement that is essentially anarchist. As such they don’t really fit into the left/right spectrum, somehow managing to float detached from it.
And reality too, for that matter. I mean, even the most freak-flag-flying commune is going to need some rules, even if it’s simply who has to clean the toilet.
That’s the sort of thing that could go on pay per view.
Heck, a follow up show to COPS would be fun, watching these people get their day in court.
I’ve had a couple of speeding tickets I’ll admit to and I’ve always been very polite to the police. It seems to me that this young lady would have gotten away without any issues if she’d just done as she’d been asked.
Any time a policeman stops someone and begins an investigation he has no idea what he’ll find or if he’ll be in some kind of personal danger. For all he knew this crazy lady had a gun in her bag (unlikely) but it was still possible. Her job during the traffic stop was to reassure the cop that she wasn’t up to something and the best way to do that would have been to cooperate.
That’s what happens when you change rape to have a flexible, retroactive definition with no statute of limitation on the retroactive determination.
But she’ll be all right. Some time in the wilderness, and then a tentative re-emergence with the appropriate mush mouthed words of contrition and claims to have gained insight and grown, and she’ll be back to making life miserable for the 97% of or so of the population that isn’t barking nuts.
No doubt about it. Even if you do still get a citation, if you’re polite, most times, it will be for a reduced amount.
My last ticket was for passing in a no passing zone, doing 75 in a 45 and not wearing a seat belt. I still got the seat belt ticket, got the speeding reduced and he forgot about the no passing. It saved me about a grand in fines and 12 points on my license…just for being polite.
Yeah, free inhabitants or sovereign citizens (or whatever they want to call themselves today) are at the “cerulean C-flat” end of the political spectrum.
That is to say, they use words, but you have to rearrange their words and use homonyms or alternate definitions to make a sensible phrase, e.g. “calm blue sea.”
Wrong slash.
Q: Why is California like granola?
A: If you take away the fruits and nuts, all you have left are flakes.
The problem is not normally the “civilian” with a chip on their shoulder, but the cop with a chip on his. Their is, indeed, a majesty to the law, but that majesty is seldom demonstrated by the cops. All too often, there are 2 classes of people to them, perps that have been caught, and perps that have not.
All too often the court will side with the cop almost regardless of what the cop did. Cops have literally gotten away with voluntary manslaughter that would have put you or me in the pokey for a long time. The cops have “qualified immunity” which means they are privileged snowflakes that can do almost anything they like.
I’m sure that was a great comfort to the victims of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. Say, what about Idi Amin? Was he ordained of God?
That “97%” figure is a bit too large.
They do fit on the left-right spectrum. they are the far right. The left is the statist bunch, and the right is the no-government bunch, or anarchy.
The odds are heavily stacked against you regardless of how you act during the encounter.
The Internet had great potential to improve the world, but it’s biggest impacts seem to have been creating a lot of porn addicts and producing whackos like this who will believe any crazy theory they read on it.
That’s when it helps to have a friend at the newspaper or the local TV station.
Well, I was referring to the percentage that is straight, cis-het whatever.
They still might be barking nuts, but not about what part goes where.
Yeah, because that’s the meaning of the passage quoted.
And they do. I have lots of stories I could tell.
100% correct. I’ve personally seen this in action.
Some here would advise me to just suck it up and tell my lawyer all about it. But you have to pay the lawyer, and why should I have to pay out two or three grand to defend myself from a bogus charge? You might also think that the prosecutor wouldn’t bother with a case he knows he’d lose, but you’d be wrong about that, too. He can roll the dice that the accused can’t afford a lawyer, or that the one he can afford is incompetent, and that’s probably a good bet for the prosecutor in a lot of cases.
In my case, I talked my way out of it, but it could have easily gone the other way.
Note that there is a huge difference in how these things are handled in high crime big cities, versus low crime small towns, where the Legal Industrial Complex sometimes has to drum up business.
Sadly true. There’s some who are pretty cool and let common sense be their guide, but in my experience, this is the minority.
I’ve heard said that boring is a state of mind. I think – that along with predictable – it’s highly underrated, having had my fill of exciting and unpredictable.
Traffic court was the best!