The new conservatism vs. the Fuzz

Mark Steyn on Ferguson and cops

From the piece.

The most basic problem is that we will never know for certain what happened. 

Why? 

Because the Ferguson cruiser did not have a camera recording the incident. 

That's simply not credible. 

"Law" "enforcement" in Ferguson apparently has at its disposal tear gas, riot gear, armored vehicles and machine guns . . . but not a dashcam. 

That's ridiculous. 

I remember a few years ago when my one-man police department in New Hampshire purchased a camera for its cruiser. 

It's about as cheap and basic a police expense as there is.

Last year, my meek mild-mannered mumsy office manager was pulled over by an angry small-town cop in breach of her Fourth Amendment rights. 

This is the one.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Not sure how that would apply to just pulling somebody over for a traffic stop, but anyway . . .

Is Steyn a fan of the incorporation doctrine, as many libertarians today are?

Or does he think, perhaps rightly, that as written the scope of this amendment is not limited to the federal government and never was.

Of the first ten amendments, only the first from its very wording applies only to the federal government.

Nothing in the texts of the others, the seventh perhaps excepted, even hints they only apply to the federal government.

Incorporation is historically redundant, on that reading, except as regards the first.

Anyway, back to Steyn.

The state lost in court because the officer's artful narrative and the usual faked-up-after-the-fact incident report did not match the dashcam footage. 

Three years ago, I was pulled over by an unmarked vehicle in Vermont and (to put it mildly) erroneously ticketed. 

In court, I was withering about the department's policy of no dashcams for unmarked cars, and traffic cops driving around pretending to be James Bond but without the super-secret spy camera. 

The judge loathed me (as judges tend to), but I won that case. 

In 2014, when a police cruiser doesn't have a camera, it's a conscious choice. 

And it should be regarded as such.

And, if we have to have federal subsidy programs for municipal police departments, we should scrap the one that gives them the second-hand military hardware from Tikrit and Kandahar and replace it with one that ensures every patrol car has a camera.

Read past that to the international statistics on police violence.

We're number one, all right.

Steyn is devastating, his only error being he seems to think there was ever a time when American cops didn't think exactly this way.

Take away their guns and leave them only their nightsticks.

Make American police learn their jobs from scratch from European departments.