I to am floored by the number of folks who would allow a peace officer to search them without probable cause. Ben Franklin said something along these lines, "Those who would give up individual freedoms in exchange for safety deserve neither freedom nor safety. I agree with the old man completely. I am no sheep.

It's scary how many folks think that it's smart to allow government to check their papers without suspicion of any wrongdoing. "I've got nothing to hide" is a poor rationale.

If a police officer witnesses somebody poaching-absolutely, go get 'em.

But just stopping someone to check their papers smacks of Nazi Germany. The argument you might find a wanted criminal could apply to anyone walking down the street.

I'm paranoid when I see people justify the actions of police acting as our masters and not our servants. You better believe our forefathers didn't write the Constitution to protect the police.

They wrote it to protect the people from the police.

GhostRider32 said: "I saw a split picture about 6 months ago that is truly revealing. It was a caption of 2 police officers. On the left side of the page there was an eighty's era cop with a .38, handcuffs, and a smile. He was there to help. On the right side there was a cop with full body armor, balaclava (for hiding the face), MP5, taser, etc..... He was there to kick your door in. The simple caption was: What the heck happened?"

Actually, what happened is that our society has evolved. But before I point out the changes, I have to ask: are you representing that officer 'with full body armor, balaclava (for hiding the face), MP5, taser, etc.....' as the patrol officer dealing with routine calls for service, or as the tactical team member running a high-risk warrant or tactical response? Because if you are misrepresenting the facts, then your point is based on a lie, and therefore invalid. There's too much lying to advance agendas going on today. The answers lie in truth, not hysterics and lies. Leave the lying to the politicians and the mainstream media.

In the eighties a lot of cops got killed because they weren't trained or equipped to deal with hazardous situations. Read your history, it's replete with situations where law enforcement was outgunned and outequipped to deal with hostage rescues, narcolabs, well-organized robberies, and the like. We learned from our mistakes, and we developed tactics and weapons systems to prevail. Law enforcement's mission is to keep our society safe, not to stomp everyone's freedoms into the dirt. If every cop you see is engaged in a tactical raid, perhaps you need to move. Or seek another lifestyle?????? I have yet to see a law enforcement agency where all of the officers are SWAT gods 24/7, and deal with the public accordingly. Do you actually believe that American law enforcement is all about treading on society's freedoms, or are you just another lying POS who is not afraid to misrepresent the facts to advance a flawed agenda? Please tell me; I don't want to waste my time on someone who refuses to stay with the truth. If you've been misled perhaps I can offer you some insights into the truth.........

Cops screw up. Cops turn dirty. Cops act on bad information. But the fact that mistakes are made, and that some cops go bad, doesn't mean that all cops are bad. If you don't like the laws, blame the ELECTED LEGISLATORS who passed them, not the cops who have to enforce them. If you want to hold all cops accountable for the bad acts of a few, the you should hold all blacks accountable for the black crooks, and all hispanics accountable for the hispanic crooks, and all whites accountable for the white crooks, and all car salesmen accountable for the car salesmen who are crooks........ Is your agenda starting to look a little stupid now? Sorta like a double standard?

Most cops are the kind of person you want them to be. They don't like crooked, unethical, unprofessional cops any more than anyone else. Most cops are proud of the job they do, and resent having their reputations tarnished by bad cops. But when every zipperhead who gets caught doing something wrong is screaming about "crooked cops!!!", and those claims eventually get disproved, they make it just that much harder to get rid of the bad cops. After over thirty years of law enforcement, I can tell you that the vast majority of police misconduct claims are eventually proved to be lies generated by crooks trying to get out of trouble. With that kind of record, it's very difficult to weed out bad cops; the people who investigate these things have seen it over and over.

And here comes GhostRider32; either an extremely naive person being manipulated, or a blatant liar, telling America that today's cop is a thug dedicated to eradicating the Constitution, just so he can........... what? What would the cop gain from doing that?

So GhostRider32, my challenge to you is this: Show us all how all of law enforcement is dedicated to trampling your rights. Use facts, not hysterical babbling from the radical extremes. Convince me that I am all wrong, USING VERIFIABLE FACTS. Otherwise, crawl back in your hole and STFU. I've dedicated a large portion of my life to helping people, and I'm getting a bit tired of morons who don't have the sense God gave a goose telling me how morally bereft I am, just because they were gullible enough to read it on some dissident's website. Try being part of the solution, not part of the problem.