A Stitch in Haste

Back to work:

(Click to enlarge. Source.)---

But what do we mean by "authority"? Two recent incidents of police shootings have riled up the righteous rights-based indignation of the usual libertarian suspects. In one, police executing a search warrant for drugs in a house where they had actually bought drugs just hours before shot and killed an apparently innocent 92-year old woman. Of course, the police didn't ask her age upfront, mainly because she was shooting at them first. Go figure.

In the other, undercover police shot — and shot and shot and shot — a car full of bachelor-partying men leaving a strip club that was under surveillance for drug dealing and other offenses. One of the casualties was the groom, who was killed just hours before his wedding. Lost in most of the outrage is the pesky little detail that the car intentionally struck one of the cops, rammed a police van, then backed up and rammed it again. Further details are still unclear.

So, do we get angry at the police, as some libertarians demand? Do we try to blame it all on Hudson v. Michigan? Do we argue that there is some sort of "right to kill (non-misbehaving) cops"?

I'm not so quick to reach such conclusions. Here's a comment I left at an Elite Eleven (i.e., excellent) blog:

My concern is that people often confuse "the police" with "the government."

If you're the beat cop, or the undercover cop, or even the paramilitary SWAT member, then you didn't pass the drug laws, you didn't target the address, you didn't sign the warrant. You're just doing your job. And then someone starts shooting at you. So you shoot back. To which I say: damn right and good job!

We're getting a little too close to the modern-day equivalent of shouting "Baby Killers!" to Vietnam vets (i.e., condemning people who are simply not the problem, but only a symbol of the true problem).

Get angry at the politicians; leave the police alone.

Discuss.