TELL US AGAIN, WHICH SIDE WON THE COLD WAR?

Sunday, April 29, 2001 - It's hard to predict just which date a future
historian will find significant, but when the book "How America Became a
Police State" is written, last Tuesday will doubtless get prominent
mention. On April 24, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court further empowered police
by ruling that police do not have to get a warrant before arresting someone
for a minor traffic offense. The offense at issue was committed by a Texas
woman, Gail Atwater, who let her children ride in a pickup without buckling
their seat belts. A cop noticed the unbelted kids and pulled her over.
Instead of just issuing a citation, he arrested her - the full drill with
handcuffs and a trip to the police station, where she had to post bond
before she could be released from jail. Once you're under arrest, the
police have the right to search the immediate premises, without the trouble
of finding a compliant judge to issue a search warrant. So, we start with a
minor traffic offense, which causes an arrest, followed by the power to
search without getting a warrant. Does this violate the Fourth Amendment,
which holds that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated ."?

By a 5-4 margin the U.S. Supreme Court said there's no violation of the
Fourth Amendment if a cop sees you change lanes without using your turn
signal, pulls you over, cuffs you and hauls you to jail, and searches your car.

Even Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a Reagan appointee, was appalled by this
reasoning. "A minor traffic infraction may often serve as an excuse for
stopping and harassing an individual," she wrote. "After today, the arsenal
available to any officer extends to a full arrest and the searches
permissible concomitant to that arrest."

So they search you and find some cash in your wallet. Since about 80
percent of the paper money in the United States carries traces of cocaine,
the odds are high that you're transporting drugs in a zero-tolerance legal
system.

They can confiscate your money and car, and the litigation to get your
property returned is long and expensive.

And the beauty of this, from the police perspective, is that they get to
keep the money for their own purposes. They can sell the car, or if it's
something cool like a Corvette or a Mercedes, they can keep it for
"official purposes" like the police chief going to and from work.

Most states recognize the possibility for abuse in this arrangement, and
some require the money to go to the general fund or to fund education, not
the law-enforcement agency in question.

But there's a way around this for your friendly local cops who covet cars
and money. They invite the feds to participate in the arrest. The proceeds
then go into the "Federal Drug Enforcement Forfeiture Fund," and 80 percent
of that money goes back to the participating local law-enforcement agency.

Thus police are able to fund themselves by arrests and seizures, and the
"power of the purse" that elected bodies are supposed to exercise has been
rendered impotent.

Nor should we forget that in Denver, if a police officer dies, the district
attorney will find someone to hang, even if that someone was in police
custody at the time - just ask Lisl Auman.

But if a citizen dies as a result of police gunfire, the district attorney
starts applying whitewash by the barrel - just ask the surviving relatives
of Jeff Truax and Ismael Mena.

And there are the special rights available to the police when they're
questioning you. It's illegal for you to lie to the police because you're
thereby obstructing justice. But the courts have held that it's legal for
the police to lie to you. Talk about a stacked deck.

Add all this up, and we live in a country where there are thousands of
laws, so many that it's impossible to avoid breaking one or more of them on
a simple errand like going to the post office.

And once you're seen breaking even the least of these laws, you can be
arrested and searched, and be questioned by people who have the right to
deceive you while holding you accountable for every word. And then your
money and property can be confiscated, and the police get to keep the
proceeds for their own purposes. And the courts will not protect you.

When I was a schoolboy during the peak years of the Cold War, they told us
that this was how the Soviet Union operated - it was a police state, not a
nation where individuals had constitutional rights.

So you have to wonder these days just which side really won the Cold War.
American police aren't there to protect your life, liberty or property -
they're a threat to all three, and nothing appears likely to stop this from
getting even worse.