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April 28,
2001
ALERT: TYRANNY IS MERELY
"INCONVENIENT" SAY JUSTICES
One day in 1997, Gail Atwater was returning from soccer practice along a
gravel road in Lago Vista, Texas. She was driving 15 miles per hour as her
two children, heads out the window, scanned the roadside for a lost toy.
At that moment, police officer Bart Turek pulled her over. He had stopped
her once
before, suspecting that her son was riding without a seat belt. That time,
the officer had been mistaken. This time, all three Atwaters were beltless
-- a misdemeanor bearing a maximum fine
of $50 apiece.
In front of a growing crowd of witnesses, Turek screamed at Mrs. Atwater
that he'd seen her before, and that this time she
was going to jail. Turek handcuffed Atwater and refused her request to be
allowed to take her children to a neighbor's home two doors away. One of
the onlookers eventually took charge of
the terrified four- and six-year-olds, while their mother was hauled to
jail, and forced to empty her pockets and submit to
the indignity of a mug shot and fingerprinting.
On April 23, 2001, U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, writing for
the 5-to-4 majority in the case of Atwater v. Lago Vista, claimed that
this example of a police state in action was merely "... inconvenient
to Atwater, but not so
extraordinary as to violate the Fourth Amendment."
Inconvenient? What kind of person imagines that being dragged from your
terrified children in handcuffs is a mere "inconvenience"? What
kind of person equates being booked, fingerprinted and jailed with genuine
inconveniences, such as having to stand in line too long at the
supermarket or having a business appointment canceled at the last minute?
Anyone making those claims understands neither the Fourth Amendment nor
the growing gulf between ordinary Americans and the government they once
believed existed to protect and serve them.
What kind of person imagines that anyone, anywhere, can rightly be jailed
for failing to wear a seat belt? Only an elitist who knows he himself will
never be forced to endure the indignities he imposes upon the riff raff --
the riff raff being millions of ordinary Americans. The riff raff being
you and me.
What Bart Turek did to Gail Atwater was a naked -- and blatantly
unconstitutional -- abuse of police power. It is also a perfect
example of how laws "for your own good" (for safety and
"for the children") are being used as America's latest excuse
for tyrannical ruthlessness.
The ACLU, in filing an amicus brief in Atwater v. Lago Vista, noted,
"The Texas statute authorizing custodial arrest for any
violation of its traffic code resembles the general warrants that were one
of the principal motivating factors behind the
American Revolution and the drafting of the Fourth Amendment."
During oral arguments in December 2000, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
agreed, saying Atwater had the perfect Fourth Amendment case. Justice
Anthony Kennedy, on the other hand, shrugged, "It is not a
constitutional violation for a police officer to be a jerk."
Although he was probably unaware of it, Kennedy was pointing the way
toward the future. Now -- with the august blessing of the U.S. Supreme
Court, and if your state laws allow it -- a cop who dislikes you, or who
thinks you're giving him lip, or who's
just having a bad day, can drag you off to jail for his own satisfaction.
If you're known for fighting city hall or being a
political activist, you can expect to be targeted and harassed for every
broken taillight, misplaced insurance card, rolling
stop or puff of excess exhaust from your tailpipe.
As usual, expect minorities and the poor to be the most frequent targets
of abuse; if police can't stop them for their race, or
can't find sufficient drugs or cash in their possession to justify civil
forfeiture, they can still threaten them with jail for exceeding the speed
limit by five miles per hour. But we are all in danger - as the ordinary
rural housewife, Mrs. Atwater, discovered.
Mark these names well: David Souter; William Rehnquist, Anthony Kennedy,
Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. They are the five who voted to let the
police state storm America's highways. We might have expected it of the
first three, but Scalia and Thomas, both Republican appointees, have just
forfeited their claim to freedom lovers' trust. (Don't expect G.W. Bush's
appointees to be any better.)
The only thing these five can do now to redeem themselves is show their
solid, unshakable support for the Second Amendment. Short of that, they
are about as useless to freedom as that bubonic plague.
We owe a vote of thanks to Justices O'Connor, Ginsburg, Breyer and Stevens
for trying to hold back the steady stomp of the jackboots -- despite the
fact that several of these four are not normally defenders of the
Constitution.
You can find the complete text of the Supreme Court's decision on Atwater
v. Lago Vista at:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinio
ns/00slipopinion.html
The Liberty Crew
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Original Material in CCOPS ALERTS are Copyright 2001 CCOPS, Inc.
Permission is granted to reproduce this alert in full, so long as the
following contact information is included:
CCOPS: Concerned Citizens Opposed to Police States
P.O. Box 270205
Hartford, WI 53027
Phone: (262) 670-9920
Fax: (262) 670-9921
Web: http://www.ccops.org/
e-mail: webmaster@ccops.org
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