Tuesday, April 23, 2013

When Police Action is NOT a Violation of Human Rights

Along with the conspiracy theories about Newtown, CT, and Waco, TX, comes the cries of foul play from the normally much better media outlets of the pro-liberty fraternity over the recent "lock-down" and manhunt in Boston, Mass.

Viral videos of folks being taken out of their homes as squads of armed police move through cordoned-off areas are making the rounds as "proof" of police-state tactics by government.

As anyone who reads me knows, I am no fan of big government, but I must remain honest and call a fraud a fraud. There was nothing abusive about the house to house search in Boston.

Perhaps we are too far removed in time to remember that earlier generation of criminals who first brought "terror" to America, the organized crime gangs and mobile robbery gangs of pre-war America. These criminals ranged from individuals and small groups like Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde, to mobile gangs like the Barkers, to organized syndicates like Capone and company. These criminals brought the use of recent (WWI), technological advances adapted for military firepower, like BARs, tommy-guns, grenades, motor vehicles, and the use of dynamite, into the escalating violence of their criminal enterprises.

These guys were stopped, as we say in the military, by proper application of superior force.

A house to house search by police in a closed-off residential area isn't pretty to see. It is threatening, it is scary, it is coercive...

And under the circumstances, it was a reasonable reaction by the authorities, and it was also, successful.

If not for the house to house search in Boston, the surviving suspect might well have escaped through the police lines and still be at large. He might well have been able to reach help from others involved with or sympathetic to his cause. He might well have been able to keep killing folks for a few more days, adding to the body count.

While none of us liked having the Boston police and other law enforcement on the streets in combat gear, going house to house and pulling citizens from their homes like criminal threats, it was not an unreasonable action. If the suspect had managed to enter a private home, perhaps holding a family hostage at gunpoint, I'm sure they would have appreciated the arrival of the police.

And that very likelihood was why there was such a search in the first place.

Not every act of force is bad. The kneejerk reaction by some folks on the Liberty side of things shows an immaturity I find disappointing.

No one was hurt, no one's property was taken, the bad guys were caught, the innocent were protected.
Good work Boston P.D.

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