Are you a citizen?
A friend and I were discussing actions and behavior of the members of a local police agency. I spoke of my experience with four specific people of the agency. Each person was extremely disrespectful toward me and treated me as though I did not have a status that they were to respect.
Are four experiences adequate to draw a conclusion about other members of the same agency and, of course, including the management model? Yes.
None of the four behaved as though they were speaking with a citizen of the United States and a resident of Lakeport. In fact, three of them behaved in an abusive, authoritative manner, as I explained to my friend, actually bordering on fascist-like behavior. I felt as though if I continued my dialogue, I would be charged with a crime. My statement roused strong feelings in my friend, who is a member of the legal system. My friend concluded our discussion with the phrase, “Ronnie, stay out of trouble.”
I replied, “you, my friend, with that attitude, are the problem.”
Our rule of law process defines “trouble.” Do you perform your duties with this attitude when no one can define satisfactorily the phrase? If so, then police action from the standpoint of stay out of trouble is fascist behavior.
When a member of the legal system tells a citizen to “stay out of trouble,” it means that the police person is stating to the citizen that we have the means to crush you or that we have ways of maneuvering you into behavior, which the police person then can identify as an offense.
The four members of the agency showed me that kind of behavior. So, when members of the legal system express the extremely intimidating attitude of “stay out of trouble” directly to a citizen, it signals to me that the members of the legal system need to be educated.
I list two quotes from the Record-Bee from Sept. 16. Both are aligned with my motivation for my Letter to the Editor. One is Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., publisher of the New York Times from 2006, and the other is Ralph Nader. Each person”s quote must be a daily mantra for each of us, including members of the legal system.
“Each one of you who forsakes your role in keeping our democracy alive by either inaction or, perhaps worse, by action based on ignorance, threatens all the rest of us. So, read a newspaper and build a community.”
I wish to build a community that includes the members of a local police agency that respects the civil rights of all citizens.
“To go through life as a non-citizen would be to feel that there”s nothing you can do, that nobody”s listening, that you don”t matter. But to be a citizen is to enjoy the deep satisfaction of seeing the prevention of pain, misery and injustice.”
When a member of the legal system tells a citizen in a menacing tone to “stay out of trouble,” the citizen must respond. “Are you a citizen and, if so, what will be your response when the civil rights of a citizen are violated?”
Ronnie Kelly
Lakeport
