Cops: Preachers and Predators

The police are out of control in America today. Cops have become predators. They’re running amok. SWAT teams are swooping down haphazardly upon innocent citizens; smashing down doors; murdering pets; shooting first and asking questions later; tasing people in the back; tazing people without reasonable cause; tasing 8-yeaar-old kids; literally tasing some people to death.

Cops are stopping and frisking ‘suspects’ without probable cause; conducting warrantless searches of homes and motor vehicles; aggressively tear gassing peaceful protesters; arresting and handcuffing elementary school children; responding to the slightest questioning of their authority often with lethal violence … the list goes on and on.

Police rarely exercise restraint today like they mostly did in the past. Today they employ violence against passive resisters, old women and kids. Cops no longer regard their jobs as protecting and serving the people. They’ve become government thugs with short tempers, badges, and guns.

Just last week, cops in Tallahassee Florida shot a 61 year old woman in the back with a Taser as she was slowly walking away from them. She collapsed face down, incapacitated to the pavement. She might have been killed as others have for the “crime” of talking back to cops.

And when the cops aren’t acting as government predators, some of them believe they have the right to be government preachers – cops for Jesus.

That’s right. I’m not making this stuff up. Last August an Indiana woman motorist was pulled over by a cop for a traffic stop whereupon the officer used the situation as an opportunity to interrogate his captive as to whether she had accepted Jesus Christ as her savior.  

Indiana state trooper, Brian Hamilton, apparently believes that he has authority from God to use his police car and badge to make traffic stops and proselytize his Christian faith to his hapless victims. While his police cruiser lights are flashing in the background, he enjoys asking them about their faith. Then he hands them religious materials to remind them, among other things, to “realize you’re a sinner.”

A spokesman for the police department said that there is no specific policy that addresses distributing religious materials. Never-mind the fact that Officer Hamilton’s conduct violates both the First and Fourth Amendment rights of motorists caught in his trap, if there’s no policy addressing it, in his mind that means that the cops patrolling the Indiana highways have the authority to preach the Christian gospel while on the job.  

"I have people pass out religious material all the time. Mormons come to my door all the time, and it doesn't offend me," explains Micah Clark, executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana. "[This case] might not be the most persuasive time to talk to someone about their faith, but I don't think that a police officer is prohibited from doing something like that."

There you have it. The American Family Association thinks it’s perfectly proper for cops to be preachers as well as predators in the service of God and government Authority!