Okay. I'm not evading the question of whether the enforcement should be going on. I say it should. Especially for DUIs (and any warrant pick-ups or stupid criminal activity-- e.g. the Jamaican fellows busted in a van in Ohio with pounds and pounds of crystal meth once they got pulled over for their tail light being out) it should be.
Everybody wants to harp on their liberties being infringed upon-- fine. The parents of the dead kids and the relatives of the drunk driver victims have a voice too. If drunk drivers kill or mame 16,000 people in a year here, are you really advocating a more who-gives-a-s#!t approach?
You're not running for commissioner are you?
One can pity the survivors of the victims and those survivors can voice their opinions all they want. However, that does not grant license to the police to force someone on whom they have no (to use a legal term) “probable cause” to either “answer their questions or have violence inflicted upon them”. That does not compute ethically or logically.
There are of course ways to deal with drunk drivers that don’t involve the actions of indiscriminately stopping and threatening violence for not answering questions. That you’re equating anything else with not giving a shit is a form of diversion known as attacking the alternative, not to mention could also be construed as an ad hominem.
Ad hominem. This kind of belittling does not add to the conversation.
I've been stopped by Staatspolizei in Germany, Caribinieri in Italy and Guardia Civil in Spain. They stopped me, checked me out and let me go. They do it there. They do it here.
The Mexican cops stopped me, found my weed (this was half my life ago), demanded a bribe, then let me go.
Do what you want and think what you want.
The Caribinieri would haul "Mr I-know-my-rights" straight to jail. No conversation. No "mirandizing." (He would not "pass go or collect $200.") Likewise the rest (of the foreign police). You're reading the post of a guy who's been stripsearched by the Grenzpolizei/Zoll (customs) and who registered with Austrian police to change residence-- in the same city!
This (irrelevant) argument is known as the
appeal to common practice. It is also fallacious.
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The Appeal to Common Practice is a fallacy with the following structure:
1. X is a common action.
2. Therefore X is correct/moral/justified/reasonable, etc.
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Some of you sound like (empty headed) crybabies who do not appreciate the limits of police work americans actually enjoy (and take for granted)most of the time. Spoiled kids who never stood a watch.
Oh Oh!! We're becoming a police state!! Maybe. But not on the DUI checkpoint front. It's a credit to the cops in the video that they just let the guy go.
First off, the “empty headed crybabies” and “spoiled kids” comments constitute abusive ad hominems, which is indicative to me of the quality of your arguments.
The use of sarcasm is also inappropriate, especially considering your near admittance directly afterwards.
I would agree that the police in the video should be given credit for their relatively polite interaction and not escalating that situation with violence or threats of violence. That being said, as soon as police do make threats, they’ve entered unethical territory. If everyone exercised the right of silence, as they should for their own benefit, the indiscriminate stop and question would be relatively ineffectual on all but the most obvious of drunk drivers, unless the police resorted to violence, which they all too often do. That is the police state. Defending that situation is untenable.
You guys can find waaay better examples of police misconduct, misuse of force, etc. etc.
I’m sure there are more obvious examples; however that does not excuse anything.
And my sociology prof taught me: "When do cops have probable cause? Whenever they want to." and if i want to fight that, get ready to pay a slick lawyer.
Well your sociology professor was demonstrating the use of an appeal to force fallacy, i.e. might makes right. If violence is its own justification, then that rule, as rules are defined, is universal. The result is violence against the perpetrators of violence (in this case the perpetrators would be the police) would be equally justified. That the professor follows upon that argument that your only (presumably ethical) recourse to that is “nonviolence” (aka begging and toiling through the court system) breaks his own “logical” premise. So he didn’t really teach you anything. A more correct interpretation would be he propagandized you.
Yea,just imagin what a nightmare life would be if there were no police.Might would make right(s).The "Wild West" wouldn't have nothing on modern day America.
For a moment there I thought you were being sarcastic.
This comment implies a couple things. One that the police aren't a form of might makes right. Two that without police that would still be the case.
I could also imagine that life, rather than being a nightmare, could actually be more pleasant without the subjugation to the violent coercion of the state.
Wed Feb 22, 2012 10:15 pm 
Maybe. But not on the DUI checkpoint front. It's a credit to the cops in the video that they just let the guy go.
all-is-sun]
, i'm a bunch older than you), but you are resorting to ad-hominems and arrogance.