"To ensure preservation of peace and public safety through the enforcement of local, state, and Federal
laws, and by providing support and assistance during emergency or crisis situations." Duluth Mn job description. The only force with an online posting I could find.
However, we're coming dangerously close to that time when we need to reign in their powers, because they're out of hand.
We've all heard of the terminally ill granny whose daughter had to take her to the rest room and remove her diaper so she could be effectively searched at an airport. And now we're looking at the police telling us what we can and cannot "say." And this is just an incident we know about, there are countless others we never hear of.
In the last decade since we bacame a nation of cowards who need to be protected from everyone and everything we've chosen to blindly hand over our civil liberties and our security to "specialists" who will take care off that so all we have to do is make sure our cell pone batteries are charged and we have the latest music on our ipod. We're makking mistake after mistake. I believe we can correct those mistakes and I believe we can return to being a truly free nation, but we aren't one right now.
But we don't even know it. Take a look at the latest episode in "cops run the show"
BALLWIN, Missouri - An offensive hand gesture earned one Missouri driver a ticket. But he says the citation is a violation of his free speech, and now he's taking his case to court.
Steven Pogue has been getting a lot of attention lately, and it's probably because of a little yellow piece of paper given to him by Ballwin police back in April.
It's a ticket for flipping another driver the bird.
"Yeah, I was frustrated."
Pogue said it was a busy Saturday and he was sitting at a light. That's when Pogue said another driver ventured into an already jammed intersection as the light was turning red, blocking his way and voiding his green light.
"The arm was there and, like I said, not proud, but I showed my displeasure of them blocking the intersection."
Just a few blocks later, Pogue was pulled over by Ballwin police and given a citation.
"He said, 'Yeah, I was thinking about going after them until I saw you flip them off.' So, it's like let's see, the person that breaks the two laws, walks. The person kind of doing their first amendment free speech right thing gets the ticket."
The ordinance cited for the ticket reads, no person shall “extend any part of his body outside of the vehicle expect the hand and arm for signaling purposes only."
Pogue said he's concerned his freedom of speech was violated, and is prepared to represent himself during his next court appearance.
"I'm just going to use the jurisprudence system and see if I can go to court on the 23rd of August and prove myself innocent,” said Pogue.
Though several attorneys said this is not a First Amendment rights case, an attorney for the ACLU said the ticket does violate Pogue's free speech rights.-cnn
Is this how we really want to live? I don't! I guarantee you there are people who will respond to this post who live with blinders on who think "this is the greatest country in the world." and will old to the party line of "love it or leave it" but how about loving it and wanting it to stay free? We spend so much time looking for threats to our freedom from without, we never think to look for threats from within.
And so it goes:
