Clowns to the left of me

Jokers to the right.

Here I am, stuck in the middle with a metric shit-ton of ammo and an attitude.

So Joe posts a link to this picture of a person with a dumb idea. The opening salvo of comments to that post contained 110 Octane levels of stupid. And by using that terminology, I am expressly implying that I believe those folks have recently stuck their heads in tanks of AV fuel and inhaled deeply.

This not being the first time I’ve come across this idea, let me just point out why it is a dumb idea. Again.

To start, there are good cops and bad cops and good prosecutors and bad prosecutors. I believe that the percentage of good cops/prosecutors is magnitudes higher than the percentage of bad ones.

If anyone disagrees, I am open to factual evidence to the contrary. But remember: “Anecdote” does not equal “fact”.

Policing draws certain types of personalities to it. Some of these types are good and others are bad. The bad types of personalities are the number one reason there have always been serious complaints against members of that profession. It is those types that lead to the call for privatization.

But, if privatization happened, guess which type would feel the stronger tug towards the profession?

And then after privatization, not only would we have more of the wrong personality types doing the policing, we would have less accountability.

People who profess a belief in the need to privatize the police have not yet thought the argument all the way through. They suffer from the same delusion that infects believers in “the evil isms” (aka: Marxism, Communism, Socialism, etc.). They keep believing that if policing/prosecutorial duties were privatized, that “the right people” would be in charge and all would be well. Maybe they forget or maybe they haven’t figured out yet that power draws to it those who enjoy having power. Either way, they’re wrong. The frailty of human morality will prove them wrong every single goddamn time.

Should the system be reformed? Absolutely. Starting with the “War on (some) Drugs” and immediately followed by  demilitarization.

Advocates for privatizing those duties will forever get a strong “NO!” from me. And if it ever did happen, the first private constable who tries to enforce a law upon my person will get a “NO!” followed up with a bullet.

As I stated over at Joe’s: “It’s hard enough to get the political class to understand that striking down laws that aren’t expressly enumerated through the Constitution isn’t a plum crazy idea. Now we have to deal with the jackasses that want to strip out the ones that are?”