You guys are making a huge leap. There's a difference between helping him and being harassed by him. I would do anything to help if there's a dangerous person around. That's not giving up my rights. Wouldn't it be a hoot if he was hiding under the tarp in the back of my truck.
The back of your truck is different than the inside of your car. If I were driving a truck, I would not try to stop them from peering over into the bed. I'm not even sure I'd have a legal basis from which to object, as it's in public view.
It's amazing to me that you see cops in large numbers going car-to-car on a road-blocked freeway with M4's and shotguns at the low-ready position demanding to search your car as just the good and always-helpful squad of Officers Friendly "
asking" you for your help. Gunpoint is
always, every
single time, coercion. You want my help? All ya gotta do is ask....nicely. You pull a weapon on me when I haven't done anything to provoke it, and could no more be confused for 3 young black perps than a plastic water bottle, you have disqualified yourself to be worthy of my voluntary help.
The only thing that makes this even a slightly tough call is that the perps were actually there in the vicinity, and the cops did apprehend them without anyone getting hurt. That's nice, but it's no different than Watertown where hundreds of LEO's locked down a whole neighborhood, ordered businesses closed, ordered people out of their homes while they illegally made entry without homeowners even there to supervise what was going on. Much of that done at gunpoint too. How you can't see that all the guns makes a world of difference between "helping" them and having your rights completely trampled by them is a mystery to me. I know what other people think doesn't have much bearing on what you think, but look around, you're alone on this one.
If the perp had your daughter in her car would you want the cop to ask her if he could search? Sort of puts it in another light. Think it couldn't happen? I once thought that way too. Experience taught me anything can happen.
I'm as empathetic to your history of being a crime victim as anyone on this planet, BC, but the fact is in this situation, the perps didn't "have" anybody. I'm guessing they had a helicopter on 'em, or had street-level surveillance from the bank to the freeway on-ramp and knew the car was occupied only three times, and must've known it was in the group of cars they managed to corral with the road-block. How would you feel if you had a daughter driving the car right next to the perps when traffic came to a stand-still? Maybe a grandbaby or two in the car with her, and when the guys realize what's happening, they take your baby girl hostage along with her kids? Would you tell your daughter that that's how we "help" the police, by volunteering ourselves to be human shields?
We could come up with an infinite number of scenarios that
could have happened, but what
did happen is what did happen, three perps' rights and lives were protected while hundreds of innocent citizens' rights and lives were trampled and under threat.
You want to help them violate your rights, have at it, but don't ask me to, and don't ask me to understand why anyone else would. I simply don't understand.
Blues
