Police & military access

Hi,

It occured to me that if the police have no civil liberties extending beyond
that of a citizen and citizens are not legaly permitted access to military
hardware then neither should the police.

If this applied then it would not be legal for police to have access to any
sort of communication or encryption technology that was not available to the
normal citizen.

If a police officer can buy body armor and automatic weapons for self
defence then so can a citizen.

If a police officer can search a suspect for weapons "to protect their person"
and confiscate or otherwise remove them from the immediate vicinity then a
normal citizen should require a police officer to do the same. In other
words, once it is established that the suspect is not armed the police
officer should be required to place their weapon in their vehicle or
othewise secure it off their person.

etc.

etc.

So, the question of the hour is:

Do police have any civil rights not endowed to a individual citizen?



                                                    Jim Choate
                                                    CyberTects
                                                    ravage@ssz.com

On Thu, May 22, 1997 at 09:04:15PM -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It occured to me that if the police have no civil liberties extending beyond
> that of a citizen and citizens are not legaly permitted access to military
> hardware then neither should the police.
[...]
> If a police officer can buy body armor and automatic weapons for self
> defence then so can a citizen.

[...]

> Do police have any civil rights not endowed to a individual citizen?

No.  But on the job, doing their state assigned duties, they have
access to instrumentalities not available to private citizens or
off-duty police.  "On" and "off" duty may sometimes be a little fuzzy
in practice, but the principle is clear.  It isn't a big deal, and
it's not a matter of civil rights.  A license to practice medicine
gives you the ability to prescribe morphine.  A certain class of
drivers license lets you drive a school bus full of children. 

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

At 12:53 AM 5/23/97 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>There is a current case involving a cop who is on the verge of losing his
>ability to be a cop because he pled "nolo contendre" to a domestic abuse
>charge a decade or so ago. The local law says that anyone in this situation
>may not have a gun, period. Thus, now that the law has caught up with him
>(no details on how and why this was not known until recently) he may not
>have a gun and thus may well lose his job.

I'm not familiar with local (Santa Cruz, or whatever) ordinances, but a
federal law saying exactly this was passed last year (the "Lautenberg Act",
which was apparently merged into a spending/budget act signed by Clinton on
10/3/96) - my hunch is that the controversy here is over the effects of the
federal law. The scenario you discussed is being played out in police
departments and sheriff's offices all over the country. Legislation has
been proposed this session (but its passage is uncertain to unlikely) which
would exempt law enforcement officers from the (federal) ban on possession
of weapons by convicted domestic violence offenders. 

>This would seem to support Jim Choate's general position. (Though I have my
>own skepticism that many jurisdictions think it is true.)

Jim Choate's messages about cops and "civil rights" suggest that he's not
familiar with and/or interested in the basics of legal research.
Restrictions (and lack of restrictions) related to use of force, power to
arest, possession/use of weapons, etc., are mostly statutory. You can't
find them (or understand them) by starting with only the Constitution, and
then reasoning and deducing things from it.

>From a moral or political perspective, (e.g., what *should* the
relationship between cops and citizens look like) what he writes is
perfectly reasonable. From a legal perspective (what is the law today?)
it's incomplete and thereby misleading. 


--
Greg Broiles                | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell:
gbroiles@netbox.com         | 
http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto.

At 11:23 PM -0700 5/22/97, Kent Crispin wrote:
>On Thu, May 22, 1997 at 09:04:15PM -0500, Jim Choate wrote:

>> Do police have any civil rights not endowed to a individual citizen?
>
>No.  But on the job, doing their state assigned duties, they have
>access to instrumentalities not available to private citizens or
>off-duty police.  "On" and "off" duty may sometimes be a little fuzzy
>in practice, but the principle is clear.  It isn't a big deal, and
>it's not a matter of civil rights.  A license to practice medicine
>gives you the ability to prescribe morphine.  A certain class of
>drivers license lets you drive a school bus full of children.

There is a current case involving a cop who is on the verge of losing his
ability to be a cop because he pled "nolo contendre" to a domestic abuse
charge a decade or so ago. The local law says that anyone in this situation
may not have a gun, period. Thus, now that the law has caught up with him
(no details on how and why this was not known until recently) he may not
have a gun and thus may well lose his job.

This would seem to support Jim Choate's general position. (Though I have my
own skepticism that many jurisdictions think it is true.)

I have no problem with the notion that there is no weapon, no technology
which certain government officials or police may have but which civilians
are *not* allowed to have. I don't think the Founders envisioned any such
circumstances.

The usual cited case is of private ownership of nuclear weapons. For an
interesting treatment of this, see Vernor Vinge's "The Ungoverned." I'm not
persuaded that the extreme cases of nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers
have much to do with anything. I certainly think "assault weapons" are
perfectly fine for individuals to own...even machine guns, which friends of
mine have owned.

(The Founders didn't know about nuclear weapons and biological weapons, but
they surely knew about various other deadly compounds, including deadly
poisons and the like. And yet there is no mention in the Constitution or
related papers that some of these substances may be owned by the police but
not by citizens. "Forbidden knowledge" is the relevant concept here. Of
course, what do you expect from a system which outlaws gambling but then
has the State running gambling operations?)

--Tim May

There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."