The Spirit or the Letter of the Law?
“…for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life.” - 2 Corinthians 3, 6
We are mourning the death of a brother officer who was murdered in Miami-Dade, Florida. We honor and dedicate this sacrifice on the altar of service to his community and to the safety and security of the entire Judeo-Christian culture. His life was a libation poured out so that others might live. As Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman says, “We live in a dark and desperate hour.” But I wonder, how can we reduce the number of deaths we must mourn in the future? We must first change the attitude of apathy in our society.
Pop Culture
Today’s society honors and glorifies the criminal and the gangster in movies, music videos, clothing styles, and even in children’s toys. Your six year old can buy drug related stickers, prison style tattoos, and gangster figurines from gum ball machines in pizza parlors, mom and pop stores and Wal-Mart. Clothing stores and swap meets feature gang style clothing and accessories with hidden stash pockets for drugs. There is a popular “Scarface” Al Pacino “action figure” you can buy.
Over 75% of “Gangsta Rap” music is consumed, not by disenfranchised urban minorities, but by middle class white kids who imitate the gang slang, dress, and demeaning demeanor. They pierce their bodies and tattoo themselves to be “different”, just like all the other homies. They reject the system that has spoiled them and rebel against the rule of law. They especially pride themselves in their hate of the police who enforce the law. They wear their oversize gangster pants sagging to expose their underwear and butt cleavage, but don’t laugh at them or they might hurt you.
The rest of society is forced to tolerate this open display of contempt for the law because some paranoid people fear you and “Big Brother”. Professors and Judges, safe in academic ivory towers, tell us that everyone should be allowed to express his or her individuality, even when it infringes on the rights of honest citizens. And besides, some shark lawyer might sue you.
The Letter of the Law
There is no lack of codified rules, procedures, regulations, and laws. New ones are written every day. But just how many crimes do you think have been prevented by the “less than ten round magazine” law? Answer: none.
I am working on a book called “Police Impostors”. It is about law enforcement administrators who claim to be policemen and even carry badges, but are really only another form of politician. I especially mean those who are from our major gang infested cities, who have forgotten that our fist duty is to protect and serve the good citizens, and not the risk managers, or the ACLU.
They make police procedural policies like; forbidding the police from engaging in vehicle or foot pursuits, forbidding cops from shooting at suspects in vehicles, calling common sense “profiling”, forbidding the enforcement of immigration laws, forbidding the deployment of patrol rifles or the use of choke holds, and requiring a written report every time an officer unholsters his pistol. They have policy manuals several feet thick detailing everything from proper grooming to which pepper spray you can use. You must find a way to work in this bureaucratic system.
The Spirit of the Law
We are judged by the letter of the law, but we use whatever discression we have to work toward the ideal of the spirit. The spirit of the law is the intent the law was written for. You represent the spirit of the law. You are the thin blue line between all that is good and right in our society and total anarchy. You are Don Quixote jousting the windmill. You are asked to defeat an unbeatable foe with primitive tools and only Sancho Panza to back you up. But you go to work every day endeavoring to perceiver in this impossible quest.
The law is often confusing and contradictory, but you know what is right and just in your heart. Every good cop, sometime in his or her career, has done days off for acting in the spirit of the law, but being technically outside of policy. By its very nature our work is dangerous. We accept that. But we don’t have to accept bad policies in silence. Speak out against these unnecessarily dangerous “do nothing” policies and the politicians who propose them. Make a friend in the media and “leak” these stories to them. Tell all your family and friends about bad administrators, politicians, and judges. Tell them about the twisted misinterpretations of law they make. Tell them how they use the letter of the law to contradict the spirit of the law. Then go to the polls and throw them out of office.
