Quote:
Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
1. If you persist in this false dilemma between "tasering" and "no force at all," then this discussion is pointless.
2. You appear not to understand the purpose of a police force. It is not to intimidate the public into obedience of the law under some Hobbesian assumption that without their presence everything would descend into chaos. It is to be the public administrators of our agreed-upon legal system, and as such their power is limited in very important ways, which peter12 alluded to. This is why they don't beat people with nightsticks just because they feel like it.
What you describe is actually far more terrifying than a police force with peter12 at the helm. His police force, I take it from his comments--would act always with an eye to upholding at once the law and the rights of the citizenry, and to see their primary role as public caregivers of the common good with law as their instrument. In other words, peter describes the modern police force under liberal democracy--the one that we are supposed to have in our enlightened society.
Your preference (apparently) would be for a police force that requires obedience to commands on pain of physical abuse, regardless of the nature of the threat posed to the public good by your disobedience. You can find examples of this in the world and throughout history. But you don't want to live in any of those places.
Here's the crux of the matter: police are charged with enforcing the law and protecting the public good. They are not invested with unilateral authority to abuse the public in the service of nothing in particular. It's an important distinction--because it marks the line between democracy and dictatorship.
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I was responding to peter when he said that the guy wasn't hiding a gun. I took that to mean he didn't think the police should have been interfering unless he had a gun. There's too much coddling of criminals in this society. I am not trying to suggest police should go around beating people up for no reason, so if that's the way you are reading my comments, you're interpreting them wrong.