On the Role of Police

in modern Western democracies:

...In Britain a street-preacher was arrested and held in a cell overnight after being challenged by a part-time police community officer who was gay and insisted on knowing what the Christian speaker believed about homosexuality. The preacher had not been discussing this issue but when pressed stated that he thought homosexual activity to be sinful. For this belief he was taken into custody and only released when, obviously, someone at the police station realized just how illegally and dangerously the officer had behaved.

In Canada earlier this year hundreds of peaceful protestors at the massive G20 conference in Toronto were arrested after the police had initially failed to stop some of their cars from being torched and public property destroyed. A massive over-reaction after an enormous display of passive incompetence. Also in Canada in early October five young pro-life students were arrested in Ottawa after displaying graphic pictures of aborted babies on the university campus. It was certainly a controversial exhibit but similar events have been held by feminist, Palestinian and leftist groups at the university for some years.

Whether political, religious or criminal, what appears to be happening in many parts of Europe and North America is that rather than being guardians of the people the police are taking on the role of agents of the state. Instead of protecting citizens against crime they are enforcing state policy against citizens. That’s deeply worrying in theory and even more troubling in practise.

The Western, democratic notion of an apolitical police force is beginning to evaporate as the police concern themselves with “hate crimes”, “bias” and even plain political correctness. What David Chen did was not obviously political but it did question the authority and competence of authority and the police and did show an ordinary person applying the law and common sense. That, it seems, is now the worst crime of all.