CBC News
January 18, 2014
A 21-year-old motorist, knowing his legal rights,
refuses to get out of his car or follow a policeman’s orders unless he is told
he is being formally detained. (YouTube)
Increasingly, and openly, ordinary Americans are committing a legal act that some police nonetheless regard as among the most heinous of all offences: it’s called contempt of cop.
It’s otherwise known as asserting your constitutional rights.
Citizens, feeling empowered, are pointing smartphones, rather than just an accusing finger, at abusive authorities.
Civil libertarians with hidden cameras are challenging the so-called “suspicion-less” roadblocks that police set up to catch lawbreakers. Motorists and others are fighting back in the courts and online against police shakedown rackets on U.S. highways and elsewhere.
Everywhere, it seems, Americans are openly challenging arbitrary behaviour by those in authority.
Furthermore, they are winning. Not since the late 1960s have those in authority, from heavy-handed cops to the federal operatives sifting metadata in super-secret intelligence installations, been exposed to so much disinfecting sunlight.
It’s marvelous to see such courage, and further proof that whatever the world might say about America, no other democracy takes the rule of law more seriously.
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