It’s true that for legal purposes, corporations are treated as legal persons, but I don’t think that’s what the freemen are referring to. Rather, they are splitting hairs as to wording in various constitutional and legal documents and statutes. Let’s take a look at a few:
We see “person” in other constitutional documents as well. Example:
Emphasis added by me in all examples. Note that these examples (few as they are) all use “person.” This indicates to me, as a Canadian citizen, that if I am in the US, I can count on the protections of the Fifth Amendment if I am arrested. And, as per the Fourteenth Amendment, I (as a non-US-citizen) can also become a naturalized US citizen in, say, Colorado; and if I do and continue to live in Colorado, then I am both a US citizen and a citizen of Colorado. Similarly, as per the Canadian Charter, American citizens (and all non-Canadians who run afoul of Canadian law in Canada) have the protections laid out in that document’s s. 11.
In short, “person” is, for the purposes of constitutional rights, a handy way to make sure that those rights are extended to everybody, citizen or not, who may need them.
Contrast this with other sections of the same documents:
Again, emphasis added by me for both examples.
Here we see a difference between plain ol’ “persons” and “citizens.” Regardless, this is the kind of difference that the freemen look for. Legally, there is a difference between “persons” and “citizens” in constitutional documents, as I have demonstrated; and it is this difference (among others) that it seems to me that the freemen are hoping to exploit. Unfortunately for them, they seem to have the entirely wrong idea about the respective words’ meanings and the reasons for using them.
I think these freemen are completely correct in their beliefs.
I am absolutely free. I am free to do whatever I can and want to do, bounded only by physical constraints and, as I am honourable, my own consentual contracts with others.
I am free to break laws. I am free to pay no tax. I am free to resist as I am arrested. I am free to say whatever I want in court.
Many is the time, as I have sat in solitary confinement, that I have rejoiced at the thought that I am free to do whatever I can and want to do, bounded only by physical constraints and, as I am honourable, my own consentual contracts with others.
The physical constraints of prison cells sure are kind of limiting, though.
In a way, the Freeman has a point: Why should he suffer the onus of “personhood” that other animals do not suffer, just because he’s Homo sapiens ?
Perhaps he should be allowed to renounce his personhood, and acquire the legal status of, say, raccoon, dog, or catfish. Letting the SPCA rather than justice system deal with him would be cost-effective.
While the legal crazy is of course crazy, the use of a taser there is ridiculous and a little frightening to me; people seem far too willing to accept the use of these things. There were numerous officers present; how annoying he might have been doesn’t justify the use of a taser to subdue him when he wasn’t violent and appeared to be in no danger of causing harm to anyone. Physically restraining him would have been more than adequate, and by the looks of it, not particularly difficult (it seems likely he would have shouted more “legal” nonsense, but not fought back). Add the fact that the event took place in an area where he had already been checked for weapons, and the officers had no plausible way to think he would pull out a dangerous weapon if they attempted to simply apprehend him physically.
Oh, I fully support his right to sue them for damages; I merely ask that – upon serving process on their ALL-CAPS personas and finding himself a courtroom where the flag is minus a gold fringe – he of course agrees to call the whole thing off so long as each would-be defendant simply refuses to consent to the proceedings.
There seem to be many recent examples of unnecessary tazering, but this one seems less clearcut. I won’t necessarily defend this tazering, but wonder what the bailiffs should have done instead. Two bailiffs were dedicated to physical blocking his path; if he had stayed there, taunting them for five hours, should the taxpayers afford ten man-hours to block him? Just before the tazering it appears “Robert” tried to shoulder his way past the bailiffs. Should they have let him continue to do that, perhaps wrestling with him?
Perhaps an arrest for “disturbing the peace” was appropriate, but the camera dissuaded that route?
My questions aren’t rhetorical; I really wonder how he should have been dealt with.
He was dealt with in the proper manner. He attempted to force his way into a courtroom, disobeyed direct, legitimate orders from an officer of the court, and previously announced his intention to disregard the law. Alternative solutions were to beat him senseless or shoot him with a real gun. Someone who announces that they are going to willfully disregard all laws is very dangerous. To be clear, he did assault the bailiffs, he was committing a violent crime, and there’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t continue to commit violent crimes based on his declaration that he was not bound to obey the law.
He’s one guy, they are many, what would have happened in the days before tazers?
They’d have wrestled him to the ground and cuffed him, while he spewed his crazy, that’s what.
Don’t misunderstand me, I understand that cops take on a lot of injuries in just such circumstances. They are not obligated to get hurt, by any means. But as stated up thread, he’d been cleared for weapons.
Perhaps they didn’t want to risk damaging the camera, in a scuffle, or thought it could be used as a weapon against them?
Right. And maybe dislocated his shoulder or broke his elbow or cracked a couple ribs in the process. I don’t know why people imagine that physical scuffles are safer for the scuflee than a nice zap. They aren’t.
At any rate, officers of the law must use reasonable force, not minimum force.
Someone trying to find an unfamiliar location would have stopped at a gas station and asked directions or looked at a map, that’s what.
I’m not sure why, when technology is available to quickly and safely subdue someone, they should be obligated to use a method that carries a similar amount of risk to the aggressor (the electrical shock has a possibility of doing bad things to the target, but so does getting dogpiled by a bunch of officers while physically resisting).
Attempting to physically restrain him poses a greater risk of injury both to him and to the officers required to take him down. It also potentially poses a higher risk of being deemed ‘excessive force’.
Now I will admit I thought the officer was a bit quick on the tazer, but they’d already been a bit too patient with this clown and it was time for the proverbial ‘slap in the face’ to wake him up to reality.
An appropriate action would have been to arrest him without zapping him. He was not causing bodily harm, and it did not appear that he would imminently cause bodily harm (that’s the policy used where I live, ymmv). As in pull out the tazer, direct him to stop, and then cuff him.
The appropriate time to zap him would be up the ass during the strip search.
Absolutely this tazering is warranted, otherwise we’d have been denied “Let the record show that you just battered me, and you’re using AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!!!”
Here is the sort of policy that we have in Kanukistan:
I realize that the laws and policies we have here are different from those in the video’s jurisdiction. If the matter had taken place here, policy would have been violated (1) because the nutter was not causing bodily harm, (2) there was no indication that the nutter would imminently cause bodily harm, (3) arrest was not used as in intervention to the bodily harm (not that there was any in the first place), and (4) there was no verbal warning given prior to the deployment of the taser.
The Commission for Complaints against the RCMP released a report on taser use yesterday, noting that taser use has dropped significantly over the last three years. The report is worth reading, for it gives many examples of appropriate and inappropriate use.
