What Options Do You Have If The Police Are Breaking The Law

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@ishamael69

Sorry, I apologize if I asked two different questions. I didn’t realize that there were two questions. I’m interested in being able to exercise my legal right in the face of a police officer telling me that I cannot, not get someone in trouble.

For instance, I try to walk into an abortion clinic for an abortion and a group of police stop me and say “you can’t go in there, abortions are illegal.” Sure, I can sue, but how do I actually get my abortion?

Are they physically restraining you? If not, you walk past the police officers and go get the abortion.

[AHunter3]

We have a social contract. Your agreement to that social contract is simply assumed; you were not asked to sign on to it, and you may choose to view yourself as not contractually bound, on that basis alone. The social contract says the laws must be obeyed by everyone, and it says that the police enforce the laws (obeying them, themselves, as they enforce). If a police officer acts in an unlawful way, especially in the course of enforcing (or claiming to enforce) the laws (or nonexistent laws that they claim exist, etc), you may choose to view yourself as not contractually bound to recognize their authority.

Some observations, though:

• The social contract mostly protects you, as long as you are law-abiding. It doesn’t really protect law enforcement officers from you, for the most part, unless you would otherwise be in a position to resist their authority in an effective manner.

• Withdrawing from the social contract on an ad hoc for-the-moment basis is tantamount to ceasing to view the law enforcement officer within their LEO role and instead viewing this person as simply another human being. This particular human being is trained in physical confrontation management and is probably carrying a gun, in addition to which they tend to travel in teams and they have radio backup.

• Power differentials – in the coercive sense of power, i.e., power to impose your will on another or vice versa – can be “of the moment”, such as the power of a thief with a knife to take your wallet; or it can be “established”, such as the power of a law abiding citizen with reasonable proof of ownership of said wallet to hail a police officer and have the wallet returned to them and the would-be thief arrested. It is important, here, to recognize that the police officer has a lot of established power. Anything you do interactively while not recognizing the social contract will not only have immediate consequences, but is likely to have longer-range consequences stemming from the probability of you being traced, your resistance being officially branded an illegal act, and the police as a collective entity coming after you, arresting you, and hauling your ass to jail to be charged with a crime.

• Non ad hoc resistance is also a possibility though. Check YouTube for videos of people who were anticipating illegal behavior by police officers, who made videos of their interactions and framed their resistance as “established” – obeying at the moment but pursuing the matter, with evidence in hand, at a later time.