While driving north on 405 to work today, I was passed by a Washington State Patrol vehicle doing better than 85 (I tried to pace the car briefly). The policeman behind the wheel was the sole occupant of the vehicle driving in the HOV lane. I smiled to myself when he got stuck behind a driver going the speed limit in that lane just a short ways ahead of me. Then I got indignant when I saw the cop pull off the road to set up a speed trap for other motorists.<\/p>\n
I think John Stossel coined the perfect phrase for this kind of behavior in his excellent book: “The Conceit of the Annointed.”<\/p>\n
The police view themselves as the annointed enforcers of some select laws of the land, but in that capacity, they often don’t feel that they are subject to the same rules they enforce. This behavior erodes the legitimacy of their mission and the laws they are charged to uphold. Along with the facts that the speed limit law is universally broken and arbitraily and sporadically enforced, the intentional and blatant breaking of the law by Washington’s “finest” damages the Rule of Law which is the foundation of our very society.<\/p>\n
If I am ever a cop, I will pull over exclusively other cops to give them a taste of their own medicine. I have been told by some more knowledgable than I that this will lead to me being beaten in locker rooms and fired with the mildest excuse. All I can say is that I will have a camcorder running.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While driving north on 405 to work today, I was passed by a Washington State Patrol vehicle doing better than 85 (I tried to pace the car briefly). The policeman behind the wheel was the sole occupant of the vehicle driving in the HOV lane. I smiled to myself when he got stuck behind a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}