☀️No Arbitrary Sun
Friday, September 22, 2022 - Vol. 01 No. 18
Calling your friend when the fresh issue of the Sun comes out:
☀️Lawless Laws
It was good to see the following video published yesterday by a lineup of Snohomish County mayors, police chiefs, county councilmen, and Sheriff Fortney.
There are as many ways for the executive and judicial branches to abuse laws as there are stupid laws written by the legislative branch. But of making many laws there is no end. There will be laws. Someone has to go to jail.
What the video points out, with repeated clarity and restrained derision, is that our state lawmakers are acting more like lawlessmakers. They’ve called the legal, illegal, and in doing so have called good, evil.
Take the single issue of Washington House Bill 1054, in essence a no-chase law. Who benefits? On the face of it, the one who is supposed to benefit is Mr. In-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time-and-not-guilty. The ones who actually benefit are the sleazy legislators, and their donors, and any other political bedfellows. They’re setting up a system in which they can’t be pursued, metaphorically, for all their dirty deeds. It’s not right, it’s a racket.
These “innovative” laws protect the law-breakers, or rather turn the police into the law-breakers for pursing law-breakers. The law enforcement officers aren’t protected, possible future victims aren’t protected (there is a 32% recidivism rate in WA), property isn’t protected, and public trust in legislators dribbles down the drain like soap bubbles in the correctional facility showers.
The Marysville Police Department and the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office have a record of reasonableness, they don’t make news for abuse of force, and they give attention to their public communication (see the Coffee with a Cop event below, remember the National Night Out, and read their annual report). Perhaps not every city’s citizens can be as thankful, and so be it. But the way to deal with bad cops is not to make bad laws.
The branches of government are meant to balance each other, and they depend on the trunk of law. Our state legislators have laid their axes to the root of the tree.
We should vote in November. We should voice our concerns; call the number provided at the end of the video.
And we really need to recover a higher reference point for our laws. Without an external, even transcendent, standard, men make up their own. Those standards are not only subjective, but arbitrary, and arbitrary laws are the same thing as lawless laws. Lawless laws are the playground of tyrants.
☀️Good Times
Coffee with a Cop, is THIS MORNING, September 23, 10:00am at The Creamery Co.
Jazz Night in The ‘Ville, Monday, September 26, at 5 Rights Brewing Company. Doors open at 5:00pm, with a suggested cover charge of $7/person but kids/students are welcome for free.
☀️Friday Fun
Consider the ant:
