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chrishernandezauthor

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My life as a tyrant
15Jan13

I’m going to say something that will undoubtedly cause me to lose some police officer friends. But I feel it needs to be said anyway. I’m willing to take the heat for it.

Keep in mind, I became a police officer because I wanted to be a good guy. Even though we’ve all seen reports of police brutality and corruption, I still believe we cops are the good guys. I’ve seen cops perform brave, selfless acts for strangers on countless occasions. Even the worst cops I’ve ever known would risk their lives to defend the innocent. But I have to say this anyway. Before you start throwing shoes, hear me out. I have a good reason for saying it.

If you think our police are no threat to your freedom, you’re living in a fantasy world.

Now I’ll explain what I mean. I worked for the United Nations Police Mission in Kosovo for eighteen months. I wasn’t there as a soldier. I was a civilian cop, living in town, basically a Kosovo PD officer. For part of my tour I worked patrol with a group of international officers and local police. We had officers from America, the UK, Germany and Greece, plus local Kosovar Albanians. The Americans were regular street cops from police departments all over the United States.

One of the American officers in my station came from a very wealthy suburban police department. My cop stories were about murders, fights and chases; his were about citizens having garage sales without permits. For some reason, citizens selling things without permits aggravated him to no end.

In postwar Kosovo, many tens of thousands of war refugees lived in the capital. Not enough jobs existed to support them all. Many of them became vendors in a sprawling, dirty bazaar. They supported their families by selling cheap Turkish and Pakistani housewares and trinkets. Under old Yugoslav law, which was still the legal standard, those vendors had to have permits. Few bothered to stand in line at a dilapidated government building to pay for a permit.

This officer – I’ll call him Joe – became infuriated every time he patrolled the bazaar. He’d find vendors without permits, then ticket and berate them. He’d make note of other illegal vendors so he could ticket them later. He’d even drive through the bazaar off-duty to spot illegal vendors for future targeting. He’d vent his anger about illegal vendors at us, which always made me laugh. I didn’t care the least bit about vendors without permits, and thought Joe would eventually get over it. I was wrong.

Joe got so mad at illegal vendors that he researched Yugoslav law. We had been advised not to do anything that violated the Bill of Rights, but officially Yugoslav law was still in effect. And Joe discovered he could use Yugoslav law to do something about those damn illegal vendors.

Joe put a plan together. Officers from a couple of stations, along with some NATO troops, would go through the bazaar, identify which vendors had no permits, and confiscate all their merchandise. Local Albanian Kosovo Police Service (KPS) officers would assist. A large NATO truck would follow the officers so they could load all the confiscated items. All the seized property would immediately be donated to charity organizations.

When I heard the plan, I was amazed. Then I got angry. Why would anyone, in a country which had suffered through a horrible war less than two years earlier, think vendors without permits were such a big deal? We didn’t have a crime problem in the bazaar, the only reason we were going in there was because Officer Joe had a personal issue with the vendors. And wouldn’t an operation like that violate people’s rights?

I argued against the operation, and was overruled. Since Yugoslav law allowed it, we were doing it. I was ordered to take my team of KPS officers and participate.

The day of the operation, I forced myself to show up for work. My KPS officers were angry, frustrated and hesitant. They didn’t want to do to their people what we were about to make them do. But their jobs and livelihood, like mine, depended on following those orders. So we walked out of the station toward the bazaar.

An officer from a European country met me outside the bazaar, held out a stack of papers and sternly ordered, “Take these. You’ll need them to document what you confiscate.”

I kept my hands down. “I’m not taking them. I think this is wrong. We can’t just take people’s property.”

The officer held the papers out further. “It doesn’t matter. They’ve been warned. Take the forms.”

I didn’t move, or respond. The officer maintained his stern demeanor for a few seconds. Then, seeing that I wasn’t going along with it, he backed down.

“Okay, fine. Just take some forms, in case you change your mind.”

I took a few forms and stuck them in my pocket. The next time they came out, later that afternoon, I dumped them in the trash.

The operation began. Dozens of officers entered the bazaar, followed by NATO soldiers and their cargo truck. The vendors initially didn’t know what was happening. Then cops walked up to stalls and asked for permits. Nobody had them. The cops grabbed everything they had and threw it into the back of the truck.

Hundreds of vendors picked up their wares and ran. The slow ones were accosted and stripped of their possessions. KPS officers swarmed me, saying, “We can’t do this! This is what the Serbs used to do!” I stood back, watching the chaos in angry silence, and said something in Albanian. It was a phrase I never in my life expected to say.

“Ne jeme komunista sot.” We are communists today.

Our KPS officers were ordered, forced, to join in. They grudgingly helped take the property, although a few from another station were enthusiastic about it. Customers in the bazaar stood close by and yelled insults at the KPS officers, or screamed things like “Why are you doing this?” One KPS officer almost got into a fight he didn’t want to be in, over something he didn’t want to do, with one of the customers. Guilt was obvious on the KPS officer’s face. That was hard to watch.

I stayed back. Officer Joe, the illegal vendor hater, picked out an old man selling bananas. The old man, who looked about eighty but was probably younger, struggled to pick up boxes of bananas before the truck arrived. Officer Joe reached the old man’s stall, tore a box from the old man’s hands and threw it in the truck. The old man grabbed the next box. Joe fought it away.

I remember standing there in impotent frustration, thinking, So now we’re literally wrestling food away from old men. This is disgusting.

I finally managed to grab a handful of KPS officers and leave. I stayed at the station until the operation ended, angry at what we had done and at myself for being part of it. I had stood by and done nothing as a fellow cop turned us into petty tyrants. That still bothers me.

Joe beamed with pride when he came back to the station. As he promised, all the confiscated property was donated that day. No vendors had been ticketed. None received receipts for their property. None had recourse to recover what had been taken. If police did that here, they would be charged with a crime.

Later that day I argued my way up the chain of command that the operation had been wrong, we shouldn’t have done it and should never do it again. An Irish officer agreed with me. But a senior American officer listened to me with a disinterested expression and said, “Look man, it’s legal here. So I don’t have a problem with it.”

I learned a lot from that operation. Prior to it, I had been something of an idealist about cops. I thought American cops would go by what’s right and wrong instead of looking for what they can legally get away with. I know now that cops like Joe have no problem violating people’s rights, as long as they have some “official” way to do it.

Maybe you’re thinking, “But this was in another country, so it’s okay.” I don’t think so. I took an oath to defend the Constitution, not to enforce any law no matter what it is. If I go to Afghanistan as a cop, I’m not going to beat women for walking the street without a male relative, even if it’s legal there.

So why do I tell this story now? This might seem like an abrupt topic change, but it isn’t. It’s directly related.

I keep hearing we don’t need the 2nd Amendment. I keep hearing the 2nd Amendment is an anachronism. I keep hearing that it was written for a time long past, when we had to worry about foreign invasion and government tyranny. I keep hearing the 2nd Amendment should be repealed because there’s no threat of tyranny today.

I’ll agree that we don’t currently worry about foreign invasion. But we ALWAYS have a worry about government tyranny. Don’t tell me, “it can’t happen here.” I know better. I was there when Officer Joe stole people’s property, because he had a personal vendetta and knew he could get away with it. Don’t tell me police officers won’t engage in tyranny. I’ve seen it.

Joe was, in many ways, a good guy. He wasn’t a horrible, hateful man who just oozed evil from every pore. He and I had a lot of decent conversations about life (and a HELL of a lot of arguments about what limits our authority should have). No doubt he did good things for people in the past, and probably did good things after Kosovo. He likely never did anything like the bazaar operation in America. But he did it in Kosovo, because he COULD.

Our founding fathers were incredibly intelligent, insightful men. They knew an external threat of invasion could exist. And more importantly, they knew an internal threat of tyranny would always exist. They knew that even basically good guys like Joe can let their personal hatreds control their official actions. They knew that even Officer Chris Hernandez might maybe, once or twice, have a little nagging thought like, There should be an automatic death penalty for anyone who drives through a quiet neighborhood at 3 a.m. blaring gangster rap. They knew I better have threats over my head, to keep me from carrying out that death sentence.

The founding fathers knew guys like me and Joe need to be controlled. They wrote the 4th Amendment so we would have to follow rules when we took people’s property. And they wrote the 2nd Amendment so that if we ever decided not to care about citizens’ rights, the citizens could forcibly change our minds.

This nation was formed by armed rebellion. Our freedoms were maintained by armed resistance to foreign threats. Our police and military exist to protect the rights that many hundreds of thousands of brave, armed Americans died for. We serve the descendants, family and friends of those men and women. We call them “sir” or “ma’am”, even if they’re a laborer and we’re a police chief or 4-star General. We don’t bend them to our will, we don’t strip their rights “for their own good”. We don’t repeal the Bill of Rights in order to protect them from the sometimes horrible consequences of freedom.

As I’ve said before, I don’t speak for anyone but me. Many, many cops will vehemently disagree with me about this (which might sort of prove my point). But I WANT law-abiding citizens to have guns. I WANT them to have a means to defend themselves from ME. I DON’T want the people I’ve sworn to defend worrying about Officer Joe and his friends taking their property on a whim. I feel ZERO threat, absolutely none, from lawfully armed good citizens.

I’ve been a cop in Texas for almost 19 years. I’ve interacted countless times with armed homeowners, business owners, and concealed carry permit holders. I’m absolutely comfortable knowing that they’re not helpless lambs, totally dependent on me for their safety and freedom. I’m there to protect good citizens from criminals; citizens have weapons to protect themselves not just from criminals, but also from me and Officer Joe.

That’s how it should be. That’s why we have a 2nd Amendment. And officers like me and Joe are why it shouldn’t be repealed.

NOTE ADDED 3/3/13: I’ve received a lot of interesting replies to this post today. Many of them point out my failure to act that day in the bazaar. Fair enough; this post obviously isn’t a defense of what I did. I don’t think there’s any way to interpret this story as a boast about my inability to stop something I knew was wrong. I admit guilt and don’t flinch from the criticism.

However, some of the comments have gone way beyond simple analysis of my actions, or justifiable criticism of law enforcement. There have been calls for violence against police, accusations that the President is a Nazi, claims that the federal government is preparing for all-out war against the citizens, etc. I’ve deleted those comments.

On the “how I roll” page I describe the rules I follow writing this blog. The comments I receive don’t have to follow the same guidelines, but those like I just described won’t be posted. This blog isn’t anti-police, anti-government, or a place for people to vent all their anger and suspicions about any political party, federal government agency or elected representative.

I welcome rational, intelligently presented dissenting opinions. This is a site where I hope reasonable people can calmly discuss important issues. It’s not a place for internet tough-guyism, veiled threats made from the anonymous safety of a computer, or expressions of support for any revolution.

Because I love this country, the last thing I’ll ever advocate is warfare between citizens and any arm of the government. The vast majority of police officers, members of the military and American citizens are fantastic people. We as a nation are strong enough to correct problems, even those we’re facing today, with discussion instead of violence.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Sounds interesting not demeaning his point, but:
1. vendors should follow the law. My company has to follow the law and so should theirs.

2. If the law is wrong, change said law. In this case that's something I'd be for, but lets change the law rather than break it.

I'm not sure what these guys beef with illegal vendors was though, and I don't feel his response was appropriate even if legal.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Using a gun to defend yourself from tyranny isn't what scares me, what scares me is:

1. People who advocate using their gun as a FIRST resort, without even bothering to try the official channels.

2. People who advocate using their gun at the slightest provocation. These Yugoslav vendors were losing probably everything they owned. Their lives and the lives of their families were probably endangered by the confiscation, because they wouldn't be able to buy food or shelter. When the police here do something that has these kinds of consequences to you, go ahead and shoot them. Unlike what some people love to espouse, losing a few hundred dollars to a minor case of government overreach is NOT the same thing as this situation and it does NOT justify you opening fire on every government official in the immediate vicinity.

Seriously, people who call American cops "fascist" have lost all perspective. Go take a trip over to western Europe, interact with the cops there for about fifteen minutes, and I guarantee you'll never complain about American cops again. Now consider that even the cops in western Europe aren't actually bad cops, at least not compared to truly corrupt cops like in Russia or most of the developing world.

US cops have the least power of any cops anywhere else on the planet, and it's not close. I don't know of a single other country where the police need probable cause to even effect a traffic stop. In pretty much all of Europe they can stop and investigate whoever they want whenever they want. Or you can go live in Japan, where >99.9% of arrests result in a conviction for something because they can hold you for a month without charge, deny you food/water until you sign a confession, and have that confession hold up in court. Japan also has nice laws where you can be found guilty despite being proven innocent, you see over there if an acquittal would "discredit" the justice system, (a prosecutor losing a case is considered a big failure because it almost never happens) for certain crimes they can just discard it and sentence you anyway to uphold faith in the system. And they're about the most liberal in East Asia when it comes to police and the government, most of the other countries are worse.

Xeq, I think that most people aren't as trigger happy as popular culture and internet forum boasting would make them out to be.
I'm beginning to change my mind on my personal gun ownership, but I am still holding out for many reasons including the fact that I feel it's a terrible burden to actually be in a position to have to use it. Most of the CCWs I've talked to feel the same way.

As someone whose traveled overseas, saw the cops patrolling with semi automatic rifles and came back short one flashlight I do agree that most people in this country don't realize how good we have it. Of course that doesn't mean we don't punish those who abuse their power either.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Ror in a collapse situation as existed in Kosovo how exactly can you defend either of your points?

Stand in land and expose yourself to gunfire and shelling at a likely unstaffed office to get permission from a government that doesn't exist to sell your own property?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I didn't think about it that way. I guess I i just assumed that since the cop was upset about permits there was someone from which to get them. The article seemed to imply that other people had them so I assumed there was. If there wasn't then the cop (and worse his superiors) is just being stupid.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I'm not sure exactly what owning a rifle is supposed to do to prevent you from getting shelled while trying to get a permit to sell your goods in the bazaar. Small arms, historically, have a bad track record against mortar fire.

Who said that it did? The cops with rifles comment had to do with Xeq's comment about how well behaved cops are here compared to other parts of the world. I'm not doing very well on this thread today. I had a lack of vision and wish to revise and extend my remarks.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Some thoughts:

I get the idea that blind adherence to the law is bad. But what's the logical connection to the 2nd amendment? There really isn't one.

If your job is to enforce the rule of law, you don't get to ***** about somebody who chooses to do that, even if you believe what was done is "wrong." This is particularly true in foreign countries, who are likely to have different laws than you are used to.

Finally, I'm not sure why the author thinks confiscation of goods is so appaling and surprising. Asset forfeiture in the US occurs prior to proof of guilt all the time, every day, across the country. Is it just because poor people's possessions were taken?

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

This guy is a big-city cop who thinks he's better than the other guy just because he works in a big city and the other guy worries a lot about yard sales that don't have permits.

If the federal government wanted to issue yard sale permits, that would be an issue. If the state did it, tht would be an issue. However, local communities wanting to issue them is not some form of "tyranny"; it's local people deciding how to regulate yard sales so they don't become a nuisance to everyone else. Screaming about "rights" and "tyranny" is just being childish.

Second, the government of Kosovo has the right to make whatever domestic laws it sees fit. If we as a nation, or the UN object to them then neither should offer its support in enforcing them. It is not in the purview of police officers in the U.S. to volunteer to go to other countries and enforce their laws and then decide to impose U.S. ideas of rights on them, especially when those are ideas from one particular part of the U.S. political spectrum. He is in fact utterly wrong when he says that it doesn't become right just because it's another country; that in fact DOES make it right. He's forcibly imposing his ideas on another nation, and he's not elected to any office we empower to make decisions like that. His example about beating women for not following muslim laws is irrelevant

Third, the prima facia sympathetic nature of some of the people whose property was confiscated is really not relevant, and as a big time inner city cop he should know damn well that just because someone's old or looks helpless does not make them that way.

Fourth, Kosovo needed badly to establish government that upholds the law. Things like sales permits are pretty basic components of public order. Yes, it might be inconvenient to wait in line for a permit. So what? They're there for basic health and welfare, and yes, public health is the government's responsibility.

Fifth, Mr. Tough Guy is totally full of **** if he thinks anyone will ever need to defend themselves against Officer Joe. Officer Joe is polite and professional at all times. He follows the law, not because he likes the law itself, but because that's what he's paid to do. Officer Joe does not really care about people selling things, what he gets tired of is people trying to skip the $5 it probably costs for a yard sale permit at city hall, and him having to go over there because some neighbor complained. Officer Joe enforces the law as its written because that's his only defense. He works in a community of rich busybodies who will get a lawyer and make his life hell if he does not follow the law. No one is going to post an outraged Youtube video of Officer Joe beating someone over a yard sale permit; Officer Joe will not do that because he knows the soccer mom with no yard sale permit plays tennis with a councilman's wife, or the councilman herself. Officer Joe has been called into the office before for writing a ticket to the Councilwoman's friend for a yard sale without a permit, and he's made the Lieutenant or the Chief back down by pointing out that he's just following the law and giving friends of politicians special breaks is a form of corruption.

If Kosovo cannot get people to take a day and pay a minor fee to sell fruit, it will remain a permanent shithole. It will be no better than a communist state because no one will pay a dime they can avoid because no one else is paying. It will be a tragedy of the commons for the entire nation.

Finally, this ******* writing this article really needs to think about what he's saying. Kosovo was going to be overrun by Serbian mechanized formations, and was stopped by NATO airpower, not by Kosovars with rifles. Serbian MiGs were not going to be stopped by personal arms, they were stopped by F-15s. The Second Amendment is not there to defeat the Army because the Army is made of citizens too and they don't want to be enforcing a dictatorship. The Second Amendment is so that people can take responsibility for their own defense, which includes forming a militia to buy time for the Army to get there. In the time the Second Amendment was written, militias did not defeat professional armies.

This guy is a sack of **** trying play elitist because he deals with "real" crimes. **** him. This guy is a tyrant all right; he's the sort of tyrant who thinks only his views should be Constitutional, and wants to impose his will on small communities and apparently other countries because of his ideas of "rights". **** him, **** him right in the *******.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Officer Joe was a dick. Noone complained, the process to get a "permit" was nonexistent. He wanted to exercise his giant throbbing Copdong.

Yeah, I'll show those **** not to get a permit.

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Holy shitsnacks!

There was a process to get a permit; it was specifically mentioned in the article. It just meant standing in a long line. Elmo made the assertion that there wasn't one, and that's contrary to the article.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

My general point is that your owning weapons isn't going to stop people with bigger and better guns from oppressing you. The Branch-Davidians are testament to that.

Remember that all governments oppress people and suppress dissension. It's pretty much what governments are there for. The governments you like are the ones who are oppressing people who aren't you, and suppressing ideas that aren't yours. Don't think that Western governments are any better, and don't think your firearm is what's preventing them from coming after you.

If you think Western governments are not better, I suggest going and living in one of those countries.

As for your guns not stopping people with bigger guns from oppressing you, that's generally true. However, the idea is to not fight the people with the bigger guns directly, and if those people happen to be from the same place you are, then the ones actually manning the guns may eventually get tired of this and switch sides.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

"Better" implies some sort of objective measurement which none of us can provide. I don't claim the government in Kosovo is better or worse than the government in the US, because I have no objective means to do so. I simply seek to point out that lack of objectivity in the argument. If you believe such a thing can be measured, I might also point out that people in Third World countries tend to be happier than those in First World countries. I can also point out that they tend to live much shorter lives. Are either of these scales objectively proving which method is better?

I read the story above, and I don't see a failure of Kosovar government, I don't see a failure of their police force. I see a man with a serious case of little dog syndrome, and another man who learned an abject lesson summed up in the "...good men do nothing" phrase. The capacity for those merchants to carry firearms could have halted such an injustice before our little dog had the idea to start begging for permits. It also could have escalated that situation into something far, far worse than what transpired.

In the end, it comes down to people, and there are a whole lot of idealistic, intelligent, rational people out there, and their well-reasoned, insightful discourse will always be drowned out by complete nutjobs and douchebags. In that regard, Kosovo is no different from America. The events may differ, but the root cause is the same.

People in the third world do not tend to be "happier". We cannot objectively measure happiness.

We can, however, statistically measure the actions taken by nations and their governments, and those measurements are objective. Simply screeching that they aren't "better" is the height of juvenile obstinacy; they are better by the standard of the human drive to materially improve conditions.



It could have escalated the situation and that's about it. The simple fact is that you canno have a system of law or justice where every person who feels they are inconvenienced by a law or requirement is allowed to simply disregard it because it's not a "big deal." What's a "big deal?"



What's this got to do with anything?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You don't know much about life in Kosovo when it was under siege do you?

I can guarantee there was no way to actually get those permits.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Were you there Elmarnieh? How do you know that strongly enough to guarantee it didn't exist? As usual, I have problems taking much of what you say without a whole lot of salt.

Back it up, cite some credible sources, or let it lie.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Plenty of first hand tales of living and surviving in Kosovo during the siege on line to be found. Just google and you can find stories from women, soldiers, reports, those inside and out. If you want a link that shows that there was no one manning that particular office for that particular permit - that doesn't exist.

Of course you're not asking if Diamondeye was there nor being as incredulous to him so if you want to continue to make one sided assumptions about the level of functioning government in a city under siege for years - in an area where UN military has to hold small sections of it at a time - be my guest but realize your bias.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville