Police abusing people? Good question.

G'day everyone!

There is a post written by Ridor in his usual rant about his stance against police again.
http://countdown2resurrection.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/17-again-do-not-trust-cops/

Now I do not blame Ridor for his fears and disgust. I have the same feelings of my own experiences and if a cop wants to talk to me, I'm alert for anything a cop may try to entrap me again.

Lately, my local newspaper: Sun-gazette, has been running a two day article of a major exposure about the subcontractors to the local police departments called "constables". What's a constable? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constable and http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/constable.
Here's an example: http://www.constable.com/ of what a constable does. (it varies by location)

Basically, Constables are assistants to the law enforcements. Every local police departments have different duties and different works to help the local law enforcement in various states.

However, as my AP article goes in my newspaper, there are some ROUGE constables out there. Bullies with a gun and a badge. Some actually go beyond the limits of the power of the constables duties. There are some honest and hard working constables out there. But they want the bad apples taken out of duty.

So, Ridor ought to be careful out there. It isn't the police that are bad apples alone. It could be the local sheriff dept as well as the local constable.

You know, a few years ago, a small town near my hometown area had a local constable that nearly got re-elected every two years. He was the local bully. He loved to pull cars over on a whim and issue speeding tickets. But nobody had the guts to stand up to him. Just when it looked like the next election would make his 6th time in office firm, a scandal brought him down.
He fled town. People then got WAY ANGRY with township board. In effect, new rules about how the constable could work with the local police and sheriff dept were written and adopted. A new constable was voted in and hired.
This guy, not going to say his name, has told me personally that he is walking on egg-shells because he is being watched like a hawk of everything he does. He's got a long way to clean up the 'image' of what a constable is to do for the community. But, he's determined to be a good "cop assistant" (which is a good term for what he's doing). I wish the township board good luck in their lawsuit against the former constable. The relationship between the township people and it's local police department will take time to improve again.

Constables almost have the same power and authority as police departments. Some are honest as they are. They ought to be respected and obeyed. But some are bad seeds too. A lot need a training and mandatory background checks. They shouldn't be given a gun and badge if there's something bad about them.

I am in hopes that my own state, the Pennsylvania Legislature, will create an oversight agency that will over see every constable person in the state. It needs to be done before a person gets killed by a constable, whatever it be a mistake or intentional.

Semper Fi.