Innocent Until Proven Guilty

Believe me Maven, this is something that I've really done a 180 on.
It's funny how when your younger you can have such a black & white
view on things.

When you give up those rights your not just having faith in your own innocence of any wrong doing, but giving control of your life & trusting both their compotence & morals with your life.

While I'm personally against guns, I only mean that for me. I have 4 kids running round the house & i'm already stressed enough, I wouldn't want to stress them accidently getting a hold of it. Plus if I ever get to a point to where I feel suicidal I can be too impetuous, I wouldn't want it that handy...but that's just me, knowing me.
Maybe when my kids are grown & out I would have a hand gun for protection.

So yes, I have to say I agree with they need to show a history of violence or self harm to reject someone.

I can only speak for what I have experienced here in California, (one time directed at me personally, and others which I had paid witness to with individuals I knew).

The moment that we practice our rights by insisting that they are utilized, we are immediately suspected as guilty through the assumption that we have something to hide. From there, we are also immediately treated as a criminal.
We are detained, (sometimes in cuffs, depending on the officer and/or his present attitude) as they run a character search on us through the state's database. Meanwhile, other backup cars are called in, (and in the city I reside in that usually means 3 or 4 more cars..as if they have nothing better to do).
And God help you if you have an arrest history. If you do, and once they discover it through the database, you undergo unjust interrogation right then and there. The police judge you by the arrest record and NOT by a conviction record, which is absurd especially if any/all charges were completely dropped. In my case, it was guilty by association (I was in the company of someone with a minor arrest history).
We are bullied from the moment the police "think" they have "something".
We are escorted away from our vehicle, (and if there are more than one of us, seperated from eachother), as they proceed to search the inside of the vehicle.
Meanwhile, the person I am in company with is requested to take a breath analyzer test. (What I found absolutely unbelievable was the fact that he wasn't even drinking. There was no need for the test).
He immediately denied, which was his right. He was offended and rightly so, that the police were abusing their positions in power. As soon as he denied the test, he was immediately arrested for suspicion of being under the influence, and was now being taken in for a urine test as well.

During the beginning stages of the ordeal my son was subjected to, we encountered various attorneys. One in particular remains in mind due to something he willingly told us regarding the police and their proceedures of intimidating the public.
He told us that there is what is practiced among them as what they call the "white lie law". This is something which reflects directly on the "guilty until proven innocent" mentality.
The police no longer need to have a justifiably legal "reason" to pull you over anymore. Because it is up to us 'victims' of these abusive officials to prove our innocence.
In other words, if an officer pulls me over because he didn't like the way I looked, or worse yet, liked the way I looked (lol), and upon approaching me, and I ask what I was pulled over for, he can simply respond with "It appeared your tail light was out". Now, it's up to me to prove otherwise.
They say whatever they want to, use whatever they decide that works best for them whenever they so choose.

Other than that one direct occurance with the "brush of the law", I have never had any personal instances which I was forced to deal with defensively.
However, since my son's arrest, I have been harrassed on a couple of different occasions by those same arresting officers as well as by the prosecuting detective.
And might I mention thanks to the local media (t.v. and newspaper), our family was made out to be a household of lunatics, which even went as far as my youngest kids being teased in elementary for having a murderer as a brother, (we had to have them removed from school until the flaming ceased).

Gosh!...I seemed to have rambled on once again. My apologies.

Shangrala

No need to apologize. My boyfriend and I have gotten into long discussions about this topic and related issues, too.

But you reminded me of a couple of other issues I have. While I might agree, if people are hanging together (including riding in the same car), they're probably doing the same things, the fact is, that isn't always true. If a cop stops your car and finds drugs on your friend, you can be arrested, even if you didn't know and had none yourself. Or Goddess help you if your "friend" decides and manages to get the drugs on you, so the cop thinks you're the guilty party. I have a problem with "guilt by association." While we should all be cautious, it would be hard to live as if paranoid. People don't want to be with you if you're "overly cautious," yet if you end up in court because you allowed, say, your cousin to borrow your car and his friend went along (and you didn't know the friend was a drug addict carrying cocaine), you might get in trouble for allowing the use of your car. But your friends and family might get annoyed and irritated with you if you never shared things, helped out, or did things that made you seem overly cautious or even paranoid.

I cringe every time I see a news story about a hoarder. While they seem "nicer" about the victim, they go on about the mess in the hoarder's house, talk about the person getting help or being taken to a mental hospital (not always helpful), and often, the word "bizarre" comes up. If animals are involved, I feel horrible for the animals and agree, they need to be rescued. I also agree, if there's danger to other people, that needs to be addressed. I would bet, though, that many of the hoarders have sought help in the past, and just couldn't find it, or treatment failed. But do they mention that in these news reports? No. They make it sound like all these sufferers chose not to get help. That's true of some, but not all.

Even if they don't mention names, usually, the neighbors, family and friends know. How humiliating for the victim, don't you think? While it may be news, and I see that side of it, I also have to say, they don't have to be made out to be freaks, if you know what I'm saying.

Sadly, I find that the innocent who have crimes done against them can't even get them to hold those people guilty......so not only are the innocent being held up as being guilty, but the guilty are getting away with it & held as being innocent.

This is what the country is coming to......the home care person who stole my mother's ID when she was dying of cancer walked off free without the police even being able to touch her as there wasn't enough evidence to hold her on. The checks she wrote, she knew I stopped payment on, so they were never cashed. The police told me that was the only way I could really catch her. The call she made to apply for a credit card (that I caught her while doing it), couldn't be proved as I caught her & stopped her from actually doing it. The phone going dead after that conversation & finding the phone cord cut.....I couldn't even get my mothers neighbor to say anything when I ran to get his help. All they could do was make stupid excuses that it had to have been the cat that broke the cord.....yea....sliced with the sizzors that were sitting right there. The credit card she stole & used, they wouldn't bother with either......the abuse she did to my mother putting her in that kind of situation when she was dying & not really knowing what was going on around her was beyond anything any courts could hold accountable for. Obviously, she anonymously called the police to accuse me of abusing my Mother.....they were mean to me as she just stood there watching what was going on. When she OD"ed my MOther on the morphine later that day, I was able to use the EMT's to get my MOther out of the house & back into the hospital where she would be safe & kicked this person out of the house. When I had my mother under an alias in the hospital so she couldn't be found by the woman, I was the bad person........what ever happened to the bad people being held accountable for their actions.....& yet the innocent are being held accountable for actions they never did????

Not only that, but when my truck was broken into when I was ddriving back to California a couple of years ago (Thanksgiving time)....it was a coverup for the guy in the office of the motel that stole my id.......I had all the evidence & everything that tied it all together on top of all the uses of my credit card.....do you think the police would do anything about it????? NO....they told me I should be thankful for what they did (which was nothing) because they wouldn't have even done that if I hadn't taken it to the newspaper in Albuquerque.

The legal system is broke......this whole society is broke & unless everyone wants to change, there is nothing anyone will ever be able to do about it.......

So I hibernate & try to stay away from everything & even then I keep getting hurt

Debbie

Sorry to hear that, eskie. It's very hard when you can't prove to law enforcers' satisfaction a crime was committed, and by whom. Police interrogation methods have led to false and coerced confessions. It's crazy.