Met some folks from the Dept of Fisheries and Wildlife

[milod]

The word I heard was that the more urban-oriented perspective of the department and officers was that Tennessee is a right to carry state and they were ... concerned.

 

Where I live a law enforcement officer generally knows that if there's an citizen around he probably has a backup - untrained perhaps, armed or not, but someone who thinks like a neighbor rather than automatically an antagonist. That goes even in terms of law officers' most dangerous potential opponent anywhere, bad weather combined with heavy traffic and stupid people.

 

OTOH, there's an expectation around here that officers who overstep or even just plain make people angry or overly uncomfortable all the time will not do well in that line of work.

 

I think that some law enforcement folks do end up with an "us vs. them" attitude that is often quite easily understood - but that may be entirely counterproductive in some circumstances.

 

The Gibson "raid" as well as other "white collar crime" circumstances shouldn't require the obvious use of armed force. More discrete modes do just as well.

 

The disconnection of the cameras ... yes, too easily could allow misbehavior on the part of the agents under cover of "we don't want them to know what exactly we are investigating." I think that's something that should perhaps be litigated regardless. But to do such litigation, one needs to have "standing" to file a civil lawsuit. A taxpayer currently doesn't, in most jurisdictions I'm aware of, have "standing" to file a lawsuit challenging policies or behavior he's forced to support.

 

I think we're in for some interesting times.

 

It is too easy for folks on both sides of our political aisles, in all Anglophone nations at least, to point fingers on folks on the other side in situations like this. Frankly to me it's a matter of bureaucracy at work in a technological world we're all struggling to meld into our culture.

 

I don't trust bureaucracy of any sort at any level to do anything but to protect itself. That's true whether the bureaucracy is governmental, business or labor unions - or even religious institutions, for all of that.

 

m