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From: ********@***.net Date: Tue, Sep 5, 2000, 7:55pm To: Lowell Potter
Hey Bro,
Just wanted to let you know that I'm not taking it any more... any of it. I'm tired of this police state...
12:15 Saturday
Million Dollar Bridge ***** ********, ME
Police "OUI Education Checkpoint" ties up traffic, necessitating a 15 min. wait just to get to the checkpoint. The citizen manning the checkpoint asked me if I had been drinking. NO. He gave me some officious bullshit about how they'd already caught 4 drunk drivers. Uh huh... have they already been convicted, or were they merely arrested? By the way, I waited 15 minutes to get here, its 12:15 at night and I want you to know that I consider this "OUI Education Checkpoint" to be highly intrusive."
"But we've already caught 4 people" he replied.
"Just think if you searched everyone's glove box or audited their taxes. You ought to read the 4th Amendment..." end of conversation as we drove away into that good night.
11:15 (11 hours later, same freak'n day!)
A yard sale on a quiet residential street
***** ********, ME
I'm talking to the home owner when a 45 year old sergeant hops out of a police car.
"Did you know that you're violating the city's garage sale ordinance?"
"But we have a permit... I got it at city hall"
"Let me see it"
"The ordinance clearly states you're allowed two signs. There's one", said the officer, pointing to the sign on the man's lawn, "and you have one at each end of the street. Unless they're on private property, you're violating the ordinance."
06:15 Tuesday
A quiet residential street
***** ********, ME
At 1 in the morning, as I was taking out the trash, my dog chased a skunk out of the yard. After 20 minutes, said dog still hadn't returned. Knowing that Tuesday was trash day, I was sure that someone would see her out by the road and call the police. In an attempt to avoid a summons for "allowing a dog to roam at large", I made the pre-emptive call to the police department and asked them to call me if anyone reported seeing my dog.
At 06:00, the PD called and said that an officer had my dog about 5 houses from home. Upon arriving at the "scene of the crime", I was met by a very angry 20-something police officer who exclaimed that my dog's collar was "cruel and [that] if [she saw] this dog in the collar again, she would confiscate it!"
I told her that the European pinch collar is a well accepted training aid in the working-dog world and that she lacked the authority to confiscate anything. She reiterated her concern about the collar and I mentioned my 10+ years of training working dogs. I then asked her about her authority to confiscate my property. She responded that she could give me a summons for "allowing a dog to roam at large" and that her sergeant would probably yell at her if she didn't.
I responded that I didn't 'allow' the dog to roam, but rather, that she'd "become disoriented after chasing a trespassing skunk from the yard. (We'd just moved there that very week!) She didn't want to push it at that point and became very friendly. Yada yada yada.
18:30
Shaw's Supermarket, ***** ******** ME
I was trying to buy a bottle of wine to enjoy with my wife when the clerk said I need to see your I.D. I gave him the incredulous look of an impatient 35 year old and he punched it into the computer. The manager came over to "check" the transaction and told the clerk to always make sure he entered the D.O.B. into the computer.
"If I'd known that he was going to put my birth date in the machine, I wouldn't have bought wine here."
"Why not?" she replied.
Because I believe that my purchasing habits belong to me and if they have commercial value, I will sell them, not Shaw's."
"Huh"
"I understand that I have an obligation to demonstrate that I'm over 21 years old if I wish to purchase alcohol. However, I have no obligation to supply Shaw's with marketing information if I don't want to. It is invasive for Shaw's to require it, don't you agree?"
"Huh?"
From the other citizens sitting at the roadblock, to the property taxpayers who dutifully went to get a permit to have a yard sale on their OWN lawn, to the citizens who let police confiscate their property to the mindless sheep attending the cash register, we've become a nation of dolts, willing to accept the most ridiculous propositions in the name of....
I can't even finish, Potter... I'm so disgusted. Finish the f#&ker, would you?
Well, ....I don't know about finishing it, seeing's how the bureaucrats work is never done.