I have noticed a general lack of respect for the government and the society in general in the last few years…I attribute this to a failure of authority in America…It is like, the national leaders, the congressmen, the senators, the governors don’t lead… They don’t even try to do the best for the people they are allegedly public servants for but instead they set horrible examples of selfish self interest that are so transparently greedy and self serving why would anybody respect them anyway?

On the local level, people disrespect each other to the point of mass murders in schools, random drive by shootings of innocent bystanders caught in the cross fire of jacked up gang members, and a police response that is more often repressive than helpful…On the local level, the police response is often the most disheartening, because these are the people that the average citizen is most likely to come into contact with if there is any trouble…If all our authority figures are disrespected, this can only lead to anarchy and more violence in the streets…

We all know there are way too many guns on the streets, and only the most rabid NRA lobbyist or member would dispute this…Yet the reaction from most citizens after the latest random school shooting in Oregon is that MORE citizens are going to buy guns to protect themselves from the psycho meltdowns that perpetrate such outrages in the first place!

That just proves how little faith the average citizen has in the police…The police themselves have been caught on video camera, an idea whose time has finally arrived, perpetrating needless, senseless acts of violence upon citizens, almost always minorities…They apparently forget that now their actions are caught, being recorded by the cold harsh reality of their belt or chest cams…. I guess this new reality has not set in yet, because they continue to react in the way they have been reacting for years, by beating or shooting presumably innocent people…..

The only difference now is that the impartial body cams more and more policemen are being forced to wear are catching them in the act…..The police can no longer fall back on the old standard lies that the victim was “resisting arrest” or attacked the officers…In fact, the overwhelming majority of these video taped encounters are damning the police in their habitual lies and hypocritical standards by which they conduct themselves…

In the past, it was always enough for the police officer to declare that he was in the right, that he was only defending himself or chasing down a suspect….This is even though it is common knowledge that most policemen have carried “throwaway guns” for years, so when they shot somebody in the past, they could plant the throwaway guns in the dead victims hands…This option is being closed off to them more and more now, since it is a truism that “the camera doesn’t lie.” The risk for them to use throwaway guns is now just too great…

The use of body cams, which I strongly believe should be mandatory for ALL levels of policemen, highway patrol, sheriffs, deputies etc. is also depriving the police of their last line of defense: the official investigation instigated by the so called civilian complaint review boards….In fact, 99% of the time, these police reviews, in other words police reviewing their fellow officers always come out in favor of the police! Oh my, what a surprise!

It must be nice to know that you are being reviewed by your own peers, maybe your buddies, and certainly people who will “lie for a good friend” as the Carly Simon song, “You’re So Vain” points out….The police have a vested interest in protecting their own, and any cop that stands up to the way it really is in the administration of corruption and “street justice” has in the past been ridiculed, bullied and often forced to resign…

A good example of the real life police culture is the movie “Training Day” with Denzell Washington and Ethan Hawke, with Washington playing the grizzled street wise cop teaching “the way it really is” to his impressionable, idealistic, fresh out of the Police Academy rookie partner… Another good movie on this subject is “The Bad Lieutenant” with Harvey Keitel as a drug addled, gambling addicted, rotten to the core detective who operates “under the color of authority” to justify and maintain his existence on the police force….

I am not a bleeding heart liberal, I am a conservative, and I realize that the cops have to deal with some of the seediest, most violent, dangerous, high on drugs or alcohol criminals in the world, and they need to do it while these truly evil people are off in the middle of one of their violent crime sprees or acts of violence…The police have a very legitimate need to protect themselves from these hardcore criminals, most of whom are in the revolving door of our criminal justice system, being rotated in and out of prison their whole lives…

These incorrigible, violent offenders are all too real and most will gladly kill a cop rather than go back to jail in a heartbeat…This also is a known fact…. But difficult as it is, that is the policeman’s job, that is what they signed up for…As a matter of fact, I think the good cops out there would welcome the mandatory use of body cams so that the people reviewing the tapes of police encounters with these violent low life’s can see for themselves just how hostile these criminals are….They ARE scary!

Like I said, the camera doesn’t lie, and I am sure there will be many police officers fully vindicated by their use of force in true self defense….Also, I think we should stiffen the laws against the truly violent offenders and keep them incarcerated for longer periods of time, including life imprisonment, rather than turn them loose in the random, arbitrary fashion we do now….This “revolving door” system just releases more hardened criminals to wreak their vengeance on society until they are caught again in a vicious cycle of repetitious violence…

On the highest political levels we can vote against the politicians who are bought and owned by the 1%, we can vote to impose mandatory campaign contributions to no more than $500-$1,000 dollars to restrict the unholy fascist influence of the 1%…. We can expose the 1% for all their crimes against humanity, like greenhouse gas emissions, dumping of pollutants in the oceans and poisoning the food chain, put them under the harsh glare of full publicity and insist on full responsibility and reparations from them…

But as a common citizen I think that we must also insist on mandatory body cams for all law enforcement officials, so that we can allow the police to make an effort to regain the trust and respect of the general populace…The failure of authority in America exists because people no longer trust their leaders, and this trend must be reversed before we fall into total anarchy…

Let’s give the police a chance to once more “Serve and Protect” as they swore an oath to do as idealistic rookies….Failure to do so will inevitably lead to chaos and disaster….

It all starts right here, right now….Never ask, “For whom the bell tolls”… “It tolls for thee”...

For more stories by John Whye, see http://www.johnwhye.com