Originally Posted by studentff
Regardless of my feelings about making things up to extract a confession, that seems to be a different game from making up a law to threaten/intimidate someone performing a perfectly legal activity. Personally, I think it's unethical. Seems like abuse of power to me, and I would hope such activity would be vigorously punished.
Gradgirl asked me a question. I gave her an answer. She did not ask about specific incidences. She did not ask me if I agreed with what allegedly happened in this specific incident.
There's a reason the suspect has most of the rights on paper. You have the gun and all of the power/force. You can beat/shoot the suspect, and if he fights back in self-defense he gets charged with resisting and assault on a LEO even if you were wrong or abusive.
That is not the reason they have all the rights at all. The reason for that is our founding fathers had a distrust of government after their experiences with the British and wished to limit its powers. It has nothing to do with LEOs carrying guns. And your beat/shoot the suspect analogy is poor. That also has nothing to do with limitations of LEOs. What you described is a crime, just one perpetrated by LEO.
LEOs scare me. I'm generally not a lawbreaker, so they really shouldn't. The fact that they scare me is an indication something is wrong with the system.
I'd say get out more. If the LEOs in the US scare you then you haven't experienced many other countries and what their LEOs can do.