Deeply Disturbing
Monday, March 4, 2013 at 3:00AM 
I found the video at the end of this rant/blog post to be deeply disturbing.
At first I was disturbed by the attitude of the person filming the video of Border Patrol people doing their job While the person being stopped was totally polite, something about it disturbed me.
But I kept watching the video and thinking about the situation, which in the video was repeated over and over again. Suddenly it struck me that I was being disturbed by the wrong thing. In each of these short examples of stopping people on the road, the driver politely refused to cooperate, yet each time the driver was allowed on his way after a short delay.
Why was the car allowed to go on its way? The reason is simple if you think about it. The supervisor of the officers, in every case, let the car proceed because the supervisor knew what they were doing was illegal and they did it anyway.
So what is more disturbing, a person politely refusing an illegal request, or an officer knowingly making an illegal request at an illegal checkpoint? In fact the “job” being done for the day by each officer in this video is based on illegal acts.
And it is even more disturbing that I would cooperate. I am ashamed.
Reader Comments (2)
When I get stopped on I-8 east of San Diego, I cooperate with the questions, but twice they have said "Do you mind opening your trunk?" and I replied "Yes, I do mind." Once the officer replied, "That's a big trunk; you could hide a lot of things in there." I said nothing. He said "have nice evening." And off I went. I had my mp3 player in voice recording mode.
My situation is different than most because I have a naturalized citizen in the car, my wife. Thus I tend to be cooperative.