Stand the Fuck By

I sit here this morning at my house rather than commuting to work.

Why?

Because I have to take time out of my fucking day to go defend my actions in court. I have to defend myself against an allegation of careless driving made by a law enforcement officer who, in my opinion, fundamentally misunderstood what he saw.

And yeah, I'm fucking pissed about it.

I'm not going to rehash the entire traffic stop. I've already spent enough energy on that bullshit. But the colossal waste of time it has created? Yeah, I'm going to fucking bitch about that. The fact that an agent of the government can pull a citizen off the road, temporarily deprive them of their freedom of movement, accuse them of violating the law, and then force them to spend their own time and money defending themselves?

Yeah.

That's worth fucking talking about.

We've become so accustomed to traffic stops that we barely think about what they actually are: Government detention.

Temporary, yes. Sometimes completely justified, yes. But detention nonetheless.

The flashing lights come on and you're expected to stop. You're expected to remain there until you're told you can leave. And then the questions begin.

“Do you know how fast you were going?”

Nope. And if I did, I'm not going to fucking tell you.

“Where are you coming from?”

None of your fucking business.

“Where are you headed?”

Again, none of your fucking business.

The question I actually care about is much simpler: Why did you stop me?

Because that question matters.

Police aren't supposed to possess some generalized authority to interrupt our lives whenever they fucking feel like it. Government power is supposed to have boundaries. The Fourth Amendment exists precisely because arbitrary government intrusion into the lives of citizens is something Americans historically decided we should be pretty fucking suspicious of.

Yet somewhere along the way, we normalized the intrusion.

We see the lights. We pull over. We hand over our documents. We answer questions we don't necessarily have to answer. We sit quietly beside the road while somebody wearing a badge decides what happens next.

And most of us never stop to think about how extraordinary that power actually is.

That's the part bothering me this morning.

Because I'm sitting at home instead of going to work.

Later today, I'll walk into a courtroom because one police officer decided my actions constituted careless driving. The government made the allegation, and now the burden falls on me to show up and challenge it.

My time.

My lost productivity.

My fucking problem.

And if I'm ultimately vindicated?

I get my life back.

Congratulations, I guess.

That's a pretty fucking shitty prize.

Police are supposed to work for the citizenry. Their authority isn't supposed to exist for its own sake. We give government extraordinary powers because those powers are supposed to preserve peace, protect individual rights, and provide accountability when someone actually harms another human being.

That relationship matters.

Government works for us.

Not the other fucking way around.

I don't know what any of this means for my case today. Maybe I'll walk out vindicated. Maybe I'll walk out even more pissed off than I am sitting here writing this.

But I know one thing.

I'm not going to pretend that government authority deserves unquestioning reverence simply because somebody pinned on a badge, put on a robe, or sat behind a bench.

Authority should withstand questions.

Power should withstand scrutiny.

And anybody entrusted with either should fucking expect both.

So, yeah.

Today they're getting the full-throttle Kate.

Stand the fuck by.