The Chicago Police Department has a problem. One of their officers was videotaped stating “Your First Amendment Rights can be terminated.”

Here’s the article and you can watch the video for yourself. I wrote a little bit about it on Google Plus:

First Amendment rights can be terminated? That’s the first I’ve heard of that! Here’s the text of the thing: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

There are exceptions that the Supreme Court has installed which bear on this text, but nowhere does any of it bear on what I saw in this video.

This video is just Chicago Police acting shamefully. Perpetuating the stereotype that the police are paid thugs with no regard to citizens basic constitutionally-guaranteed rights. How can we petition the government for a redress of grievances if the central right that backs it up can be “terminated”.

Chicago has a problem on it’s hands. The police need to be put back under control before they think of themselves as somehow better or more than the rest of us.

Trampling on our rights, and worse yet, being recorded to trample over citizens rights is only going to lead to future unrest and a mounting pressure from citizens to reject these officers of the law as absurd simulacrums of what they are intended to be: To enforce laws, to serve the citizens and protect them.

The first step? Protect us from yourselves, Chicago Police Department. You are hazardous to our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.