By Alex Wukman
Imagine this scenario, if you can: it’s 10:30 at night and you’re walking to a store for whatever reason. A cop pulls up and flashes his lights. Like a good boy or girl you stop and 5-0 rolls on up and demands your name. Now, since you weren’t doing anything but minding your own business you don’t particularly feel the need to tell the po-po who you are; so you give the cop some variation of “get lost.” Next thing you know you are arrested, charged with a Class C misdemeanor for failing to identify yourself and then, because of overcrowding, you’re carted off to a tent city to await your day in court.
Sadly if two bills that have been presented in the Texas Legislature pass the above scenario won’t be fiction, and worst of all is that the fact that these bills were even filed isn’t that surprising. In the ongoing race to the bottom that Texas entered into with Arizona this year lawmakers have already passed a voter ID bill that is guaranteed to do nothing but disenfranchise thousands of Hispanic immigrants, proposed bills that would make it a felony to hire an illegal immigrant except as your maid and dozens of other bills that seek to do everything from making it impossible for illegal immigrants to get probation or indigent health care.
Now on top of all that our enlightened elected representatives want to make it an arrestable offense for failing to tell a cop who you are, even if he or she has no reason to ask and then they want to allow County Sheriff’s to house inmates in tent cities in the middle of Texas summers.
I’ll just leave this here as a message to the assclowns in Austin:
Walk me through the logic of this…
It’s the middle of the night and a cop is making sure his or her patrolling station is safe. The cop sees something suspicious and wants to make sure everything is in order. The cop asks the pedestrian for ID, and instead the pedestrian gives him a smart aleck comment and refuses to answer his questions. What was now simply suspicious has become an issue, and the cop has to take necessary actions.
This is the lawmakers’ faults? What’s the better alternative? What should the cop do?