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by slapfrog 1746 days ago
> If a cop asks you to stop and the only thing that makes you stop is the threat of violence I would seriously rethink who I am and my values.

People who deliberately speed don't accept speeding tickets out of civic duty. If you accidentally went five over and are embarrassed by your mistake and want to make it right by eagerly paying the fine, good for you I guess. But if you are instead deliberately doing double the speed limit because you think it's fun and don't care about the law, you are clearly not the sort of person who is inclined to willingly accept the ticket because it's the right thing to do. If you were that sort of person, you would not have been racing your car on public streets in the first place.

There is not a country on this planet in which nobody ever chooses to willingly break the law and flagrantly act in antisocial ways. And there is not a country in this world which will not eventually resort to violence when all else fails to convince a criminal to stop committing his crime. You might be thinking that if the cops don't have guns, then what they do isn't violent. But if you think that, you're obviously wrong. Unarmed well trained police will still wrestle you to the ground when all else fails. Unarmed police officers won't shoot you for refusing to comply, but they sure as shit will manhandle you to the ground and wrestle you into handcuffs. That is violence, and the implicit threat of that violence is used to convince people to go along with them peacefully in a dignified fashion.