Crime du jour: pumpkin streakers

November 2, 8:13 PMAnchorage Libertarian ExaminerKevin Wilmeth

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  Comic from xkcd.  (Anyone who doubts we live in a
  police state is welcome to try this.)

Think we don't already live in a police state?

Via Wendy McElroy, the Wall Street Journal carries this story about cops cracking down on yet another "crime" in which nobody is hurt, which never seems to have been a problem before, and which is a specific local tradition that enjoys popular support from both the public and much of the city government.

Cracking down with SWAT teams.  Two of 'em, actually.  You know, body armor, machine pistols, military gizmos of the tacti-cool variety...we're talking about units that train to bring war to their customers.  And yet their customers are...oh, never mind.

Why?  What is so compellingly dangerous about a demonstrably peaceable assembly that justifies militarized enforcers showing up with orders to arrest anyone participating in the event as a sex offender? 

The police chief of Boulder, Colorado will now Tell Us How It Is:

Police acknowledge they have not been flooded with pumpkin-run-related complaints, but say that's beside the point. A throng of naked people with jack-o-lanterns on their heads is, by definition, an alarming sight, Chief Beckner says. Therefore, it's illegal.

Alarming == illegal.  And that's "alarming" according to... uh, him.  Get that?

It would appear that Chief Enforcer Beckner is of the same Police Academy aesthetic as Shreveport's Cedric Glover and his band of rights-suspendin', arse-kickin' enforcers.  It's pretty clear who the top dogs in this town are;  it is telling that nobody but the cops is hot on cracking heads over this.  Not the public:

Runners and their fans are outraged. This is not the free-spirited Boulder they know and love. "It kind of reminds me of what's happening in Tehran," says Andy Schmidt, a lawyer. "They're pre-emptively outlawing a gathering."

Not the city government:

At a recent forum for city council candidates, all 10 participants said they disapproved of the threatened crackdown.

Even Mayor Matt Appelbaum, who supports the police, admits to a tinge of worry that arresting Halloween streakers will tarnish Boulder's reputation as, well, Boulder.

"I'm a little old for it, but it could be pretty cool to be running around with a pumpkin on your head and not much else," says the 57-year-old mayor.

Not even the DA--although that office still makes it clear that it is perfectly willing to seal the deal on the infractors (I refuse to call a non-aggressor a criminal), who will wind up on the same offender list as rapists and molesters:

Those convicted of indecent exposure rarely get jail time, but they must register as sex offenders, just as rapists do. Which seems a bit excessive to Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett.

"A lot of times," he says with a sigh, "these people are just being idiots."

Still, Mr. Garnett says he will back up the police, adding, "We will take the cases they give us."

Gee, thanks Stan, for looking out for your own at the expense of us all.  No, it's just the enforcers who really want to get to their enforcin'.  And just what is it, exactly, that they're enforcin'?

Casting about for a law to apply, since nudity per se is not illegal, police hit upon the state's indecent exposure statute, which makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor for anyone to knowingly expose his or her genitals in circumstances "likely to cause affront or alarm."

Mark that point well.  When one manufactures a crime out of something that is not a crime, selecting the phony justification for it may be a bit of an obvious shopping exercise.  Fortunately for the enforcers, they've got all kinds of things to pick from in their ever-expanding playbook.  What can we hang 'em on?  Indecent exposure?  Very well, let's go crack some heads, boys.

Once again, it's all about compliance, cloaked behind a modernized mantra of "just following orders":

"We're a police department," Chief Beckner says. "We enforce the law."

Really, Chief Enforcer Beckner?  Because from here it seems like you're enforcing nothing but your own unquestioned ability to enforce, and only fishing about for some excuse that the DA won't question you on, afterward.  You know perfectly well that you're accountable to nobody but yourself, and it shows.

Consider just how twisted this man's sense of reality is.  To him (he certainly didn't suggest here that anyone else felt this way too), a group of anonymous nudists celebrating Halloween in an odd but peaceable way is more "alarming" than sending two teams of militarized cops into the streets, with automatic weapons and other tools of war, to round up people who have not hurt anybody and ruin their lives with a trumped-up charge.

Now, let's talk about obscenity.