cop map debuts

In an effort to reign in the power of America's various police forces and to hold them accountable for their actions, cities across the land have subscribed to a new system for tracking police officers' location and activity in real-time. Pulling data automatically from GPS units already installed in most of the cruisers used by law enforcement today, the system – which is unofficially called Watch-Watching – also relies on input from the officers themselves. By entering an activity-specific code into his laptop computer at least once every fifteen minutes, the public servant tells the system what he is doing, be it patrolling, looking for a suspect, following up on a report, lurking, violating somebody's Constitutional rights, or just plain acting the fool. If the code as entered does not match paperwork filed following an arrest or citation, the system will help individuals wrongfully targeted by the pigs prove that their rights were abused or that they were discriminated against; alternately, codes that do match paperwork can be used to strengthen an officer's case.

Watch-Watching allows ordinary citizens to keep tabs on the persons tasked with keeping them safe. By logging onto QuisCustodietIpsosCustodos.net (Latin for “Who watches the watchers?”), regular citizens can note the location and direction-of-travel of any police officer in their vicinity so that they might go about their business without undue exposure to a role-crazy, rule-heavy cop. Since 11 September 2001, many police departments and tens of thousands of individual cops have convinced themselves that every traffic stop will bag them the next bin Laden, that the protections clearly defined in the United States Constitution do not exist, and that all citizen who step outside the lines – even if only briefly – deserve to be stopped, questioned, and kicked in the head while handcuffed. Today, Americans are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist; instead of protecting us from external threat, many police officers have themselves become internal threats, abusing rights, ending lives, and generally treating us – their pay-masters and the persons they are charged with protecting – with malicious and murderous contempt.

Such abuses of power must end; such overreaches must stop. Only through united action might we guide our police forces back into the roles which they filled for so long – those of selfless helper, trusted protector, and honor-bound guardian. Watch-Watching is just one tool in the citizen's arsenal, just one means by which she can protect her Liberty from abuse, her body from violation, and her virtue from destruction. Other tools include: filming unlawful or overly aggressive police activity and forwarding that footage to copblock.org; knowing one's rights and, more importantly, actively protecting them; maintaining awareness of this growing internal threat by speaking with one's peers and encouraging civic leaders to join in the struggle against persons who think that badges confer special rights. As with any new tool, Watch-Watching will only be a strong as those who wield it; we at Mentiri Factorem Productions suspect that certain police departments and officers will find ways to hide their movements so that they might continue to abuse the rights of non-violent civilians and innocent pursuers of Happiness alike, murdering and maiming to their hearts' content. Therefore, dear reader, keep your head on a swivel, a song in your heart, and drive it like you stole it. Mahalo.

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