Alas the FL Warrior/Guardian researcher(s) might have instead asked a far more basic question...
Are LE & their agencies constitutional as Roger Roots questioned in the Seton Hall Constitutional Law Journal in 2001: quote:
Uniformed police officers are the most visible element of America's criminal justice system. Their numbers have grown exponentially over the past century and now stand at hundreds of thousands nationwide. Police expenses account for the largest segment of most municipal budgets...
English colonists who framed the United States Constitution would have seen this modern 'police state' as alien to their foremost principles. Under the criminal justice model known to the Framers, professional police officers were unknown.
At the time of the
Constitution's ratification, the office of sheriff was an appointed position, and constables were either elected or drafted from the community to serve without pay. Most of their duties involved civil executions rather than criminal law enforcement. The courts of that period were venues for private litigation — whether civil or criminal — and the state was rarely a party.
Professional police as we know them today originated in American cities during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, when municipal governments drafted citizens to maintain order. The role of these "nightly watch" officers gradually grew to encompass the catching of criminals, which had formerly been the responsibility of individual citizens.
While this historical disconnect is widely known by criminal justice historians, rarely has it been juxtaposed against the Constitution and the Constitution's imposed scheme of criminal justice. “Originalist" scholars of the Constitution have tended to be supportive, rather than critical of modern policing.
The Constitution contains no explicit provisions for criminal law enforcement. Nor did the constitutions of any of the several states contain such provisions at the time of the Founding. Early constitutions enunciated the intention that law enforcement was a universal duty that each person owed to the community, rather than a power of the government. Founding-era constitutions addressed law enforcement from the standpoint of individual liberties and placed explicit barriers upon the state.
Unquote
Interesting hypothesis isn’t it?
Especially if you consider, quote
The modern police-driven model of law enforcement helps
sustain a playing field that is fundamentally uneven for different players upon it.
Modern police
act as an army of assistants for state prosecutors and gather evidence solely with an eye toward the state's interests.
Police seal off crime scenes from the purview of defense investigators,
act as witnesses of convenience for the state in courts of law, and
instigate a substantial amount of criminal activity under the guise of crime fighting.
Additionally, police
enforce social class norms and act as tools of empowerment for favored interest groups to the disadvantage of others.
Police are also
a political force that constantly lobbies for increased state power and decreased constitutional liberty for American citizens. Unquote
Quite an interesting read...http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm
Oh, dear, a very excellent book from 2013 called Rise of the Warrior cop the militarization of America’s police by Balko...
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces [Radley Balko] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <div>The last days of colonialism taught America's revolutionaries that soldiers in the streets bring conflict and tyranny. As a result
www.amazon.com
