For those of us who love liberty and freedom, who believe that each person owns himself, who hold the idea that a person can do whatever he wishes with his life and property as long as he does not infringe on the rights of another person or his property, we find ourselves beset on all sides by a State that is oppressive of our rights and the most violent and consistent aggressor against life and property.
The State, media, and government run schools are all working to teach our children a near blind obedience to government and its agents.
In an effort to combat all the State propaganda and ensure my children receive a more enlightened education, I began recording short podcast type lessons for them. The lessons are all designed to be about 5 minutes long and to teach the ideas of liberty in a language they can understand.
I'm posting these lessons online so that others who might find them useful can share them with their own children.
The white part of this image came from a tweet someone posted after the presidential election, most likely a Hillary supporter. The black part was added as a response to the tweet(maybe a Trump supporter). Here is my response: Not all of us abstained from voting. But those of us who did refused to participate in an immoral system of aggression against our neighbors designed to create the illusion of legitimacy for a government that uses force, coercion, and violence to steal the wealth and freedoms of our friends, family, and neighbors.
Hillary Clinton supporters react to Hillary's loss to Donald Trump on election night.
The Hillary supporters in this photo are likely not really thinking about how government is going to be used against them. They are probably just upset because their "team" lost. But one of the reasons they are upset is because of how Donald Trump being president is going to negatively affect them. I think it's a shame that the office of the president is so powerful that people have to be fearful of who has that office. The founding fathers created a presidency that was so weak that it shouldn't matter who it is to regular Americans. But every president pushes a little further outside of the boundaries that the Constitution sets for him. This has happened with every president, but really took of with Abraham Lincoln, and hasn't slowed down since then. There is now a cycle that repeats every time a new president is elected.
The cycle goes like this: People spend 4 or 8 years supporting the president with the R or D behind his name (just because it’s the same letter they carry behind their name) as he grabs more power for the office of president than his predecessor did, cheering him on as he further erodes liberties, enslaves the residents of the nation through taxation and inflation, and makes government more authoritarian. Then they spend the next 4 or 8 years in a panic as they fear how all these powers will be used against them as they prepare and plan to win next time so that they can start the cycle again.
A better system would be one where people respected the non-aggression principle, which says that you don't use force against anyone unless you are defending yourself, you family, your property, or your rights. It says that you can use force, just not to be the aggressor, only to be the defender. Libertarians believe that this principle applies to all areas of our live, including government. It's wrong for a person to use force to take their neighbor's property, and it doesn't become okay when it is the government taking your neighbor's property. If we vote for a politician, we are choosing someone who will use government to take our neighbors wealth or freedoms, and this violates the non-aggression property. The democrats in this picture likely cheered on President Obama as he used government to spy on Americans, to punish their enemies, to steal wealth from Americans to fund programs they wanted, and to murder innocent people, and now they are afraid that President Trump is going to do the same, but he is going to use government against democrats. Of course, now republicans will spend the next 4-8 years cheering on Trump as he grabs even more power for the office of the president and uses the power against their enemies, only to be weeping and gnashing their teeth when the next democrat is elected as president as they fear how government will then be used against them.
Getting a driver's license is a great moment in the life of a teen. It's a sign of maturity and of nearing adulthood, and it's a license for freedom.
While a system of insuring that drivers know the rules of the road and have competent driving skills is important to the safety of all drivers and the efficient flow of traffic, having a State-run monopoly issuing driver's licenses is a horrible way to manage this system. Driver's licenses offices have a well deserved reputation for being inefficient, having rude employees, and being difficult to work with. In the Houston area where we are,it takes a minimum of a month to get an appointment, and you can only get one that quickly if you are willing to drive 60 miles from home. The closest office to us required a 2 month wait.
3 of the 6 kiosks used for check in are out of service.
After waiting that month, if you are missing one of the 10 forms they require you to have, you are sent away and required to go to the back of the line, meaning you have another month wait and another 60 mile drive.
Once in the office it is likely that you will experience at least one employee who will be short with you when answering questions, or downright rude.
This is all happens because the government has a monopoly on licensing drivers. Monopolies have no incentive to offer good service or a good product. If you don't like the service the State provides, you can't go anywhere else to obtain a license. This doesn't happen in the free market. In the marketplace, if you don't enjoy the service or product a company provides, you go to a different company. If enough people do this, the company has a financial incentive to improve its service/product, or they risk going out of business.
So I was thinking about how drivers could be licensed without a government monopoly. I'm not claiming to have come up with a perfect solution, but the system we have now is horrible and people just live with it, so why not consider something different.
Maybe we could have auto insurance companies issue licenses. Insurers have a financial reason to verify that their customers know he rules of the road and are skilled and able to drive safely. The safer their drivers are, the more profitable they can be. They might offer different grades of licenses. Go through the bare minimum of training, maybe 100 hours of classroom and behind the wheel instruction and you could get a rate, say $100 a month, for your insurance. Go to more advanced training like defensive driving or accident avoidance and they might give you a rate of $75/month. This system would encourage drivers to complete more training to get more advance licenses for cheaper rates.
The abundance of poor service offered at State-run licensing offices would become a thing of the past. If we didn't like the service we received at the Farmer's Insurance licensing office, we could swap to Geiko, Allstate, or many other insurers. This is not to say we could find someone who who license you if you were not qualified to drive, because these insurers would still want to be sure you were a safe and qualified driver before making themselves financially responsible for you.
I don't know if this is the system that would be best to replace the state run system we have now, but I know that the state run monopoly that now exists is terrible and should be replaced.
Literally the very first thing a soldier swears is to defend the Constitution. Then they proceed to fight illegal undeclared wars of aggression on orders given by politicians who regularly write laws that disregard the Constitutional rights of Americans.
This image is trying to illustrate the idea that the two party system of politics in America(on one side is democrats and the other side is republicans) are supposed to be polar opposites from each other, and that libertarians have a completely different idea about who should govern your life. In fact though, the two parties are not polar opposites. They do try to portray themselves as this image suggests
Democrats would like you to believe that their party stands for individual liberty - allowing people to make their own decisions while at the same time confiscating a large part of your property to redistribute to poorer and so-called "disadvantaged" people. In fact though, they work to control people's decisions, such as what wages they are allowed to work for and what tools or weapons they may possess to defend themselves,
Republicans would like you to believe that their party stands for allowing people to decide for themselves how their money is spent, while at the same time making laws to force people to live by their own moral code. In fact though, they also confiscate a large part of your property, but they want to spend it on waging wars and funding the police state needed to enforce their moral code.
Libertarians understand that the best way for men to progress, be healthy, happy, and wealthy, is to allow them to run their own lives and control their own property. Mutually working together making voluntary decisions and trades is a better(though not perfect) system than allowing a central organization to use threats and violence to enforce the will of an elite group of government officials.
Who is the most dangerous person in your school? If you have a police officer who is assigned to your school, he or she is likely the most dangerous person you will encounter while getting an education. The best thing that you can do if you or a friend (or even an enemy) has personal encounter with a cop, is to record the interaction. Generally, people will behave better when they know they are being recorded, but there are many videos of adult police officers physically abusing young students to prove that is not always the case.
When dealing with police, keep these things in mind:
1. Police are trained to lie, and it is acceptable for them to lie.
2. Police are trained to make requests sound like demands. Example: "I'm going to have to ask you to open your bag for me." Although this may sound like an order, notice the language is "have to ask." While you are film the encounter, get them to commit to an order by asking, "Is that an order or are you asking me to?" If they don't have legal standing to order you to, they won't commit to it on film.
3. Police often respond to perceived insults with violence, so it is best to be respectful.
4. Police often respond to any short delay in obey them with violence, so proceed with caution and continue to film.
Remember that the camera is your friend. The officer in this video may end up getting in trouble, but that would not have happened if someone had not caught this on their phone. Any time you stand before a judge or a school official without video evidence, they are most likely to side with the cop over you.
In America, we're taught that there is a political that has the democrats on one side and the republicans on the other. Democrats are said to be on the left, and republicans on the right. Democrats may be referred to as left-wingers, and republicans as right-wingers. People who try to mix both beliefs are called centrists (meaning in the center).
In reality, there is not much different between these two "sides." When you boil down all their beliefs to the bone, they both revolve around the idea that some person or group of people have the right and authority to rule over you and to claim ownership of your life and property. We call this belief authoritarianism.
The opposite of this belief in authoritarianism is voluntaryism. It is the belief that all people own themselves and that no other person can have a higher or better claim on the ownership of their body or property than the individual can. It is the belief that all the ways people interact should be voluntary. Neither force, nor coercion, nor threats should be used to make someone do what they don't want to, or to stop them from doing what they want to do, as long as they are not harming anyone else or violating another person's rights.
All governments are authoritarian. But some are more authoritarian than others. North Korea is one of the most authoritarian governments. They control much of their citizens lives, such as the books that can be read, the movies they can watch, the news they are told, where they can work.
The American Constitutional government is a less authoritarian government. The Constitution was written to clearly define what government was allowed to do and to put limits on how much the government could interfere in the lives of it's citizens. Unfortunately, the government has claimed more and more power for itself over the years and is becoming more authoritarian every year. America does not have the limited government that the writers of the Constitution intended, and the actual government is much closer to the oppressively authoritarian government of North Korea than most Americans would like to admit.
America claims to be the "land of the free," but it is more accurate to say that it is the "land of the people who are more free than some people in the world and less free than others." The only truly free society is one follows the principles of voluntaryism.
Garner State Park is one of the more popular outdoor areas in Texas. The Frio River, with clear, cool water, and a limestone riverbed, runs though the length of the park. The river offers family friendly tubing, and a short dam near where the river exits the park offers a large area for swimming with calm water about 3-4 feet deep. There is a wildly popular nightly country dance that is attended by scores of families in an open pavilion beneath old oak trees. The park is popular among hikers, with several miles of challenging hike up craggy hills.
It was after completing a two hour hike around one of these hills that my family experienced the most unforgettable part of our trip. As we drove from the parking area back to our campsite, I inadvertently drove the wrong way down a one way street. The parking lot we used was about half way down this street, and when I left the lot, I had forgotten that it was a one way road.
Now I'm typically a safe person. I work in an industry where accidents can cause major injuries or even be fatal, and can cause damage to equipment than can cost tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair. We are constantly being trained and retrained about working and living safely. All this safety training has overlapped into my home life and driving habits.
I also tend to follow most traffic regulations for several other reasons. I have no desire to finance the government any more than I already do involuntarily through taxes, permit fees, and licensing requirements, by giving them a reason to issue me a traffic citation. Because I film police performing traffic stops and arrests in my area, and because I often hold a sign warning drivers of police manning a speed trap near my home, I'm aware that the police know my face and vehicle and I assume that they watch me more closely to find me breaking one of their traffic rules.
I haven't been pulled over in probably 10 years. So I was at first surprised when the police truck headed towards me flashed his lights at me, swerved in front of me, and motioned for me to roll down my window. But then it flashed through my head that I was in a one way street, headed the wrong way, and he probably just wanted to give me a heads up. This is pretty much what he did, except he added instructions for me to turn around and head the correct way. This surprised me because I was about 40 feet away from the two way road, and there was no other traffic. So I was technically breaking a rule designed for safety, but I wasn't actually being unsafe. If I were, I would have understood the instructions to turn around and I would have complied.
Now I understand the reason this road is designated for one way traffic. It is about 3/4 as wide as a normal two lane road with, has no shoulder, and there are campsites packed along this road where families with young children camp. It can be a busy place since it is in the most popular area of the park. It might have made sense for me to turn around, even though I was so close to the beginning of two way traffic, if the area had been busy at the time. But it was a Tuesday morning with no traffic and many empty camping sites. And the first opportunity that I had to make a u-turn was actually about 15 feet from from the multilane road. So as an adult who can determine what is safe and what is not and who can reason out what is sensible, I decided to ignore his instruction to turn around, drove the remaining distance to the terminus of one way traffic, and immediately pulled into the camp store parking lot to buy some ice.
I was in the store for several minutes, plenty of time for the cop to approach me and scold me if he choose to. But he choose instead to follow me for a mile after leaving the store before pulling me over. I suspect that he wished to avoid having a crowd of people see him reprimanding or citing a park guest. Instead, he waited until I left the parking lot, then trailed about 10-15 feet behind me up and down steep roads until we reached a secluded spot before signaling with his lights for me to pull over.
Ostensibly, the entire reason for this stop was because I created an unsafe condition by driving opposite the flow of traffic on an empty road. But consider this: the police officer swerved his truck into my path to originally get my attention, tailgated me as we drove steep roads with blind curves, and parked his truck in the flow of traffic as I pulled off the side of the road. So this servant of public safety responded to my apparent breach of safe driving by putting me and other park guest in jeopardy three times.
Luckily, I have prepared my family for police encounters. I have talked with my wife and daughters countless times about what their rights are when interacting with the State's law enforcement agents are, how to safely interact with them while exercising their rights, and to always film any interactions they or their friends have with police. So all it took was a simple reminder and we had 4 iPhones recording as the officer interacted with me. The video tells the rest of the story. (Unfortunately none of the video was of the quality I would like, so I have posted the significant portion to Youtube. Our family has reviewed the video and using this as a learning experience.)
I'll take the officer at his word that he usually writes a ticket. But I don't believe his explanation as to why he didn't in this case. He claims it's because I'm with my family. But so are about 85% of the guests of the park. So if he let people off when they are with their family, my guess is that he would almost never write tickets.
So why didn't he write a citation this time? I suspect, but obviously can't prove, that it is because he saw 4 cameras recording him, and he choose not to take the chance of becoming a Youtube star for being a jerk at a park that is trying to attract families to visit. This is not the outcome I expected. When I chose not to roll my window down fully, control my voice so that I didn't sound like the sycophant I am sure he is normally used to dealing with, and to film him, I fully expected that I would be receiving a citation if for no other reason than to teach me some respect for law enforcement officers. But, I was willing to pay the $150 for the opportunity to show that it is not only poor, young black people who are fed up with their gestapo tactics and violence, but also middle class, middle aged, white men too.
"Ordinarily I'd write you a ticket for not doing what I instructed you to do." This statement by the officer is the most interesting of the entire experience. He was considering issuing me a ticket not because I was unsafe or had harmed anyone or damaged any property, but because I had disobeyed him. It is telling that an officer of the State views disobedience as a more dangerous crime than endangering public safety.
Americans believe that democracy is equivalent to freedom. Or they at least believe they are able to be free because they live in a democratic country. They believe that their ability to participate by voting in making decisions about their community protects their freedom.
But in truth, living in a democratic society is exactly the opposite of freedom. Democracy allows other people to have a say in whom we may marry, where we may live, with whom we may trade, what products we may purchase or sell, with whom we may be at peace with and whom we must be at war with, how much of our income we may keep for our own needs and pleasures, what kind of business we may operate, and what we learn in school. Democracy allow our neighbors, people across town, even people a thousand miles away who we have never met and shall never meet, people we have little in common with and may even be religiously, politically, morally, and socially opposed to, to have a say in how we live our lives and how we are allowed to pursue happiness.
In a free society, we would be free to make all our own decisions, as long as our actions didn't cause harm to others or their property.
When politicians put there own names on plaques like this, it demonstrates the hubris(extreme arrogance) of the State.
Politicians cast a vote to use force to extract(steal) wealth from property owners. These property owners have committed no fault except purchasing property within the geographical boundaries that these politicians claim to rule over(such as their city or county). The politicians then use the threat of violence to collect the money to build the park from these unfortunate property owners. If the property owner refuses to bow to the edict(command) of the politician, the politicians send the thug enforcers they call Sheriffs to forcibly remove the property owner from his home. The these mafioso(gang)-like enforcers called sheriffs auction the property off to collect the extortion money(money collect by threatening violence against a person) from the property owner.
Of course, this threat of violence is understood by all the property owners, and since the mafia(gang)-like organization of politicians has many guns and obedient thug enforcers, most property owners willingly, if grudgingly, pay these extortion demands called taxes to avoid the violence.
And when it’s all done, the politicians have the audacity(courage)
to put their own names in the plaque, as if their contribution to building the park was anything more than the threat of violence against their friends, family, and neighbors.
Today, the federal government controls the printing of dollars. They print as many as they need to pay for their wars. If another type of money like bitcoin can become popular enough so that people aren't using dollars anymore, the government won't have enough money to pay for it's wars.
Edward Snowden is the American hero who exposed to the world that the US government is spying on everyone, including collecting text messages, phone calls, emails, bank account info, spying through webcams, installing spyware on computers, listening to the phone calls of world leaders, tacking people with their phones, and pretty much invading the privacy of Americans in any way you can think of.
The League City Police Department is getting a tank-like vehicle from the military called an MRAP. MRAP stands for Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected. The vehicle doesn't have weapons, but it can have a gun mounted on its top. Letting police department have military vehicles is a bad idea. I wrote a letter to the city council and mayor listing some of the reasons it's a bad idea. Here is the letter:
"It is my understanding that the city is accepting a military MRAP vehicle for use by the League City Police Department. I want to express my feelings that this is a bad idea and explain why. It is my hope that the City will work to get rid of the vehicle in the same way as the Davis, CA has recently done.
1. America has a history of resistance to becoming a police state. In that effort, the government passed the Posse Comitatus Act, which in its spirit is to keep the military from policing American citizens. Ever more frequently though, the federal goverment is finding ways around this Act. One of which is to arm, train, and equip existing local police departments with military weapons, clothing, training, and vehicles. The federal government's 1033 program that gives surplus military equimpent to police agencies has been making police forces look more and more like military units for years. It is unfortunate that a conservative community like League City has fallen victim to the lure of "free toys" and joined the rush to have it's police force become more militarized.
2. The police claim they need such vehicles as the MRAP for their safety. But the truth is that the job of police officer doesn't even make the list of top 10 most dangerous jobs in America. Roofers and garbage collectors rank higher on the list of dangerous jobs than police officers. In fact, it is more safe now to work as a police officer than it has been in decades.
3. Vehicles like this, instead of actually being used for police work where officers respond to emergencies, are often used as crowd control at peaceful demonstrations. Having a military vehicle show up at a peaceful rally or demonstration can have quite a chilling effect on free speech, something the government should be protecting, not discouraging.
4. Giving the police military vehicles, clothing, weapons, training, etc can only lead to police officers forgetting that they work to serve the people. Police officers are often recruited after military service, where they learn to follow orders without question and see the people around them as enemies and a potential threat. I don't want police officers to act on orders without thinking. If they are given an order to confiscate guns house to house, or to fire upon peaceful protestors, I want police who can think for themselves and realize which orders are good and which are bad. I don't want my local police department seeing my family as a potential threat, but to see them as citizens to be protected. Giving our police military toys only reinforces the military training they may have received, and the military attitude they probably experienced in the boot-camp-like police training they received. Give them something like an MRAP, and eventually they are going to find an excuse to use it.
Like anyone else, I want the police to go home safely to their families when their shift is over. But I don't believe their having an MRAP is necessary to make that happen, and in fact carries too much negative baggage. I hope that League City will return the MRAP and look at other ways to scale back the militirization of its police force before we see police activities like were recently seen in Ferguson, MO."
A man named Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.” While it is a truth that everything the government has it has stolen, it is a bit of an exaggeration to say that "everything" it says is a lie. But it does lie an awful lot, and one lie stands above all the rest. When the government tell the lie that "we the people are the government," it convinces people that they need the government and that the government has our best interest at heart.
While out running today, I witnessed police employee Gonzales step in front of two lanes of cars that were moving about 50 mph. He was working at a speed trap, and was signaling for one of the cars to stop so he could give them a ticket.
Driving faster than the speed limit may or may not be dangerous. In a case like this, with most cars going at the same speed, dry roads, and sunny skies, I don't think it was dangerous at all for a driver to choose to go 5-15 mph faster than the speed limit. But what is definitely dangerous is someone stepping in front of these moving cars to signal them to pull over to the shoulder.
Mr. Gonzales didn't just take a step into the road, but walked through a full lane of traffic, about 10 feet into the road. Two vehicles had to quickly slow down to about 10 mph to avoid running him over. This could be a danger to other drivers behind these first two cars who wouldn't be expecting anyone to slow down that much and who would not be able to see Mr. Gonzales standing in the road. I would also be a danger to the two drivers in front, who may have briefly glanced away from the road due to a some reason like adjusting their radio volume or responding to a young child in the back seat. Looking back to the road to see Mr. Gonzales standing in front of them might cause them to use dangerous evasive maneuvers and drive into the oncoming lane of traffic or to swerve into each other.
Mr. Gonzales saw me filming him from across the street and yelled to me that he would do an interview with me after he finished with the driver he had just pulled over. I checked with him to be sure it was okay for me to cross the road to him and hoped that he wasn't tricking me into giving me a jaywalking ticket.
I'm getting better at my one-on-one interviews with police like this, but I still made several mistakes throughout this video. Several times I raised my voice to talk over him instead of just allowing him to speak, then taking my turn. I was too excited about making my point to him, and I wish I would have been a better listener. Also, I was shaking pretty bad, but I always do in these situations, and I don't expect that to get any better with more experience. My adrenaline always gets going, even though I didn't feel any fear while talking to him. Can you see any other mistakes I made or any ways I could have been better? It's important, in all the things we do, that we are always evaluating ourselves and looking for ways to improve.
At the end of the video Mr. Gonzales remembers me warning drivers of a speed trap. As a reminder, here is the blog about that incident. Cop Blocking and Police Intimidation
We've heard that money doesn't grow on trees, but someone forgot to tell that to the government. They've given themselves the power to create money, and they are printing as many dollars as they want.
Good on this boy's parents for teaching him his rights, and good on both these boys for having the courage to resist the bullying tactics of this policeman and record their interaction with this police employee. I like how there is a silent stand off at about the 2 minute mark when the police officer doesn't know how to respond, and this young hero is just waiting for the cop to make his next move. The cop's best comeback is, "Why are you nervous?" Cops like to act that just because someone gets nervous that it must be because they have committed a crime. But it's only natural for most people to get a pump of adrenaline when they are confronted by a person with a gun who acts like they have authority over them and regularly uses violence against peaceful people. I actually think the young man was remarkable composed, thoughtful, and well spoken.
The boy is correct that he doesn't have to provide any identification. The cop just made up a reason to pull him over that wasn't even legitimate. He said the cars registration was expired. The registration has to be renewed yearly on cars in Texas, and when you register you get a sticker on your windshield that shows the date. Since it is night time and the sticker is small, I'm sure the officer is lying about seeing it was expired and just made that up as a reason to stop someone he was looking to harass.
The State doesn't write laws in a way that is always easy to understand or fun to read, but this is what Texas law says about being required to provide ID to cops:
(a) A person commits an offense if he intentionally refuses to give his name, residence address, or date of birth to a peace officer who has lawfully arrested the person and requested the information.
(b) A person commits an offense if he intentionally gives a false or fictitious name, residence address, or date of birth to a peace officer who has:
(1) lawfully arrested the person;
(2) lawfully detained the person; or
(3) requested the information from a person that the peace officer has good cause to believe is a witness to a criminal offense.
The teen was not legally detained, nor arrested, therefore, according to state law he did not have to produce ID.
While I was out running last week, I was able to catch a few naughty police employees on camera.
This photo is from a nearby park. Police often sit like this in their cars so they can chat with each other without getting out in the heat. These men are employed to protect our lives and property, and could use their time patrolling neighborhoods to find criminals, or to scare criminals away before they can commit crimes like theft from homes and vehicles. Instead, they are using their time to sit in this parking lot where nothing good is accomplished. If the police were accountable to their employer like a normal employee is, this behavior would not be tolerated. But police work for the government, and government employees are rarely held accountable for their mistakes or doing their job poorly, especially the police. Police are often treated as heroes for doing their job, and every excuse is made to forgive their bad behavior.
Next, I came upon two young men who were being threatened by another police employee. I heard the policeman raising his voice and threatening one of the young men, so I stopped to take video.
The cop was giving the young man a ticket for driving 35 mph in a school zone with a 20 mph speed limit. The police would say this is for this is for the safety of the children, but there were no children walking home from school at that time. But the police never pass up an opportunity to issue such an expensive ticket to drivers. The young man was calmly trying to talk to the cop about the speeding ticket, which angered the policeman. The police don't like people to challenge the authority they believe they have over us, and expect people to cower before their presence. Any time someone does something that challenges the authority of the police, no matter how insignificantly, the police can become abusive and dangerous. I hope that my presence there filming the interaction was enough to calm the policeman down. It was at about that time that you can see him waving at me in the video, so I know that he was aware of me shortly after becoming hostile.
In the end, the policeman wrote the young man a ticket for speeding, and declined to write him far less expensive tickets for not having a license to drive a motorcycle and not having a helmet. Sometimes police do this to try and appear like they are nice guys, but it may also have been because he was being filmed and was embarrassed at having yelled at the young man. But the officer would not let the young men ride the moped home. He expected them to walk about 5 miles in the heat to get to their home.
Luckily, I was finishing my run and only about 1/2 mile from home, so I was able to run and get my truck and take them and their moped to their house. It is important for us to help each other when the police are harrassing our friends, neighbors, family, and even strangers, first by filming the interactions, but in any other way we can also.
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