Conversation with Officer Lambright

During our stop in Kansas City, both Ademo and I had interactions with the same KCMO police officer. Ademo had a conversation with officer Lambright and eventually led him to the conclusion that the law fails to prevent crime, or save lives. My interaction with officer Lambright was a little bit different.

Wes is a cop and his job is to enforce the law so its understandable that he would be under the impression that his actions are saving lives and keeping people safe. At least that’s what they tell you in cop school. In reality people are just making choices. More often than not the law is a restriction of our individual behavior, and is not a preventative measure to insure the safety of others.

According to the numbers, checkpoints don’t prevent drunk driving but do open up opportunities to create almost an unlimited supply of criminals for a number of other victimless violations that arbitrarily generate revenue in order to keep the wheels of the state spinning. Roadblocks were never designed to protect you, they were designed to victimize you.

The US has over 300,00 people driving drunk every day with just over one percent of them getting caught. In fact the average repeat offender will drive intoxicated and avoid capture 80 times before getting caught. The equivalent of driving drunk everyday for almost 3 months. Surprisingly this only resulted  in a total of 10,076 deaths in 2013, an average of 28 a day. Since 1980 the amount of drunk driving has dropped by 50 percent. Combine that with an overall cost of almost 200 billion dollars a year to the government which equals out to a cost of 800 dollars to you the individual. Keep in mind this is taken by force, regardless of whether you drive drunk or not. When you factor in the 1.3 million overall traffic deaths that happen in the world, drunk driving in the US attributes to well under 1 percent of the global traffic fatalities.

It’s blatantly obvious that DUI laws are not only ineffective, but also expensive. With the information collected by MADD (mothers against drunk driving) corroborating the facts that both laws and roadblocks are both failing miserably at preventing people from drunk driving. It’s ironic that they are advocates for such useless legislation.

Instead of rushing to make everything illegal, why not just hold people accountable for their actions. Everyone should be held to the same standard of accountability regardless of whether you are intoxicated or not. Unless you are the government, you will never be subject to a law that exempts people from accountability for their actions.

Brian’s interaction with Officer Lambright.

**Authors Note** All statistics other than global fatalities were supplied by MADD (mothers against drunk driving)

Conversation with Officer Lambright is a post from Cop Block – Badges Don’t Grant Extra Rights