Garrison state overture. (The Last Word).(police abuse case)(Brief Article)

Of necessity, the grim history of police states focuses on large-scale honors -- the gulags, gas chambers, and killing fields. But before a police state can carry out such monumental atrocities, it will announce its arrival with a proliferation of smaller abuses of law-abiding people. The experience of Jim and Elizabeth Meyer of Yakima, Washington, offers an ominous overture to the arrival of the "homeland security" police state apparatus.

On the afternoon of July 13th, as temperatures climbed to 107 degrees in the shade, Elizabeth Meyer was pulled over by a policeman for an expired license tag on her Chevy Suburban. During the routine stop, the officer noticed an unloaded ammo magazine for a semi-automatic rifle on the dashboard. The officer asked to inspect the magazine and search the vehicle. Elizabeth didn't consent to the search, assuring the officer that the magazine -- misidentified as a clip for an MP5 machine gun -- was empty and that she wasn't carrying any weapons.

"We were told that we could leave, but as we pulled away the officer said, 'Ma'am, my boss would like to talk to you,'" Elizabeth recounted to THE NEW AMERICAN. "The officer in charge told me that he represented a tri-agency counter-terrorism task force that included the FBI and the ATF, and insisted that they had to search my vehicle as part of an ongoing investigation."

Elizabeth is a 22-year-old, red-haired, Irish-American mother who sings in her church choir. Her passengers that afternoon were her four children -- a four-year-old daughter, two-year-old twins (boy and girl), and another four-month-old daughter -- and a female friend in her early twenties. They would be difficult to shoehorn into any profile of suspected al-Qaeda collaborators -- but this didn't deter the police from trying.

Insisting that Elizabeth represented a "flight risk," the police hemmed in her Suburban with five squad cars and refused to let her turn on the ignition to run the air conditioner. Elizabeth wryly told THE NEW AMERICAN that the only relief she received from constant demands to allow an inspection "was when I told them that I had to nurse my baby." After she and her passengers had spent nearly an hour and a half in the pitiless sun, Jim Meyer, Elizabeth's husband, showed up to address the officers' concerns. Jim, a world-class marksman who has trained alongside both local and federal law enforcement personnel, quickly dispelled the officers' concerns. Elizabeth, who had received a citation for her expired tags, was allowed to drive away, and the matter was put to rest. Or so it seemed.

About a week ...