US petitions Obama for better policing of its mega-cities
Stricter, motorcycle-based judiciary proposed
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A group of Americans has turned to the Obama administration's online petition site to propose a radical reform of the US law enforcement and judicial systems.
While citizens of as many as 40 US states have lately used the petition system to request permission to secede and form their own governments, this more civic-minded bunch has called for stricter enforcement of current US laws and policies.
As the brief, yet succinct text of the petition explains:
This is a petition to dissolve the current legal system and replace it with a single Hall of Justice, run by Judges; motorcycle-riding law officers who act as police, judge, jury, and executioner.
Although the petition may sound harsh, the sentencing practices it proposes are not entirely unusual for the US, which remains one of the few developed nations to employ capital punishment. Currently, the death penalty is law in 33 of the 50 US states.
Under the present judicial system, however, death penalty trials are often long and arduous, with multiple mandatory appeals causing many cases to stretch out for years and even decades – a situation that the petitioners clearly seek to reform.
The concept of granting absolute authority to judges is not alien to Americans, either. As defined by the US Constitution, the Judiciary is one of the three top branches of the Federal government, with the nine Justices of the Supreme Court determining the highest law of the land.
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At present, however, the Judiciary lacks the kind of law-enforcement powers the petition proposes, and of the current crop of Justices – all of whom are over the age of 50 – none is known to ride a motorcycle.
Although most day-to-day law enforcement duties are now handled by police departments at the municipal level, many federal agencies are involved with policing, too. The FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the US Marshals Service, and the Secret Service are all federal agencies, to give just a few examples.
Under the proposed system, the current dizzying array of national law enforcement bureaus and agencies would be streamlined to form a single Hall of Justice, which could create beneficial efficiencies in this time of budgetary excess.
The Obama administration has issued no statement on the petition so far, as is its policy; only those petitions that pass the 25,000-signature mark are granted an official response. As of this writing, the judicial-reform petition had 400 signatures and counting. ®
