Time to pay attention

A B.C. driver wearing ear buds connected to a dead phone was found guilty of distracted driving.

It was the police officers opinion, that you have the ability to use the phone if it is close enough, even if it doesn’t function. The judge agreed with him.

See: Don’t touch that phone, even a little bit

The police can now charge you with drunk driving two hours after you get home unless you can prove that you didn’t drink until you got home. Even then you can still be issued a ticket for DUI. It will be up to you to prove your innocence.

With the firearms bill of a few years ago, the police have the right to enter your home without a warrant, and if they so choose they can also apply a mental health warrant gaining access and/or taking any firearms you might have in the house. Getting them back is not always an option.

How about speeding tickets? The last time you got one, did you ever see the speed on the radar gun or did you just take the officer’s word of your speed that you were ticketed for?

These issues might seem a good thing to some people, but not really fair to many others. The days of “innocent until proven guilty” are no more.

Those of us who don’t use cell phones or drink alcohol could really care less about proving innocence. However, it does seem that “The Man” is tipping the scales of justice a little too heavily in their favour.

See: Impaired driving laws create different classes of offenders, says B.C. lawyer

It just might come to pass that we will have less and less rights, until even the people who “never do anything wrong” will worry about having no rights. Unless you plan on living away from all civilization, the erosion of basic rights just might be an important issue to pay attention to in the future.

Complacency seems to be the “in” thing these days. That’s how people get elected that don’t deserve to. That’s how projects get passed that are not popular or shouldn’t even get off the ground. If we continue to pretend we cannot change things we will get what we deserve…nothing/shafted.

Remember…those who walk with their heads down, get blindsided.

Paul Elmont