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WHEN THEY COME FOR YOU by David Kirby

WHEN THEY COME FOR YOU

How Police and Government Are Trampling Our Liberties - and How to Take Them Back

by David Kirby

Pub Date: Oct. 29th, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-06436-3
Publisher: St. Martin's

Investigative reporting and anecdotes demonstrate why the author believes United States citizens should fear governments at all levels.

A journalist and self-described “leftist libertarian,” Kirby (Death at SeaWorld: Shamu and the Dark Side of Killer Whales in Captivity, 2012, etc.) certainly understands the vital roles of governments regarding roads, parks, schools, consumer safety, environmental protection, and even law enforcement. In this book, the author focuses on how and why government entities in Washington, D.C., state capitals, county seats, city halls, and law enforcement complexes consistently restrict the rights of Americans. Kirby hopes to raise individual consciousness with the case studies and then encourage individuals to mobilize against government overreach, whether it is well intended or motivated by corruption. The chapters focus on warrantless police searches of residences; child protective services removing juveniles from families; incarceration of suspects for minor alleged offenses or inability to pay bail (manifested in the proliferation of “modern-day debtors’ prisons”); a law enforcement practice known as forfeiture, which strips cash and other assets from alleged criminals, many of whom are not guilty; suppression of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment; governmental invasions of individual privacy; a malfunctioning criminal justice system revolving around out-of-control police, inefficient courts, and mass incarceration in inhumane jails and prisons. The author also explains why he decided to exclude a chapter about voter suppression by governments, suppression aimed unequally at people of color. He goes on to delineate why he decided to omit Second Amendment controversies over gun ownership and government-enforced gun control. Kirby generally avoids partisan political verbiage; throughout the narrative, he chooses case studies that reflect poorly on nearly everyone involved in the political process: Republicans, Democrats, and so-called civil servants who are unaffiliated. Readers who pay attention to the news behind the headlines will already know much of this information, and Kirby’s proposed reforms at the end of each chapter are intriguing but probably mostly impractical in the current political climate.

An average contribution to a variety of political debates.