Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Protecting Evacuees, or Their Rights?


After a significant natural disaster, it's become standard operating procedure.  Law enforcement agencies refuse to allow property owners back to their homes and businesses until the affected area has been deemed safe for re-entry.

Many people don't even think about it anymore.  It's just something else cops do to keep us safe, right?

This situation repeated itself Monday in the wake of Hurricane Irma, as Floridians who'd dutifully evacuated the Keys in advance of the storm were initially prohibited from returning by police officers who claimed the low-lying islands hadn't yet been deemed safe enough for re-population.

Other Florida neighborhoods were similarly restricted by law enforcement officials, at least for a day or so, but with many residents of the Keys being particularly independent and obstinate - which apparently is a requisite personality trait for those who call that fabled island habitat home - the tempers were particularly apparent there.

Having police officers telling them they couldn't go home was an emotional trigger compounded by anxiety from having just lived through a hurricane.  Since "home is where the heart is," it's only natural for folks to want to return to it and see how well it survived.

Is keeping homeowners from their homes something cops should be doing?  Homeowners are the ones paying taxes on that property (whether owning or renting) and having people whose salaries are drawn from those taxes telling you to stay away from your home can sound unAmerican.

Indeed, if you think about it, this irony is juxtaposed in the face of what most Americans claim to be the basic duty of government.  Ask just about anybody, and they'll tell you that the main purpose of government is protection.  Protect me personally - and all of us corporately - from adversaries, terrorists, whatever.  It's why many conservatives believe in a bloated military budget.  It's why many liberals believe we need more gun control laws.  Protection, safety, defense.  It's the people's Trinity.

Meanwhile, I've said all along that the main role of government is a different type of safeguarding.  Safeguarding not the "homeland," or our physical well-being, but the safeguarding of civil rights.  After all, if we don't have civil rights, how much more is worth protecting?  If we don't have the freedom of speech, or religion, or the right to be safe from unwarranted searches and seizures, what difference does it make if we have the strongest borders and the most merciless police forces patrolling our neighborhoods?

Now, obviously, there is a difference between having a robust military defense, and having cops perhaps being a bit over-zealous in keeping homeowners away from their property after a natural disaster.  But the theory is the same:  Governments get away with letting law enforcement agencies rule with an iron hand when the old "protection" justification gets trotted out in support of police officers winning out over angry, displaced folks from the Florida Keys.

After all, it's not entirely fair to those evacuees, is it?  The Keys weren't deserted; other residents had stayed behind to ride out Irma, whether that was a smart thing to do or not.  The folks now trying to get home had obeyed the government, yet they were being delayed in rejoining their neighbors who hadn't evacuated, and were still home.  And if personal protection is the main goal here, shouldn't the government "reward" evacuees by not making a habit of restricting re-entry after a predicted natural disaster?

Some folks have grumbled that when the next Irma approaches, they'll be less likely to heed government warnings because they don't like how the government treated them after Irma was over.

Not that the cops were entirely unjustified, of course.  And that's the wrinkle in these arguments, isn't it?  Electrical lines and other utilities had been compromised, with some perhaps exposing residents to some dangerous conditions.  Perhaps flooding had undermined more roads than first responders had realized.  Maybe there were massive casualties in some obscure neighborhoods, with fetid corpses laying bare in the Florida sun creating significant health risks to returning evacuees.  Nobody really knew all of the dangerous scenarios that existed after Irma, and if we're talking solely about safety, it doesn't make a lot of sense for hundreds - even thousands - of anxious residents to flood back onto the Keys.

Besides, returning evacuees would make what roadways were passable more congested for first responders and utility crews trying to complete their important work.  Spotty cell phone service could compromise communication in the area, especially as more and more people tried to make calls and overload frequencies.  And then what happens if it's still too dangerous for some folks to return to their particular neighborhood?  Where, along the broad scale of "danger," which we all tend to define differently, is the mark that says the danger isn't worth the risk of returning right now?  And how would you know it, if you weren't there to make that decision yourself?

Yet, on the other hand, how much personal responsibility should property owners be expected to assume for themselves?  In other words, is it more valuable to our society to let people be stupid in their eagerness to return home after a natural disaster, or is it more valuable to our society for people to not be restrained by a police state?  If three feet of seawater still covered the entire 100-mile stretch of the Keys, I don't imagine anybody would argue with the cops about not being able to return home.  And venturing into an area that has been hit by a natural disaster should at least be done without children or the elderly, who may not be able to navigate the various obstacles and dangers that may now exist.  There has to be some common sense here, with evacuees being willing to act responsibly and not take unnecessary risks.

During Irma's lashing of Florida, we all saw the photos and videos of unwise people venturing out in the storm to take selfies in the wind, ride bikes in the rising surf, or drive around like it was just another rainy day.  Remember, there is a difference between being adventurous and being reckless (even though many people today pervert the word "reckless" into being something that should be admired, instead of avoided).

It's hard to enforce laws against stupidity, even though we have many of them.  They've been dubbed "Nanny State laws," such as governmental prohibitions against texting while driving, which should be an obviously dangerous activity to anyone, but in reality is practiced by just about everybody.

And the more we let our government dictate our actions, the deeper our dependence on government becomes.  And that's not good for us individually, or as a society.  After a while, the government gets to set the standards pretty much unilaterally, with the populace further and further removed from decisions that impact us on a daily basis.  We live with the fact that our government can assume a position of control when we abdicate our own responsibilities in a situation - such as texting while driving - but isn't it another thing for us to, for example, let the government keep us from our homes after a natural disaster has passed?  Aren't there ways to accommodate the rights of property owners while at the same time making sure whatever first responders still need to accomplish isn't compromised?

It's kinda like here in north Texas, where law enforcement officials close two or three extra lanes of traffic after an accident just to provide an extra-wide buffer between two cars in a fender-bender, and the vehicles trying to get around the mishap.  What police officers who do this seem to forget is that the more traffic backs up behind an accident, due to needlessly closed lanes, the chances for further accidents in the back-up grows greater.

But I digress.  Of course, the easy answer after a natural disaster would be to simply outlaw permanent homeownership in areas prone to natural disasters, such as the Florida Keys.  Actually, any low-lying land close to the sea.  And maybe forests, considering all of the wildfires raging across the western half of our continent right now...  In fact, if the role of government was to really really protect people, where would be the limit in terms of preventing people from living in harm's way?

This brings us back to my main point about civil rights.  The more we molly-coddle people and compromise their ability to exercise basic human rights in a sensible manner, the more control we cede to an authority structure that has more power to pervert justice on a broader scale than we citizens do on an individual level.  If we don't take upon ourselves the logic, caution, and respect that being participatory members of a well-functioning society demands of us, then government control inevitably follows.

Well, either that, or anarchy.

Unfortunately, some folks think they'd prefer anarchy to a well-functioning society, but they do so without recognizing that no control can actually be more restrictive to civil rights than a well-meaning (yet self-feeding) government.

So maybe waiting for the cops to let you back into your neighborhood after a natural disaster is a small price to pay for an even worse alternative to such control.

Especially after these residents begin to file for government aid to rebuild what Irma damaged, so they can got through all this again after the next big storm.

But doesn't the logic of living in a well-functioning society involve learning our lessons the first time, and making constructive changes to avoid repeating them in the future?


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