Ignoring notice, city raises aggravation factor of cop tort liability

Jon Luman, right, talks about the criminal case against him where an officer accuses him of exercising a state privilege of transportation without having any evidence that the tradesman was using the road for hire as his principle place of business. With him are Gregory Parker and attorney Melody Shekari. (Photo David Tulis)

The concept of notice is akin to that of preaching and prophecy in Christianity. My administrative notice project tells officials by restatement of law and court rulings the limits of their authority and their duty and effectively requires them to return to justice and integrity.

By David Tulis / NoogaRadio 92.7 FM 

The Word of God is notice to humankind about God’s claims and law. In American law, statutes are thrown out on grounds of unconstitutional vagueness for inadequate notice to the citizen what is required or forbidden

“If I had not come and spoken to them,” the Lord Jesus says in his soliloquy to the apostles in John 15:22, “they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.” The role of his speech, and the work of prophets and evangelists is notice. Ezekiel tells of his ministry to give divine notice to the children of Israel, “Yet, if you warn the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your soul,” Ezekiel 3:19. Paul in Romans chapter 3:20 tells about the role of preaching in making guilty people see themselves as guilty, “for by the law is the knowledge of sin,” and by means of warning they might repent. 

“As sin is not imputed where there is no law,” notes Matthew Henry (John 15 commentary), “so unbelief is not imputed where there is no gospel. *** If they had not had the gospel among them, their other sins had not been so bad. The aggravated guilt which those lie under to whom Christ has come and spoken in vain. They have no cloak for their sin; they are altogether inexcusable. The word of Christ strips sin of its cloak, that it may appear sin.” 

Corrective required under notice

The purpose of transportation administrative notice Tennessee is to make it unmistakably clear a legal bright line on the roadway visible to all police officers, deputies, sheriffs, chiefs of police, commissioners of safety, and state troopers.

The bright line is the distinction between free private travel, outside of any state privilege, and the commercial use of the roadways under privilege, under the state grant of permission to use the people’s roads for privae profit and gain.

Notice describes the operation of the law pursuant to the Tennessee code, federal statutes and also to court cases which tell of the origins of transportation regulation. 

Police officers and other “LEOs” (law enforcement officers) whose employers are under TAN are aware either personally or by legal imputation of these limits of regulatory reach. 

If they enforce the law beyond its scope, they injure and oppress the people upon whom they flash their blue lights.

It’s not that my notice itself should make them halt all enforcement action upon private people on the road. The law does that — or should do that. The constitution’s recognition of our rights does that — or should do that.  

But notice could take credit for ending the state-based human-trafficking highwayman program of traffic enforcement against people not involved in “traffic” (commerce). 

It could do so because it injects the element of aggravation into the activities of law enforcement in Chattanooga and, eventually, across the state when (if) reform takes hold

AGGRAVATION. Any circumstance attending the commission of a crime or tort which increases its guilt or enormity or adds to its injurious consequences, but which is above and beyond the essential constituents of the crime or tort itself. Matter of aggravation, correctly understood, does not consist in acts of the same kind and description as those constituting the gist of the action, but in something done by the defendant, on the occasion of committing the trespass, which is, to some extent, of a different legal character from the principal act complained of. Hathaway v. Rice, 19 Vt. 107. So on an indictment for murder the prisoner may be convicted of manslaughter, for the averment of malice aforethought is merely matter of aggravation. — Black’s Law Dictionary, 4th ed.

Transportation administrative notice, as it were, is a sort of declaration of status, a call to repentance and reform. Until heeded, it makes the torts of officers against innocent people aggravated, especially enormous and especially guilty.

The David Tulis show is 1 p.m. weekdays, live and lococentric.

One Response

  1. Libertarian

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