Attempting to further bolster a de facto monopoly of violence in New York City, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton proposed additional edicts to tip the power scales even more in favor of enforcers over citizens, the New York Observer reported Wednesday. In addition to stiffening penalties for things like wearing protective body armor, tinting windows and holding police to similar information disclosures that “civilians” (a telling attitude in itself ) are subjected to, Bratton said it would be “very helpful” if charges of resisting arrest were upped from misdemeanors to felonies.

Who that would be very helpful to is obvious. And, as with so much of what Bratton has stood for throughout a long career as a tax-fed serial oath-breaker, the potentials for further assaults on liberty and shielding of a corruption are intentionally terrifying -- if we let ourselves be cowed by them.

"There's a widespread pattern in American policing where resisting arrest charges are used to sort of cover -- and that phrase is used -- the officer's use of force," retired criminal justice professor and expert witness Sam Walker told WNYC in a December analysis of police abuse. "Why did the officer use force? Well, the person was resisting arrest."

“NYPD Has a Plan to Magically Turn Anyone It Wants Into a Felon,” Gawker Justice observesin a more hard-edged assessment that includes examples of resisting arrest charges being deliberately unjustly applied. And it’s that felony rap that should most outrage right to keep and bear arms advocates, because such convictions will result in lifetime prohibitions against owning guns, outcomes Bratton and his boss, socialist mayor Bill de Blasio, wouldn't mind seeing more of. Understand, these are people who want to deploy with machine guns to control protesters, a wish they've apparently publicly backed down from -- for now.

And it’s not like the leadership for the rank and file don’t share the goal of total armed control, with an overwhelming continuum of up-to-lethal force should any have the temerity to resist.

"We need to make it clear that if someone lifts even a finger against a police officer, their life could be on the line," Patrick Lynch of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has advocated. That’s quite the threshold level for “justified” use of lethal force, is it not? How much less will be required for a “resisting” charge? Is it any wonder attitudes like this result in the “permitting” of a right that is reserved for the “right people”?

It’s consistent with a sense of entitlement actually bragged about by former mayor and longtime domestic enemy Michael Bloomberg, when he told an audience in a speech at MIT“I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh largest army in the world.”

Noting how megalomaniacs with power consistently presume their will trumps the Constitution, it’s no surprise they flaunt their workaround to Article .1. Section. 10, which declares “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress .... keep Troops...” But don’t look for anyone to successfully challenge the power elites by reminding them of that unheeded mandate, either through legislatures or courts serving the hands that hold their leashes. 

What remains to be seen is if a new paradigm being tested and adjusted to results in a new awakening sufficient to discourage someone lifting an iron fist against a citizen who is exercising his rights. This latest move by Bratton, with his variation on Star Trek’s Borg warning, “Resistance is futile,” may set the stage for seeing if that’s really so.