”In a discussion on MSNBC of how Trump’s doctor has finally revealed his story about the infamous letter one of the guests (I don’t recall her name, let me know if you do) said Trump is a thin skin narcissist with thugs. She was referring to the hired thugs sent to get the medical records from Dr. Bornstein’s office.
Bornstein is essentially alleging a holdup, where the bandits demanded and got the material they sought through a show of extra-legal force. Bornstein did not file a police report after the incident, but he certainly could have.
I spoke with TJ Raimey, senior associate attorney at Atlanta's Bader Law Firm, who told me that "without a warrant, without notice by the government to seize property, that's a violation of someone's rights." A former police officer himself, Raimey says that "the intellectual property contained within those records, that's the property of the treating physician, he has the right to his papers and objects."
Raimey stops short of calling the alleged "raid" a robbery since Bornstein and his office gave up the records willingly, but they did so under intimidation, opening up the door to a possible constitutional rights violation. From CNN
We still don't know whether Keith Schiller, Trump's former bodyguard and current White House assistant, was armed when he paid his visit to Dr. Bornstein. My hunch is that he was.
This got me to thinking about the intimidating, powerful, and armed authorities Trump can order to do his bidding, not overseas but in the homeland. I don’t consider them thugs, although there may be bad apples in the bunch. However, they are armed to the teeth and have the extraordinary power to detain and arrest anyone.
As someone who was not only a go-to therapist for police officers, and who also published the number one website, Police Stressline, on police stress I have strong opinions about good policing and what makes an effective and ethical police officer.
I also was an auxiliary police officer for 20 years. When Chief Clifford Kline (who retired as a Detroit street cop and moved to our rural town and became chief) asked me to become the only auxiliary officer on his seven-man department he told me that the main thing I always had to remember was that my badge gave me the awesome power to deprive someone of their freedom, if only for a short time, and under extraordinary circumstances their life.
When I see these heavily armed and body-armored federal agents wearing police on their uniforms all I can think of is how, as a mere volunteer cop I was considered something less than “real police.” If I was only a real cop wanna-be, what do you call these folks?
I have known probably 100 real police, some as friends, some as ride-along partners, some as acquaintances, some as clients. Our job was to protect and to serve, and as one of my cop friends, Jim Shelley, used to say when I rode with him and were preparing our police car, to “go out and crush crime.”
I spent many hours riding with Jim and have great memories of our long talks and our adventures. When he left Mason PD he went on to have an amazing career as an author and in law enforcement
Much of the policing we did in our small Michigan department was focused on watching for drunk drivers and we won the MADD statewide award for best enforcement twice. That too was real policing.
When we moved to Middleboro, Massachusetts I went to their reserve-intermittent police academy and became a special police officer.
In all modesty, I worked with “real cops” during a time when the police seemed to be mostly respected and admired by law-abiding residents.
Our job wasn’t to do the bidding of a thin-skinned narcissistic president with a racist political agenda.