More Texas Citizen Abuse, This Time In Arlington, Again

My bizarre run-in with the Fort Worth Gestapo a couple days ago has had me thinking about how bit by bit freedom can erode, and if you let little freedoms erode, the erosion can eventually reach a Grand Canyon depth level. Just consult a German to see how that can happen.

I think I've not been paying close enough attention to how badly freedom has eroded in my zone of Texas.

Yes, I did clearly make note of how appalled I was by the worst case of eminent domain abuse in American history, when thousands of citizens and hundreds of homes and apartments were taken from people against their will, in an extreme violation of that basic American idea that when we are in our homes we should be safe from the government.

Instead, in Arlington, the government took homes and replaced them with a private business in the form of a football stadium. In the famous words of a wise philosopher named Jesus, "What you do to the least among us, you do to me."

And now, this morning, I learned that Arlington is employing a method loved by the old Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. That being, having citizens, in the form of "Code Rangers," spy on their fellow citizens and report serious violations impacting the public well being. Like putting your garbage out a day early. Or parking your car on your lawn. Yes. Your lawn. You own it. But, in Arlington, you can't decide to park your car on your lawn, if you want to. The Code Rangers will get you.

I might find some sense in this if Arlington was some sort of pristine city, with well paved streets, sidewalks everywhere, no eyesores. Instead, just look at the majority of the area around the new Cowboy Stadium. It is Eyesore City, for the most part. Or drive Division or Pioneer Parkway in Arlington and make note of the number of eyesores you see. They must be more difficult to go after and generate easy revenue.

Oh, I forgot to mention, if you put your garbage out one day early in Arlington, you will get a $132 fine, no warning. Within hours of putting out your garbage on the wrong day, a City of Arlington KGB/Gestapo Agent will show up at your door and hand you a ticket.

The civic sense in Arlington is so twisted that they are actually proud of running this KGB/Gestapo inspired program. They even have a city website that sort of brags about the miscreants they have played nanny too, with Violation of the Week "Before" and "After" photos illustrating the wonderful results of this corrective behavior. People in free parts of the World, and America, I'm not making this up, click the link "city website" link above and see for yourself.

A letter to the editor in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, this morning, put me on to this latest bizarre thing in Arlington. I had no idea about this, prior. The KGB/Gestapo victim, in this instance, has decided he has had enough of Arlington and is taking his family and saying bye-bye.

What really gets me is the attitude here, in this extremely repressive part of America, of treating perfectly good citizens as if they are criminals. You put out your garbage on the wrong day and you get a fine? How about being neighborly and simply pointing out to the person that this is not garbage day, and there is this darn city code about not having your garbage out til garbage day.

Or like I said before, if someone is driving real slow in a residential neighborhood, without wearing his seatbelt, for good reason, why not simply stop that person, ask why they were driving slow, tell them they need to put on their seatbelt and send them on their way, once you realize this was not a hardened criminal you stopped.

Instead, in the ham-handed KGB/Gestapo manner in which one simple matter was handled, Arlington is losing one good citizen and his family, and Fort Worth has another citizen having fun expressing his umbrage, in various forms, about the various forms of umbrage-worthy ridiculousness, in this city I live in, that makes the World Green with Envy.

I am almost to the point of leaving myself. I am ready to live in the land of the free again. I hear Austin is quite nice.

Anyway, below is the letter that set me off this morning.....

I’m a concerned citizen who finds he is living among a secret society that the City of Arlington calls its "Code Rangers."

While I was working in South Texas for 60 days, my wife mistakenly put out the trash for pickup on Thursday instead of Friday. Within four hours, she received a ticket. Not a warning — a $132 ticket issued by a code enforcement officer.

My wife, grandson and I have lived here only six months and had no prior incidents. When I brought this to the attention of the local code officer, he said Arlington issues no warnings; it’s an automatic citation. When asked how he found this egregious violation, he said he was not at liberty to discuss how he was notified.

Through research, I found that Arlington trains residents to be "Code Rangers," and it is these fine upstanding residents, sitting in the shadows waiting for flagrant violations to happen, who inform city code officers.

Farewell Arlington, my taxes are going elsewhere.

Robert Reuland, Arlington