From 2018, you can LISTEN HERE.
EXTRACT: “In 2010, Carla Gericke says she was following a friend in her car one night through Weare, New Hampshire, when a squad car pulled up behind her. She says she pulled over, and the officer told her to drive away because he was actually pulling over the car she was following.
“The officer told me to leave and I was like ‘Well, I can’t leave because I’m following them and I’ve no idea where I am, it’s 11:00 at night. It’s dark, you know. No I’m going to stay here.’ But he really was a bit on edge so something was weird and I was just like, OK, something’s weird.”
At this point, Carla pulls out a video camera. For some reason, it wouldn’t record, but she got out of the car and started pretending to film the police anyway.
They told her to get back in her car, and then a second officer showed up and asked her where the camera was. She refused to tell him, and refused to hand over her license and registration.
“So things escalated. I was arrested. The people in the car that I was following got arrested and at the police station the police officers refused to give me my camera and they refused to give me a receipt to say they had taken my camera, and so I got a little stroppy and that’s when they decided to charge me with wiretapping.”
Carla told me this experience – of being told she could not document the actions of a police officer – re-affirmed everything Carla knew about the state. Not just New Hampshire – the very concept of a state.
“Government is force. And what I mean by that is for every law we write it is backed by the barrel of a gun. If you refuse to do whatever’s in that piece of paper and you keep saying I won’t do it someone will eventually show up at your house with a gun and make you do it.”
