Civil Defenders Program (re-write with changes)

[Name changed to Civil Defenders from Citizen Defenders in original article 2 law enforcement groups that check & balance each other ]

The Civil Defenders (CD) are a police watchdog organization and also a self-organizing militia for threats against the country.

Mission statement #1 for police watchdog aspect: To gather 3rd party evidence on police operations mostly via video recording, and to protect life (police lives and criminal lives).

Mission statement #2 for militia aspect: In the event of an armed threat to the country, Civil Defenders (CD) will self-organize into teams and the teams can voluntarily choose to accept missions put out by the CD Council.

The Civil Defender program is now VOLUNTARY to join (the previous idea had it mandatory). All volunteers will be sent to a law enforcement school (paid for by govt program) so that they have a good understanding of the workings of police operations and also warfare tactics for militia operations (the school will be pass/fail). CDs can later go on to join the police, but anyone who has previously worked as police cannot become a CD (This is because police behavior becomes instinctual, and is difficult to change).

Members of the CD Council shall be elected into their positions, but before they can be active, they must undergo CD training. CD Council members decide on what should be in CD training, and they will be in charge of organizing CD response to a national threat in cooperation with Congress. They will also be the review council for actions of any CD and will decide if a CD needs to be suspended or terminated from their position or even charged with breaking a law. The CD Council will never issue any direct orders to any Civil Defender, anything an individual CD participates in will always be voluntary. The individual CD will have no hierarchy above them telling them what to do and will essentially be a free-agent (except for the Council’s ability to fire them).

Most of what CDs will do is become aware of an active “call-for-help” to Police dispatch and, either an app, or possibly dispatch itself will ask for a CD to respond to the scene. They can accept by an app or via radio to dispatch and they will get their equipment and travel to the scene (The closest CD to the scene is who should be sent to it). Once on scene they will achieve mission statement #1. The police are not allowed to give the CD any orders unless the CD starts breaking laws. The CD can voluntarily choose to assist the police if there is a safety threat.

CDs will be paid for time spent on the “call” as an incentive to keep responding to what are often boring scenes. I have not decided if the CD Council should be unpaid volunteers or receive the LL recommended minimum wage. Either way, costs must be kept down to ensure the program lasts. A CD’s equipment will be issued to them, and if they are terminated from their position, the equipment must be returned.

I think it is best to have the CD training as completely voluntary for now. But I am still open to having the training be required in certain instances. There could be some school programs in LL that want to require all their students to complete this training. Parents could demand that their child complete the training. The CD training might be broken up into phases, like phase 1: laws, phase 2: police operations, phase 3: militia response. So maybe some parents want their kid to go thru the laws phase just to learn all of LL laws and that’s all. Or maybe people want to be a CD police watchdog so they do phases 1 and 2, and then are qualified to go on police “calls”.

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Very interesting elaboration. Thank you Murf.

Since we have the freedom to start something new in LiberLand, I’d like to add that we should apply a “zero-base-thinking” and be pragmatic about the solution. Apply/implement only as much, as it’s necessary to remedy current issues. We can always introduce additional procedures/law later. (Situation/Problem –> Remedy (plan) –> IMPLEMENTATION –> feedback which leads to a (new) situation).

For example, we should take one (1) topic/problem and address it until it’s satisfactory solved;

  1. What (security) problem persists currently in LiberLand?
  2. How can we solve it (plan)?
  3. Implementation.

We should also consider a potential risks and collateral effects. Brainstorming this subject with LL’s lawer and politicians prior to implementation would be very advisable. (@llTB)

I respect your opinions and logical mind, but strongly disagree with the process you outline. I believe they are based on incorrect assumptions of underlying factors.

In previous discussions, Martin and I have talked about how most countries have evolved with a copy-and-paste mindset in nearly everything and thus end up with the same institutions and policies as most other countries. If LL develops with the approach you outline, they will only address currently pressing items and will use the known copy-and-paste solutions because of conservation of effort. And thus mostly be a carbon copy of existing countries.

In the written work that I do, I’m not hyper-focused on LL, I’m trying to design the systems that will be a part of a highly innovative country of the future.

But of course no one is in charge here, so feel free to develop your writing as you see fit.

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Tadeo, your plan would work in part IF Liberland had a more active body politic that was brainstorming constantly but as Murf also pointed we must be forward thinking. I will say that having personal interactions with several of the higher up people of Liberland, it is known that certain people are very difficult to get a hold of I will not name who they are as I feel that this is not an appropriate venue to air such dirty laundry.

The key is we must be forward thinking so as not to be blind-sighted by something that could be mitigated if proper planning had taken place before. The people of Liberland must constantly be thinking in a state of think tanking always looking to innovate and never settle for statist copy and paste solutions.

It is why I write so much about history. The saying, history repeats itself, shows that we as human beings do not fully learn from our mistakes especially when one looks at the big picture of entire nations, cultures and civilizations. I do not want Liberland to devolve into just another statist country in the future, this is my ethos. I will admit that I do not always follow it myself admittedly but I try to. Winston Churchill famously said, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see,” this quote references that you can understand history, you will know what the future will be. Churchill saw well in advance what Adolf Hitler was to become before anyone else did in Europe. He just wasn’t in a position of power at the time to be able to do anything about it, people have short term memory loss in particular on political events, Hitler broke the 1918 Treaty of Versailles multiple times and many other international agreements as well. He invaded Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland before World War II officially was declared. His copy and paste pattern worked twice until his attempted it a third time on Poland and the polish people feared Hitler and did not give in. Hitler was so enraged by it that he swiftly attacked them using his now famous Blitzkrieg attack method.

I say all of this because Liberland is supposed to be different we must have passionate, informative discussions and debates on these issues beforehand so that when the time is right to implement them the plan was been thoroughly hashed out by all parties involved and it is known to be the best plan that everyone agrees upon.

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Martin,

Thank you for your answer and I agree with you.

What I wanted to point out, is that some small daily pragmatic steps in the right direction bring a huge change over the time. On the other hand, there is paralysis through (too much) analysis.

We must find, as a fresh nation, a way in-between those two approaches. This is also what history is teaching us.

PS: Churchill had already a nation. We are building one —> action more than words, then words more than actions.

(Unless, we are GOD, there was only WORD at the beginning :smiley::+1:)

I get it I don’t want Liberland to be paralyzed by inaction either BUT, we cannot allow crazed knee-jerk reactions to problems that need time for more rational solutions to be formulated. I don’t think I need to remind you about the horrible “legislation, decrees, etc.” that occurred due to the global scamdemic of 2020? That is why I say we need to do think tank style table top exercises and scenario planning so we do not allow Liberland to succumb to statist rationale.

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Martin, I fully agree.