For some time now our Sheriff has been actively engaged in the pursuit of whiskey runners. To this there can be no possible objection provided the efforts of this official are confined to this class of men. But in his eagerness to arrest bootleggers he seems to have cast aside the well-balanced judgment which should be associated with the official acts of all officers.
Innocent people have been held up at the point of a pistol. Highways have been blocked on curves ad the lives of the guilty and innocent alike have thus been placed in jeopardy. It is against the law to block a highway and there can e no possible excuse for violating one law to enforce another. Our officials should remember that doctors have to visit the sick at night and many other people have legitimate business on the highways after dark. Under present conditions the driver of a car never knows whether the road will be blocked around the next curve or whether he will have his car crowded into a ditch by the car of our officials. Be the driver of a car innocent or be he guilty of hauling liquor, it’s all the same to the Sheriff. No self-respecting American man or WOMAN, likes to be treated as a criminal unless there be reasons for such treatment. Our law-abiding citizens are entitled to protection as the hands of our officials. They have a right to travel the highways at night with the assurance that the road is clear and that they will not be subjected to the indignity of having a gun thrust into their faces on the off chance that they are liquor runners. The Sheriff’s authority does not include the privilege of preventing respectable and law-abiding citizens from pursuing the even tenor of their way without molestation.
From the editorial page of the Franklin Press, Macon County, N.C., March 3, 1925, S.A. Harris, editor.
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92074069/1925-03-03/ed-1/seq-2/#words=MARCH+3%2C+1925
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