Just take it on the chinny chin chin

We Live in a security state now. Don't believe me? Just try walking up to a member of the Johannesburg metro police and telling them you're PigSpotter.

If the statements coming from JMPD spokesman Wayne Minnaar are to be believed, the police don't understand crowd-sourcing, how information spreads on social media, or even why it's a bad idea to anger the already mistrustful and jaded public.

And that's not even the worst part. It appears that the cops have adopted a "shoot first and check if it's okay with the law later" attitude.

Now the police reckon that PigSpotter can't possibly be working alone - he provides too much information. There must be a gang. And the reports are so detailed! Smells of an insider. And let's not forget that they've promised to arrest the person tweeting information that allows "criminals" to evade capture.

I can understand if the cops don't get what crowd-sourcing and social networking are. Almost no one in power seems to understand it. But surely 15 minutes watching how Twitter works should quickly enlighten them as to how PigSpotter gets his information.

Cops set up a roadblock or mobile radar trap. Driver sees it. Driver tweets PigSpotter. PigSpotter generously lets all his followers know where the cops are.

It will be interesting to see how Minnaar will handle this once he realises that, well, thousands of Twitter users are PigSpotter's co-conspirators. Is he going to get all of them arrested?

To be honest, I do sympathise with the police, and am very grateful for the service they provide. It's thankless work, and the workload is enormous. However, there's also the inescapable fact that there is a general attitude of mistrust of the police. And as much as we are entreated to show the police the proper respect, it isn't that simple.

The police have earned the "pig" label. How many times haven't we read of people being mistreated by the police, of bribes being solicited, of shots being fired at motorists by blue-light brigades? We, the public, can't help but feel that the cops aren't always on our side. Now, in PigSpotter, we've found a way to express that.

Instead of reassuring the public that they are here to protect and serve, the police have promised to find and arrest the Twitter "vigilante", thereby immediately cementing his cult-hero status. They're going about this investigation by randomly searching cellphones at roadblocks for references to PigSpotter.

This isn't "shoot to kill" - this is "hose them all down with machine gun fire and we'll eventually hit the guy we're after".

Though the callers to Radio 702 who had suffered this indignity [cellphone rape] were rightly furious, I found it quite hilarious (maybe because they haven't unjustly invaded my privacy yet).

If the police haven't grasped how Twitter works, it's fantastic to imagine that they'd be able to snatch a phone at a roadblock, access a client like UberTwitter and ascertain from the garbled mess they see that they had at last caught PigSpotter Cliff.

Even if they manage to catch this "highly dangerous" criminal, it's difficult to see how they'd get a conviction on a charge such as "obstruction of justice". How would they convince a magistrate that their collective dignity had been "unlawfully, intentionally and seriously" impaired by them being called "pigs"?

It comes with the job. People do it all over the world. I did a quick search, and these are some of the printable versions of police nicknames, from places like Nova Scotia, the underbelly of London, Portugal and America: The Big Big Big, bobbies, bullymen, the fuzz, rozzers, cinder dicks, dogs, the doughnut shop, scuffers and smurfs.

This is where the "the law does not concern itself with trifles" principle comes in handy.

The sad part is that we would dearly love to respect and cherish our police officers, for the right reasons. Instead, we're faced with a force that seems increasingly to rely on jackboot tactics, and often acts in a way that impinges on the dignity and rights of citizens.

We're supposed to trust and respect the same cops who think they have the authority to stop people at roadblocks and search their phones without a warrant.

We're supposed to have warm, fuzzy feelings about the same cops who descend on journalists and haul them off to Nelspruit interrogation rooms on frivolous charges. We're meant to do our civic duty and smile respectfully when the cops shoot out our tyres because we didn't get out of the way of a blue-light cavalcade fast enough.

Who will protect us from the protectors?

• This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in The Daily Maverick ( http://www.dailymaverick.co.za )