Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New laws trying to criminalize filming cops

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 272 posts

Re: New laws trying to criminalize filming cops

#171

Post by sidewndr46 »

jaywalk wrote: post #128
zer8k wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're wannabe military tough-guys with laughably worse training and culture, A lot of them are ex-military which is why every incident is treated like a mini-fallujah. There should be better psychological evaluation of police. It's harder to get a gun as a citizen anywhere in the US than it is to become a cop.The very least we can do is treat them to a far higher standard than we do citizens given that they have…

> It's harder to get a gun as a citizen anywhere in the US than it is to become a cop. As a gun owner, I can tell you this is laughably false. I can't go into a police station and walk out as a cop 30 minutes later.

The comparison doesn't even make sense. You can make a gun in your own home. You can't make a police officer

Re: New laws trying to criminalize filming cops

#172

Post by mrangle »

enragedcacti wrote: post #44
zdragnar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several people have been charged with hate crimes for spinning their car tires over rainbow painted sidewalks, even though nobody else was present. Hate crime is a fucking stupid term; a crime is a crime is a crime. That said, if targeting one group deserves special treatment, then targeting any group should get the same. Equal application of the law, y'know?

Protected classes are part of the law and "Cop" is not one of them. Treating cops the same as minority groups would be ignorance of the law, not equal application of it.

There are no protected class allowances for assault.

This thread is a menagerie of legal misunderstanding and buzzword abuse.

Re: New laws trying to criminalize filming cops

#174

Post by mrangle »

jgwil2 wrote: post #149
mrangle wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're being prosecuted for smirking at cops while destroying pro-cop signage, which can be read as assault. Ask yourself whether in today's age someone could get away with destroying an LGBT sign amidst a pro-LGBT protest, while staring down LGBT people, and get away with it. I don't agree with where the standards are, but most people would observe that this is the standard. Whatever anyone's personal rationalizati…

If she tore it up and threw the pieces in their face then maybe it could be construed as assault. If she was tearing it up and smirking without physically threatening the cops then how could it possibly constitute assault?

Read assault laws. As is common, you are conflating assault with battery.

Re: New laws trying to criminalize filming cops

#175

Post by elkhadiy »

next_xibalba wrote: post #96
ralusek wrote: post #21

Being a police officer is a privilege. The population grants you the authority to detain us, accuse us, and even kill us. Few professions should be subject to higher scrutiny.

I find this type of overly simplistic claim pretty naive and unhelpful. If you knew any police, you would know it sure doesn't look like a privilege. It is often an unpleasant job. Policing is much more dangerous than the average job, often involves dealing with the mentally ill, intoxicated, people in some form of crisis, people who are just antisocial criminal jerks, etc. It is not very well compensated profession.…

Take away from the parent and your comment is that Policing is a high skill hard job with a lot of associated responsibilities and accountabilities.

Thus I find it alarming that on average, US officers spend around 21 weeks training before they are qualified to go on patrol [1] while a teacher needs at least a bachelor degree so 4 to 5 years of training [2].

I find compensation for both professions laughably low in the US (teacher: $57,220[2], officer: $62,600[3]) however police equipment budget [4] is orders of magnitude higher than that of teachers that need to spend their own money on school supplies [5]. So there is an argument to be had about the difference of quality of life of these two very important professions. The LAPD gets a $2 billion budget [6] which is equivalent to the total military spending of nations like Lithuania [7]. Maybe a lower barrier of entry to the force and bigger crime and arrest statistics with everything that it entails and it implies on the ground to create such numbers in the books is what it takes to maintain this kind of budget?

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733 [2] https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-... [3] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/police-offi... [4] https://www.investopedia.com/how-are-police-departments-fund... [5] https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/out-p... [6] https://knock-la.com/lapd-budget-2023-increase/ [7] https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/military-spending-by-...

Re: New laws trying to criminalize filming cops

#176

Post by sidewndr46 »

iudqnolq wrote: post #133
euniceee3 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25' is fine if ALL officers involved have body cameras. Getting that footage should be as simple FOIL request. There needs to be a streamlined process for citizens to obtain footage as easy as it is to browse on Nextdoor. The problem is when you have a police line established that is 25' from the action and then have to move back another 25'.

I thought this until I tried to actually watch and understand body cam footage. it's quite a lot harder to parse and misses quite a bit that cell phone cameras capture. there's also an interesting argument that by always showing the officers' perspective it will make people more likely to empathize with them. I'm not sure exactly why bodycam footage is so much worse. I think part of it might have to do with the odd h…

I've watched lots of body cam footage as well. One interesting aspect is that apparently multiple departments allow officers to turn the camera off at will.

Re: New laws trying to criminalize filming cops

#177

Post by mitt_romney_12 »

mrangle wrote: post #151
mitt_romney_12 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people respect and want cops 89% of Americans think that changes need to made to make policing better and 50% of Americans think that major changes need to be made [1]. > People whining about cops being mean to them, and their general dispositions, tends to think that their police interaction is a super special customer service experience and that the system is faulty when it falls short of their expectations.…

Garbage poll. It utilized questions that close to zero Americans would disagree with, in that the policies in question aren't controversial and are already enforced. Ignoring the intentionally murky language of the third question. And ignoring the fact that their methods can't be critiqued given America's current rock solid trust in polling. See the first three: Require officers to have good relations with the commun…

> in that the policies in question aren't controversial and are already enforced

These policies aren't enforced

> Change management practices, so officer abuses are punished

"Less than 10% of officers in most police forces get investigated for misconduct. Yet some officers are consistently under investigation. Nearly 2,500 have been investigated on 10 or more charges. Twenty faced 100 or more allegations yet kept their badge for years." [1]

> Change management practices, so officers with multiple incidents of abuse of power are not allowed to serve

"Officers like Wiley Willis, who was caught on video manhandling a handcuffed woman in an interview room until she lay injured in a pool of blood. He got his firing reversed because an expert didn’t record a polygraph ... Among the officers who benefited from it: a Shreveport officer accused of raping a woman at police headquarters; a Baton Rouge officer who shot at a fleeing motorist and was fired for dishonesty; a Eunice officer disciplined for choking and tackling a motorist; and a Hammond officer who took part in a beating that a policing expert hired by the city said was one of the “most abusive uses of force” he ever reviewed." [2] all of these cops got their jobs back

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/0... [2] https://www.nola.com/news/crime_police/louisiana-shields-pol...

Re: New laws trying to criminalize filming cops

#178

Post by 542354234235 »

mrangle wrote: post #64
542354234235 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Remember that this is the age wherein people are getting arrested for destroying LGBT, BLM, etc signs and art. Do you mean vandalizing and/or destroying other people's property or pulling a sign away from someone else and destroying it, or do you mean being charged with assault for destroying their own LGBT sign? Because those are night and day different things. I would love to see a source if it is the latter, sinc…

The former. People have been over-charged for destroying the property of others, in the example given. But my point was comparative. Also, to clarify, it should be difficult or impossible to charge someone for assault simply for destroying property. But according to how I understand assault laws, and leaving room for jurisdictional interpretation, if you do it while doing something else that can be read as intimidati…

These aren’t comparative in the slightest. They aren’t being arrested for destroying an LGBT sign, they are being arrested for destroying someone else’s property. If you steal something from a police officer and destroy it, that is a “comparative” crime. You added false equiveillance examples because your “understanding” of assault laws has very little weight on its own. Considering there are actually many examples of anti-LGBT protestors that come armed [1] obviously to intimidate, it seems you attempting to mislead people as to the nature of anti-LGBT crimes and paint anti-LGBT crimes as “overcharged” seems telling.

[1] https://www.opb.org/article/2022/10/30/eugene-drag-queen-sto...

Re: New laws trying to criminalize filming cops

#179

Post by [deleted] »

whoknew1122 wrote: post #120
lordfrito wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they are so fragile that a smirk can intimidate them? First let me say I'm not on the side of these kinds of laws. We can't be passing laws giving special privileges to (or removing privileges from) a particular group of people. "Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law." Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) […

Safe spaces aren't a new thing. It's just now there is a vocabulary for it. 20 years ago, before people talked about safe spaces, I would hang out at comic/gaming stores because I could be my nerdy self while playing Magic: the Gathering. When I would go to bars, I'd go to gay bars. Because I could just be myself and not worry about running into the violence in the clubs that catered to teens. A safe space is about f…

[deleted]

Re: New laws trying to criminalize filming cops

#180

Post by zer8k »

jaywalk wrote: post #128
zer8k wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're wannabe military tough-guys with laughably worse training and culture, A lot of them are ex-military which is why every incident is treated like a mini-fallujah. There should be better psychological evaluation of police. It's harder to get a gun as a citizen anywhere in the US than it is to become a cop.The very least we can do is treat them to a far higher standard than we do citizens given that they have…

> It's harder to get a gun as a citizen anywhere in the US than it is to become a cop. As a gun owner, I can tell you this is laughably false. I can't go into a police station and walk out as a cop 30 minutes later.

Yeah, you'd have to do 6 weeks of PT first. But you can waiver that.
Post reply on HN