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How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

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Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#521

Post by apayan »

jjoonathan wrote: post #505
pessimizer wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can always lie about you. Control what you have control over. If you force them to lie, maybe you can force them to lie stupidly, and that may save you some point down the line. The point is that there is no way that talking will help you. They are trying to make a case against you.

There are many ways talking can help. It can help you avoid the police officer's discretionary punishments. It can help you avoid increased scrutiny that turns up something incriminating. It's less probable that it will help you avoid being punished due to a baldfaced lie on the part of the officer, since presumably the courts are good at filtering those out, but it's not impossible. Once you require the services of…

I can't recommend enough watching this video. The law professor explains why you should never speak to the police. It's 46 minutes long, but every minute is pure gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#522

Post by dllthomas »

ctide wrote: post #487
dllthomas wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it sad that the officer could be a "joke around the precinct" - presumably incompetent and apparently eager to abuse their power - and still be an officer.

Never worked in an office before?

You don't see that there's a distinction when the behavior in question involves abuse of a position of power?

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#523

Post by vonklaus »

rdl wrote: post #125

It's kind of unfair to paint all the police as the same -- it varies both by officer (hard to predict) and by department (easy to predict). I try to deal strictly with California Highway Patrol and various Peninsula PDs. BART PD, SFPD (and SFFD), EPA PD are pretty horrible. I'd go out of my way to avoid contact with them, be wary, and use protection (a lawyer). OPD is bad too, but by virtue of being a rich white guy…

Glossing over some of your assumptions, I find I agree whole-heartedly with your conclusion.

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#524

Post by mwfunk »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #397
BlackDeath3 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No one is denying that good cops do exist. If you'll look closely through this comment section, several people have suggested that good cops don't exist. I'm speaking to them. I do not deny that calling police can be a big gamble.

They're being hyperbolic, there's no point arguing when someone says there are 'no' good cops. It just sidetracks the conversation.

A bunch of people slinging hyperbole around sidetracks the conversation more than anything else.

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#525

Post by vonklaus »

Lagged2Death wrote: post #51

It's high time to just make the cops wear video cameras. A whole lot of this sort of crap could just vanish.

This is the only logical way for police to do their job, if the servant of the people is given more power, so should come more scrutiny and observation.

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#526

Post by bstrand »

Lagged2Death wrote: post #51

It's high time to just make the cops wear video cameras. A whole lot of this sort of crap could just vanish.

I'd take it a step further and say that all on-duty officers should have to wear cameras that stream continuously into a third party repository.

The BART police are mandated to wear cameras in the wake of the killing of Oscar Grant. Unfortunately it's up to them to activate the camera. Recently a BART cop was shot & killed by another officer when searching a robbery suspect's home. Supposedly none of those officers had their cameras running. http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Fatal-BART-shooting-not-...

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#527

Post by pessimizer »

RMacy wrote: post #498
pessimizer wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a black programmer, I remember the cliche about problems and regular expressions in my head as "regular expressions are like calling the cops." That's unfair to regular expressions, though, because I actually have seen them solve a problem before. Cops improving a situation? Never seen it.

Cops are in a weird place. People don't like them until they need them. I work with a lot of cops and most of them are good (and yes they can occasionally get overreaching) but that generalization widens the divide between on-duty police officers and civilians. I would say if we treated them like I get treated being part time Military (hand shaken, dinners, etc) that they will be better people. You'll also see less o…

I'm pretty sure we all know or have known cops. The ones I've known definitely love praise. They seem upset and angry that people aren't praising them constantly, in my experience. Very high opinions of themselves.

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#528

Post by [deleted] »

jjoonathan wrote: post #505
pessimizer wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can always lie about you. Control what you have control over. If you force them to lie, maybe you can force them to lie stupidly, and that may save you some point down the line. The point is that there is no way that talking will help you. They are trying to make a case against you.

There are many ways talking can help. It can help you avoid the police officer's discretionary punishments. It can help you avoid increased scrutiny that turns up something incriminating. It's less probable that it will help you avoid being punished due to a baldfaced lie on the part of the officer, since presumably the courts are good at filtering those out, but it's not impossible. Once you require the services of…

[deleted]

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#529

Post by lstamour »

gizmo686 wrote: post #329
pessimizer wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a black programmer, I remember the cliche about problems and regular expressions in my head as "regular expressions are like calling the cops." That's unfair to regular expressions, though, because I actually have seen them solve a problem before. Cops improving a situation? Never seen it.

I really can't stand how often this view is repeated. Of course their power can be abused, but once you know how to avoid the abuse, regular expressions are a great and easy to use tool.

Especially if well-commented thanks to /x or if live-previewed in an editor like IntelliJ (though it still needs additional live-previewing if you ask me). As to the subject at hand... Yeah. I feel like I've woken up to the reality of what it means to talk to cops. I'd call if I had video evidence for insurance or something, but I'm not sure otherwise. I've never had anything turn out right when involving cops. Nothing bad either, but they didn't help as much as I expected. My problem (a theft) meant far more to me than to any detective. So I learned to protect my stuff better, make backups, keep things hidden. The world's a scary enough place without cops adding to it. Then again, maybe part of the problem is how arrests are performed. I'd try to fix it, but I'm worried about attracting attention ;-)

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#530

Post by csense »

maratd wrote: post #409
gameshot911 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually see a silver lining in this story. The worst thing an officer of the was able to do was inconvenience you for a day. Compare that to pretty much another other time in recorded history, and indeed still many places today, and you could have been locked up for far longer for pissing off someone in an authority position. Now obviously this is a ridiculous situation and the officer was on a powertrip, but you…

> The worst thing an officer of the was able to do was inconvenience you for a day. Wrong. Job application. Have you ever been arrested? No job. Mortgage application. Have you ever been arrested? No mortgage. No house. Rental application. Have you ever been arrested? No apartment. These are just a few places you will have the door slammed in your face. Now, the OP was lucky, because the matter was dismissed, the arre…

It's in everyone's interest for criminals to learn from their mistakes and become functioning members of society. How could they conceivably do so if they're eternally denied education, employment, or even shelter on the basis of their past deeds?

NB, this is argument applies even if you're trying to make the argument to a very pro-law-enforcement person who accepts the premises that only guilty people need to worry about the police and that the laws are perfect so everything that is a crime ought to be one.

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