I am tired and bored of reading these rants on HN. Why don't Americans just give themselves a spring?
How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help
721–730 of 816 posts
Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help
#722Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I understand that on some level putting Peretz in jail was a reasonable response to him not leaving the scene, ..." It sounds completely unreasonable to me, by the way. Of course he doesn't want to leave, he just found someone bleeding in the street, it's natural to care about what happens to them. Why should he leave? And why would he go to jail after not obeying immediately? Isn't there something else that you guy…
It's rational for a police officer to respond to civil disobedience in some circumstances with detention. That is not unreasonable in some situations, particularly one where lives are at stake or where there is clear and present danger. My point is that while the arrest may have been bad, what happened after is egregious and clearly definable as awful. There's lots of blame to go around here but blame does little goo…
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Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help
#723Back in November, I was arrested in Brooklyn for running a red light on my bike while on my way to work in Manhattan. Normally you're given a ticket and let go, but in this instance, the officers took issue with the fact that I was not carrying ID. Both officers told me that I "could be arrested for not having ID." For clarification, I asked if it was a city, state, or national law, and the officers adamantly maintai…
Cop's language was fuzzy but they were right in principle and you were mistaken. You have right to not carry ID. But if you broke law and they can't readily ID you, they have right to hold you till arraignment for belief of citable offense. There are a sequence of laws resulting in you locked up (not exactly arrest, but held, same difference to you in the moment) if not carrying ID (you did), doing citable offense (y…
So carry your ID or a good book.
Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
SFPD are going down this road, OPD (Oakland) and many others already do, but the officers often find an excuse for their camera to malfunction when they want, and in many cases they are instructed to turn the camera on themselves before interacting with anyone, and they simply don't. It turns out that telling the cops what to do isn't very effective.
But the existence of the cameras can solve this problem (assuming that the footage is made available for subpoena). For instance, if this particular officer has a history of having their camera malfunction right before arrests and do so at rates far higher than other officers then this fact could be brought up in court.
The real world just doesn't work that way. Cops are not accountable. We need to take more responsibility for policing our own communities and spend less time demanding that more money is spent on police budgets.
These SFPD were whining about how they can't afford to live in SF, but they make as much as I do SPECIFICALLY to address that problem.
Police are "State Violence". They exist to encourage the rest of us to follow the rules for fear of SPECIFICALLY this sort of situation.
They are never, in any precinct, going to be an acceptable institution. They will not find your stolen shit, they might arrest you if you witness a tragedy, and if you want to go tell your elected representatives they are a bunch of assholes, they will come out in paramilitary gear and spray fucking pepper spray or teargas in your face.
They have one of the strongest unions in the country and their own bill of rights. Cameras are a good idea, but they're just not going to fix this.
I would love to see people in the tech industry get involved in CopWatch, talk to people that have been doing this, esp in the bay area for decades. It is ASTOUNDINGLY difficult to get even a reprimand on file. Look at Johannes Mehserle and John Pike, extreme cases, but if their behavior is above reproach, how do you think that grabbing a random person and stomping you into the ground for noncompliance while you are in a state of shock is going to get them anything but a few laughs at the cop bar.
I wish technology could fix the police, but it cannot.
Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help
#725Earlier quoted context omitted.
SFPD are going down this road, OPD (Oakland) and many others already do, but the officers often find an excuse for their camera to malfunction when they want, and in many cases they are instructed to turn the camera on themselves before interacting with anyone, and they simply don't. It turns out that telling the cops what to do isn't very effective.
It's high time to make the cops wear video cameras that are permanently turned on while on duty, and to make it a penalisable infraction for them to obstruct the camera without filling in reams of paperwork to justify it afterwards. FTFY. Or... Even better... It's high time to hire better cops.
"hire better cops" usually translates to "pay cops more".
SF and Oakland are already amongst the highest paying police departments and neither has almost any residents of their city working for them. I have met some of the police who are natives in both cities and it's a great way to get uninvited from Thanksgiving, and with good reason.
Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help
#726Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're talking about people with a preference for bicycles not their religion, race or gender. And, yeah, you could replace it with driver, that one at least is valid. I don't know if you've heard of this rift between cyclists and motorists but it gets pretty heated and intense in urban areas. Typically the people pushing for legislative changes and updates to infrastructure are cyclists. Typically, those cyclists are…
In your desire to complain about cyclists (rightly or wrongly) you are blind to the abuse of a citizen that happened here.
You're overlooking the fact that the cyclist in question ran a light and then tried to school a cop. Being arrested under the circumstance is not abuse - on the contrary it's just about standard procedure. Do you really expect you can give a cop lip - while being cited for a traffic violation - and skip away?
When you have an altercation with a cop, give at least the respect you expect to receive.
Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help
#727Earlier 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…
People don't like them until they need them.
Then when people need the cops, they call the cops, and their dog gets shot, their door gets broken, their kids get taken away, they get a beat-down, and maybe get to spend a weekend in jail, it goes from "don't like" to "really don't like".
Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help
#728I posted this in another thread today but it's even more relevant here. We need a way to track when police officers have violent interactions with the public. We should be able to look up any officer and find their history of abuse of authority if it exists to make it easier to identify patterns. We can't trust these people with power if we can't hold them responsible. I would love to help work on this with someone.
Cant be wikipedia?
Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help
#729Back in November, I was arrested in Brooklyn for running a red light on my bike while on my way to work in Manhattan. Normally you're given a ticket and let go, but in this instance, the officers took issue with the fact that I was not carrying ID. Both officers told me that I "could be arrested for not having ID." For clarification, I asked if it was a city, state, or national law, and the officers adamantly maintai…
Perhaps it would have helped to have a lawyer from work call them. Corruption hates the light of day.
It's also a bad indictment of the system that the 90% of cops that are good don't stop the 10% that are bad. Could it be that every cop has a mistake in their past, and that keeps them from disciplining each other?
Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help
#730Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep in mind we only have his version of the story...
Well, he called 911 himself. I think this part won't change from version to version. Now how many people who call 911 when they witness an accident actually are a "problem" enough to warrant an arrest?
Only the drunk, self-entitled assholes like OP.