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Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

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111–117 of 117 posts

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have to have anything related to your work release reviewed for the rest of your life I'm not sure that this is true.

I can confirm it. Anything you want to release that is even tangentially related to cleared work needs to go through the gov't first to vet it for classified info.

That's not true for life and not true just because you have a TS. It is true for certain compartmentalized programs and their ilk, but a GENSER TS does not bear this responsibility. It merely acknowledges that you've had a NAC and an SSBI performed - nothing more.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#112

wow 16 years for filimng a police officer who is handing him a ticket! and that guy is in armed forces, good luck with keeping morale of your troops high.

16 years is about what he'd get if he killed the officer instead!

no in that case they would execute him by a firing squad and tweet about it (sick)

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#113
post #83
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why'd you leave the ACLU?

The most recent time, because they sent me a deluge of junkmail. They seemed to have morphed into a marketing organization that also did some legal work. Maybe the problem was that I gave them more than the normal amount of money; maybe the more you give them the more mail they send you.

I sent them $50 two years ago, and I got swamped by mail. Definitely off putting.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#114
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we all, given a few minutes of reflection, would be glad that we're not judged on a 30 second edited video highlights reel of the worst decisions we've ever made. Particularly not one which stripped the context out of the video. That said, I'm much less concerned about videotaping cops on the street and more concerned with VPI -- videotaped police interrogations. Unlike videotaping cops on the street, they'd…

Videotaping police interrogations is routine in my state, just as private citizens recording their own activities and interactions with other people (with or without the consent of the other parties in the interaction) is routine. The practice of routinely videotaping police interrogations in my jurisdiction seems to help considerably with the administration of criminal justice.

I think the issue is that at some point those videos are destroyed, and the only thing left from the interrogation is the police officers' notes and/or memory (and that of the suspect and/or their lawyer).

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish all cars came with black boxes and 360-degree video coverage so that we could voluntarily supply this information. People lie when they get into a fender bender. (Note: if you live in a neighborhood where people key cars, either stop parking like a douche or you need to move to a better neighborhood. If people feel free to vandalize in a place, they'll also do other crime.) I'd pay $300 for a device I could ju…

I started sketching notes for this a couple years back. Some stupid parking lot altercation where someone started lying.. With the costs of flash and cameras becoming so inexpensive and the amount of wireless access around (GSM or Wifi) I was thinking you Tivo style record like 2 to 8 hours of video just with a circular buffer then if a triggering event happens (hazard button pressed, the record button pressed, a cra…

All of the cars in an area could be used to help when there is an Amber alert or some major crime was happening.

I'm envisioning huge video walls like in The Dark Knight...

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#116
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop making the consumption of drugs illegal, and it's no longer necessary to have a policeman that looks like a drug dealer.

Even if you make drugs legal, we still need undercover operations to deal with criminal organisations. What about the groups that kill people for money, or extort 'protection money', or groups that rob banks? Unless you want to make murder, arson and theft legal, you need to go undercover in these groups.

>What about the groups that kill people for money, or extort 'protection money', or groups that rob banks? Unless you want to make murder, arson and theft legal, you need to go undercover in these groups.

You watch too many movies. Such groups are extraordinarily rare, and it's even rarer that they'd be around long enough to actually infiltrate. The only real examples are organized crime, and almost universally a "man inside" is not an undercover cop, but a former member who's changed sides.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#117
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you make drugs legal, we still need undercover operations to deal with criminal organisations. What about the groups that kill people for money, or extort 'protection money', or groups that rob banks? Unless you want to make murder, arson and theft legal, you need to go undercover in these groups.

Two things: 1. I'm not saying that drugs themselves have to be legal. I think our current policy of punishing drug use is the bad thing. If drugs are to be illegal, the sensible thing is to punish production and sale. Then you can develop a dynamic where a user who wants to get clean can get some kind of reward for turning in a dealer. Then dealing becomes less attractive because there's a higher likelihood of being…

It's impossible even in principle to distinguish users from dealers. Users are constantly selling or giving drugs to each other, whether for a small profit, for mutual convenience, or to be friendly. They can't just introduce new people to their dealers because dealers don't want to meet lots of new people. If you put a bounty on dealers, people who are really just users will constantly be caught up and punished.

That is what happens today. Professional informants are paid to buy drugs and get the seller arrested for dealing. But because it's not that easy to find real dealers, they more often convince other users to sell to them. Someone who doesn't normally deal gets hit with a dealing charge.

As to the matter of videotaping undercover drug cops: this is really nothing to worry about. Drug dealers are not video taping their transactions. Citizen videotaping is something people do when they don't think they are doing anything wrong and they want evidence of possible police wrongdoing.

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