General Police Abuse Thread

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Elheru Aran
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Elheru Aran »

That's the problem though. The issues with running his card were not his fault, as the card obviously worked fine later, and he offered an alternative (going to the ATM and withdrawing money) that was rejected by the cop in favor of arresting him.

All the more reason to always pay up front, I suppose...
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by RogueIce »

Yes, but to be fair to the officer it's not like he had any way to know that at the time. So I'd question whether the arrest really counts as "police abuse" or not.

Kamikaze Sith could probably chime in as to whether or not the officer would have been required to go to the ATM or if just the fact he was A) called and B) both cards were coming up 'Declined' at the scene was enough.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Kamakazie Sith »

Elheru Aran wrote:
Borgholio wrote:
Dominus Atheos wrote:snip

Wait, why was he arrested...because his card was declined?
Manager called a cop, dude was like 'hey can you come with me to the ATM', cop is all 'nah' and that's all she wrote. It comes off like basically the cop felt like his time was being wasted and decided he wanted something to show for the call. Never mind that the CC worked just fine when he paid his own fucking bail with it in the morning...
$600 is a class A misdemeanor in Utah. Under my departments policy we have no choice but to arrest.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

Kamakazie Sith wrote:
Elheru Aran wrote:Manager called a cop, dude was like 'hey can you come with me to the ATM', cop is all 'nah' and that's all she wrote. It comes off like basically the cop felt like his time was being wasted and decided he wanted something to show for the call. Never mind that the CC worked just fine when he paid his own fucking bail with it in the morning...
$600 is a class A misdemeanor in Utah. Under my departments policy we have no choice but to arrest.
What if the guy appears to be trying to settle the tab in good faith, though? You don't have any kind of leeway to march him to an ATM, even in handcuffs?

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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Block »

Dominus Atheos wrote:Let me put it to you this way, how many simple possession cases does the average prosecutor prosecute in his lifetime? Or at the other end of the spectrum, how many death penalties does he ask for and receive? How many people does he knowingly put into the shockingly inhumane US prison system?
Is possession of illegal drugs not a crime? Is it not a conscious choice? Your analogy is moronic, unless you somehow think people chose to be born Jews, Black, Gypsy, etc.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Havok »

A) It's not theft until you leave the premises.

B) Making a "scene" is not an arrestable offense unless you hit or threaten someone.

C) Why didn't the guy stay there and have his buddy go to the ATM?

D) Credit cards are ROUTINELY denied now because of security features on the card, sometimes those not even wanted or just because a charge is out of the ordinary or as happened in this case, multiple charges at the same location are made as the article states. Cops should be aware of this.

E) What doesn't sit right with me is the time frame. If the cop got there at 3:49, and the guy didn't get the e-mail until after that, and he was on the phone when the cop had already been there, there must have been some other shit going on.

F) Also, I have NEVER heard of a guy being able to use his own money or credit card to pay his own bail. Is that a Flori-duh thing?

Don't get me wrong, ACAB and all that, but this story sounds fishy.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

Raw Shark wrote:
Kamakazie Sith wrote:
Elheru Aran wrote:Manager called a cop, dude was like 'hey can you come with me to the ATM', cop is all 'nah' and that's all she wrote. It comes off like basically the cop felt like his time was being wasted and decided he wanted something to show for the call. Never mind that the CC worked just fine when he paid his own fucking bail with it in the morning...
$600 is a class A misdemeanor in Utah. Under my departments policy we have no choice but to arrest.
What if the guy appears to be trying to settle the tab in good faith, though? You don't have any kind of leeway to march him to an ATM, even in handcuffs?
Dear Bacon Bits,

How about addressing the question regarding the unsupported claim you made five days ago while you're here to post in other threads?

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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Kamakazie Sith »

Raw Shark wrote:
Dear Bacon Bits,

How about addressing the question regarding the unsupported claim you made five days ago while you're here to post in other threads?

- :luv: Raw Shark
It's not my fault you can't read.

LOL @ unsupported claim nonsense.

In other words. Eat a dick.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Gaidin »

Raw Shark wrote: Dear Bacon Bits,

How about addressing the question regarding the unsupported claim you made five days ago while you're here to post in other threads?

- :luv: Raw Shark
Dear Fish Lover,

Learn the difference between policy and guidance.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

Kamakazie Sith wrote:
Raw Shark wrote:
Dear Bacon Bits,

How about addressing the question regarding the unsupported claim you made five days ago while you're here to post in other threads?

- :luv: Raw Shark
It's not my fault you can't read.

LOL @ unsupported claim nonsense.

In other words. Eat a dick.
Since you're too much of a typical lazy-ass cop to read a nested quote, I'll break it down for you. The claim in question (bolding mine):
Kamakazie Sith wrote:$600 is a class A misdemeanor in Utah. Under my departments policy we have no choice but to arrest.
In case it wasn't clear, I think that sounds like total bullshit, which is why I politely inquired:
Raw Shark wrote:What if the guy appears to be trying to settle the tab in good faith, though? You don't have any kind of leeway to march him to an ATM, even in handcuffs?
... to the sound of chirping crickets, because you're a weasel. So, I'll request again: Kindly pull the taxpayer teat out of your mouth for a minute and back your shit up.

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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

Gaidin wrote:Dear Fish Lover,

Learn the difference between policy and guidance.
[quote="Debate Rule #5, which is from the thread called "Official Board Policies," thanks for playing, Jackass"]Back Up Your Claims. If you make a contentious statement of fact and someone asks for evidence, you must either provide it or withdraw the claim. Do not call it "self evident", restate it in different words, force the other person to prove your claim is not true, or use other weasel techniques to avoid backing up your claims.[/quote]

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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Gaidin »

Raw Shark wrote:
Gaidin wrote:Dear Fish Lover,

Learn the difference between policy and guidance.
[quote="Debate Rule #5, which is from the thread called "Official Board Policies," thanks for playing, Jackass"]Back Up Your Claims. If you make a contentious statement of fact and someone asks for evidence, you must either provide it or withdraw the claim. Do not call it "self evident", restate it in different words, force the other person to prove your claim is not true, or use other weasel techniques to avoid backing up your claims.
[/quote]
We've believed him on many other things when he's talked about his police department and he made no claims about the Florida police department. However, if you can't tell from my post alone, in government jobs of all shapes and sizes at any level from federal to local and many corporate the difference between policy and guidance is just that when he runs into a situation when he's dealing with a policy he has no choice in how he deals with it. If his department gives guidance he has room to maneuver, say for a lesser misdemeanor he wouldn't have to arrest(Kamakazie, correct me if I'm wrong please).

Now again, he only stated for his own police department and not the one in the news story. We've taken him at his word for his own police department pretty much a hundred times before. Tell me why the hell I shouldn't now?
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

Gaidin wrote:
Raw Shark wrote:
Gaidin wrote:Dear Fish Lover,

Learn the difference between policy and guidance.
[quote="Debate Rule #5, which is from the thread called "Official Board Policies," thanks for playing, Jackass"]Back Up Your Claims. If you make a contentious statement of fact and someone asks for evidence, you must either provide it or withdraw the claim. Do not call it "self evident", restate it in different words, force the other person to prove your claim is not true, or use other weasel techniques to avoid backing up your claims.
We've believed him on many other things when he's talked about his police department and he made no claims about the Florida police department. However, if you can't tell from my post alone, in government jobs of all shapes and sizes at any level from federal to local and many corporate the difference between policy and guidance is just that when he runs into a situation when he's dealing with a policy he has no choice in how he deals with it. If his department gives guidance he has room to maneuver, say for a lesser misdemeanor he wouldn't have to arrest(Kamakazie, correct me if I'm wrong please).

Now again, he only stated for his own police department and not the one in the news story. We've taken him at his word for his own police department pretty much a hundred times before. Tell me why the hell I shouldn't now?[/quote]

You've taken him at his word for his own police department pretty much a hundred times before because you're a gullible idiot. We should not now because it's highly-suspicious and backs his own interests (ie: arguing that the cop in this case was not just being an entitled asshole, in following with the assumptions of most readers based 0n the facts presented, rather than following rigid departmental policy like an innocent and/or biased lamb who is no way a toxic douche). I'd be willing to accept the simplest link to a Utah PD policy, or even an admission that Utah is a retarded fucking time warp with stone-age policies that no sane person would choose to live in, but we are provided, as always, with neither here, by the typical badge-wearing, responsibility-dodging, heavily-armed, dishonest, point-dodging weasel known as Kamakaze Sith.

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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Gaidin »

Raw Shark wrote: You've taken him at his word for his own police department pretty much a hundred times before because you're a gullible idiot. We should not now because it's highly-suspicious and backs his own interests (ie: arguing that the cop in this case was not just being an entitled asshole, in following with the assumptions of most readers based 0n the facts presented, rather than following rigid departmental policy like an innocent and/or biased lamb who is no way a toxic douche). I'd be willing to accept the simplest link to a Utah PD policy, or even an admission that Utah is a retarded fucking time warp with stone-age policies that no sane person would choose to live in, but we are provided, as always, with neither here, by the typical badge-wearing, responsibility-dodging, heavily-armed, dishonest, point-dodging weasel known as Kamakaze Sith.
I take him at his word because I know how policy works. Have fun hounding him, though. Not sure where you get that he's a point-dodging weasel though. I think that one's just convenient for you. Saying what a policy is isn't really a point to be argued unless you're a local politician or police command. For someone like him it just is, whether he agrees with it or not, and the agreement doesn't matter. And there's been plenty of actual argumentative things in N&P that he's been on both sides on and not dodged the point(cameras being one that come to mind). I'll let him defend himself from here if he wishes.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

Gaidin wrote:
Raw Shark wrote: You've taken him at his word for his own police department pretty much a hundred times before because you're a gullible idiot. We should not now because it's highly-suspicious and backs his own interests (ie: arguing that the cop in this case was not just being an entitled asshole, in following with the assumptions of most readers based 0n the facts presented, rather than following rigid departmental policy like an innocent and/or biased lamb who is no way a toxic douche). I'd be willing to accept the simplest link to a Utah PD policy, or even an admission that Utah is a retarded fucking time warp with stone-age policies that no sane person would choose to live in, but we are provided, as always, with neither here, by the typical badge-wearing, responsibility-dodging, heavily-armed, dishonest, point-dodging weasel known as Kamakaze Sith.
I take him at his word because I know how policy works. Have fun hounding him, though. Not sure where you get that he's a point-dodging weasel though. I think that one's just convenient for you. Saying what a policy is isn't really a point to be argued unless you're a local politician or police command. For someone like him it just is, whether he agrees with it or not, and the agreement doesn't matter. And there's been plenty of actual argumentative things in N&P that he's been on both sides on and not dodged the point(cameras being one that come to mind).
I get that he's a point-dodging weasel from him dodging my point for five days. I'm not really expecting a meaningful result here; I just want to call him out for being a weasel because he is and always has been. I'd settle for seeing something that at least sounds like an official quote from some kind of police text that I can't conveniently look up myself, but he won't even dignify me with that because he is a massive, obvious, irrevocable douchebag. As it is, it just sounds evasive. "Cops are always right, because reasons!" is not going to earn a response other than, "Go fuck yourself," from this guy.

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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Dark Hellion »

Raw Shark, maybe you could get off your lazy, confrontational ass and use google to search for what a $600 theft is under Florida law; you know actually do your due diligence instead of picking a worthless fight. From a quick google search it appears that theft of $600 is a third degree felony which can be punished by up to a $5000 fine.

But feel free to keep up your pathetic and childish baiting by calling KS bacon bits and weasel. It makes you look like such an accomplished rhetorician and not a petulant little shit.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Kamakazie Sith »

Raw Shark wrote:
In case it wasn't clear, I think that sounds like total bullshit, which is why I politely inquired:
Raw Shark wrote:What if the guy appears to be trying to settle the tab in good faith, though? You don't have any kind of leeway to march him to an ATM, even in handcuffs?
... to the sound of chirping crickets, because you're a weasel. So, I'll request again: Kindly pull the taxpayer teat out of your mouth for a minute and back your shit up.
How is "What if the guy appears to be trying to settle the tab in good faith, though? You don't have any kind of leeway to march him to an ATM, even in handcuffs?" a request for evidence?

How is "What if the guy appears to be trying to settle the tab in good faith, though? You don't have any kind of leeway to march him to an ATM, even in handcuffs?" a valid question when my previous statement includes the words "no choice". Those are all choices. So, no. We don't march people to ATMs in handcuffs. We don't give them rides to their moms house so they can borrow money.
I get that he's a point-dodging weasel from him dodging my point for five days. I'm not really expecting a meaningful result here; I just want to call him out for being a weasel because he is and always has been. I'd settle for seeing something that at least sounds like an official quote from some kind of police text that I can't conveniently look up myself, but he won't even dignify me with that because he is a massive, obvious, irrevocable douchebag. As it is, it just sounds evasive. "Cops are always right, because reasons!" is not going to earn a response other than, "Go fuck yourself," from this guy.
Let me make sure I understand you. According to you I am a "responsibility-dodging, heavily-armed, dishonest, point-dodging weasel" I noticed the word dishonest is in there. So, why would you accept something that "sounds" like an official quote from me when you consider me a dishonest weasel? Your logic is not sound.

Anyway, you received the "eat a dick" response because that's what you get when you want to be confrontational asshole when it was you that wasn't being clear in what you were asking. So, you can still go eat a dick because it sounds like I'd be wasting my time by quoting the policy. If the policy were available online then I would post it here even after your temper-tantrum but it is not available online.

Now, if you apologize for your statements and retract the baseless accusations of me being a responsibility-dodging, heavily-armed, dishonest, point-dodging weasel I will do two things for you;
1 - I will drop the matter and not ask you to provide evidence for these claims
2 - I will provide a quote of my departments policy. I would take a picture of it and post it here but policy restricts me from doing so. That authority belongs to the Public Information Unit. I think you can fill out a GRAMA request and maybe have it mailed to you but I am not sure about that. I will find out if you want.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Kamakazie Sith »

Gaidin wrote:
Raw Shark wrote:
Gaidin wrote:Dear Fish Lover,

Learn the difference between policy and guidance.
[quote="Debate Rule #5, which is from the thread called "Official Board Policies," thanks for playing, Jackass"]Back Up Your Claims. If you make a contentious statement of fact and someone asks for evidence, you must either provide it or withdraw the claim. Do not call it "self evident", restate it in different words, force the other person to prove your claim is not true, or use other weasel techniques to avoid backing up your claims.
We've believed him on many other things when he's talked about his police department and he made no claims about the Florida police department. However, if you can't tell from my post alone, in government jobs of all shapes and sizes at any level from federal to local and many corporate the difference between policy and guidance is just that when he runs into a situation when he's dealing with a policy he has no choice in how he deals with it. If his department gives guidance he has room to maneuver, say for a lesser misdemeanor he wouldn't have to arrest(Kamakazie, correct me if I'm wrong please).

Now again, he only stated for his own police department and not the one in the news story. We've taken him at his word for his own police department pretty much a hundred times before. Tell me why the hell I shouldn't now?[/quote]


You are correct. In the case of felonies, like this would be under Florida law, police have no discretion nation wide when they have probable cause that a felony has been committed. As a reminder probable cause can exist to arrest you even if the evidence gathered against you isn't enough for conviction. In retrospect I should have done what Dark Hellion did and posted straight from Florida Law.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by fgalkin »

Kamakazie Sith wrote:
You are correct. In the case of felonies, like this would be under Florida law, police have no discretion nation wide when they have probable cause that a felony has been committed. As a reminder probable cause can exist to arrest you even if the evidence gathered against you isn't enough for conviction. In retrospect I should have done what Dark Hellion did and posted straight from Florida Law.
Except did he have probable cause? A declined credit card is hardly evidence for fraud. Especially if the person says he's willing to pay and is on the phone with his bank.

Have a very nice day.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Simon_Jester »

At that point it comes down to details. If the customer behaved (or reportedly behaved) in a way that made the policeman think he was being dishonest... well, it's a judgment call. Sometimes you make such a call and turn out to be wrong.

In this case, given that it's increasingly likely for cards to be randomly denied by central banking computers for 'breaking the pattern,' we may need to become more sensitive- but it's hardly surprising if a few policemen's brains haven't caught up with that yet since the phenomenon wasn't nearly as much of a problem a few years ago.

So while this is a mistake, I question whether it's in any reasonable sense "abuse."
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Kamakazie Sith »

fgalkin wrote:
Kamakazie Sith wrote:
You are correct. In the case of felonies, like this would be under Florida law, police have no discretion nation wide when they have probable cause that a felony has been committed. As a reminder probable cause can exist to arrest you even if the evidence gathered against you isn't enough for conviction. In retrospect I should have done what Dark Hellion did and posted straight from Florida Law.
Except did he have probable cause? A declined credit card is hardly evidence for fraud. Especially if the person says he's willing to pay and is on the phone with his bank.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
That is a reasonable question. Just because arrest is mandatory in certain cases does not mean that no investigation should be done. In the cases of theft due to a declined credit card and a suspect/patron that has remained on scene part of that investigation should include allowing the patron time to contact his credit card company and resolve the issue. All my financial institutions have a 24 hour help line.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

Kamakazie Sith wrote:[snip]Anyway, you received the "eat a dick" response because that's what you get when you want to be confrontational asshole when it was you that wasn't being clear in what you were asking. So, you can still go eat a dick because it sounds like I'd be wasting my time by quoting the policy. If the policy were available online then I would post it here even after your temper-tantrum but it is not available online.

Now, if you apologize for your statements and retract the baseless accusations of me being a responsibility-dodging, heavily-armed, dishonest, point-dodging weasel I will do two things for you;
1 - I will drop the matter and not ask you to provide evidence for these claims
You're right, I was just being a confrontational asshole because I had a bad day and a few too many. My apologies to you and all for shitting up the thread.

On a related note, I really think that sort of thing should be online, for greater transparency to the public. What reason do they have for it not to be, if any?
Kamakazie Sith wrote:2 - I will provide a quote of my departments policy. I would take a picture of it and post it here but policy restricts me from doing so. That authority belongs to the Public Information Unit. I think you can fill out a GRAMA request and maybe have it mailed to you but I am not sure about that. I will find out if you want.
Don't worry about it, you addressed my doubts about the policy here:
Kamakazie Sith wrote:[snip]That is a reasonable question. Just because arrest is mandatory in certain cases does not mean that no investigation should be done. In the cases of theft due to a declined credit card and a suspect/patron that has remained on scene part of that investigation should include allowing the patron time to contact his credit card company and resolve the issue. All my financial institutions have a 24 hour help line.
...which sounds a lot more reasonable than how you put it originally. I was mistakenly assuming that "arrest" means no more screwing around on the scene, he's definitely getting booked downtown.

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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Dominus Atheos »

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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Kamakazie Sith »

Raw Shark wrote: You're right, I was just being a confrontational asshole because I had a bad day and a few too many. My apologies to you and all for shitting up the thread.
I've been there. No worries.
On a related note, I really think that sort of thing should be online, for greater transparency to the public. What reason do they have for it not to be, if any?
I agree. I'm not sure why it isn't.

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Dominus Atheos, what are your thoughts on that video? Did you watch the entire video?
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Terralthra »

Huffington Post wrote:It's Legal To Sing In The Subway, But This Subway Singer Got Arrested Anyway

The New York City transit authority has a rule that expressly allows people to play music beneath the streets.

So why did a cop arrest a busker over the weekend after he refused to stop singing and playing his acoustic guitar on a subway platform?

At the busker’s urging, the officer first read out loud the relevant section of the MTA rulebook, noting that “artistic performances, including the acceptance of donations,” are permitted.

Then he arrested the singer, slamming his guitar into the wall. In a video of the incident captured by a bystander, the musician sings Neil Young’s anti-authoritarian anthem “Ohio” as the officer and several backups handcuff him and drag him away. The crowd on the platform erupts into a chant of “Fuck the police.”

A police spokesperson told HuffPost in an email that the video is "under review,” but didn’t answer questions about the reasons for the arrest. The singer, Andrew Kalleen, 30, told HuffPost the arresting officer charged him with loitering, but only after poring over a law book in the back of the police van.

While state law prohibits people from loitering in the subway “for the purpose of soliciting or engaging in business,” that law seems to contradict the MTA rule, which allows performing for money.

Matthew Christian, a street violinist who co-founded BUSK-NY, a group that advocates for street performers, said the police often charge performers with vague offenses like loitering when they can’t find a more convincing justification for arrest.

“This happens so often,” Christian said. “When police officers don’t precisely know the law, they arrest someone over their own refusal to back down, and once the person is brought to the police station and booked, they can’t find anything else to charge them with, so they go mining.”

The arrest may be the latest example of a broader police crackdown on small-time hustles like panhandling and dancing in subway cars. In March, the police commissioner, Bill Bratton, proudly announced that arrests of subway peddlers and panhandlers had tripled under his watch.

“If you take care of the little things, then you can prevent a lot of the big things,” Bratton said at the time, expressing the conviction at the core of the “broken windows” strategy that he famously embraced during his first stint as New York’s top cop in the '90s.

Critics of the broken windows theory point out that no one has conclusively proves it works, and they argue that a hard-nosed approach to minor offenses only leads to violent encounters, racially biased policing, and wrongful arrests. In July, the strategy came under heightened scrutiny after Eric Garner, a Staten Island grandfather, died at the hands of police. An officer had grabbed him in a banned chokehold while attempting to arrest him for the sale of loose cigarettes.

Kalleen said police have stopped him at least five times for performing in the subway station, and he has filed a complaint against them with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an agency that investigates allegations of police abuse. He plans to sue the department over the latest arrest.

He spent Friday night in a police holding cell, but he doesn’t sound bitter about it. At the precinct, he said, he thanked his arresting officer and another cop for risking their lives to protect people, and told them about something that happened to his family a decade ago in Northern California: A masked intruder entered their home with a shotgun and struggled with his father before the police arrived and took the man away.

After he shared that story, he said, the cops warmed up to him.

“From that point on, we were able to have a real conversation. Both cops agreed that the system is very broken. Their bosses tell them it’s their job to go out and write tickets. It’s a revenue system. We all agreed that we want it to change, but they’re doing what they’re told.”

Kalleen said he later asked his arresting officer if he liked music. “It turns out that he plays guitar too, or he used to. We talked about music that we like, and there were some bands that crossed over: Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin. He’d recently gone to see Robert Plant."

The officer did not tell Kalleen whether he likes Neil Young.
Of course there's video:
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