More COPS gone wild....

[Pilgrim]

That's what cops do.... they are revenue collectors, just like the henchman of the Sheriff of Nottingham. They hide in bushes like cowards setting speed traps. They stake out jay-walkers. They do random checks points, East Germany style, in many states. It's all in the name of safety, but I guarantee you, it's about MONEY MONEY MONEY....

Cool. If your house is robbed, call the local department of revenue collectors and see how fast they get back to you.

 

[fmoore200]

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawnnnnnnnnnnn

I thought you loved these threads cheeze

 

[Helaskold]

Oh, thank you, thank you, mr. Policeman for saving our lives and protecting our precious little children from those big, bad, evil jaywalkers.

I guess it would be something to think of as not a big deal until some jogger with their headphones in runs out in front of your car in a non-crossing zone and ruins both of your lives.

She caused a big scene and is now playing the victim for a bunch of 17-year-old "rebels" (read: idiots) on the internet. The articles being written about this are so skewed it's unreal. Twisting everything to make the cops evil and the girl innocent. Don't forget that she could've made this SO MUCH EASIER by just showing her ID and she didn't.

 

[fmoore200]

I guess it would be something to think of as not a big deal until some jogger with their headphones in runs out in front of your car in a non-crossing zone and ruins both of your lives.
.

QFT

Drivers are expecting pedestrians near crosswalks, intersection and corners. Coming from between cars or other obstructions, not so much.

It just takes a fraction of a second to devastate lives and families. And often times both pedestrians and drivers are too pig headed to back down.

 

[Jared Lash]

Imagine that word has come down that there are increased numbers of pedestrians being hit by cars in a city and that the accidents are primarily in a certain 6 block radius. It would make sense to have police officers ticket jaywalkers in an effort to curb jaywalking and hopefully decrease incidents of bodily harm.

I'm not claiming that's what happened here, but I'm not sure people would complain all that loudly about the police ticketing jaywalkers if that were the motivation behind the move.

I know for a fact that something similar happened at the freeway offramp near my old house. The offramp had one left hand turn lane and two right hand turn lanes. People in the farthest right hand turn lane could legally turn right on the red. But for some reason people seem to always think the same thing is legal from the middle lane as well. With the cross street being busy with a 45 mph speed limit there had been a few accidents there over one or two year span. At some point they started ticketing people making a right turn from the center lane. This went on for a few weeks and a family friend (who was one of the officers doing the ticketing) told us that the motivation was to stop people from making the illegal turn in an effort to decrease accidents.

I'd be pissed to get a jaywalking ticket. But the fact of the matter is that we all know there are laws against it and do it anyway.

And other than either the jogger or the police blowing things way out of proportion here (and we honestly don't know which at this point) this is a boring story about police deciding to enforce a minor traffic law, which is their prerogative.

 

[Bassist4Eris]

Look folks, I'm not one to go crazy and blindly defend overly aggressive cops (if you know me of facebook, I'm pretty vocal about police abuse), and I even posted this exact case in the other cop thread as an example of how cops wrongly escalate situations that don't need to be escalated (which often winds up with someone getting hurt, killed, or having legal ramifications). I'm just not a person to blindly rage and stereotype an entire part of society. All these cases we read about (while there are a lot of them), represent a very small fraction of all the stops and interactions police have everyday. The media will have you believing that cops are a band of roving thugs that are out of control just looking to bust heads, but in reality, these cases (locally I think of Kelly Thomas case in Fullerton, CA) are pretty isolated and quite small in frequency when you consider all the police and all the interactions they have. Doesn't mean that it makes it acceptable, or that this is something we have to tolerate, but most of the time, the cops are just doing their job. There are probably incidents that go unreported, but luckily because of things like this situation with this jogger and others, more and more cops are being filmed, so I would venture to guess that less and less is going unreported.

With that said, I am very concerned about certain trends I'm seeing. The militarization of our police force, the random traffic checks by certain agencies like Homeland Security, the TSA, the NSA, etc. But that's an entirely different subject for entirely different threads.

This particular case, with this girl jogging is missing a lot of info. We didn't see the actual stop. We don't see how that went down. We don't see, know, or have any idea what she said or did when the cops stopped here after their initial request. All we see is the girl freaking out with cuffs on from what originated from a jaywalking ticket. Perhaps she didn't want to give them her name. Perhaps she DID give them her name and it didn't work, or perhaps she was completely cooperative and these cops are just dicks. We just don't know all the info. This particular case DOES however reflect how a simple stop can go south if a cop is perpetually escalating the situation, and it has been further exasperated by an idiot police chief saying stupid stuff.

Folks, what we have here is called "the voice of reason". While refusing to act as an apologist for out-of-control cops, Maki has also flat out refused to paint them all with one brush. Excellent, intelligent post!

@Powderfinger, Will33, and Unrepresented: I love your anti-authority attitudes. We'd probably get along well. But through some weird twists of karma I find myself acquaintances with several cops, and I believe these individuals to be decent people with a sincere desire to serve their communities (even if I remain skeptical of the legitimacy of state power and the force used to maintain it). To be bluntly honest, the tone of your posts is rather biased. Again, I like your biases; I pretty much share them. But I can't help but recognize the wisdom in what Maki's saying.

 

[LiquidMidnight]

I don't buy the premise that they are out there "risking their lives for the safety of the public". The vast majority of their job involves transferring wealth from the private citizens to the "system". It ain't like murders and bank robberies happen all that often.

When our bikes got stolen, the cops wouldn't even show up to take a report for several hours and basically told us we'd never see them again and they really weren't going to waste their time looking. Drive a few miles per hour over the limit, or jaywalk though and they get to you as fast as they can.

It has nothing to do with "safety" or "justice" and everything to do with wealth transfer.

Anecdotal?...sure. It also happens every single day. That would be "empirical".

Regardless of the slogan painted on the cruiser, an officer's job is to enforce the law, not to protect anybody. That's been affirmed by the SCOTUS. Of course, I know that I implicitly enjoy the fruits of the police's labor insofar that catching bad guys makes me safer. However, while I'm not necessarily anti-cop (Cheeze and JeffK are both cool dudes), I never kid myself into thinking that officers are there to help "protect and serve" me.

Of course, there are police who do want to truly protect and serve the public, and I tip my hat to those officers; they have my utmost respect.

 

[matante]

How I would love to sit on this jury.


You know...a jury is supposed to have the power to judge the validity of a law itself and not just the person accused of breaking it. But you'll never hear some piece of crap brownshirt judge tell them that, especially not while playing golf with the DA. They will, however, set some bs "precedent" to take that power away from the jury and hand it to the judge...likely before they get to the 19th hole.

I've never heard of this. Do you have a source?

Ultimately, I think everyone here showed very poor judgement in the heat of the moment. But...cops are theoretically held to a higher standard, especially when physical restraint is involved.

As soon as they grabbed the woman--who was certainly adrenalized from running, and by the surprise of being gripped from behind--they changed the situation. It was up to them to contain or escalate.

Since she had already cleared the intersection, she really didn't pose an ongoing threat to the public welfare. Smart money would have just let her continue on her run, and pass on her ticket to the next jaywalker.

I think that's the biggest factor here. Whenever these kind of stories occur we have to remember that the policemen are supposed to be highly trained professionals. They are not supposed to behave the way some guy off the street would behave if he had a badge and a gun.

 

[Eric Perry]

This thread is ridiculous. I wasn't aware school was out for the summer already.

 

[Tony Flow MMMM]

Cool. If your house is robbed, call the local department of revenue collectors and see how fast they get back to you.

Cops stop house robberies? News to me.

 

[Hobobob]

I've never heard of this. Do you have a source?

I could tell you about it, but the very knowledge makes you theoretically unfit to serve on a jury. Do you still want to know?

 

[HolmeBass]

You don't even need photo ID when you drive! Of course if you get pulled over, you have no proof that you are a licensed driver, so they issue you the citation for driving without a license. You just need to produce your license, or proof of insurance, down at the station to get these citations summarily dismissed. Their is a grace period during which you can do this, like a week or so.

I think there are too many police that are just not psychologically qualified to do the job. They gleefully abuse their power every day in small but meaningful ways.

 

[GlennW]

This has to be one of the most dumbass threads I've ever seen on TB.

And that's saying something.

 

[matante]

I could tell you about it, but the very knowledge makes you theoretically unfit to serve on a jury. Do you still want to know?

I'm all ears (eyes).

 

[Hobobob]

I'm all ears (eyes).

I'll PM you.

 

[blue4]

It's funny. There's a thread here in OT about the oldest Holocaust survivor, and then there's this thread full of people who think a few bad decisions by police dealing with idiots is akin to Nazi Germany. Why don't we ask her how Nazis would have handled a woman who broke a law and then threw a hissy fit when stopped. Here in St Louis we have gangs in North St Louis and in East St. Louis, meth heads in Jefferson County. You need metal detectors just to go to high school. Perhaps if the general population stopped acting like fools maybe the police would too.

 

[Munjibunga]

Regardless of the slogan painted on the cruiser, an officer's job is to enforce the law, not to protect anybody. That's been affirmed by the SCOTUS. Of course, I know that I implicitly enjoy the fruits of the police's labor insofar that catching bad guys makes me safer. However, while I'm not necessarily anti-cop (Cheeze and JeffK are both cool dudes), I never kid myself into thinking that officers are there to help "protect and serve" me.

Of course, there are police who do want to truly protect and serve the public, and I tip my hat to those officers; they have my utmost respect.

By enforcing the law, they are a priori protecting me. When they send a drunk driver to jail, they are protecting me. When they apprehend a burglar, they are protecting me. When they catch a rapist, they're protecting my family. I'd much rather have the cops out there, even with a few rogues, than not have them. I'm amused at how all the anti-authoritarians are so concerned that they may have a bad experience with a cop. It makes one wonder why? In 65 years, it's never happened to me. But maybe that's because: 1. I don't have anything to hide, and 2. I comply with their requests to expedite the process. I can tolerate a few minutes of inconvenience in the interest of having the police work for me. My experience has been that the type of people who don't cooperate with the police are the ones about whom I need to be concerned.

I had two occasions on which the police came to my house after a psycho neighbor called 911 when I trimmed the portion of her trees that hung over my yard. In each case, I showed them the situation, and they went back to her and told her I was completely within my rights. I didn't have to tell them anything because no crime had been committed. But by being rational and cooperative, I got them on my side.

 

[Munjibunga]

How I would love to sit on this jury.


You know...a jury is supposed to have the power to judge the validity of a law itself and not just the person accused of breaking it. But you'll never hear some piece of crap brownshirt judge tell them that, especially not while playing golf with the DA. They will, however, set some bs "precedent" to take that power away from the jury and hand it to the judge...likely before they get to the 19th hole.

Judges are under no obligation to mention jury nullification to a jury.

 

[Metalbasspro]

Wrong, it's a case of the police trying to get people to obey the traffic/safety laws and minimize the moronathon that happens when people disregard the signs and lights.

LOL I used to be pulled over every three weeks for a period of some 7 years when I used to drive a Van in CA. When I noticed all the deputies would jay walk to the Circle K store for their coffee I called the City Manager and told him it was a crappy example and since we all knew damn well they would not hesitate to ticket a Jay walker I thought they should knock it off.

They said they would take it under consideration. I should have called the Sheriff himself since it was a sub station.

Since you are supposed to be secure in your papers and person, unless they have a reason to arrest you they don't have to ID you but if they must they don't have any call to arrest you because you left your house without ID.

Have you guys heard the term people throw around when getting indignant (Sp) about this? "Show me your papers" or the variations of "Ve demand your Papers" in a German accent? Well the truth of that comes from the Soviet Union from the 30's when all citizens had to register and carry ID. If you were not from Moscow you were deported to Siberia. If you went outside to take the trash out and the NKVD just happened to be around the corner and saw you they would demand your papers. If you did not have them on you you were arrested. NO they would not let you get it from your house 35 feet away. NO ID, no questions you were gone. You simply forgot it and were sorry? Sure that's what they all say the victim would be told as they were carted away. Kids running an errand for a parent, anyone not having ID was deported. NO effort to check any files or contact parents or family members was made.

Some states require you to carry ID. Arresting someone for not having ID while jogging in their neighborhood even if Jay walking is way out of line.

 

[Downunderwonder]

Not arrested for not having ID, arrested for refusing to identify herself.