Not only did this man DESERVE to be arrested, but Brad Pitt himself should be arrested for the MURDER of the World War Z source material by his boring movie. /s
This was an absolutely insane case, and I'm glad it at least ended with sanity. The fact this arrest happened at all is unbelievably dumb and also scary.
Like the article states, this is likely to end in a settlement.
I would hope settlements for power abuses of this type would come out of this PD's pocket. Meaning: abuse power = less $ left for paying officers, obtaining gear, etc. So that in future, PDs would be more hesitant to stomp on things they don't like simply because they can.
But who am I kidding.. probably taxpayers on the hook as usual (same with court costs).
Btw: too bad victim deleted his post. No deletion (or even apology) needed.
"This person said something I didn't like so they should be arrested", isn't really a valid or worthwhile opinion though. I don't like your post. Should you be arrested for it?
Without going into the merits of this particular case, you can get charged for inciting to violence. Indeed that's being arrested for what others could've done. Specifically for what they could have done, but would not have done if you had not incited them to.
For example, if a black man walks into a neighbourhood and someone claims to the neighbours that he is armed and on a killing spree, they are possibly putting that man's life in danger.
Edit: actually a better example is swarming. It's seriously endangering someone's life, so someone doing it can get arrested for what police could have done.
The defacto assumption that internet discourse is a "discussion" is pretty implicitly wrong or at least very misguided. Most forums are much more in the mode of loud public arguments, which is why we have votes.
Even my own comment, by continuing this conversation serves in rhetorical, political, and philosophic capacities; many of which I don't intend but are implicit to how the medium is presented
> assumption that internet discourse is a "discussion" is pretty implicitly wrong…many forums
We aren’t on many forums. We’re here. I wouldn’t think twice about that comment on e.g. Reddit. But that’s why I’m no longer there. The people who go into “loud public arguments” and win often had an adult discussion before. That an increasing fraction of world chooses to only engage in the former is creating problems and the necessity of moving important debates, including political debates, away from them.
People use comments as a substitute for reading the article, that means whatever ideological thread is dominating the comments is also defacto going to be the mass interpretation of events. "Winning" a comment section can have relative major ideological concerns as it makes a whole community start framing events around them with certain sets of priors
So, if someone said they wanted Brad Pitt to save them from the police, how likely do you think someone will take that seriously?
I would put it in the 0.001-0.00001% possibility. If you fear the mentally ill and make policy choices on that fear, you would necessarily have to ban free speech to mitigate such low risk.
It's good to see common sense upheld by jurists applying case law to hold the line against arbitrary arrest by LEAs over-stepping their authorities.
Now, if police-involved firearms incident data reporting were mandatory because we only know some details of most cases, but there's no national standard. 1055 people were shot by police in 2021 that we know of. How can the public health crisis of violent deaths be addressed if we're unable to scrutinize the data of each incident? Overall, there were 48k firearm deaths in 2021, or 13 / 100k. (variance by state from Massachusetts 3.4 / 100k to Mississippi 33 / 100k)
