I once had the cops seize $800 in cash I had on me to pay for motorcycle service (15% discount with cash) and hold it for 3 months.
Eventually I got a letter saying I had to show up and prove I wasnt going to do drugs with it. So I showed up with my invoice.
Then I was told I had to submit fingerprints and sign a letter promising I wasnt going to do drugs and I refused.
Finally a month later they sent me a letter saying I had forfeited the money and I showed up again (took a day off work) and they said I had to go to court. So I went to court, and the judge spent ten minutes telling the cops that didnt show up I had to get my money back.
Next month after that I got a call saying I had property to pick up and that I'd be fined daily if I didnt. So I got the money back.
They took my camera and then when I tried to get it back they claimed that nothing like that was in evidence. So I filed a police report because the police stole my camera, but I never heard back about it.
As absolutely ridiculous (and illegal) as this advice is, if you find a way for inanimate objects to "detect that they have been stolen" I'd imagine you'll become wealthy enough that you won't need to worry about it.
I don't see anything illegal. It would be a device intended for my use, not the police's use, and I'm happy with the way it is constructed, therefore I purchase it and own it. If you steal it, you assume all liabilities thereof.
For all intents and purposes, booby traps are illegal 100% of the time regardless of the reason for their construction or the damage they cause. A booby trap that squirts water is as illegal as one that fires bullets, and one that misses someone is as illegal as one that hits someone (although hitting someone opens you up to other charges but unrelated to the booby trap).
This is a pretty good example of arguing from the way you feel like the law should be written rather than how it's actually written.
Just to be clear - this is not really up to judgment or interpretation, you are just completely wrong. So I wouldn't do anything based on this (very incorrect) reading of law.
I believe your summary of that Reddit comment is overly-broad: he admitted two of the videos involved a friend-of-a-friend volunteer that he was "unaware" had staged the theft. The thread then goes on to do some heavy extrapolating based on that thin evidence.
Booby traps are incredibly illegal, even if they're "non-injurious" by your personal definition.
This also applies to the classic tale where someone is stealing food from a communal fridge so an enterprising idiot puts laxatives in a sandwich. Congratulations! You've just committed a felony by poisoning someone.
Again, even if what you're saying is logically consistent, it is absolutely completely 100% wrong with regard to the law. A booby trap is still a booby trap even if you throw your hands up and say "that's not a booby trap."
"This shotgun attached to a string isn't a trap if it's in my possession all of the time. If you take it out of my possession forcefully and it blows your head off, that's your fault!"
Not who you're replying to but I've spent a lot of time reading about this particular aspect of law. I more or less happen to agree with you, but this is one of those examples where I think we've taken a lot of small steps in one direction and all of a sudden it looks crazy to an outside observer who doesn't understand the full context.
There's a concept of you "altering" your lunch such that it becomes dangerous or inedible but still leaving it out, e.g. in a fridge, where a reasonable person would assume that the lunch is edible. If you put rat poison in your lunch then throw it in the garbage, it's going to be harder to argue that you intentionally hurt that person who stole it. Even harder is if you put in a biohazard disposal bag.
There's the concept of the severity of the offense - poisoning someone is worse than stealing their lunch. Nobody is calling the cops because their lunch got stolen once.
There's intent. If you poison your lunch and put it back in the fridge, you're accepting there's a chance someone takes it. Can you prove someone intentionally took your lunch as opposed to accidentally taking it? You can accidentally take the wrong takeout container, even multiple times. You can't accidentally poison your own food.
I agree with you that it's a complex and subtle area of law. For more color on this, it's helpful to keep in mind the difference between criminal liability and civil liability. Also, the concepts of "reckless endangerment", "negligence" and "due care." Factors which can change what may be "okay" to "not okay" include private vs public property, intent and, the ever present catch-all, reasonableness.
The likelihood of getting in legal trouble, as well as the potential severity of the trouble, can vary widely depending on where, how, who and other surrounding context.
Do you really think you're the first person to think of this?
If you actually need a certain medication, and you absolutely must take it by putting it in your lunch, then I suppose you can feel free to explain that in a courtroom, but you should be reminded that perjury is a vey bad legal strategy and judges don't like to play games.
Pretty common. This sort of mistrust is one reason people oppose red flag laws that require seizure (before even being tried, and without the protections of the criminal system).
On a side note, how did they find the money? Or was this an expensive lesson in why not to consent to a search?
If you don’t consent to searches, cops that want to search you will either simply search you illegally anyway, or call out dogs that are trained to alert whenever the cops want them to. There’s a reason that K-9 units are called “probable cause on four legs”.
Not true, I have refused a “look over”of my car for two traffic stops, both cops threatened canine cops and I told them go ahead. One radioed in “not available”, The other one went back to his car and wrote me a ticket and told me I was lucky he got another call while he was filling out the ticket. I’m sure they sometimes do “do it anyway” but it isn’t a sure thing.
Ever since Rodriguez v. United States the police cannot make you wait for the K9. It's considered an unlawful detainment if they extend the traffic stop, without reasonable suspicion of another crime, beyond the time it takes to deal with the original reason they pulled you over.
This is generally accepted to be about 20 minutes but that's not a hard and fast rule and multiple things can extend that time.
Basically they need to continue writing your citation for speed or a brake light or whatever, at a reasonable speed. If you ever see dash/body cam footage where this is relevant, cops have had charges dismissed because they fill out the entire citation but don't sign it in about 10 minutes, then spend 45 minutes questioning everyone in the car and trying to get probable cause for a search. This is part of why they'll do a lot of the fishing at the beginning before they start the citation process, as that's seen as more "reasonable" than doing it at the end. This is also why it's so important to only give the info you're required to and not to answer any other questions. It increases the odds you'll get that first ticket but it cuts off their ability to extend the stop.
Canines need to be well trained, if it goes to court the need to prove the dogs won't point if there are no drugs (or whatever the dog looks for) so if there isn't good reason to suspect you they won't bother (depending on how far away a dog is) they are just threatening as if you are guilty you may give up.
There are also rules about how long they can detain you while waiting. See a lawyer (the rules may not be good but you can get off in court if they are 'too long')
They do need to prove it. It's just that they treat it like a radar gun - they take the last certification testing as the proof. It's very rare to get to re-examine them.
It's impossible for a test to prove that a canine ONLY alerts to contraband. It doesn't matter how many controlled tests it has passed, dogs could nevertheless be responding to conscious or unconscious signals from an officer who is already expecting to find drugs.
They can also plant evidence, find something left behind by a passenger, or any myriad of things. You do not consent to the search because if you are arrested I guarantee that's the first thing the lawyer will ask. And will turn a $10k into a $20k if you allowed it. Because even 1 piece of illegally gathered evidence can wreck the whole case.
BTW, I've done jury duty and witnessed the DA's case fall apart as witnesses and evidence was excluded. It's hard to build a strong narrative when whole chapters have to be ripped out. Years of evidence went up in smoke because they weren't handled correctly.
Anyway, the point is you don't make the cops job easier because they certainly don't deserve it.
Interesting, typically all the evidentiary hearings happen without the jury present - because as much as we like to pretend otherwise, once the jury hears something it's going to be considered no matter what.
In my case we had pictures of random people, we assumed "accomplices", with no statement. Dates and timestamps where there was lots of activity, then nothing for 2-3 weeks and then lots of activity. We determined in the jury room the prosecution was hiding evidence from us probably because some of it wasn't legally obtained.
We were 51% certain the guy was guilty but everything else left too much doubt.
I was on jury duty recently that seemed the epitome of "you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride," along with a terrible job done by the prosecutors. I explicitly told the defense attorneys on the way out that they didn't win their case, the prosecution lost by doing a terrible job with evidence.
Violation of an order of protection case, charged with violating a 500 foot OOP by 2 feet. Apparently part of the sidewalk at a nearby intersection was 498 feet from the house, but they didn't even pop up a map of the area just threw a bunch of street names at jurors from all over the major metro area.
Of the few criminal cases I sat through usually it's nothing like what you see on TV. There is no brilliant dialog or smoking gun evidence. The defense simply raises objections or asks sensible questions. If they did their job right they might not have to say much at all. You thinking the prosecution doing a terrible job is the defense attorneys job!
Typically what happens is the defendant doesn't exercise their constitutional right to shut the fuck up. The only statement you should give is: "I don't consent","my lawyer","I'm remaining silent".
If the defense believes the order was in fact violated but they see the prosecution doing a terrible job with the evidence the worst thing they could do would be to clearly communicate anything to you!
That seems wild. How do they even know it was 498 feet? Usually these things are only enforced if someone makes a complaint, and the basis for that complaint is usually something very obvious.
You are misunderstanding the reason to not consent to a search. If the police officer can't justify his search in court, the evidence will be dismissed. By consenting, you are giving the court free evidence.
NEVER consent to a search. However, never obstruct one either.
It's also very very important to explicitly say "I do not consent to any search or seizure." They will tell you to do things you're not legally required to do, e.g. "move over here for me" and if there's no audio recording of you refusing to consent, they can (and will) simply say in court that they took your choosing to get out of the way when you didn't have to as consent. Now you have to argue that you didn't consent, which you wouldn't have to do if it was clear on camera that you were refusing the whole time.
Say it over and over again, any time they ask you to move, any time they ask to search again, any time they say they're going to pat you down, etc. Be a broken record. It's become a meme but this is why you see people asking if they're being detained over and over again because once the cops say yes that changes the rules considerably (in your favor).
If they try make sure you assert that you do not consent to searches, and would like to be on your way.. Then when they try to hold you ask them if the detention is inline with `Rodriguez v. United States` which specifically forbids cops from delaying a driver so that they can get dogs to the scene.
This sounds nice until a cop throws you against a car anyways. You're right to give the advice because this is what should happen but that's not the reality because the whole premise is based on what already should not be happening. You'd only need that line against a cop abusing their power. They're almost always going to continue abusing their power
Many cops just try to trick you or are ignorant. Providing this info and asking for a supervisor is the best basis for any potential future legal recourse (especially if recording). Of course none of that matters in the moment, but it can make a big difference in getting that $800 back or not having it seized in the first place.
Well in my experience (given in another comment) this is not the case. With a judge, sure, but a cop no. (Fwiw, I'm white)
It's worth a shot, yes, but it's also unlikely to change the tables. Because again, the only time you would need to utilize such information is when you're encountering a cop who is actively abusing their power. My point is that in such situations, the information has a chance to de-escalate, be neutral, or escalate the situation.
It's hard to tell on the Internet what the intent is because well intended seemingly good advice can also be noise. I'm just trying to convey that the picture isn't black and white. I mean if things happened they way they should, we wouldn't need to call a supervisor or remind a cop of the law, right?
"My point is that in such situations, the information has a chance to de-escalate, be neutral, or escalate the situation."
Yes, because in intense situations, it matters often much more how you say something, than what exactly you are saying.
Remember that from the point of view of the cops, you might draw a gun at any moment, if they misjudged you. They need to feel they are in control of the situation.
So giving a legal correct counter, but in a snarky or aggressive voice, might not help.
But calmly reminding them of certain laws and maybe even asking them, if they are sure that they could justify their actions in a court, might work better than resisting and demanding things of armed police officers.
> But calmly reminding them of certain laws and maybe even asking them, if they are sure that they could justify their actions in a court
This will mostly just come across as patronizing and more likely to 'deal with you in court' while your smarmy ass sits somewhere.
Some real advice: don't tell a cop how to do their job. Answer the damn questions and be assertively "no" if they ask you to consent to anything. That's it. If they go away, great. If they make your life hell. That sucks, but don't do anything to make it worse, like patronizing them. Suck it up and deal with it later.
Well, I do have managed quite well with different police so far, even though not with US police. But I am sure they react to body language and sound as well. And yes, one can also articulate that sentence less escalating, my point was mainly that the way someone is said matters a lot more.
> Remember that from the point of view of the citizen, the cop might draw a gun at any moment, if they misjudged you. They need to feel they are in control of the situation.
FTFY
The point I'm making with the edit is that the cop is a trained professional while the citizen is some random bloke.
Not that while the citizen might have a weapon, the situation is unambiguous for the officer. They have several...
So both people are in the same situation and seeking the same thing (at this basic level), right? The question is who has the higher obligation, who has to "be the bigger man?"
In all other professions, it is generally without dispute that the greater burden falls upon the professional. The one with training. The one with authority! By nature of the interaction the cop has more control than a citizen. Power granted by law, a position of authority, and an unambiguous armament.
I need you to think carefully about the consequences of your argument. How they extend past this specific example we have in our heads. You'll need to clarify to what extent this is okay.
Authority needs not just be accountable, but accountable in proportion to the power we grant them. Do I need to quote Uncle Ben‽‽‽ Without a doubt, officers have substantially more power than the average citizen, thus I do not think it is unreasonable to suggest they should be held to a higher degree of accountability. I maintain this position regardless of the type of authority. In many cases, ignorance is not an excuse. With professionals, ignorance may not just not be an excuse, but an active act of malice (a doctor who does not continue their education has actively chosen inaction. Their ignorance will not hold up in a court of law. In our case, I see no reason ignorance is different from malice when the requisite knowledge is commonly taught in middle and high school. I am willing to give a pass for complex issues, but not stop and frisk)
We are talking about something fairly basic, so if our standards of policing are that it is excusable that a cop does not understand... the 4th amendment... then I'm not sure it is worth distinguishing from abuse. As such level of incompetence would necessitate willfulness.
> deceptive
I fail to understand how you are distinguishing an antagonistic cop who understands you are not breaking the law and is actively trying to trick you into (or trick you into revealing that you are despite no meaningful evidence that a crime is taking place) is different from one that is abusing their authority. I'd go so far as to say that this is a literal act of that.
Look, I am happy you are willing to give the benefit of the doubt. We need people to provide such perspectives. In all honesty, I do appreciate your comment and that you are pushing back, but I think you'll need to take a significantly different route if you are to sway me. I think continuing down this train of reasoning will fail to persuade those with similar views. This does not mean there isn't an argument that would, just not this one.
There is a level of incompetence one can be at their job in which it is clear that they do not seek to do their job well.
> You really should engage in a genuine debate.
You should respond to the things I say, not the things you wish me to say. Disagreement with you does not mean I am not being genuine, just as a circle jerk is not a genuine debate.
> It's perfectly legal for a cop to say "I'm searching your car, ok?".
To again reference the level of incompetence...
> The Fourth Amendment requires that before stopping the suspect, the police must have a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been, is being, or is about to be committed by the suspect.[0]
> The term “unreasonable” refers to any action or result that exceeds a reasonable expectation, or refers to anything beyond what would be considered “common sense.” In criminal cases, the prosecutor should explain the evidence so clearly that the average person would agree with it; if the logic of the prosecution or the certainty based on the given evidence could not be accepted by the common public, it would be unreasonable. [1]
Even if you disagree with the interpretation, I hope you are able to distinguish the difference between "what is right" and "what is legal". Because if your argument is "it is legal, therefor morally correct" we will never agree, just as I will not condone the actions of cheaters, and those that manufactured the housing crisis.
In the US, we do have the presumption of innocence. Questioning to search without probably cause is, legal or not, an abuse of power.
I do wish you think deeply about what the "power" is that is being abused. What "authority" mean. Because if your argument is "it's legal" then I do not believe you understand this and I ask you to think a little deeper. Perhaps you're familiar with "malicious compliance?" That's enough of a hint.
I haven't moved any goal posts. I've kept my replies civil and on topic. If you read the conversation back, you engaged me to fight the idea that providing information on the law and asking for a supervisor can be beneficial. From that point on you have consistently make illogical and unsupported blanket statements such as any cop who makes a mistake of law is considered to be corrupt or abusive.
Most police officers will bully you within the extent of their authority and try to deceive you into complying beyond their authority, but will not physically break the law.
With those police, being polite but firm is a good strategy.
- - - - -
Example: you’re in the parking lot of a business after hours, sitting there with a backpack; two officers in a cruiser park and get out to find out what you’re doing.
1. Well — legal or not, they’re going to detain you for a moment until they decide how to proceed
2. and they’ll pretend the only way to make that stop is let them search your bag to “prove you didn’t steal anything”
3. but if you politely repeat that you’re not consenting to any searches and would like to leave, they’ll let you go because at best they have probable cause for trespassing.
> Most police officers will bully you within the extent of their authority and try to deceive you into complying beyond their authority, but will not physically break the law.
"most" is probably correct, but of course cops that don't break the law don't make the news because it's uninteresting.
I think the real problem we have is the cops that DO break the law and violate your rights and absolutely nothing happens.
A cop that searches your bag without probable cause or consent needs immediate retraining on the first offense, and needs to be fired on the second offense. If the cop gets fired and then gets hired as a cop somewhere else and commits the same offense, they need to be permanently banned from being a cop.
I think the argument for using the line is, there is no reason in the moment not to try everything you can, no matter where you are, and you adjust based on the situation. If you’re in a place that doesn’t respect the rule of law ALL THE TIME, sure, don’t. Is the US(I will assume you’re US-based) that right now? I think your answer to that question == whether you feel the tactic is viable.
But you’re right, we shouldn’t be in this place as a nation, wondering if police are going to be ethical even most of the time.
The main point was that there is a line between being cooperative and being tricked or forced into consent for a search. The best tactic is to appear cooperative but not a pushover. If they are forcing or tricking a search, then you need to show that you are complying but "under protest". And definitely, this is based on how it is now, not where we should be.
If the cop wants to throw you against the car that's going to happen and no amount of negotiation or "Am I being detained?" is going to prevent that. It's also not going to help against the sizable percentage of cops who just don't know they can't do something. This isn't for either of them, this is for the lower grade abuses of power where the cop will make you "wait" 2 hours for a K9 (but never call them in the first place) to try to get you to consent to make things go faster. If they know that you're going to be filing complaints and suing them they're much more likely to just send you on your way. YouTube has literally thousands of these videos which induce various levels of rage depending on how egregious the cops act.
Yeah having rights is great but it's not a lot of help when the cops can just beat the shit out of you and arrest you for resisting arrest. Maybe you'll get it overturned in court but what good does that do if you missed work or lost your job over the whole ordeal?
Drug dogs only provide probable cause for drug searches. They arent suppoaed to extend to other crimes. Just as if the dog alerts on private property and a warrant is then needed, it only provides probable cause for a drug search (or related offense).
On another note, in many states the dogs can't be trained on marijuana as it has legal purposes (medicinal or recreational). If coming from a state where it is legal, it still shouldn't provide probable cause as the sniffable residue could be from previous legal use.
So in my view, the drug dog liability is low (biggest threat being planted evidence, but that could happen anyways), and being reined in further. Yes, the made-up probable cause is more likely. That's why I was wondering.
The entire existence of a class of contraband that cops can claim to be searching for at any time is a massive loophole in the fourth amendment, and as such, the drug prohibition wave of the mid-20th century was instrumental in turning the US (and for that matter a majority of developed countries) into police states
That's the thing - it's not considered a search. That's how they get away with it. The sniffing has to happen in public (or with a warrant) and is considered in plain smell (same as an officer smelling alcohol on your breath in a car). Then the dog provides probable cause for the real search.
Well, really everything has become heavily criminalized in the 20th century. Especially as things that aren't outright outlawed are regulated to the extreme. Drugs, alcohol, guns, knives, etc. Some things have gotten more open, but virtually everything has gotten more complicated and easy to get tripped up on technicalities.
The officer "smelling alcohol on your breath" is infamously applied to any situation where the officer lacks probable cause. It cannot be verified in a criminal case or in litigation, the officer is simply presumed to be telling the truth, and if proven to be lying is never, ever imprisoned for perjury.
It may as well be "The officer saw you drinking in a vision"
This is only partially true (on several of the statements).
The plain smell test has this problem in general. So does any witness testimony. In the case of driving, they will issue sobriety tests and a blood test. But part of these searches is different because of the way driving is treated as a privilege and the conditions you agree too in requesting a license. These subsequent tests will verify the officer's statements. The admissibility of evidence from searches based on this sort of "mistake" is up to the court to determine if it was in good faith.
As for the lying... there is a difference between lying and being mistaken. Very few people in general are prosecuted for perjury because it requires proving that they willfully provided false testimony. This is very evident in the way protection from abuse orders are misused in many divorces and the requestor is almost never charged. However, police are (in theory) held to a higher standard with the use of Giglio/Brady lists. These list only need to show that the officer is repeatedly unreliable, not actually lying. In practice, these might not be very effective because it's up to prosecutors to maintain these lists. They only have incentive to add officers if they lose too many cases for the prosecution.
In an environment where police officers are effectively immune from any consequences of any actions, which appears to be almost true - barring widespread media coverage and consistent pressure from essentially a majority of US adults for multiple months at a time - the actual nature of the pretense used to take the officer's word for things is pretty immaterial
The theory-practice gap is so wide as to make the theoretical maxima essentially fantasy with body cameras that are proprietary and owned and operated by the same police departments they are supposed to be an accountability mechanism for
In theory you could, but that requires something like a small scale mass spectrometer to feed recordings into the camera log. So in practice, not realistic... yet.
It is still a federal crime to use marijuana, even in states where it is legal under state law. Also, if you are in a car, they just have to suspect you were driving while under the influence of marijuana and it becomes probable cause again. But it is unlikely that residue alone constitutes sufficient evidence of a crime, because they would never bother to investigate someone smoking a joint so severely anyway.
I believe you are also wrong about the limited scope of a search. If additional crimes are uncovered during a legitimate search, they absolutely can charge you with it and use the evidence they found. Think about what you're saying. If they find pools of blood in your trunk while looking for drugs, they will definitely admit that as evidence against you and cause to search all your property.
Apparently (and not too surprisingly) it’s much more complicated than that. In Washington, police are explicitly forbidden from enforcing immigration laws (“Keep Washington Working” act) and nationally, police could perhaps arrest you for weed but the feds are apparently not allowed to spend any money prosecuting you if you didn’t break state law, according to the Rohrerbacher-Farr amendment https://scholarship.law.uc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...
Immigration enforcement is the most prominent today probably.
Local police can arrest anyone for illegally crossing US border and can arrest someone for being undocumented(where not banned by state law), they are just not obligated to by federal law or US constitution.
I agree with you in general but police can do a lot of things on suspicion of a crime. They may have to let you go eventually, but don't overestimate your position. You could be tied up for months straightening out issues with false accusations.
Real question: Who counts as "the feds"? I assume at least the FBI and Secret Service. Are there others? Maybe some Postal or Immigration police? How about Department of Homeland Security?
Recreational - no, but you also won't get arrested by the Feds. TSA will report it to law enforcement. If it's legal in that state, nothing will happen orher than forfeiture if you plan to fly. Basically the same deal as if you left a knife in your bag.
> Only the feds enforce federal crimes, so it's not relevant to most traffic stops.
You're unlikely to be arrested by any federal LEO, as there are not many of them. Your local LEO do the arrest and then transfer to the relevant agency.
Law enforcement can, and do, cooperate to arrest individuals.
Imagine if a suspect could get away from being arrested just by crossing into another state.
Yes and no. Depends on what you consider an arrest. Colloquially, yes, any law enforcement can arrest you for any level of offense. Technically, the arrest is made by the officer with jurisdiction that you end up being transferred into their custody and putting their name on the paperwork. The big bottleneck here is that the Feds decline to have many people held because they don't have enough people to take the transfer. They perfer to let the state level law do their work for them (as on many topics they're basically the same). In the case we're talking about, the Feds generally don't care about marijuana in a traffic stop since their policy is to basically ignore it in states where it's legal.
I said an example. If you're found with a dead body in your trunk for example, that will not be thrown out on a technicality, especially if it was found during an otherwise legal search. I don't have the case law memorized but I've heard lawyers discuss it before. If you do some research you will find exceptions to 4th amendment protections, such as the ones in this article: https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-rights/the-fourth-...
I meant actual case law examples. If it's a body in plain view during the other search, then that falls under the plain view exception. If it's somehow concealed in a way that they can't tell what it is, then they shouldn't be able to use it. Of course judges would use every avenue possible to side with the police on an issue of murder (assuming it was murder and not just a corpse from some other reason).
You'd just be an idiot to think that your dead body in the trunk would be excluded as evidence during any search, much less a lawful search. Searches of cars are special as well and do not require a warrant, only probable cause like "I smelled something" or "The suspect was acting erratic/intoxicated" which is your word vs. theirs. If you find a case where a murderer was uncovered during a lawful search and that evidence was thrown out due to it being off topic, please let me know.
"In that one a lawful search turned up unexpected items, and those items were permitted."
Yes, that's the plain view exception I mentioned earlier.
"Even an error in a warrant might not save you."
Yeah, depends on the error and the good faith excpetion.
"Searches of cars are special as well and do not require a warrant,"
Yes, I mentioned that in other comments. But that probable cause is supposed to follow the same standards. It's just expedited by cutting out the judge.
That example would be hard to find because anything they find could be potentially covered under the independent source avenue. But that has to come from a separate warrant. Since murders don't have a statute of limitations, that's open ended and would almost always result in a secondary search even if the first search evidence was thrown out.
>Yes, that's the plain view exception I mentioned earlier.
I think there is more than one plain view exception. Things in plain view from outside your protected space are definitely fair game but that is not what that case describes. Things were found in plain view while conducting a search for another reason. So, presumably, if your garage was being searched for a stolen car, that would not cover discoveries made while digging through boxes in there. But if they were digging through boxes for stolen property and found evidence of another crime, they could use it. The contents of opaque boxes are not in "plain view" but can be uncovered in an unrelated search.
Can a discovery from an illegal search give probable cause for another search? I think it can.
There are many ways the 4th amendment can fall apart in practice. All I was saying in the first comment (that I remember) is that evidence of additional crimes is admissible if it was found during a legal search for some other purpose. Needless to say, there are also many situations where an officer can lie about probable cause and get away with it. Juries and judges care more about stopping crime than the privacy rights of criminals. Only the most blatant violations of the 4th amendment ever work against the state from what I've seen. And if you're innocent, you can complain. But the complaints rarely go anywhere either.
It’s a really good algorithm imo designed to reduce the flame war we see everywhere else but here online. As we stumble in hacker news half beat and fully traumatized from the rest of the internet it’s nice to know I can’t even start a flame war here if I wanted to. Contro-factor maybe.
What’s more interesting is how easy hacker news can detect a boiled egg.
Only the most refined version of a red head can make it here on hacker news. One must veil their agitations in deep plausible deniability to get past the gate. Embrace the vanilla and refine your penmanship.
People post similar comments with opposite views as mine. So there must be something else going on. Maybe if a few people downvote you, HN downvotes you everywhere else. Or else, the site prefers a few viewpoints and has a way to detect negative responses to those views. Either way, it is very offputting. I don't appreciate someone putting their thumb on the scales. I can't even downvote at this point due to not enough points, and at the rate it's going I might be able to do it like next year.
Then there's the "You're posting too fast" thing. I think fast and people respond with predictable stuff to my comments. I can only respond to like 2 of them at once or I won't be able to comment on anything else for hours.
I don't think there's anything wrong with spirited discussions. If you don't want to participate, then don't. Simple argument does not make it a flame war.
> Either way, it is very off-putting. I don't appreciate someone putting their thumb on the scales.
The problem is things are very selectively enforced, so it ends up not feeling fair or consistent. The intentions are great, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
It’s possible someone deployed ai to follow your digital shadow around but this is purely hypothetical. Do you have similar experiences on other platforms? I am only chiming in because at one point of my experience here I felt the same as you do. Only later realizing my “tone” was the culprit.
> If you don’t consent to searches, cops that want to search you will either simply search you illegally anyway
Over a decade ago (in California) I had met up with some friends at a park where we were going to carpool to a concert in LA. I had a medical license and my weed was locked in my trunk AND we hadn't smoked. Cops pulled up, asked what we were doing, we explained, they asked if they could search, we said no, they did anyways. One friend had his hands in his pockets when the cops rolled up and they asked him what he had in there, so he naturally pulled them out and the cops threw him against a car and searched, saying they thought he was pulling a knife on him... I got a ticket, had to show up to court. Contested which meant another court date (I was following the law. Cop didn't even show up!). I talked with one of the clerks because I had a calc midterm that day and he pushed me to a afternoon session. Showing up to that the judge grilled me about "being late" (I had docs) and I yelled at him for wasting my time, the publics time, money, and how I was scheduled for this time because I had a fucking calculus test so to stop treating me like a degenerate. That I followed the letter of the law. 15 minutes total and charges dismissed. What a shit show...
Another time I was visiting the Golden gate Park. I asked a ranger for directions. He said we smelled like weed. I told him SF smelled like weed. He asked to search, we walked, he grabbed us and my backpack. His evidence to give us a ticket was my still sealed bottle from the dispensary.
I won't say all cops are bad, but some just want to abuse their power. I won't say cops are good, because the ones that don't abuse do know the ones that do. And you know what they say about "good men" who do nothing...
And people still wonder why I'm critical of authority
It's very much a spectrum but, in my personal experience, many cops are drawn to the job for the wrong reasons, like the power or being able to retire after 20 years with a pension (varies by municipality but very common in the northeast).
It would never happen and I'm not sure it should but I often think about what a community based approach might look like. For example, a requirement that police live in the community they're policing or some sort of conscription model.
Wanting to collect a pension is NOT a wrong reason. It is a very legitimate reason for any government worker. I'd even bet it's inversely correlated with wanting to abuse power.
Moreover, the abuse of power looks to develop over time, learning it from other abusive cops, and going further. It is a cycle of abuse taught from senior to junior. Even if the police represent the community or are conscripted, they still can learn such abusive behavior.
The solution can be for all teams to be new, to not pass bad cultural knowledge from the old team to the new team.
The reason I'm a fan of these (albeit they are far from perfect[0]) is because it both creates some humanization as well as some social accountability.
I think some of the problems are related to the fact that parts of society don't scale well (though some do). As population grows, so does anonymity. But a powerful tool to fight abuse of authority is by decreasing anonymity, as this creates a social pressure. There are disadvantages to cops being biased towards their communities, but I think this is better than the bias of indifference. We're dealing with humans, and the direction in which we should _error_ should *always* be on the side of compassion.
[0] Perfection does not exist and will not. So we have to be nuanced
I think people have fewer qualms about cops seizing weapons than any other kind of property. Taking cash or a car from someone is not equivalent to taking their guns.
Ideological opposition to these laws without a frank understanding of their intent and impact is arguing in bad faith. Property is not all equal and not treated that way, for reasons that should be self evident.
Guns are tools to kill people. Red flag laws exist to identify people who have them and are likely to use them. If a few people get caught up by the net by mistake, the societal impact is that we have fewer guns on the streets while those people are inconvenienced.
Compare that to seizing people's cars. Sure, cars are dangerous, but people need them to travel to/from work/school/etc. The impact of seizing a car from someone by mistake is they could lose their job, their house if they lose income, etc. It's a lot worse than a gun owner not having access to their gun for a little bit.
Your comparison is not correct. There are security guards, police, and others who rely on guns for their jobs, even more so that the typical person relies on their car to get to work (alternate rides are available, but being armed may be a requirement). Keep in mind that DUI suspects are allowed to drive until their hearing. Also, that there are habitual offenders who have already lost their license and still kill people with their car because their car isn't seized.
The real differentiator here is simply the prejudices the speaker holds against one item or the other. For example, you conveniently leave out all manner of lawful and beneficial uses that the gun owner is inconvenienced with, including potential loss of life or victimization while unarmed.
I'd argue your argument is in bad faith. Guns are tools, that can be used to kill people, just like knives, clubs, or other weapons. Guns are also tools for ensuring equity in a potentially violent world. You don't need to be 6'2 250lbs to defend yourself with a gun from a criminal or violent government. Its also convenient for you to decide that others don't "need" to protect themselves from situations that they've deemed necessary.
The overarching point I'm making is that the government seizing $2,000 in cash from you is not the same as seizing a $2,000 gun from you, because the $2,000 in cash isn't a potentially immediate threat to the public. Red flag laws are one of the very few pro-active tools for law enforcement.
I think any argument around guns that focuses on ideological thought experiments like self defense from a "violent government" is not worth exploring. Because then you're talking about how to organize an armed insurrection, not how to reduce mass shootings and domestic partner violence.
> Its also convenient for you to decide that others don't "need" to protect themselves from situations that they've deemed necessary.
And it's convenient for the craziest people in our society to have easy access to weapons and ammunition because of widespread paranoia about defending yourself from those people. Seems like the easy solution is to make access to weapons harder!
What puts me off about the argument is along the lines of "and because of such and such, now numerically less guns exist in public, and that's -a good thing-"
For me this smacks of California style government i.e. "we've made gas and energy so expensive that people use less energy, and environmentally that's -a good thing-" or "we've made permit regulations so bad nobody is able to build anything anymore and environmentally that's -a good thing-"
The crux of these things is that if you presume that these are basic rights: not having property confiscating, building a house without too much red tape, free market energy economy - then we have arrived at -a good thing- via -an unethical thing- and thus it's a good outcome through an unethical means, or "fruit from the poison tree" as ethics states.
From a legal perspective, these are trying to avoid a completely hypothetical scenario of Peter's hypothetical gun hypothetically shooting Paul, or Peter's hypothetical +20% pollution hurting the life of Paul, and George got jammed up by the law and hates it, but the lawmaker who is worried solely about Paul is quite pleased with himself about having saved Paul from the hypothetical which may or may not have actually happened.
> The crux of these things is that if you presume that these are basic rights:
That's the problem though, isn't it? Less guns should exist in public, and the 'right' the US has shouldn't have been extended as far as it has, so it needs to be choked and leashed.
Same with utilities...they might be a right, but the specific means of generation isn't necessarily a right, and maybe it shouldn't be.
> What puts me off about the argument is along the lines of "and because of such and such, now numerically less guns exist in public, and that's -a good thing-"
I did not make that point, but I also don't understand yours.
If they're actually crazy like you claim, then they lose their weapons upon an involuntary commitment. That is by far the better outcome (assuming peoper due process) since they'll get actual help for their problems and not just the removal of one of many deadly weapons they can use.
I'm very pro 2nd amendment, but guns are not tools and it's a fallacy to say that.
Guns are used to kill something. In hunting they are used to kill animals, and otherwise they are used to kill other people, or yourself in the case of suicide. You don't do anything with a gun except kill or attempt to kill something.
Unless you're a professional shooter, such as in the Olympics? Some people make a living using a gun that never kills anything. Even police rarely fire their weapons. They are more often used to foster compliance without any injury than to kill.
But yes, in general killing or potential killing is the purpose. But this reasoning implies that killing is bad even when there are legitimate circumstances.
I think your reasoning is flawed. When you are aiming for targets with a gun, there is no utility in that. That's like saying a basketball is a tool. Neither guns nor basketballs are tools.
Also, I never once implied that killing is bad. For example, killing animals for food is not bad. Also, killing someone who is trying to kill you is not bad.
"something (such as an instrument or apparatus) used in performing an operation or necessary in the practice of a vocation or profession"
Websters even considers books as tools as they relate to scholars. By the definition, they are tools. In the context of hunting (and policing, and self defense), they absolutely offer utility.
I don't know what you meant to imply or not. But colloquially, when those statements are made they usually imply a negative view of it. I would bet that more than a few readers would have read it with that in mind. What is evident based on your prior comment and this one is that you do not consider utility to include killing.
> general killing or potential killing is the purpose
I'd like to emphasize the "potential" here even more - one of the greatest uses of guns is as as a deterrent, and this is worth differentiating from actually killing.
People who claim that the only use for a gun is to kill are factually wrong, and you can point this out.
> Guns are tools, that can be used to kill people, just like knives, clubs or other weapons
What non killing-or-practicing-killing use do handguns have? Zero.
Surely there must be better ways of “ensuring equity” than threat of death.
Also, if you think a handgun is going to protect you “from a … violent government” you should see what happens (or really, doesn’t happen) when a handgun round hits modern tank plate.
"What non killing-or-practicing-killing use do handguns have? Zero."
This argument implies that killing is never justified. Society in general seems to disagree with that. Killing as a last resort to protect yourself is considered reasonable.
Also, there are remote areas where it would be much more likely for the killing to take place against animals than humans. These sorts of scenarios seem to be overlooked quite frequently in these arguments.
Killing another human IS never justified. You’re not a judge, jury or executioner. It should never, ever be up to one person to decide if someone else should live or die. Especially not in the heat of the moment.
In your remote area hypothetical, a rifle would be the appropriate tool. I was very specifically talking about handguns, which are most frequently used to kill the person holding it[0][1], and it’s getting worse[2], hence the Red Flag laws that started this entire thread. And that’s the reason there’s a significant difference between a pile of cash and the equivalent value handgun should absolutely not be treated equally.
The logical conclusion from this is that if someone is going to kill you, and you have the option to stop them via possible-fatal means, you have to let them kill you. I don't think most people agree with this ideology, or that it's compatible with...any of the common systems of morality.
> It should never, ever be up to one person to decide if someone else should live or die.
This is inconsistent with reality. Criminals don't adhere to this belief, and so it doesn't work for anyone who might be attacked by a criminal, either.
"Killing another human IS never justified. You’re not a judge, jury or executioner. It should never, ever be up to one person to decide if someone else should live or die. Especially not in the heat of the moment."
The courts find justifiable homicides often. Statute, code, and case law even define specific instances when it is justified. That's not one person, but many creating those. The only person who can make a decision in the moment is the person who is there. They have to live with that decision, but nobody else can make it for them.
"In your remote area hypothetical, a rifle would be the appropriate tool."
Not really. Handguns are the prevailing tool of choice due to the ease of carrying them while performing other tasks. Sure, rifles and shotguns are better choices for hunting, but get burdensome if fishing, foraging, working, etc.
"I was very specifically talking about handguns, which are most frequently used to kill the person holding it[0][1], and it’s getting worse[2], hence the Red Flag laws that started this entire thread."
They might be the tool of choice for suicides, and that suicides are more common than homicides. However, that has nothing to do with their "most frequent use". There are plenty of uses that don't result in death. If you only focus on the negatives, then your perspective will be skewed and you can come to a valid value proposition. The numbers have been trending down and have only ticked up slightly. Your argument also assumes that suicide is always wrong. Most of the people I know who committed suicide did so because they had terminal dementias. Perhaps it's not as big of a problem as the gross numbers suggest if we dive into it deeper. There are also stats out there that show defensive gun use us more common that firearm injuries.
Finally, red flag laws are not primarily about preventing suicide. Existing laws about involuntary commitment better handle it because they offer actual help whereas red flag laws take away only one of many methods of suicide and don't offer any real help. They were primarily created to prevent mass shootings by creating a a version of existing protection from abuse orders that didn't require domestic or family relations.
> What non killing-or-practicing-killing use do handguns have? Zero.
This is factually wrong. Guns are extremely useful as deterrents, even when never fired.
> Also, if you think a handgun is going to protect you “from a … violent government” you should see what happens (or really, doesn’t happen) when a handgun round hits modern tank plate.
This has been debunked a long time ago, in Afghanistan, and in most other authoritarian regimes - governments need a disarmed populace in order to stay in power. You cannot have tanks driving around on the streets, policing opposition - actual humans have to do the policing.
>Also, if you think a handgun is going to protect you “from a … violent government” you should see what happens (or really, doesn’t happen) when a handgun round hits modern tank plate
Idk I feel like it just increases incidences of "I have a gun and therefore I win this argument".
I'd lean towards saying that there are many times more misuses of a gun than "a good guy with a gun". Wonder if there are stats on lawful shootings vs unlawful.
Yes, there are a number of stats out there on defensive uses of a firearm vs misuse. Every one that I have seen shows a net positive on the side of defensive uses. CDC has some numbers out there that seem to be respectable if you'd like to look at them.
interesting. my "ideological opposition" had nothing to do with "guns" or the second amendment, or a government's interest in safety
it was purely about assets, their attributes of valuation, in-kind transfers based on appraisal value to normalize it amongst a cash seizure. commonalities that all property shares. in that regard, to the government and its constitution, property is property.
I did make a mistake in assuming this article was about civil asset forfeiture though, where my observation would apply more strongly as the property is charged instead of the person. This article is about something in between civil and criminal asset forefeiture.
My point is that's too narrow a view. You can't treat property opaquely, or the reasons for the state for seizing it equally. Eminent domain, civil asset forfeiture, red flag laws, even economic sanctions and KYC compliance in finance are all different trees of the state asserting power over different classes of property, for different reasons from public safety to foreign policy, or just plain old corruption.
All personal property should have adequate protections from seizures. We shouldn't be side stepping protections by moving things to the civil system to avoid the protections in the criminal system. It shouldn't be easier to side step the protections guaranteed as rights just because something seems scary. You've admitted it's fine to strip innocent people of their rights to protect society, and the numbers show that most red flag laws have not been successful and overwhelmingly impact people who pose no threat.
If believing in basic protections and rights is too narrow a view, I'm happy to say that I support that narrow view.
I don't know what country you're from, but in the US, a very large fraction of the population cares about the rights enumerated to them (not granted - enumerated) by the second amendment of our Constitution, and most of these people will have significantly more qualms about cops seizing their arms.
Reading anecdotes about US police is trully terrifying. How one of the richest countries in the world be so incompetent in this one particular regard. Is there some sort of historic review that highlights how it got this way?
Police unions in some districts are incredibly strong. New York City is famous. That means when you try to charge the police, none of the other officers will want to testify against bad behaviour. Plus, there is bribery-lite with stuff like "Fraternal Order of Police" where you can donate money (no idea what they do with it), get a sticker for your car and you will be statistically much less likely to be pulled over in your car. (Really, I wish I were joking.)
A deeper question: Why don't other highly advanced democracies decay in the same way? For example: Why hasn't the same happened in Japan or Denmark or Portugal?
We were supposed to have an aggressive internal affairs department, federal investigations, and federal prosecutors to address the possibility of local/state police corruption, since the prospect of that corruption was raised in the 1970's (or, depending on your perspective, the 1900's to 1930's).
The problem is that since the rise of the 1980's white conservative 'crime and punishment' voter we don't have executive-branch leaders who are willing to regard police overreach as a form of police corruption; In the bootlicker's mind, everything is an honest mistake as long as the police are hurting the right people.
> A deeper question: Why don't other highly advanced democracies decay in the same way? For example: Why hasn't the same happened in Japan or Denmark or Portugal?
My pet theory is that multi-party, coalition-based systems help a lot.
my cousin's husband is a cop in Philadelphia. my cousin has a "courtesy card", signed by him, declaring that she's family. she shows it along with her license when she gets pulled over for speeding, and they let her off with a warning.
Can confirm, NYPD has these as well. Between this and the ghost cars they drive, the illegal parking, flouting traffic laws, use of their law enforcement function as a political cudgel to be deployed and withheld on demand depending on the prevailing political climate - it is hard to see them as anything but an occupying gang.
I think the part you are missing is the sheer scale of our public services in the US. Sure it's like that in some parts of the country but in other parts it's completely different. A quick Google says that the US has ~18,000 police departments (by comparison, Germany has 16 and Japan as 1,250), I'm sure some of them are fantastic and others are corrupt hellholes, all depends on where you are.
> Why hasn't the same happened in Japan or Denmark or Portugal?
The purpose of police and their training matters a lot. That is not to say that police in other countries are saints, they just have a much different role in societies in western Europe compared to US.
I suspect the number of cops per capita also matters a lot. The U.S. seems to have very few by the standards of western countries, especially European ones, even though we have a more violent society.
There are a lot of reforms that would have to be carried out to U.S. departments to essentially keep from just turning new recruits into more bad apples, but some of the problem may be that from the cops' point of view they just don't have time to deal with any crap. It might be weird to suggest that part of the problem with bad cops is not enough cops, and it's definitely not an excuse, but I bet it's a reason.
Don't assume the best of European countries. If and when they decay, you won't find out about it. The US is different because US people are loud. I submit this discussion as proof.
By the way, Japan is always different. As the saying goes, they are just like us, only more so. So, eventually, they will also decay and when they do, they will decay just like us, only more so.
This is an interesting point. To generalise, I would say that Northeast Asia is significantly different (culturally and economically) compared to EU+USA+CAN+NZ+AU.
Both (South) Korea and Taiwan are considered highly developed. They also do not experience this type of "democracy decay" (my term). If anything, they are expereincing the opposite. Personally, I think this is due to both are still relatively young as democracies, so their democratic institutions, when tested with difficult issues, continue to strengthen.
> How one of the richest countries in the world be so incompetent in this one particular regard.
It's not a bug, it's a feature. Police are largely there to reinforce social and economic hierarchies, which the people at the top of those hierarchies naturally benefit from.
The police in the U.S. can be awful, but let's not get smug about it either. Police in MANY places worldwide and also in many European countries are just as bad or worse (if sometimes less overtly aggressive) and often you don't even have the basic protections of the law that you can use to your advantage in court later.
Heh USA biggest police state, in EU there is only one state with same level of policing. Germany. Cops there will make you strip search even before concert, because of "drugs" lol.
Do they have the right? I was stopped by German police many times and they asked me to search my car every time, which I complied.
However one time I was stopped, one policeman was speaking to me while I was in my car, and his colleague started opening the passenger door and searched without asking. That's when I told them to stop and questioned their authority to do so.
German citizen did not seem to question the authority, because when I asked around, they didn't know if it was legal or not.
> German police authorities are authorised to stop vehicles throughout the territory of Germany at any time, although the police have the general authority to scrutinise a vehicle only in order to inspect the technical condition of the vehicle. Other vehicle checks (e.g. for the purpose of examining the objects being transported in automobile vehicle) may be carried out only if there is a suspicion that the person is perpetrating a crime or threatening safety in some other way.
> Unlike the police authorities, the customs authorities are, in principle, authorised to stop vehicles only in near-border areas, i.e. at a distance of up to 30 kilometres from the border. However, in a near-border area, the customs authorities may also carry out vehicle checks without the existence of any suspicion that a crime is being perpetrated or that there is a threat to safety.
Can confirm. The people in front of me in line were taken away by police. I met them later and they said they consented (because they were stupid) to be searched for drugs.
That is clear abuse. I think there should be very clear law and the same that the police should be extremely diligent applying laws, abuse should be punished the same way. But for this, rules need to be crystal clear.
California and the Federal gov’t has a requirement that if you’re ever accused of domestic violence, you’re not allowed to be near any firearms unless the accusations have been withdrawn or found without basis. (Notably, it is a very low bar for them to be found as having a basis. The standard is literally ‘could have possibly happened/occurred’, not did or beyond a reasonable doubt, etc.)
Practically in California, you’re required to turn them all in for storage or sell them within 24 hrs of being served - either selling them to a dealer or turning them in to the cops or to a very hard to find, expensive, and specialized type of gun dealer who doesn’t advertise.
Keep in mind - accused - not a finding of or anything - and the court is happy to issue these orders ex-parte based off accusations which the impacted party has no chance to rebut or is necessarily even aware of at the time the order is issued. And the bar to issue it is very, very low. The accusations don’t even need to make sense or be supported by any police calls or the like.
In theory? Fine. In practice, a very common abuse and harassment tactic. Or actually necessary.
If you can’t find the specialized type of dealer and get him everything within 24 hrs, and can’t sell everything for penny’s on the dollar to a standard gun dealer in time, then you have to turn them into the cops. Or be committing a felony.
Oh and the court will demand proof when you go to reply to/contest the emergency order that you did everything within the requisite amount of time, and did indeed turn everything in.
In Santa Clara county - among others - apparently the cops will also never actually return the guns to you either. Because ‘it would look bad if you then used them in a crime’. Yes, this is clearly against the law. They DGAF.
There are multiple outstanding lawsuits against them for this, last I checked, but the courts keep putting them on the back burner as after the Judge Persky recall no one wants to be involved in anything like this in the current political climate.
They’d much rather drag it out for years or even decades over procedural matters.
Even if it’s really clear what the legal thing to do is.
One or two guns, not a lot of money. But folks with collections? Better not piss off anyone you’re living with.
Speaking only for Finland: most of the guns are for hunting: rifles, shotguns and the like. A statistic from 2016 has 1.5 million guns, 220 000 of which are handguns.
Second, the legislation is very strict. You need to have a reason for owning a gun; hunting and shooting sports are valid, personal protection isn't. You need to belong to a relevant association (such as hunting clubs or shooting clubs). You need proper locked storage in your apartment. Carrying a gun in public without a reason (such as going to a shooting range) is forbidden, and even then should be minimized.
Should you violate any of these conditions, you're liable to lose your gun license and all guns will be seized. Also the police may revoke the license on suspicion of violent behaviour.
So, if you want to get a gun, you have to live squeaky-clean. Illegal guns are of course another matter.
True; the intent isn't to make owning guns impossible, but it takes some dedication to get into guns, and once you get one, next ones are easier to obtain.
The end result is a small minority having multiple guns per person, the majority not having any, so citing Finland as a country with high gun ownership is misleading.
I am not replying to dispute your comment. I didn't consider your idea about concentration of ownership. It is a good point!
About gun ownership in Finland, Wiki tells me:
> There are approximately 1.5 million registered small firearms in the country. Out of those, 226,000 are short firearms (pistols, revolvers) with the rest being long firearms (rifles, shotguns). There are approximately 650,000 people with at least one permit, which means 12% of Finns own a firearm.
In this case, while it may (temporarily) remove (if the party is willing to follow the law!) one method of domestic violence, it’s not like it’s hard to come up with alternatives. In many parts of the world, the preferred method of domestic violence is throwing acid on someone’s face.
The concern here is abuse of due process, and that it’s so trivial to take away someones rights and property using falsehoods and BS bureacracy, while also not actually solving any of the underlying problems.
Since, for instance, if that emergency order was for someone who actually was a problem, they still have a full day to go after whoever while still legally owning everything, and if they go on the run, it’s not like they care about another felony!
I'm not defending the police, or forfeiture laws; I'm just surprised one would use guns as an example, because it's still so surprising to me, as a European, that people would have guns in their homes like it's the most natural thing in the world.
Guns are dangerous -- in fact they don't have any other purpose beyond inflicting harm (unlike other dangerous things such as cars or drugs, etc.) I'm aware of the 2nd amendment, but firearms don't look like a good rhetorical argument in a discussion about property.
"European": I'm getting a bit tired of this trope on HN. What does that even mean? There are fifty countries in Europe and twenty-seven in the EU. There is huge cultural variation over that continent that is, give-or-take, the size of the continental United States.
> that people would have guns in their homes like it's the most natural thing in the world.
This is weird. There are many countries in Europe with hunting (or sport shooting) laws where it is legal to own a firearm and keep at your home. For many countries, it needs to be locked up.
As a casual gun owner, my main requirement for entertaining any sort of gun prohibition is simple - disarm the police first. The police operate within domestic society, where the power of the government is supposed to flow from the rights of the citizenry. Police are also involved in the sheer majority of violent confrontations across society, and thus preemptive de-escalation would be quite significant at changing the overall societal dynamic. And disarming the police wouldn't even involve any kind of constitutional amendment, since we're essentially talking about employment regulations. It would also address the worry that police will find some way to except themselves from any new regulations prohibiting firearms, as they have traditionally done with existing regulations on guns and many other judicially-banned armaments. So if you're advocating for gun prohibition, put your best foot forward and get to work on the police.
I would agree we should disarm the police. For some reason most people get upset when you say this, not just in the US but everywhere I've tried. In France at the last presidential election there was only one candidate (out of 12) who defended the idea, and he scored 0.77% of the vote, so there's a long way to go...
It’s the mindset difference between DIY and outsourcing, essentially.
Denser populations are used to their biggest problem (and biggest help) being other people. So they tend to outsource more.
Less dense populations are used to their biggest problem being something they need to do themselves, because there aren’t a lot of people all up in their business/available when they have a problem. So they’re more comfortable doing DIY.
The issue in this case of course that outsourcing personal safety puts a lot of power in other people’s hands.
Typically, this results in people in dense areas being more manipulative and avoidant to compensate. You can have a good life by getting other people (readily available) to do things for you. Having certain people be mad at you can result in really bad outcomes if you can’t manage the people around you.
Folks in less dense areas being typically more direct, because they can/need to be. You can have a good life by doing things yourself, and you don’t need to worry if someone is going to be (moderately) unhappy with you. And even if they’re really mad at you, you can do something about it directly without needing someone’s help.
For exteme examples in either direction;
- less dense, say Siberia, Alaska, Sudan - ‘everyone’ is armed, ‘everyone’ knows how to jump their car and fix basic plumbing issues, how to do basic first aid, etc. (at least 50% of the population, anyway).
- more dense, say Mumbai, Tokyo, New York City - only the cops/military and extreme outliers in the population are armed (< 5%) and ‘no one’ (well under 10% of the population) knows how to jump their car, fix plumbing issues, basic first aid, etc.
This has always resulted in tension. Ghenghis Khan was on record for really hating ‘decadent city dwellers’ for instance, and made a habit of destroying any particularly decadent cities he ran across (and either slaughtering their populations or driving them out of the city) apparently out of spite. Large cities have always expended significant effort in controlling who is armed and when (including Rome, London, Paris, etc).
This is directly applicable to US politics, and shows up quite clearly in the gun control debate too, where gun control laws have a clear and nearly (but not completely) 100% correlation with population density.
It’s also something you can see as a clear trend in Europe, with West and South-West European countries being strictly controlled, and less dense Northern, Eastern, and Central European countries being looser.
South and Eastern Asia, being exceptionally population dense, has almost complete prohibition of firearms for civilians. Even air guns are strictly controlled in most countries.
>because it's still so surprising to me, as a European, that people would have guns in their homes like it's the most natural thing in the world.
Then you must be one very insulated or ignorant European. Many people in many European countries own guns and keep them in their homes. Some states, such as the Czech Republic, even have remarkably flexible gun ownership laws and others have widespread private gun ownership to a degree that's not too different from that of the U.S. In Norway and Finland for example, private possession of firearms amounts to something like a quarter of the population measured per 100 people.
I'm also a European, and i'm not sure how being one means a damn thing about categorically judging a complex thing like gun ownership in any other culture or place. This applies particularly since many other Europeans in dozens of different states with their own contexts have entirely different motives for doing something practical one way or another. It's downright absurd to claim that "as a European" you can make any kind of value statement about the tendencies in such a diverse range of countries and contexts. Never mind being able to judge the personal protection motives of people in other continents.
Owning guns has many good reasons behind it in any case. These include the obvious like general self protection, home protection, hunting and collecting, but also less obvious reasons that are specific to very particular places.
I currently live in a country where gun ownership is severely restricted, legally at least, but in which violent crime and firearm homicide rates are rampantly high. Many people here have very good reasons to keep guns, under the real world circumstances of criminal groups and gangs having them, the police being uselessly corrupt, and the practical reality of all of that being something that one can't simply wish away by magic, even if they're wishing "as a European".
It's ever more tedious to see random comments with "As a European" appear on this site, followed by some smug, morally superior little value judgement of others from the perspective of one very narrow, insular mindset.
Sorry I phrased it poorly maybe and yes, it was a rate of between 20 and 25 or so per 100 people (not 1000). As you mention, I guessed that much of that also applied to a smaller percentage owning the majority of guns. Those things aside, I don't think this takes away from my main argument.
Sure, if we substitute "many people own guns" with "10% of people own guns" the your argument holds that most people in Europe simply don't avail themselves of guns despite the "good reasons" you cite.
I'm in a rural are in Australia, we have guns like we have shovels and mechanic pits in the sheds - they're funtional tools with a purpose (guns -> feral control).
Waving guns about to deter thieves isn't as useful as having actionable video evidence of theft that identifies people and vehicles .. and it runs the risk of escalation and having to deal with a wounding | murder charge.
And statistically, very very very few guns kill people. The US has well over 300 million, and it is far from the top cause of death or serious injury.
If anything, a collection of them is even less likely to be dangerous, no? Since if someone is collecting something, they tend to be familiar with it and are putting effort into keeping it safe and in good condition.
Even Germany allows gun collections, albeit with a mind blowing amount of paperwork.
And they are worth money. And prone to people trying to grab/forfeit/confiscate.
The American constitution is based on the enlightenment idea that people have "natural rights" granted by God whereas Europe still operates on the feudal idea that rights and privileges are granted by the powers that be and can be revoked.
Yup, and the hard part for many folks in the US right now is that in many areas of the US, their other freedoms (and wealth) are being taken away, using the ‘bait’ of gun rights to distract them from it.
And in other areas, the same thing, but using the bait of reproductive rights.
While those nominally ‘protecting’ those rights actually sabotage them in often subtle ways, while blaming the opposition.
Perhaps such as it ever was? It’s hard to not yell ‘wake up sheeple!’ at the end of that.
Why such needless arrogance from cops in a developed country like US? They for sure couldn't be following some written law, right?
I mean that's not even pretending to 'protect and serve', unless we change subject from 'citizens' to 'ourselves'. I would expect such stories from say Russia or some parts of Africa, not champion of free world.
There’s a lot of sordid history around the police being used to keep certain ethnic groups in line (heavily but not just black people - one of the more interesting shifts was how Irish immigrants went from being over-policed to comprising large fractions of many forces), but then the war on drugs really hardened things into a relationship more like an occupying military force. That coincided with many cops joining white flight to the suburbs, meaning that they didn’t feel part of the cities where they served as had been the case a generation earlier, and the lurid tales of how violent & well-armed drug gangs were along with how dangerous “super predators” were lead to a lot of quasi-military weaponry and tactics becoming routine with quaint things like warrants being severely undermined. I say quasi-military because I’ve known multiple combat vets to express disbelief at the poor discipline shown by cops compared to the rules they had in places like Fallujah.
The other big driver was the concept of qualified immunity and civil forfeiture. The modern form of the latter was invented during the drug war and formally embraced by the Reagan administration as a way to make elevated police presence self-funding, and that opened up a lot of room for abuse since it created huge conflicts of interest and the growth of qualified immunity removed the potential counterbalance of personal accountability.
The persecution of the Irish was a leftover of the British's attempted cultural eradication of celtic and Catholic identities. British media often portrayed the Irish as violent and backwards, and the living conditions the British enforced often made the stereotypes seem true. After the Eiri Amach of 1798 and Irish Potato Famine of 1845 there were two waves of large immigration of Irish farmers, fisherman, and sailors to Boston and New York. These former farmers, fisherman, and sailors were extremely unfamiliar with many of the job types available in the heavily industrialized cities and struggled to find employment they couldn't form for themselves. As a result high levels of unemployment and street crime were part of American Irish life in cities in the 1850s and 1860s, leading to them being seen as troublemakers and being heavily targeted by city patrolmen.
By the 1870s a large portion had left through Pennsylvania to settle in the Appalachian Mountains, and many more were pushing further west to work on the rail lines. As they were often paired up with the Chinese and German migrant workers they were distrusted and weren't easily integrated into heavily English, French, and Italian descended communities that settled along the developing railroads, continuing the reputation of the Irish being supposed troublemakers.
However back in the major east coast cities the Irish who stayed were successfully carving out their own districts thanks to the enforced isolation from other ethnic groups, allowing them to form almost vertical control of the political process from individual home to district level. To ensure this control wasn't ceded as the cities grew and to prevent the return of the abuse of the 1850s, rising political institutions like Tammany Hall heavily encouraged first and second generation Irish immigrants to perform enforcement instead, leading to Irish descendants taking positions as everything from police officers to prosecutors. By the 1910s this push meant that as many as one in five police officers in New York and Boston was either an Irishman, the child of an Irishman, or the grandchild of an Irishman.
There are a couple of different things coming together but the big one is that while they were first considered degenerates, criminal, drunks, etc. they weren’t denied all of the legal status whiteness offered. As states removed the property requirements, allowing all white men to vote, the large groups of Irish immigrants voted cohesively enough to become very influential in a lot of cities – helpfully around the same time that booming cities needed professional police & fire departments, creating a ton of civil servant jobs which did not require formal certifications or uncommon skills. Once a few people from a tightly-knit community get in more will follow, and the Irish tended to be more insular as Catholics in a Protestant country.
Do you have a source showing that Joseph Dorobek was extremely racist? I can't seem to find anything about him being racist. I saw one article which said that according to Dorobek's granddaughter it was coined by her mother who was 17 at the time, and he submitted her idea as part of a contest to find a motto
They mostly are not, but with 300 million people and free press you hear about the exceptions. If you think your country doesn't have simialar problems you are not paying attention.
Or it just isn't being discussed. I'd expect to hear fewer of these stories in Russia because they don't have a free press and you can be punished for what you say online.
I'm sure this is what you mean, but not everyone is going to understand what that phrase means.
It happens enough (20 years ago, at least) that a short-term visitor like myself actually saw (but happily didn't experience) multiple examples of cops abusing people (beatings, mostly). The completely oblivious reaction of the crowds around these incidents spoke volumes more; it was clear that nobody wanted to attract any attention.
Cops in the USA are social tech support. They exist to protect the social and economic status quo, and to close out trouble tickets that come in over the phone. Protecting and serving aren’t in the job description, practically or even legally.
Your head not being on a pike/your continued breathing is also part of that 'economic and social status quo'. I think we can agree then that 'economic and political status quo' is thus a uselessly vague term.
Ive had a bunch of run ins with cops and, to me, they just seem like guys who have a job thats annoying. I didn't get a big "classist conspiracy" vibe.
I recommend not believing everything you read on the Internet. In a country with 330 million people, a one-in-a-million event happens often enough to be a regular fixture in the news. And it gets clicks every time, reliably.
If that happened to me I would put up posters with the face and name of the thief (police officer) that did that in his neighborhood. I would want everyone to know what kind of an asshole he is.
Eventually I got a letter saying I had to show up and prove I wasnt going to do drugs with it. So I showed up with my invoice.
Then I was told I had to submit fingerprints and sign a letter promising I wasnt going to do drugs and I refused.
Finally a month later they sent me a letter saying I had forfeited the money and I showed up again (took a day off work) and they said I had to go to court. So I went to court, and the judge spent ten minutes telling the cops that didnt show up I had to get my money back.
Next month after that I got a call saying I had property to pick up and that I'd be fined daily if I didnt. So I got the money back.