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I'm aware of the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony, but that's not relevant in this case. The tip came from a known confidential informant, not a random person

by ggreer 11y ago

I'm aware of the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony, but that's not relevant in this case. The tip came from a known confidential informant, not a random person. The police were going to pursue the lead, stinger or no. The stinger just made it easier for them to verify that the suspects were at their homes. Yes, proper procedures are important. Yes, I doubt this stinger usage was legal. Yes, this was bad police work. I agree with all of those points. As I said before, the OPD was incompetent. Now for a thought experiment: Imagine we lived in a world where police needed a warrant to dust for latent fingerprints. Such procedures would safeguard the privacy of citizens and prevent many abuses of power. Still, I think that world would be worse than this one. Such hindrances would, at the margin, make it harder to solve cases and allow more criminals to evade capture. Those costs are high enough to outweigh the privacy benefits. Now imagine trying to convince people of the advantages of warrantless fingerprint-dusting. No matter how you frame it, everyone thinks you don't care about civil liberties. Many of them try to educate you on the importance of checks and balances in the legal system. Sounds pretty frustrating, huh? I hope that helps you see where I'm coming from. Edit: So far in this whole thread, not a single reply has engaged with my actual argument. (sigh) I give up. Here's another thought experiment: If the Supreme Court ruled in favor of warrantless stingrays, would you be OK with them? If not, maybe legality isn't your true reason for opposing them.

mattlutze 11y ago
>> Eyewitnesses are generally pretty terrible at providing a true and accurate accounting of specific details in a sudden situation. For many reasons, informants can be misinformed, confused, incorrect, malicious. > I'm aware of the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony, but that's not relevant in this case. The tip came from a known confidential informant, not a random person. Many informants provide information all the time about crimes. Accuracy and reliability of informant reporting is always an issue for police. Again, that's why they have procedures dictating how they have to verify information, etc. The article says only "confidential informant," so you may have misread and assigned more value to the informant's report than you otherwise would have, which is understandable. > Yes, this was bad police work The issue here isn't "bad" police work as much as it's "warrant-less search and seizure." So, possibly illegal police work. They were quite competent and use tools that haven't necessarily been outlawed yet; when courts start outlawing stingrays, then its incompetence. > Now for a thought experiment: If I leave evidence at the scene of a crime, it's understood to be within the law for the police to collect it and analyze it. Fingerprints, body fluids, electronic devices, all fair game. I have no reasonable expectation of privacy if I've left stuff at a crime scene. This is not that. This is if the police didn't need a warrant to enter your house and collect fingerprint/other samples, for the purpose of determining if you may have been involved in a crime in the past. That's a violation of your right of the people to be secure in your person, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. In a similar way, the courts need to decide if it's also a violation when police, without a warrant, sett a wiretrap to spoof a cell phone tower with the intent of discovering a person's location or other personal information from a person's private electronic devices. It's held to be the case that a wiretap cannot be placed without a warrant. It is reasonable to extend that logic to the automatic/unintentional/"unconscious" communication a person's cell phone does with the cellular network, to say nothing about using that stingray to capture actual explicit communications made by the person over that network. I do get where you're coming from; I just don't agree that the argument you've laid out is sufficient to subjugate a constitutionally dictated right. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the federal courts and in congress.
- merpnderp 11y ago
  The problem is they often verify the information with a SWAT raid on someone's home in the middle of the night. Lots of people have been shot on these kinds of raids and in many of the cases the informant's info was wrong.
jschwartzi 11y ago
How likely is a latent to produce a false positive? What if the police burst into your house and start dusting for prints because they're "collecting evidence." They then run those prints through their database of existing prints, match you to a crime in another state for which you have an alibi, and arrest you. You're held without bail because it was a violent crime, and your presence in another state at the time of arrest marks you as a flight risk. Because the court where your trial will be held has a several month backlog, you spend several months in jail. On the first day of the trial, evidence is heard of your alibi, which exonerates you. How would that be just for any of the parties involved?

by ggreer 11y ago

mattlutze 11y ago

>> Eyewitnesses are generally pretty terrible at providing a true and accurate accounting of specific details in a sudden situation. For many reasons, informants can be misinformed, confused, incorrect, malicious. > I'm aware of the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony, but that's not relevant in this case. The tip came from a known confidential informant, not a random person. Many informants provide information all the time about crimes. Accuracy and reliability of informant reporting is always an issue for police. Again, that's why they have procedures dictating how they have to verify information, etc. The article says only "confidential informant," so you may have misread and assigned more value to the informant's report than you otherwise would have, which is understandable. > Yes, this was bad police work The issue here isn't "bad" police work as much as it's "warrant-less search and seizure." So, possibly illegal police work. They were quite competent and use tools that haven't necessarily been outlawed yet; when courts start outlawing stingrays, then its incompetence. > Now for a thought experiment: If I leave evidence at the scene of a crime, it's understood to be within the law for the police to collect it and analyze it. Fingerprints, body fluids, electronic devices, all fair game. I have no reasonable expectation of privacy if I've left stuff at a crime scene. This is not that. This is if the police didn't need a warrant to enter your house and collect fingerprint/other samples, for the purpose of determining if you may have been involved in a crime in the past. That's a violation of your right of the people to be secure in your person, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. In a similar way, the courts need to decide if it's also a violation when police, without a warrant, sett a wiretrap to spoof a cell phone tower with the intent of discovering a person's location or other personal information from a person's private electronic devices. It's held to be the case that a wiretap cannot be placed without a warrant. It is reasonable to extend that logic to the automatic/unintentional/"unconscious" communication a person's cell phone does with the cellular network, to say nothing about using that stingray to capture actual explicit communications made by the person over that network. I do get where you're coming from; I just don't agree that the argument you've laid out is sufficient to subjugate a constitutionally dictated right. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the federal courts and in congress.

merpnderp 11y ago
The problem is they often verify the information with a SWAT raid on someone's home in the middle of the night. Lots of people have been shot on these kinds of raids and in many of the cases the informant's info was wrong.

jschwartzi 11y ago

How likely is a latent to produce a false positive? What if the police burst into your house and start dusting for prints because they're "collecting evidence." They then run those prints through their database of existing prints, match you to a crime in another state for which you have an alibi, and arrest you. You're held without bail because it was a violent crime, and your presence in another state at the time of arrest marks you as a flight risk. Because the court where your trial will be held has a several month backlog, you spend several months in jail. On the first day of the trial, evidence is heard of your alibi, which exonerates you. How would that be just for any of the parties involved?