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>The problem is most people don't think like that. But what is the problem here anyway? If there's a crime at a location, police detectives will investigate an

>The problem is most people don't think like that. But what is the problem here anyway? If there's a crime at a location, police detectives will investigate anyone that has any connection to that location. That someone may have searched for that location is certainly relevant to the investigation, but it doesn't imply that those individuals are automatically a suspect. In fact, they will be quickly ruled out.

candiodari 6y ago
Mostly there are zero suspects. These subpoenas are, as you point out, ways to find more suspects. There's just one issue: they also often only turn up ONE suspect. And here's the thing with people and police: everybody lies. The victim of the crime lies. Suspects lie (but the thing is: suspects lie whether or not they've committed a crime, this is not a difference between innocent and guilty). Witnesses lie (don't want to get caught, and yes the police encourages this, at wrong parking. Police will encourage them to lie, because they can't ignore a confession of wrongful parking and they understand they'll lose cooperation if they write them a ticket for their trouble). And of course the police officers themselves lie. Whatever hope you have of finding the underlying truth in such a haystack less than a few years of work ... forget it. And then comes Google with "concrete evidence". Something that is actually true. Very likely not related to the crime, but true. So you can probably understand that this would introduce quite a big bias against a "suspect", when their real connection to the crime is "someone was shot, and this guy googled 'gun' 2 days before". Furthermore, this gives them something to put to a judge or a jury, when before they had nothing, or nothing coherent. Do you really think at this point a police officer, judged by the number of cases solved, bad guys put away, just walks away without at least applying very strong pressure on whoever was fingered ?
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Police have no obligation to prosecute a wrongful parking confession.
  - candiodari 6y ago
    Police have an obligation (and so does everyone else) to report any crime they're aware of. But the same goes stronger for police officers: they cannot have a court document (like a witness statement) they know of that contains crimes and then not report those. Any such document kills the "I didn't know" defense. And parking violations are crimes. If they have a DA that doesn't like them ... So yes they do. In theory they risk their job if they don't. Now I'm not stupid. No precinct commissioner will fire an agent for this. However they will strongly discourage making a habit out of that. And if there is even a slight appearance that they're neglecting to report it because they're friends or family of the "perpetrators", then it becomes a LOT more serious. The same goes for private individuals by the way, except your job is safe (unless it requires strict no convictions, like healthcare positions). However, this is still one of the reasons for you tell the police "I don't know. I haven't seen a thing", because if you had seen it, didn't report it of your own accord and they don't like you, you'll be paying a fine.
idrios 6y ago
Exactly everything candiodari said. The police are under immense pressure to put somebody away or else they're basically telling the public "we have no idea who did this crime". They need to find and convict a suspect to instill confidence from the public that they're doing a good job, in order to keep their jobs and their funding. This doesn't mean they need to find the actual criminal, only that they need to appear that they did. The more information you have about a person, the more you can present to a jury selective facts about them that make them look guilty. And with enough circumstantial evidence you could make quite a lot of innocent people look guilty, despite having no causal evidence whatsoever. Google is providing circumstantial evidence, not causal.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > The police are under immense pressure to put somebody away or else they're basically telling the public "we have no idea who did this crime". They need to find and convict a suspect to instill confidence from the public that they're doing a good job, in order to keep their jobs and their funding. This doesn't mean they need to find the actual criminal, only that they need to appear that they did. they don't even have to put the person away necessarily. an important metric used to evaluate police departments is the clearance rate, which is just the fraction of crimes where they found someone to charge. whether or not the charges stick or get thrown out entirely does not affect this number, and would more typically be used to evaluate the state/district attorney's office. so really all the police need to look good is to collect the bare minimum amount of evidence to charge someone in a case and then move on. if the conviction rate ends up being low or a bunch of charges get thrown out, they can just say the prosecutors are lazy/incompetent. at the same time, the prosecutors can point the finger back at the police and say they throw out so many charges because the police don't collect evidence properly. as long as they drop the weak cases, plea out the middling ones, and take a few slam-dunk cases to court, their numbers will look okay too. all the links in the chain only get examined together in the few high-profile cases that linger in the news.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >They need to find and convict a suspect to instill confidence from the public that they're doing a good job, in order to keep their jobs and their funding. This doesn't mean they need to find the actual criminal, only that they need to appear that they did. There are always instances of bad process and bad outcomes, but in general that's not how the justice system works. I'm sorry for your cynicism.

candiodari 6y ago

Mostly there are zero suspects. These subpoenas are, as you point out, ways to find more suspects. There's just one issue: they also often only turn up ONE suspect. And here's the thing with people and police: everybody lies. The victim of the crime lies. Suspects lie (but the thing is: suspects lie whether or not they've committed a crime, this is not a difference between innocent and guilty). Witnesses lie (don't want to get caught, and yes the police encourages this, at wrong parking. Police will encourage them to lie, because they can't ignore a confession of wrongful parking and they understand they'll lose cooperation if they write them a ticket for their trouble). And of course the police officers themselves lie. Whatever hope you have of finding the underlying truth in such a haystack less than a few years of work ... forget it. And then comes Google with "concrete evidence". Something that is actually true. Very likely not related to the crime, but true. So you can probably understand that this would introduce quite a big bias against a "suspect", when their real connection to the crime is "someone was shot, and this guy googled 'gun' 2 days before". Furthermore, this gives them something to put to a judge or a jury, when before they had nothing, or nothing coherent. Do you really think at this point a police officer, judged by the number of cases solved, bad guys put away, just walks away without at least applying very strong pressure on whoever was fingered ?

srtjstjsj 6y ago
Police have no obligation to prosecute a wrongful parking confession.
- candiodari 6y ago
  Police have an obligation (and so does everyone else) to report any crime they're aware of. But the same goes stronger for police officers: they cannot have a court document (like a witness statement) they know of that contains crimes and then not report those. Any such document kills the "I didn't know" defense. And parking violations are crimes. If they have a DA that doesn't like them ... So yes they do. In theory they risk their job if they don't. Now I'm not stupid. No precinct commissioner will fire an agent for this. However they will strongly discourage making a habit out of that. And if there is even a slight appearance that they're neglecting to report it because they're friends or family of the "perpetrators", then it becomes a LOT more serious. The same goes for private individuals by the way, except your job is safe (unless it requires strict no convictions, like healthcare positions). However, this is still one of the reasons for you tell the police "I don't know. I haven't seen a thing", because if you had seen it, didn't report it of your own accord and they don't like you, you'll be paying a fine.

idrios 6y ago

Exactly everything candiodari said. The police are under immense pressure to put somebody away or else they're basically telling the public "we have no idea who did this crime". They need to find and convict a suspect to instill confidence from the public that they're doing a good job, in order to keep their jobs and their funding. This doesn't mean they need to find the actual criminal, only that they need to appear that they did. The more information you have about a person, the more you can present to a jury selective facts about them that make them look guilty. And with enough circumstantial evidence you could make quite a lot of innocent people look guilty, despite having no causal evidence whatsoever. Google is providing circumstantial evidence, not causal.

leetcrew 6y ago
> The police are under immense pressure to put somebody away or else they're basically telling the public "we have no idea who did this crime". They need to find and convict a suspect to instill confidence from the public that they're doing a good job, in order to keep their jobs and their funding. This doesn't mean they need to find the actual criminal, only that they need to appear that they did. they don't even have to put the person away necessarily. an important metric used to evaluate police departments is the clearance rate, which is just the fraction of crimes where they found someone to charge. whether or not the charges stick or get thrown out entirely does not affect this number, and would more typically be used to evaluate the state/district attorney's office. so really all the police need to look good is to collect the bare minimum amount of evidence to charge someone in a case and then move on. if the conviction rate ends up being low or a bunch of charges get thrown out, they can just say the prosecutors are lazy/incompetent. at the same time, the prosecutors can point the finger back at the police and say they throw out so many charges because the police don't collect evidence properly. as long as they drop the weak cases, plea out the middling ones, and take a few slam-dunk cases to court, their numbers will look okay too. all the links in the chain only get examined together in the few high-profile cases that linger in the news.
macspoofing 6y ago
>They need to find and convict a suspect to instill confidence from the public that they're doing a good job, in order to keep their jobs and their funding. This doesn't mean they need to find the actual criminal, only that they need to appear that they did. There are always instances of bad process and bad outcomes, but in general that's not how the justice system works. I'm sorry for your cynicism.