17 ms·
Woman catches state police attaching tracker to her car, now they want it back
- rolph 5y agoeither give it back to them, stuck under one of thier cars, or leave it in place and start hanging around near the local precinct
- jmclnx 5y agoFinders keepers. Or better yet, if small enough and you have thick gloves, attach it to a feral cat :)
- smitty1e 5y agoWaste. The Chief of Police's personal vehicle would be more poetic.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoNah, too easy to retrieve. Better an international shipping vessel.
- pavel_lishin 5y agoInternational is good; run up those SIM card charges.
- OminousWeapons 5y agoReminds me of the surveillance van shipped abroad by the union in the Wire XD
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- generalizations 5y agoOr, shove it on a cross-country 18-wheeler. Let them chase it down.
- aaron-santos 5y agoWhile it would be incredibly fun to see the police be led on a goose chase, it's just as wrong to put the unsuspecting truck driver under the same non-consensual tracking situation that original person found themselves in.
- ipaddr 5y agoTwo wrongs don't make a right but it may lead to different methods being used.
- OminousWeapons 5y agoI can't believe no one has mentioned using the car for ride sharing. Let them try to figure out why you are taking such random, meandering paths and make them do more work to get warrants for data from each ride sharing company for elimination purposes. Bonus points if you sometimes remove the tracker and leave it at your house while you are engaging in ride sharing to make the data overlap imperfect and also if you mix in some random driving while the tracker is on to confuse the observers.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoSo many options! On a police cruiser. Up a tree. Under a dumpster behind the impound lot. In the discount bin at Victoria's Secret. The mind boggles!
- jacquesm 5y agoThat last one was really funny :)
- DangitBobby 5y agoIf you have attached a device to my vehicle without my consent, you've forfeited ownership. I have no idea how any rational person (or court, especially) could conclude it would be theft to remove the tracker. It's good to see some sanity.
- xwdv 5y agoFuck the state. It’s your tax money.
- danaris 5y agoUnfortunately, while that's certainly common sense, I very much doubt that there's any actual law or jurisprudence that supports it, whether the perpetrator is a police officer or a private citizen. This is almost certainly yet another place where the law simply hasn't caught up to the technology available.
- munk-a 5y agoIt'd be interesting to see how this might shake out related to lost-and-found precedent - I bet there's some insight there. If you find a sweater abandoned in the woods and take it home I'd assume that isn't stealing unless there was a reasonable case to be made that the article of clothing was recently discarded - but if someone comes looking for it or puts up fliers that may change the math on that. This is essentially the same idea - something was left on your car, potentially maliciously even.
- danaris 5y agoIt's an interesting point, though I wonder how the intentionality would play into it. Malicious or not, it's hard to argue that someone who places a tracker (or a bomb!) on your car has "lost" it, as opposed to knowing exactly where it is and wanting it there for specific purposes.
- slowmovintarget 5y agoIn this case the law is just fine. The State Supreme Court ruled, essentially, that you can't put an object in someone's car and accuse them of theft if they remove it. The court invalidated search warrants issued based on that faulty assertion.
- draw_down 5y agoSeems almost like their main complaint is the lack of stealth or professionalism this surveillance in the police’s execution, an odd complaint. With enemies like these... It’s also weird to describe the state police as an “agency”.
- sschueller 5y agoThey should be required to attach a warrant ID to the device allowing someone to lookup the warrant however I am assuming in this case there was no warrant making the whole thing illegal. Edit: they did have a warrant, which I missed reading the article.
- munk-a 5y agoAccording to the article it looks like they did secure a warrant first.
- ChrisKnott 5y agoWhat a ridiculous thing to assume. Especially since TFA features a statement literally saying "a warrant was obtained for the surveillance equipment."
- Miner49er 5y agoThere's no reason to assume that the statement is true, it's coming from the police, they could easily be lying.
- munk-a 5y agoThere is, honestly, less of a reason to believe it's false. They may be lying but our legal system relies on us trusting the police to be honest and, ideally, strongly punishes those who abuse that trust. I'm happy to concede that policing in America has long eroded that trust but it's still a requirement that you obey and openly communicate with anyone identifying themselves as law enforcement.
- greyface- 5y ago> it's still a requirement that you obey and openly communicate with anyone identifying themselves as law enforcement. There is no requirement that you communicate openly with police. See: the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.
- spockz 5y agoThis might be a bit meta. But why is the article interspersed with segments/links to other articles longer than one screen on my phone so that every time I think the article is finished?
- upofadown 5y agoThose things are what, $40 now? Why are the police such cheapskates about them? If they are hoping to get some incriminating information from an offline tracker then wouldn't they be asking the suspect to help incriminate themselves by returning it?
- jowsie 5y ago$40 if you were to buy one from Alibaba, I'm sure the ones that get sold to police departments cost hundreds, if not thousands, along with expensive subscription fees and mandatory training programmes.
- BikiniPrince 5y agoWell they get it back. This is far less ambiguous then a case I read about years ago when someone found one on their car. In that case, they started tracking him because of a sketchy friend. Kid took it off and sold it on eBay. Turns out you can’t tamper with a wiretap. I think the wiretap is the least of her problems if she is up in federal drug charges.
- bobthepanda 5y agoWouldn’t you need intent? At least in the Indiana case that was why the charges did not stick for the man who took it off. He plausibly didn’t intend to ruin a wiretap or steal the device because he thought it was some random thing and he took it off his car. > “To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we would need to conclude the Hoosiers don’t have the authority to remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal vehicles,” Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote for a unanimous court.
- polynomial 5y ago"the Hoosiers"? I know what the word means, obvi, just seems an odd wording for a judicial finding.
- bobthepanda 5y agoIt's written by Indianans for the Indiana Supreme Court.
- dehrmann 5y agoIt's also easy to argue that the car owner had no reason to think it was law enforcement that put it there and not a private investigator or a stalker.
- bobthepanda 5y agoYes, it's in the preceding paragraph before the cited one.
- toss1 5y ago>>“To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we would need to conclude the Hoosiers don’t have the authority to remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal vehicles,” Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote for a unanimous court. Yup. Finders' keepers. The only question is what is the most fun thing to do with it. Maybe a full teardown? Or, use a drone to deposit it up on the top of a tel/power utility pole a block from the police offices (or just attach it to a strong string and another weight and throw it waaaay up in a tree nearby? There's surely more clever & fun ideas out there...
- marcusverus 5y agoSo this woman was written up on charges for Distribution/Manufacture of Schedule 1 drugs (among other things)[0], and was subsequently the subject of a minor inconvenience when she discovered that she was being (legally) monitored by the cops. The cops then asked for their property back. And the result of this was a sympathetic write-up of the poor, mildly inconvenienced drug dealer? We are really scraping the bottom of the barrel in our search for victimization porn... [0] https://www.publicpolicerecord.com/louisiana/batonrouge-jail/BEVERLY_TIARATISHA/21-00002513 https://www.publicpolicerecord.com/louisiana/batonrouge-jail...
- ipaddr 5y agoShame on you for victimizing someone because you label them with a status that somehow makes them lower than you in society? Should we only care if it happens to someone of your status or do we want to apply laws equally?
- generalizations 5y agoI don't think status has anything to do with their comment. What made you bring it up?
- ipsin 5y ago"drug dealer" ... "bottom of the barrel"... The obvious implication is that drug dealers are low-status individuals who deserve this kind of treatment.
- IshKebab 5y agoThey never said that she was bottom of the barrel.
- xd 5y agoWhat's your experience of drug dealers? I'm really curious where this new age anti police pro drug peddler mentality is coming from because I've had multiple friends over my 40 years lost to drugs so what the fuck is the defence of these people about? Many people that can be sold drugs are victims.. so yeah these drug dealer cretins are low status.
- neves 5y agoThe problem is that the police can't track the tracker!
- Havoc 5y agoThrow it in trash and police can play easter egg hunt in the landfill
- dehrmann 5y ago> A woman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, watched State Police place a tracking device on her vehicle last weekend and contacted her local NAACP president Why would you contact the NAACP over the ACLU?
- pyrophane 5y agoOdd that they aren’t more specific than saying she was arrested on “serious” drug charges. Depending on who you ask, that could be anything from possession to trafficking. Sure, that’s not what the article is about, but leaving it so vague just make the absence of that information stand out. Also, the story here really just seems to be this: police poorly but lawfully install tracking device on car, owner of car removes it, and police demand it back. Then they discuss a previous case where they court said it wasn’t theft to remove the device. I’m not sure there is much of a story here.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y agoThe police shouldn't be enforcing drug laws. They should be advocating for legalisation and regulation. Massive waste of life, time, and money.
- bpodgursky 5y agoCops choosing which laws to enforce leads down a very bad path. I understand where you're coming from, but a society where the police have total control over who is arrested and who goes free — who the laws apply to — is a much darker world that I don't want a part of. (And let me head you off — no, it's not the one we live in right now. You don't actually know what it's like to live in a society without civilian control of the police.)
- seoaeu 5y agoPolice do have enormous discretion over who is arrested and who goes free. It could certainly be a whole lot worse, but it could also be much better.
- Ar-Curunir 5y agoPolice already do that. They don’t police rich white neighborhoods as deeply, and often don’t enforce laws to the same severity eg drug possession laws.
- 5y ago
- gexla 5y agoShe didn't have to click "I agree" on a giant pop-up model explaining tracking policy? I bet they even have trackers on their website too. And how is it that they can justify trying up multiple people to attach the device, but not to track the thing and pick it up? Interesting the comments mentioning they would keep it. If the police are showing up at my door looking angry and asking for their stuff back, I'm not going to argue.
- egberts1 5y agoBest to reattach to police chief’s vehicle. Enough said.
- pvaldes 5y agoI bet that tracking a police car or spying police private conversations would be a typified crime, and with our name clearly written in the device serial number. If police is trying to prove that you are a criminal, basically you would be doing they life much easier.
- pvaldes 5y ago-> doing -their- life much easier
- ttt0 5y agoReminds me of this: Cops put GPS tracker on man’s car, charge him with theft for removing it https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/man-charged-with-theft-for-removing-police-gps-tracker-from-his-car/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/man-charged-with...
- exprez135 5y agoAfter the article was written, the Supreme Court of Indiana did end up ruling in favor of the car owner. From the ruling [1]: > To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we would need to conclude that Hoosiers don’t have the authority to remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal vehicles. In this case, however, there was no obvious indication that the device was put there by the police. [1]: https://law.justia.com/cases/indiana/supreme-court/2020/19s-cr-528.html https://law.justia.com/cases/indiana/supreme-court/2020/19s-...
- EdwardDiego 5y agoA man in my country, found police trackers on his vehicle, listed them for sale on the local version of eBay. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/48059/Man-finds-police-tracking-devices-in-cars http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/48059/Man-finds-police-track...
- qwerty456127 5y ago> ongoing investigation involving Ms. Beverly and a suspect It should be illegal to directly spy on people who themselves are not suspects.
- klondike_ 5y agoIn case you're wondering what one of these trackers look like, here's a teardown by iFixit: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Tracking+Device+Teardown/5250 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Tracking+Device+Teardown/525...
- nexuist 5y agoI am laughing so hard at: > This teardown is not a repair guide. To repair your FBI Tracking Device, use our service manual.
- cycop 5y agoSo it looks like a pipe bomb with a detonator
- echlebek 5y agoWow, does it ever. This picture in particular looks just incredibly sketchy. https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/oYAZSOBmMEibujjd.medium https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/oYAZSOBmMEibujjd.med... I would be scared out of my mind if I found that on my car.
- fnord77 5y ago> The device is powered by four lithium-thionyl chloride (Li-SOCl2) D cell batteries. > Each cell is good for 13,000 mAh! That's about double the capacity of the iPad 2's battery.
- nocturnial 5y agoI'm wondering if it's legal to deny the return of the tracker unless they can provide a receipt of them purchasing it? For all we know it could be an FBI tracker, or installed by some other PD. So whoever can provide a purchase receipt can have the tracker.
- macinjosh 5y agoCould you imagine the bureaucratic nightmare it would be to find that receipt?
- FranchuFranchu 5y agoI think that's the point
- GuB-42 5y agoIf you find something that is not yours, whatever it is, you don't get to keep it. And if the owner wants it back and you don't want to give it back, it is theft. I am sure there are plenty of special cases and a variety of laws but that's the general idea. And if the tracker was legally installed, you know it is owned by the police and don't want to give it back, then it is reasonable to call it theft. We can't blame her if she destroyed it, torn it apart or whatever but now that she knows, there is no excuse. Now, I don't know what the laws are but I think that could be perfectly reasonable to say: I will put it on my front porch tomorrow, it will be in an expensive looking box, feel free to pick it up. I mean, with you around, there is no way someone would want to steal an expensive looking box sitting unattended on the street, right ;)
- permo-w 5y ago> “It’s bush league,” Collins told WBRZ. “The fact that a young woman can see you doing something like this means you’re not very good at it.” It’s interesting that in today’s witch-huntocracy, the NAACP chapter president would be so careless with his words
- aussieguy1234 5y agoI'm curious as to what would happen if, after discovering a tracker on her car, she put the tracker in a box then FedEx'ed it to an overseas country?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- klyrs 5y agoIf only they had a tracker on their tracker, to help find it when the tracker gets lost
- max-ibel 5y agoI’d mail it to a police station in Russia for instance :)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]