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Police: Mock us in Cartoons, go to Prison
- fexl 15y ago"Respect mah authori-tah!"
- civilian 15y agoYeah. This is police harassment, plain and simple. Piggies! Also: http://www.kingcounty.gov/courts/SuperiorCourt/judges/cayce.aspx http://www.kingcounty.gov/courts/SuperiorCourt/judges/cayce....
- rhizome 15y agoActually, it's the judge and the prosecutor who are on the hook more for this use of Cyberstalking (and likely ultimately terrorism laws) to umask a critic using their First Amendment rights. The prosecutor is at risk for losing their qualified immunity, since he is using his position to commit a civil rights crime.
- thirdhaf 15y agoProsecutors have absolute immunity which is incredibly difficult to overcome. Even falsifying evidence doesn't seem to do it unless there's a "pattern of abuse" which is practically impossible to prove. http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Pottawattamie_County_et_al._v._McGhee_et_al.#Argument_Preview http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Pottawattamie_Coun...
- mindcrime 15y agoAction is sometimes taken against prosecutors who abuse their position, though. Mike Nifong comes to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Nifong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Nifong Granted, the behavior does have to be pretty egregious, but at least these people aren't (always) above the law.
- rhizome 15y agoProsecutors do not have absolute immunity when it comes to crimes that are only possible with their office. If they do something bad in a case, they have absolute immunity, but if they break the law under the guise of law enforcement, they don't. Same as cops.
- fexl 15y agoHey, just because police behave badly, that's no reason to start insulting pigs!
- VladRussian 15y agowell, at least they didn't do that to him http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ljYNgLnpxM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ljYNgLnpxM
- fexl 15y agoThe guy's screaming "Dad! Dad! Dad!" ... that breaks my heart. One bystander wisely asks "How do you resist when they're on top of your back?" and then wonders why they don't just put the cuffs on him and be done with it. That's a common theme I've noticed with these incidents: the assailants keep saying "stop resisting! stop resisting!" But I imagine it's kind of hard to stop struggling and moving around when you're terrified, in excruciating pain, and being crushed with body weight like that. Wrongful and unwarranted arrest is bad enough, but this sadistic torture and power-play brutality has got to stop. Oh and get this: http://www.cityoffullerton.com/civica/press/display.asp?layout=1&Entry=2433 http://www.cityoffullerton.com/civica/press/display.asp?layo... Would you go forward if you were a witness?
- VladRussian 15y ago>One bystander wisely asks "How do you resist when they're on top of your back? Convulsions from multiple tazering and hits into the head and spine. It is a catch-22 for the victim - police tazers you, you convulse, ie. resist, thus giving them plausible cause to tazer you more and/or in this particular case to hit your head, neck into the curb, etc... when they hit your head (or kidneys - they professionally trained and very experienced in how to hit you) the brain and spine nervous tissue shock make you convulse, ie. resist, ... loop continues.
- fexl 15y agoRight, well put ... and to the bystander's credit, he was asking the question rhetorically. But you're right: basically your own death throes become "resistance". And to answer my own question: I'd like to think I'd step forward as a witness, even though it might mean a few years of harassment.
- deleted 15y ago
- smokeyj 15y agoCops are legal terrorists.
- glimcat 15y agoOne of the ideas in the theory of government is that it exists to have a monopoly on violence and so forth. It's murder if you do it once, it's not if the state does it a few hundred thousand times. To an extent, police abusing power and inducing fear in the populace is "working as intended" if it keeps the state in power. But our ideals tend to be such that we think the state should function with greater respect for human rights and individual freedoms. Also, these wahoos are just a bunch of loose cannons. It's embarrassing the state, not serving it.
- DasIch 15y agoHuman rights and individual freedoms are not just ideals. They are crucial checks which insure that the government doesn't go "rogue" and abuses the power it's been given.
- seagaia 15y agoI wouldn't be too quick to write all cops off as bad. There are definitely a good number of "good" cops. We should make sure not to stereotype policemen because a few of them do something idiotic. I think a big problem with a lot of government positions or other legal positions are that a noticeable (hence this situation) percentage of the people are power-hungry, or have a chip on their shoulder. Which results in unspeakable, completely illogical results like this - torturing someone to feel like you have power, and then being able to get away with it because of an obfuscating and broken legal system, filled with good law people and bad law people.
- VladRussian 15y ago>I wouldn't be too quick to write all cops off as bad. There are definitely a good number of "good" cops. the system easy makes bad even out of the good ones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment "Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority."
- meow 15y agoSomeone should schedule Mock-A-Cop day on facebook to celebrate satire.
- wooster 15y agoSome believe that the police merely are trying to use the guise of charges to obtain the suspect's name in order to harass him outside the courts. A valid possibility, which speaks strongly in favor of anonymous speech still being important.
- axusgrad 15y agoThis is why we defended Lori Drew's right to free speech after her cyber bullying of Megan Meiers
- chc 15y agoIf you can't distinguish between a woman deviously driving a vulnerable girl to suicide and a satirist doing cartoons about public scandals, I can't imagine you've put much thought into the subject.
- ColinWright 15y agoAlso submitted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2849372 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2849372
- beej71 15y agoOh, man... if the Renton police thought they were getting mocked before, they are unprepared for what's coming. Edit: And the department isn't even named in the videos! Hilarious!
- ratsbane 15y agoOne of the few defenses society has against this kind of abuse is the Streisand effect - their attempts to suppress this kind of speech only make it have more effect. Because of that I'm all for giving this kind of story more exposure.
- adammichaelc 15y ago425-430-7500 option 8 is the number for the police department in question. I think that people tend to act differently if they know they are being watched so I called and talked to the person who answered to (a) confirm the story and (b) express my concerns about the abuse of power.
- colanderman 15y agoFrom the article: "illicit relations between a female cop and a police officer" ...are female cops not police officers? Are police officers never female? I hope I'm missing some detail in terminology because this smacks of sexism on the part of the author.
- hullo 15y agoNo, I think it's just sloppy, probably the same incident from this quote (later in the article): Chief Prosecutor Shawn Arthur writes, "[The videos] discussed a past incident tha has already been investigated.. regarding a dating relationship (a female detective) had with a suspect."
- llimllib 15y agoThe article is almost unreadable due to the many grammatical errors contained within. It's a shame too, for such an important story.
- gnosis 15y agoMay a thousand parody videos bloom in response!