6 ms·

Louisiana man tells joke online, gets arrested by swat

92 points by tomohawk 4y ago

hirundo 4y ago
The extent of qualified immunity is a stain on this country, a corruption created by the judiciary. For it to be legal for the rule of law to not apply to a privileged class is to eat the rule of law from within. An authority that exempts itself from its own rules bleeds away its legitimacy.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  It’s amazing watching American politics talk about how not even the President is above the law but then watch news stories about Qualified Immunity. If a President wanted to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, maybe they should deputize themselves first.
  - P_I_Staker 4y ago
    Whether or not the president can pardon himself is not a settled matter in US law.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      Pardons are criminal, QI is about civil liability.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > If a President wanted to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, maybe they should deputize themselves first. QI has nothing to do with being “deputized”, it has to do no with being a public official. It was first articulated in a suit over government cobtracts against White House, non-law-enforcement, officials.
- Melting_Harps 4y ago
  > The extent of qualified immunity is a stain on this country... Agreed, and that is why we fought so hard in CO to over-turn it [0] during the BLM riots, which really should have been called overt police abuse riots akin to those in LA in the 90s during the Rodeny King arrest. Which I saw happen in real-time as a child. The fact that the rest of the US didn't follow suit was an immense tragedy, as that was likely the ONLY time that this would have been possible due to COVID and the shutdown slowing down the economy enough for people to realize how far we had fallen and get politically active in their community. Instead it's been a tragic reality come to life rife with more authoritarian encroachment on civil liberties both on and offline. All of this while we see what authoritarian nations like Russia and China do serving as a stark reality of how quickly bad things can get. See, this is the hard part about living in a Republic: you have to place a great deal of faith in the populace to be just as active and as well informed as oneself for it to sustain itself if it's to remain a Republic wherein the Citizen's rights are upheld and the State is suppressed to it's enumerated and outlined duties. I personally never wanted to be an activist, it's incredibly difficult and often sad thing to do because of the harsh realities of Life it exposes you and the emotional and mental toll that it takes, but I realized that without it we can lose what so many fought for to get us to this point in order to advance Society and Civilization as a whole--as flawed as the West may be it is still orders of magnitude better than perhaps any of it's predecessors to date in most capacities, and it's worth fighting for. I fear that that the American experiment placed the most value on this since it's inception, but that much like Rome because of overt corruption and nepotism it's populace became more and more disenfranchised and apathetic as time went on and it devolved into just another imperial plutocracy. I still think the US is remarkable in many ways, but if it's own populace cannot or will not resist against this than what was thought to be an ongoing experiment in self-governance might have ended in my Lifetime. > It’s amazing watching American politics talk about how not even the President is above the law but then watch news stories about Qualified Immunity. That's just a platitude and I don't think that was ever anything but a fabrication to tell children and the feeble minded alike to give the illusion of how skewed the Law really is the closer you get to it's source of power (State): Bush et al are all War Criminals [1]. It's worth noting that this all happened when I was a child and I soon realized what a farce this was then, too. Hence the need to get involved in activism. > In recent weeks, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and others have been formulating defenses against possible prosecutions for war crimes and are pressuring Republican members of Congress to pass new laws to protect them. >> As long as George Bush is president and controls the Department of Justice, there will no prosecutions for war crimes, but after Bush is gone, anything could happen and hundreds of Americans could be charged with war crimes. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2020/06/21/colorado-passes-landmark-law-against-qualified-immunity-creates-new-way-to-protect-civil-rights/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2020/06/21/colorado... 1: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-george-bush-guilty-of_b_26669 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-george-bush-guilty-of_b_26...
- HPMOR 4y ago
  Absolutely agree. The legislative branch needs to reassert itself here.
  - salawat 4y ago
    Though they should do a little something about their specific and conspicuous exclusion from coverage under insider trading laws while they are at it. Just to be self-referentially consistent.
sn0w_crash 4y ago
Unless imminent physical violence is being threatened, there should never be any police activity over speech. To repeat, no human should ever be arrested or visited by police for speaking, typing, or posting anything anywhere.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  We should add that as an amendment to our constitution.
- sfe22 4y ago
  Good wish. However why would the government give up this power?
autoexec 4y ago
How did the police find out about the joke? Was Waylon facebook friends with the sheriff? Did facebook proactively alert the police and forward them this user's information or was this the police leveraging their own system installed or pointed at facebook to catch anyone who dared to make fun of them? It's insane that the police would go after this guy just for making a joke. It's not as if he posted song lyrics or anything! (https://www.14news.com/story/26443062/muhlenberg-man-arrested-for-posting-song-lyrics-on-facebook-released-from-jail/ https://www.14news.com/story/26443062/muhlenberg-man-arreste...
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Interestingly at least in the case stage I found qualified immunity wasn’t granted for the song lyrics. This also has a ton of context elided in the news article, like what were the lyrics. https://casetext.com/case/evans-v-muhlenberg-cnty https://casetext.com/case/evans-v-muhlenberg-cnty
  - autoexec 4y ago
    I think that in the song lyrics case the police could have easily justified having an officer (or a mental health professional) pop by to ask some questions and make sure the guy wasn't a threat. That entire issue could have been resolved with a simple conversation. In Waylon's case I can't imagine how the joke (which was: “SHARE SHARE SHARE ! ! ! ! JUST IN: RAPIDES PARISH SHERIFFS OFFICE HAVE ISSUED THE ORDER, IF DEPUTIES COME INTO CONTACT WITH ‘THE INFECTED’ SHOOT ON SIGHT….Lord have mercy on us all. #Covid9teen #weneedyoubradpitt”) could have even justified police knocking on his door at all.
    - fnordpiglet 4y ago
      Yea if you read it they actually did come visit him and ascertained it was nothing. But a school cop unilaterally decided to ignore that evidence and arrested him and made no mention in charging him that they had visited him, he had cooperated, that it was lyrics, that he assured them he had no malice, and that everyone had agreed it was nothing. That’s the premise of why qualified immunity was denied - the officer knew all these facts because he was there, along with several other officers, yet willfully ignored that and omitted it in charging him. I couldn’t find any details about the ultimate resolution of the case, just the judges denial of qualified immunity.
timcavel 4y ago
1letterunixname 4y ago
Does anyone have experience and a specific recommendation for privacy-oriented servers (VPS) hosting providers beyond the reach of US feds? In places like Iceland or Sweden.
- betaby 4y ago
  You would need a VPS in China, Russia, Belarus, Iran.
  - notsound 4y ago
    What if I am also anti those countries?
- tux 4y ago
  Any country that is not "Five Eyes"[1] and similar will do. But the list is short and getting shorter by the day. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
amanaplanacanal 4y ago
I’m wondering what he actually wrote, since they don’t quote it in the article.
rnk 4y ago
If you read the article, it refers to using a long discredited restriction on free speech from WW1. This refers to the law used by President Wilson to put people arguing against the war into jail. That this kind of law has survived this long without being overturned by the US Supreme Court is itself a terrible crime. Qualified Immunity imho is just the latest way to give the police unlimited power to abuse civil rights.
- coldacid 4y ago
  /Schenck/ and /Abrams/ were overturned via the Brandenburg v. Ohio decision of the Supreme Court of the US in 1969.
  - rnk 4y ago
    Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks for mentioning it! https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/189/brandenburg-v-ohio https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/189/brandenburg-v-o.... I would have expected it to have been Vietnam War resistance, instead of civil rights of KKK type speech.
animitronix 4y ago
As we learned in 2020, sometimes the only solution is to burn the police station to the ground.

92 points by tomohawk 4y ago

The extent of qualified immunity is a stain on this country, a corruption created by the judiciary. For it to be legal for the rule of law to not apply to a privileged class is to eat the rule of law from within. An authority that exempts itself from its own rules bleeds away its legitimacy.

Waterluvian 4y ago
It’s amazing watching American politics talk about how not even the President is above the law but then watch news stories about Qualified Immunity. If a President wanted to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, maybe they should deputize themselves first.
- P_I_Staker 4y ago
  Whether or not the president can pardon himself is not a settled matter in US law.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    Pardons are criminal, QI is about civil liability.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > If a President wanted to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, maybe they should deputize themselves first. QI has nothing to do with being “deputized”, it has to do no with being a public official. It was first articulated in a suit over government cobtracts against White House, non-law-enforcement, officials.
Melting_Harps 4y ago
> The extent of qualified immunity is a stain on this country... Agreed, and that is why we fought so hard in CO to over-turn it [0] during the BLM riots, which really should have been called overt police abuse riots akin to those in LA in the 90s during the Rodeny King arrest. Which I saw happen in real-time as a child. The fact that the rest of the US didn't follow suit was an immense tragedy, as that was likely the ONLY time that this would have been possible due to COVID and the shutdown slowing down the economy enough for people to realize how far we had fallen and get politically active in their community. Instead it's been a tragic reality come to life rife with more authoritarian encroachment on civil liberties both on and offline. All of this while we see what authoritarian nations like Russia and China do serving as a stark reality of how quickly bad things can get. See, this is the hard part about living in a Republic: you have to place a great deal of faith in the populace to be just as active and as well informed as oneself for it to sustain itself if it's to remain a Republic wherein the Citizen's rights are upheld and the State is suppressed to it's enumerated and outlined duties. I personally never wanted to be an activist, it's incredibly difficult and often sad thing to do because of the harsh realities of Life it exposes you and the emotional and mental toll that it takes, but I realized that without it we can lose what so many fought for to get us to this point in order to advance Society and Civilization as a whole--as flawed as the West may be it is still orders of magnitude better than perhaps any of it's predecessors to date in most capacities, and it's worth fighting for. I fear that that the American experiment placed the most value on this since it's inception, but that much like Rome because of overt corruption and nepotism it's populace became more and more disenfranchised and apathetic as time went on and it devolved into just another imperial plutocracy. I still think the US is remarkable in many ways, but if it's own populace cannot or will not resist against this than what was thought to be an ongoing experiment in self-governance might have ended in my Lifetime. > It’s amazing watching American politics talk about how not even the President is above the law but then watch news stories about Qualified Immunity. That's just a platitude and I don't think that was ever anything but a fabrication to tell children and the feeble minded alike to give the illusion of how skewed the Law really is the closer you get to it's source of power (State): Bush et al are all War Criminals [1]. It's worth noting that this all happened when I was a child and I soon realized what a farce this was then, too. Hence the need to get involved in activism. > In recent weeks, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and others have been formulating defenses against possible prosecutions for war crimes and are pressuring Republican members of Congress to pass new laws to protect them. >> As long as George Bush is president and controls the Department of Justice, there will no prosecutions for war crimes, but after Bush is gone, anything could happen and hundreds of Americans could be charged with war crimes. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2020/06/21/colorado-passes-landmark-law-against-qualified-immunity-creates-new-way-to-protect-civil-rights/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2020/06/21/colorado... 1: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-george-bush-guilty-of_b_26669 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-george-bush-guilty-of_b_26...
HPMOR 4y ago
Absolutely agree. The legislative branch needs to reassert itself here.
- salawat 4y ago
  Though they should do a little something about their specific and conspicuous exclusion from coverage under insider trading laws while they are at it. Just to be self-referentially consistent.

sn0w_crash 4y ago

Unless imminent physical violence is being threatened, there should never be any police activity over speech. To repeat, no human should ever be arrested or visited by police for speaking, typing, or posting anything anywhere.

commandlinefan 4y ago
We should add that as an amendment to our constitution.
sfe22 4y ago
Good wish. However why would the government give up this power?

autoexec 4y ago

How did the police find out about the joke? Was Waylon facebook friends with the sheriff? Did facebook proactively alert the police and forward them this user's information or was this the police leveraging their own system installed or pointed at facebook to catch anyone who dared to make fun of them? It's insane that the police would go after this guy just for making a joke. It's not as if he posted song lyrics or anything! (https://www.14news.com/story/26443062/muhlenberg-man-arrested-for-posting-song-lyrics-on-facebook-released-from-jail/ https://www.14news.com/story/26443062/muhlenberg-man-arreste...

fnordpiglet 4y ago
Interestingly at least in the case stage I found qualified immunity wasn’t granted for the song lyrics. This also has a ton of context elided in the news article, like what were the lyrics. https://casetext.com/case/evans-v-muhlenberg-cnty https://casetext.com/case/evans-v-muhlenberg-cnty
- autoexec 4y ago
  I think that in the song lyrics case the police could have easily justified having an officer (or a mental health professional) pop by to ask some questions and make sure the guy wasn't a threat. That entire issue could have been resolved with a simple conversation. In Waylon's case I can't imagine how the joke (which was: “SHARE SHARE SHARE ! ! ! ! JUST IN: RAPIDES PARISH SHERIFFS OFFICE HAVE ISSUED THE ORDER, IF DEPUTIES COME INTO CONTACT WITH ‘THE INFECTED’ SHOOT ON SIGHT….Lord have mercy on us all. #Covid9teen #weneedyoubradpitt”) could have even justified police knocking on his door at all.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    Yea if you read it they actually did come visit him and ascertained it was nothing. But a school cop unilaterally decided to ignore that evidence and arrested him and made no mention in charging him that they had visited him, he had cooperated, that it was lyrics, that he assured them he had no malice, and that everyone had agreed it was nothing. That’s the premise of why qualified immunity was denied - the officer knew all these facts because he was there, along with several other officers, yet willfully ignored that and omitted it in charging him. I couldn’t find any details about the ultimate resolution of the case, just the judges denial of qualified immunity.

timcavel 4y ago

1letterunixname 4y ago

Does anyone have experience and a specific recommendation for privacy-oriented servers (VPS) hosting providers beyond the reach of US feds? In places like Iceland or Sweden.

betaby 4y ago
You would need a VPS in China, Russia, Belarus, Iran.
- notsound 4y ago
  What if I am also anti those countries?
tux 4y ago
Any country that is not "Five Eyes"[1] and similar will do. But the list is short and getting shorter by the day. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

amanaplanacanal 4y ago

I’m wondering what he actually wrote, since they don’t quote it in the article.

rnk 4y ago

If you read the article, it refers to using a long discredited restriction on free speech from WW1. This refers to the law used by President Wilson to put people arguing against the war into jail. That this kind of law has survived this long without being overturned by the US Supreme Court is itself a terrible crime. Qualified Immunity imho is just the latest way to give the police unlimited power to abuse civil rights.

coldacid 4y ago
/Schenck/ and /Abrams/ were overturned via the Brandenburg v. Ohio decision of the Supreme Court of the US in 1969.
- rnk 4y ago
  Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks for mentioning it! https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/189/brandenburg-v-ohio https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/189/brandenburg-v-o.... I would have expected it to have been Vietnam War resistance, instead of civil rights of KKK type speech.

animitronix 4y ago

As we learned in 2020, sometimes the only solution is to burn the police station to the ground.