6 ms·

It's not even that strong because of the "reasonably believed" bit: they just have to plausibly deny knowledge of precedent explicitly barring their (hyper-spec

It's not even that strong because of the "reasonably believed" bit: they just have to plausibly deny knowledge of precedent explicitly barring their (hyper-specific) action.

schoen 4y ago
Could there be an impact from putting up some billboards about the legality of certain actions, where police officers would be likely to see them frequently?
- ars 4y ago
  Interesting idea. Although the cops might claim they did not believe the billboards were accurate.
- joelfried 4y ago
  I doubt it. There's too many ways for this not to work - the police testifies "I never saw that billboard". Even if they admit they saw it, so what? Anybody can say anything on a billboard, the police officer could say "Oh yeah, I saw it, but I have no idea if it's true" - and plausible deniability is sufficient as I understand it.
  - petsfed 4y ago
    "Oh yeah, I saw [the satirical facebook page about us], but I have no idea if its true" It's infuriating that this farce is what our legal system hinges on.
    - rnk 4y ago
      You can even put it on their qualification tests so you have documentation that they heard something was illegal and it doesn't matter. For many things they are effectively immune to prosecution. Add on that most prosecutors don't want to go after cops because they won't cooperate in cases after that.
  - kevviiinn 4y ago
    Yea police are definitely known to absolutely never ever testilie.
- freejazz 4y ago
  Probably not. You can tell a police officer something is illegal, I'm not sure why they'd be inclined to believe you, especially in the context of you being arrested.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
stefan_ 4y ago
While the made up immunity prevents any precedent from ever being set.
- bilbo0s 4y ago
  Democratic norms are on a troubling trajectory in the US. We as a people should have addressed this trend long ago. Now we’ll have to countenance much more discomfort to right the ship. Some people are going to be upset, but in the end we can’t live in a “papers please” society with no freedom of expression. You want to cancel someone? Go ahead. You want to socially ostracize them? No problem. All that’s just freedom of association. Reasonable constitutionalists can have no problem with any of that. But when you start arresting people? That’s a bridge too far. If the supremes say the law is good with this then we need new law makers, new laws, and new supremes just to be sure.
  - 20after4 4y ago
    You act as if it's even possible at this point to "right the ship." I can't see any way for the trend to actually reverse, unfortunately. It seems far more likely that things continue to get worse resulting in either totalitarianism or (most likely) a complete collapse.
- __derek__ 4y ago
  Right. SCOTUS has created a Catch-22 with a twist of Kafka: one's right to redress only exists as long as someone else has successfully gotten the courts to decide that some other police violated the specific expression of the right one wants to exercise.
seadan83 4y ago
Are you sure that is the case? My understanding was that if any court had litigated the issue at all, then the QI drops away. The big loophole though is how narrowly the issue is interpreted. "Oh, I can't violate the rights of someone wearing a _yellow_ jumpsuit; I didn't know this applied to people also wearing yellow and not just blue! We never had a court case about that!" My understanding comes from having listened to far too many 'Audit the Audit' videos while doing work. I could be mistaken, this is my understanding of the issue though.
- __derek__ 4y ago
  > My understanding was that if any court had litigated the issue at all, then the QI drops away. I'm not sure why this would be so given the way precedent works in US courts: since SCOTUS denied cert in this case, none of this applies outside the Sixth Circuit. Even within the Sixth Circuit, it's not clear that the same set of facts should pierce QI as long as the PC can be reasonably justified, an area where courts give police extremely broad latitude.
jasmer 4y ago
This conversation is off the rails. There's a 100% chance that some (many, actually) members of the community would have believed this account to be 'real' ergo, he's impersonating an entire police force. Ergo, reasonable to think he was 'disruptive' to Emerg. Services. Here is one of his 'satire' posts [1] Where is the satire? I can't even see how that's funny to anyone, but that's besides the point, there's no reason for people to not be certain that it's not real. Frankly is seems really 'real' to me. EDIT: Here's a very salient point - I glanced at it and actually missed the specific detail about 'hiring upon passing a 15 question test'. Why? Because even as I knew it was parody, the badge was there, my mind was filling in the blanks. I had to re-read it and 'think about it' to realize that was the 'comedy'. That's part an parcel of why we're not allowed to impersonate police officers for fun. He is 'impersonating' Emergency services. That's it. That's obviously not appropriate and surely should not be legal. I suggest the Police were called out of confusion, which is very literally supporting the claims that it was 'disruptive' to their operations. I'm sad that so many people here seem to think he was maligned, I suggest having a look at what he did. 'Making fun of cops' is obviously fine, this was just someone impersonating the police. All of that said, maybe people are assuming this was all truly a clear, South Park satire? [1] https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Novak-Facebook-Post-03.png https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Novak-Facebook-Pos...
- BEEdwards 4y ago
  strongly encouraging minorities not to apply and implying that they will hire you if you pass a hearing test, while probably their true feelings are clearly parody.
  - jasmer 4y ago
    While it's a bit odd that 'minorities' would not be able to apply - but not even remotely within the realm of 'obvious parody'. Private and public services make all sorts of claims with respect to hiring. And BTW - I myself misread that (!) I thought it said 'only' minorities would be hired on first glance. More broadly - anyone who thinks that this is 'obviously a parody' needs to get out more - meet actual people. Many Americans are not hugely clued in, not up to date with culture, have difficulty reading, hearing, moreover, we're all busy and will misinterpret key items - for example even both of us misread the statement. My mother has used a 'Web Browser' for 20 years and she doesn't know what a 'URL' is. My father uses 'The YouTube' daily and doesn't really know what a 'Web Browser' is. He clicks on the icon, and gets the videos. That's his understanding. Phone scammers take advantage of a lot of people, not just the elderly. But if we put this to the test, and showed this to random people without any context at all, there's a 100% chance that people would believe some of the post are real, and at minimum, literally call the Police to ask what is going on, hence 'disrupting' police.

It's not even that strong because of the "reasonably believed" bit: they just have to plausibly deny knowledge of precedent explicitly barring their (hyper-specific) action.

schoen 4y ago

Could there be an impact from putting up some billboards about the legality of certain actions, where police officers would be likely to see them frequently?

ars 4y ago
Interesting idea. Although the cops might claim they did not believe the billboards were accurate.
joelfried 4y ago
I doubt it. There's too many ways for this not to work - the police testifies "I never saw that billboard". Even if they admit they saw it, so what? Anybody can say anything on a billboard, the police officer could say "Oh yeah, I saw it, but I have no idea if it's true" - and plausible deniability is sufficient as I understand it.
- petsfed 4y ago
  "Oh yeah, I saw [the satirical facebook page about us], but I have no idea if its true" It's infuriating that this farce is what our legal system hinges on.
  - rnk 4y ago
    You can even put it on their qualification tests so you have documentation that they heard something was illegal and it doesn't matter. For many things they are effectively immune to prosecution. Add on that most prosecutors don't want to go after cops because they won't cooperate in cases after that.
- kevviiinn 4y ago
  Yea police are definitely known to absolutely never ever testilie.
freejazz 4y ago
Probably not. You can tell a police officer something is illegal, I'm not sure why they'd be inclined to believe you, especially in the context of you being arrested.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

stefan_ 4y ago

While the made up immunity prevents any precedent from ever being set.

bilbo0s 4y ago
Democratic norms are on a troubling trajectory in the US. We as a people should have addressed this trend long ago. Now we’ll have to countenance much more discomfort to right the ship. Some people are going to be upset, but in the end we can’t live in a “papers please” society with no freedom of expression. You want to cancel someone? Go ahead. You want to socially ostracize them? No problem. All that’s just freedom of association. Reasonable constitutionalists can have no problem with any of that. But when you start arresting people? That’s a bridge too far. If the supremes say the law is good with this then we need new law makers, new laws, and new supremes just to be sure.
- 20after4 4y ago
  You act as if it's even possible at this point to "right the ship." I can't see any way for the trend to actually reverse, unfortunately. It seems far more likely that things continue to get worse resulting in either totalitarianism or (most likely) a complete collapse.
__derek__ 4y ago
Right. SCOTUS has created a Catch-22 with a twist of Kafka: one's right to redress only exists as long as someone else has successfully gotten the courts to decide that some other police violated the specific expression of the right one wants to exercise.

seadan83 4y ago

Are you sure that is the case? My understanding was that if any court had litigated the issue at all, then the QI drops away. The big loophole though is how narrowly the issue is interpreted. "Oh, I can't violate the rights of someone wearing a _yellow_ jumpsuit; I didn't know this applied to people also wearing yellow and not just blue! We never had a court case about that!" My understanding comes from having listened to far too many 'Audit the Audit' videos while doing work. I could be mistaken, this is my understanding of the issue though.

__derek__ 4y ago
> My understanding was that if any court had litigated the issue at all, then the QI drops away. I'm not sure why this would be so given the way precedent works in US courts: since SCOTUS denied cert in this case, none of this applies outside the Sixth Circuit. Even within the Sixth Circuit, it's not clear that the same set of facts should pierce QI as long as the PC can be reasonably justified, an area where courts give police extremely broad latitude.

jasmer 4y ago

This conversation is off the rails. There's a 100% chance that some (many, actually) members of the community would have believed this account to be 'real' ergo, he's impersonating an entire police force. Ergo, reasonable to think he was 'disruptive' to Emerg. Services. Here is one of his 'satire' posts [1] Where is the satire? I can't even see how that's funny to anyone, but that's besides the point, there's no reason for people to not be certain that it's not real. Frankly is seems really 'real' to me. EDIT: Here's a very salient point - I glanced at it and actually missed the specific detail about 'hiring upon passing a 15 question test'. Why? Because even as I knew it was parody, the badge was there, my mind was filling in the blanks. I had to re-read it and 'think about it' to realize that was the 'comedy'. That's part an parcel of why we're not allowed to impersonate police officers for fun. He is 'impersonating' Emergency services. That's it. That's obviously not appropriate and surely should not be legal. I suggest the Police were called out of confusion, which is very literally supporting the claims that it was 'disruptive' to their operations. I'm sad that so many people here seem to think he was maligned, I suggest having a look at what he did. 'Making fun of cops' is obviously fine, this was just someone impersonating the police. All of that said, maybe people are assuming this was all truly a clear, South Park satire? [1] https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Novak-Facebook-Post-03.png https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Novak-Facebook-Pos...

BEEdwards 4y ago
strongly encouraging minorities not to apply and implying that they will hire you if you pass a hearing test, while probably their true feelings are clearly parody.
- jasmer 4y ago
  While it's a bit odd that 'minorities' would not be able to apply - but not even remotely within the realm of 'obvious parody'. Private and public services make all sorts of claims with respect to hiring. And BTW - I myself misread that (!) I thought it said 'only' minorities would be hired on first glance. More broadly - anyone who thinks that this is 'obviously a parody' needs to get out more - meet actual people. Many Americans are not hugely clued in, not up to date with culture, have difficulty reading, hearing, moreover, we're all busy and will misinterpret key items - for example even both of us misread the statement. My mother has used a 'Web Browser' for 20 years and she doesn't know what a 'URL' is. My father uses 'The YouTube' daily and doesn't really know what a 'Web Browser' is. He clicks on the icon, and gets the videos. That's his understanding. Phone scammers take advantage of a lot of people, not just the elderly. But if we put this to the test, and showed this to random people without any context at all, there's a 100% chance that people would believe some of the post are real, and at minimum, literally call the Police to ask what is going on, hence 'disrupting' police.