8 ms·

Stop and Seize

104 points by misiti3780 12y ago

a3n 12y ago
Highway robbery.
jmadsen 12y ago
Old news, but who's doing anything about it?
- davidw 12y ago
  I did something - I flagged it as being off topic in that it's 1) politics and 2) mainstream news. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6120530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6120530 I'd also recommend that people get more involved in politics to stop stuff like this. However, please do that elsewhere - there are tons of places on the internet to talk politics, but only one Hacker News.
  - danieltillett 12y ago
    I see you are being down voted. I do understand your view point, but I don’t see where politics comes in and unfortunately this story is far from mainstream. Now maybe if this happened to Kim or Miley then it would be mainstream, off topic, and something would change.
    - davidw 12y ago
      I don't care if you folks downvote me. I'd rather that than you all transforming HN into a site for politics and "outrage" articles, and ruining it. The Washington Post is a fairly mainstream news organization, isn't it? It's very, very much a political and "outrage" story. Does anyone really feel 'intellectually gratified' after reading it? I know I don't. I feel angry. To me that means it's not really something that belongs here. This isn't a site for political activism.
  - icantthinkofone 12y ago
    There's something about HN that you also see on reddit with regards to politics and these sort of stories. On reddit, it's always kids. On HN, I can only assume there must be a lot of liberals who, at the first sign of trouble, call 911 with great urgency. Upvoted you.
    - pyre 12y ago
      > there must be a lot of liberals who, at the first sign of trouble, call 911 with great urgency. How is this not inflammatory? How does this lead to intelligent and insightful discussion rather than just stoking the flames? All you've really done is group together everyone with a particular view point that you don't like and attempted to trivialize them into a couple of strawmen that you can easily tear down (presumably so that you don't have to deal with people that might have a strong points against your opinion on the matter). If you really believe what you have said, all you've done is troll the people that you are upset with for posting/commenting on this stuff on Reddit & HN. If your intent was not to troll, then I think that you should rethink your tactics with respect to commenting on these stories.
      - icantthinkofone 12y ago
        So, iow, just like every thread on HN about the police.
armenarmen 12y ago
Organizing the police to be parasites rather than predators of narcos. A few steps away from 'payola' but still.
einrealist 12y ago
If you need to carry "seizable" amounts of money around, you should put that in an envelope along with a written statement that describes the purpose. And if possible, the envelope should be sealed by a solicitor. I like to see what happens then. It should be a sufficient hurdle.
- TobbenTM 12y ago
  Hurdle for the police, but a bigger one for you.
- FireBeyond 12y ago
  You mean like in multiple of the examples that are cited in the article? Lay church members carrying funds from their congregation, going to purchase property for the church (well, the police said “both of them disclaimed ownership of the money, so it was seized” - no kidding, because it was for the church). Or the gentleman buying a car, who had the car ad, contact information for the prospective seller, who confirmed that he had an appointment to meet that person? “No, based on my investigation I have concluded this is money for a drug purchase”.
nateabele 12y ago
Yet another reason why you never talk to the police, and never consent to a search. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
- acjohnson55 12y ago
  Good luck with that. I agree with you, but it's hardly a solution given that you can be arrested on practically any pretense.
  - zipwitch 12y ago
    Unless you know the right magic spells to invoke in order to keep the demons away. I know one that goes, "I'm not consenting to any searches. Am I free to go? Am I under arrest?" If you keep chanting it in the right tone, there's a good chance you'll escape.
    - TheCraiggers 12y ago
      "...there's a good chance you'll escape." I'd love to see a citation on that, because I can easily see that going the other way: cop considers you a smart-ass and decides to teach you a lesson. Maybe you appear nervous or he/she claims that your eyes are glazed, and now has probable cause to detain you further and get a warrant to have your car torn apart looking for drugs or other contraband. Yes, you'll eventually win in court if you're truly innocent and you keep saying you don't consent to searches, ask if you're free to go, and ask for a lawyer. Of course, that doesn't mean the officer can't make your life hell during and after the stop if they so desire. The point is, they have the power, not you. You can't even leave until they say you can. The best you can hope for is that the cop maybe gets a reprimand after you complain, and good luck getting any compensation beyond that.
diydsp 12y ago
What's interesting to me, in addition to the obvious major point, is how this process is taught: in private seminars. I have seen this in other areas involving questionable practices, especially involving law enforcement. Training agencies put together professional seminars- just as any of us might take a programming seminar- and teach lessons that "improve" the officers' skills, but at the same time, in the privacy of the seminar, strain the boundaries of what's legal. That's the part that I find fascinating. In contrast to larger-scale fascist movements, in which anti-national behavior is spread from the top-down (I'm thinking of slave-era American and modern Arabic racism here or the classic example of Nazism), this type of nation- and rights-destroying behavior emanates from numerous, distributed "educational facilities." It's fascinating to me because there's no single identifiable point to put the finger of blame on, because the erosion happens so gradually, the damages to the common good take place in such tiny increments and because it's not motivated by a common, uniting goal (although law enforcement is the simulacrum), but by numerous distributed organizations motivated by making cash via the trainings and who motivate the participants the same way. It's as if multi-level marketing were getting applied to professional gang-banger training. And through the logic of "training seminar," why exactly not produce week-long seminars in gang-banging? It's not illegal to teach people how to break the law, there is a need in the form of customers who want to know how to do it and there is money to be made in educating others in the arts of carjacking, robbery and drug sales using slides, role-playing and case studies. It is up to the customer whether or not to make use of the information... One final point is that there is an implied escalation of consent in the "professional" veneer of the "training seminar." This happens due to our assumptions that 1. spending money on a seminar results in at least some useful information 2. information learned in a private seminar is not expected to be unethical or useless. This leads to training seminars on law enforcement (and several other topics) operating as an "offshore zone" where unacceptable behavior gets legitimized: The police chief could never train their officers to perform manipulative, borderline illegal practices, but he can easily sign off on a training where these practices occur and become part of their department[s repertoire. The kinds of conversations and education that could never take place in a public-supported institution such as a police station can easily happen outside the publicly-supported sphere, in the conference room of a hotel, led by a small, scarcely memorable, unaccountable training organization.
jchrisa 12y ago
Related discussion from 2 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8444785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8444785
adaml_623 12y ago
Is this an opportunity for a startup to automate the process of retrieving money? Like http://www.getfixed.me/ http://www.getfixed.me/ but on a more serious scale! (I'm not in the US so not something I can do)
- avn2109 12y ago
  Does anyone know if this actually works? I don't have a car but this is obviously a real pain point.
- FiatLuxDave 12y ago
  This is a good and socially valuable startup idea. The next time HN has a thread about startup ideas, I hope that you (or someone else reading this) posts this. Kudos for posting this.
keerthiko 12y ago
I didn't find this listed, so obligatory Last Week Tonight with John Oliver link[0]. The extent to which authority figures intervene in normal citizen life in the US always seems like some medieval European feudal lord stuff to me. [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks&list=PLmKbqjSZR8TZa7wyVoVq2XMHxxWREyiFc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks&list=PLmKbqjSZR8T...
peg_leg 12y ago
This has been going on to some extent for decades. Now that John Oliver (a satirist) does a story it's all of a sudden front page news?!
- pessimizer 12y ago
  It's a phenomenon called publicity. Usually people concerned about an issue spend most of their effort towards generating it. Your comment reads to me as if you resent it, but I may be projecting.
- Torgo 12y ago
  I first read about this in Reader's Digest in the 1980's or early 1990's. Yes I am annoyed by the fact that nobody gave a shit until a TV funnyman talked about it decades later, accompanied by a million Facebook posts of "why is it that only comedians talk about this!!!1" Contrary to popular opinion, this is the sign of a public that doesn't read, doesn't actually care about news, and isn't informed. John Oliver gets his story ideas from the news, it's all there if his fans cared to look.
  - goldfeld 12y ago
    I think it's really plain to see how even the most educated youth today think they're getting culture enough from TV series, documentaries, Facebook links and Wikipedia trips. Who ever reads a longform piece of good journalism or (gasp!) a book anymore? I guess the answer is those who are force-fed this ancient and boring medium by means of still being able to afford a citizenship-minded Liberal Arts degree that would otherwise implicate them in more debt than their projected lifetime employment value.
rbcgerard 12y ago
1 in 12 households are unbanked - https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/ https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/ I'd bet far more of these people are getting being hurt by this than the "bad guys"
- icantthinkofone 12y ago
  So about 8%. Bordering on market insignificance. Insignificant in a lot of areas but definitely not the norm.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    >So about 8%. Bordering on market insignificance. That's crazy talk.
    - icantthinkofone 12y ago
      Some web development companies drop support for browsers when their versions drop below 10%. Not crazy at all.
davidwparker 12y ago
Previous discussions from submission ~month+ ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280889

Stop and Seize

104 points by misiti3780 12y ago

a3n 12y ago

Highway robbery.

jmadsen 12y ago

Old news, but who's doing anything about it?

davidw 12y ago
I did something - I flagged it as being off topic in that it's 1) politics and 2) mainstream news. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6120530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6120530 I'd also recommend that people get more involved in politics to stop stuff like this. However, please do that elsewhere - there are tons of places on the internet to talk politics, but only one Hacker News.
- danieltillett 12y ago
  I see you are being down voted. I do understand your view point, but I don’t see where politics comes in and unfortunately this story is far from mainstream. Now maybe if this happened to Kim or Miley then it would be mainstream, off topic, and something would change.
  - davidw 12y ago
    I don't care if you folks downvote me. I'd rather that than you all transforming HN into a site for politics and "outrage" articles, and ruining it. The Washington Post is a fairly mainstream news organization, isn't it? It's very, very much a political and "outrage" story. Does anyone really feel 'intellectually gratified' after reading it? I know I don't. I feel angry. To me that means it's not really something that belongs here. This isn't a site for political activism.
- icantthinkofone 12y ago
  There's something about HN that you also see on reddit with regards to politics and these sort of stories. On reddit, it's always kids. On HN, I can only assume there must be a lot of liberals who, at the first sign of trouble, call 911 with great urgency. Upvoted you.
  - pyre 12y ago
    > there must be a lot of liberals who, at the first sign of trouble, call 911 with great urgency. How is this not inflammatory? How does this lead to intelligent and insightful discussion rather than just stoking the flames? All you've really done is group together everyone with a particular view point that you don't like and attempted to trivialize them into a couple of strawmen that you can easily tear down (presumably so that you don't have to deal with people that might have a strong points against your opinion on the matter). If you really believe what you have said, all you've done is troll the people that you are upset with for posting/commenting on this stuff on Reddit & HN. If your intent was not to troll, then I think that you should rethink your tactics with respect to commenting on these stories.
    - icantthinkofone 12y ago
      So, iow, just like every thread on HN about the police.

armenarmen 12y ago

Organizing the police to be parasites rather than predators of narcos. A few steps away from 'payola' but still.

einrealist 12y ago

If you need to carry "seizable" amounts of money around, you should put that in an envelope along with a written statement that describes the purpose. And if possible, the envelope should be sealed by a solicitor. I like to see what happens then. It should be a sufficient hurdle.

TobbenTM 12y ago
Hurdle for the police, but a bigger one for you.
FireBeyond 12y ago
You mean like in multiple of the examples that are cited in the article? Lay church members carrying funds from their congregation, going to purchase property for the church (well, the police said “both of them disclaimed ownership of the money, so it was seized” - no kidding, because it was for the church). Or the gentleman buying a car, who had the car ad, contact information for the prospective seller, who confirmed that he had an appointment to meet that person? “No, based on my investigation I have concluded this is money for a drug purchase”.

nateabele 12y ago

Yet another reason why you never talk to the police, and never consent to a search. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

acjohnson55 12y ago
Good luck with that. I agree with you, but it's hardly a solution given that you can be arrested on practically any pretense.
- zipwitch 12y ago
  Unless you know the right magic spells to invoke in order to keep the demons away. I know one that goes, "I'm not consenting to any searches. Am I free to go? Am I under arrest?" If you keep chanting it in the right tone, there's a good chance you'll escape.
  - TheCraiggers 12y ago
    "...there's a good chance you'll escape." I'd love to see a citation on that, because I can easily see that going the other way: cop considers you a smart-ass and decides to teach you a lesson. Maybe you appear nervous or he/she claims that your eyes are glazed, and now has probable cause to detain you further and get a warrant to have your car torn apart looking for drugs or other contraband. Yes, you'll eventually win in court if you're truly innocent and you keep saying you don't consent to searches, ask if you're free to go, and ask for a lawyer. Of course, that doesn't mean the officer can't make your life hell during and after the stop if they so desire. The point is, they have the power, not you. You can't even leave until they say you can. The best you can hope for is that the cop maybe gets a reprimand after you complain, and good luck getting any compensation beyond that.

diydsp 12y ago

What's interesting to me, in addition to the obvious major point, is how this process is taught: in private seminars. I have seen this in other areas involving questionable practices, especially involving law enforcement. Training agencies put together professional seminars- just as any of us might take a programming seminar- and teach lessons that "improve" the officers' skills, but at the same time, in the privacy of the seminar, strain the boundaries of what's legal. That's the part that I find fascinating. In contrast to larger-scale fascist movements, in which anti-national behavior is spread from the top-down (I'm thinking of slave-era American and modern Arabic racism here or the classic example of Nazism), this type of nation- and rights-destroying behavior emanates from numerous, distributed "educational facilities." It's fascinating to me because there's no single identifiable point to put the finger of blame on, because the erosion happens so gradually, the damages to the common good take place in such tiny increments and because it's not motivated by a common, uniting goal (although law enforcement is the simulacrum), but by numerous distributed organizations motivated by making cash via the trainings and who motivate the participants the same way. It's as if multi-level marketing were getting applied to professional gang-banger training. And through the logic of "training seminar," why exactly not produce week-long seminars in gang-banging? It's not illegal to teach people how to break the law, there is a need in the form of customers who want to know how to do it and there is money to be made in educating others in the arts of carjacking, robbery and drug sales using slides, role-playing and case studies. It is up to the customer whether or not to make use of the information... One final point is that there is an implied escalation of consent in the "professional" veneer of the "training seminar." This happens due to our assumptions that 1. spending money on a seminar results in at least some useful information 2. information learned in a private seminar is not expected to be unethical or useless. This leads to training seminars on law enforcement (and several other topics) operating as an "offshore zone" where unacceptable behavior gets legitimized: The police chief could never train their officers to perform manipulative, borderline illegal practices, but he can easily sign off on a training where these practices occur and become part of their department[s repertoire. The kinds of conversations and education that could never take place in a public-supported institution such as a police station can easily happen outside the publicly-supported sphere, in the conference room of a hotel, led by a small, scarcely memorable, unaccountable training organization.

jchrisa 12y ago

Related discussion from 2 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8444785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8444785

adaml_623 12y ago

Is this an opportunity for a startup to automate the process of retrieving money? Like http://www.getfixed.me/ http://www.getfixed.me/ but on a more serious scale! (I'm not in the US so not something I can do)

avn2109 12y ago
Does anyone know if this actually works? I don't have a car but this is obviously a real pain point.
FiatLuxDave 12y ago
This is a good and socially valuable startup idea. The next time HN has a thread about startup ideas, I hope that you (or someone else reading this) posts this. Kudos for posting this.

keerthiko 12y ago

I didn't find this listed, so obligatory Last Week Tonight with John Oliver link[0]. The extent to which authority figures intervene in normal citizen life in the US always seems like some medieval European feudal lord stuff to me. [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks&list=PLmKbqjSZR8TZa7wyVoVq2XMHxxWREyiFc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks&list=PLmKbqjSZR8T...

peg_leg 12y ago

This has been going on to some extent for decades. Now that John Oliver (a satirist) does a story it's all of a sudden front page news?!

pessimizer 12y ago
It's a phenomenon called publicity. Usually people concerned about an issue spend most of their effort towards generating it. Your comment reads to me as if you resent it, but I may be projecting.
Torgo 12y ago
I first read about this in Reader's Digest in the 1980's or early 1990's. Yes I am annoyed by the fact that nobody gave a shit until a TV funnyman talked about it decades later, accompanied by a million Facebook posts of "why is it that only comedians talk about this!!!1" Contrary to popular opinion, this is the sign of a public that doesn't read, doesn't actually care about news, and isn't informed. John Oliver gets his story ideas from the news, it's all there if his fans cared to look.
- goldfeld 12y ago
  I think it's really plain to see how even the most educated youth today think they're getting culture enough from TV series, documentaries, Facebook links and Wikipedia trips. Who ever reads a longform piece of good journalism or (gasp!) a book anymore? I guess the answer is those who are force-fed this ancient and boring medium by means of still being able to afford a citizenship-minded Liberal Arts degree that would otherwise implicate them in more debt than their projected lifetime employment value.

rbcgerard 12y ago

1 in 12 households are unbanked - https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/ https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/ I'd bet far more of these people are getting being hurt by this than the "bad guys"

icantthinkofone 12y ago
So about 8%. Bordering on market insignificance. Insignificant in a lot of areas but definitely not the norm.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  >So about 8%. Bordering on market insignificance. That's crazy talk.
  - icantthinkofone 12y ago
    Some web development companies drop support for browsers when their versions drop below 10%. Not crazy at all.

davidwparker 12y ago

Previous discussions from submission ~month+ ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280889