God bless Texas:
These guys shouldn’t have jobs anymore and most certainly should not have guns. Period.
This post is in: Shitty Cops, Meth Laboratories of Democracy
God bless Texas:
These guys shouldn’t have jobs anymore and most certainly should not have guns. Period.
Comments are closed.
SiubhanDuinne
I watched about the first 3 minutes, could not handle any more right now (I will watch the entire tape later, promise).
Might as well move to fucking Ukraine. What would be so different?
Botsplainer
Jesus. Another fucking Aspergers case with a grandiose sense of understanding of the law and society.
I can’t listen to this mook’s voice. Please tell me he gets tased and beaten for being a douche.
Laertes
Christ. What a couple of douchebags.
ronin122
@Botsplainer: Leave autistic individuals out of it, please. This is about shitty cops, nothing more.
Joel
California, too. Not the first time for Hawthorne, either.
John Cole
@Botsplainer: Actually, he had a far better understanding of the law than the cops and the prosecutor. I hope one day you are pulled over and get beaten and tazed. This guy wasn’t being a douche, but you sure as hell were in that comment.
This is why we can’t have nice things. Someone clearly exposes abuses of authority, and instead of venting anger at the authorities and trying to get something done, you attack the victim.
Would you ever catch yourself saying a rape victim had it coming because she was out too late or wearing too short a skirt? Because that is what you just did here.
Laertes
Man. If you can’t stand to watch the whole thing, skip ahead to around 14:15 and listen to what Greenwood (the prosecutor) says to the guy. It’s amazing.
Howard Beale IV
What we really need is to eliminate the immunity clause and allow private right of actions against prosecutors and judges.
shelly
Jesus, can you remember happier, by-gone days, when we were kids and were told that the police were our friends?
Howard Beale IV
@Botsplainer: If a cop ever has to enter your home on an urgent matter, hope your dog gets shot because they fear its attacking them.
Maybe then you’ll get a fucking clue.
Litlebritdiftrnt
Here in Jacksonville NC they are conducting “protective searches” whereby they can search a residence without a warrant for the “protection” of the residents of the home. We have a case whereby during a “protective search” cause there was loud noises heard from the house they “noticed” marijuana on the night stand. Also too, they are now charging anyone with any amount of marijuana with a felony Possession With Intent To Sell and Deliver, regardless of the amount of marijuana that was possessed. That gets you locked up with a serious bond in order to get out. The war on drugs has gone to epic proportions around here. It is insane.
Laertes
Thing about those cops is they’re looking for an excuse to escalate. Here’s how a real cop behaves when a motorist has an attitude: http://youtu.be/RxaVubJdsuU
poco
I bet he would have been shot and killed if he were black!
Really admire the guy’s persistence, though. And the way he brought his kid to the court. Doff my hat to him for his gutsy behaviour.
piratedan
at least it’s not New Mexico where they did the unlawful body cavity searches without cause…. and tbh, I can’t say much because I live in Arizona, where they still allow Sheriff Joe to earn a salary.
ty for the video JC, sobering shit indeed. Bet if he had Texas license plates, no one would have stopped.
Original Lee
I’ve just put visiting Texas on my un-bucket list.
Amir Khalid
There are going to be people defending these hoodlums in police uniform, alas. Some of them will be police officers themselves, like a few of those who defended the cop that shot a boy for answering the door while holding a TV remote.
On a side note, the ad I saw with the video was for a seller of “Police Military Supplies”.
kc
Fire the gotdamned prosecutor, too.
EriktheRed
@Botsplainer: Really? REALLY???
SatanicPanic
@Howard Beale IV: Hey hey, it’s not the dog’s fault
Kathy in St. Louis
@John Cole: As Ed McMahon used to say, “You are correct, sir.”
Laertes
And yes, obviously, the guy is kind of a dick. But he’s not the one with a gun and a badge and the power of life and death over everyone he meets. In a typical cop-and-motorist interaction at the side of the road, that cop has had hundreds or thousands of such interactions. The motorist has most likely had only a few, or none at all. So it’s perfectly fair to expect a lot of professionalism and restraint from the cops, and to excuse a fair bit of excitement and panic from the motorist they’ve stopped.
Keith G
“God Bless Texas”
Well at least we are not knuckle draggin West stupid fuck Virginia.
Come on Cole Don’t play that dumb shit blame the whole group game. Or do you really believe in stereotyping the whole group because of the action of a part?
I thought you had matured. since the early 2000s.
Howard Beale IV
@SatanicPanic: Lots of dogs have met their demise at the hands of trigger happy cops.
Mike Furlan
I thought Sherman said this, but it applies in this case:
“If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell”. ― Philip Henry Sheridan
Hungry Joe
I’d like very much to believe that I’d be as calm and polite, yet as insistent on my rights, as that guy. And maybe I would be. But probably I’d just seethe.
Repercussions from this viral video, I suspect, have been and will be nil. What do you want to bet those two cops are out there this very minute, still strutting their stuff?
NotMax
Scorning becomes Electra.
SatanicPanic
@Howard Beale IV: Sure, I’m just saying don’t wish that on the dog cause its owner is jerk
ChrisH
Driving north of Waco I got a little taste of the rural cops. In my case I’d been hit by the sudden speed drop in Hubbard Texas so it was a fair cop. But the cop asked me to step out of the car in order to get my drivers license number cause they didn’t have a computer (0_o)
About halfway through me being outside chatting with him and handing over DL info he says a bit more sternly “Take your hands out of your pockets for my safety and yours.” Good white redheaded college student that I am I took them out but was floored. A minute later my girlfriend opens the passenger side door to come ask if anything is the matter as to why I’m standing around outside with the cop for nearly ten minutes. The cop tensed up again and I had this fear one of us was going to get shot in the back of my spine. As the cop approached my girlfriend she got back in the car, the home station radio’d back the necessary details and was sent on my way with a “And be careful of the speed limits in small towns like this.”
Nothing like what could have happened if I was a minority, but stuff like this is common.
ranchandsyrup
The tell that he really stuck in their craw was the hackneyed intimidation technique of “If this would have happened in the 80’s or early 90’s,” bullshit. Very weak.
greennotGreen
@Laertes: I don’t think he was being a dick so much as he was having one. He stood up to the cops who were trying to throw their weight around in an illegal manner. I wouldn’t have had the guts, myself, but I would have really been pissed off about it.
El Tiburon
Did any of you see those cops forcefully insert anything up that man’s ass? Did any of you see them taze him repeatedly or bust his head open or rape his wife?
What’s all the ruckus about? Shit, here in Austin the police chief brags his officers didn’t rape a chick jaywalking, just tackled her to the ground.
We are so fcked.
Mike Furlan
@Laertes: The guy is not a dick, he is doing us all a favor by fighting this nonsense.
Looks to me like he was just minding his own business and trying to get home.
Cermet
@John Cole: John, the police state isn’t just for bad movies any more – we are living it in no small part thanks to right wingers in the day and age you were a right winger. Remember rayguy the brain dead and his “demorats are soft on crime campaign?
All that drugs and police need to enforce the law started creating a lower class of petty criminals that were, by converting having even minor amounts of drugs into felony convictions – ending these young men’s hopes for a job/future/life; now all pigs … sometimes called cops … are armed thugs thinking everyone needs to be arrested. Everyone is a criminal in their eyes.
These armed thugs are getting the same equipment as the military and are looking to use it. This serves only one elite – the 0.001%. Hell, the elite even get to invest in the prison system for returns! Cops get revenue from taking cars/homes/cash from alleged criminals. Who ever said crime doesn’t pay? It does for the cops and elite investing in the police state.
kc
@Hungry Joe:
Yeah, I’m impressed with how he kept his cool, with the cops and then with the prosecutor and judge.
legion
Frankly, it seems pretty clear that the entire area is corrupt. The department needs to be dissolved and taken over by the state, with long-term federal DoJ oversight – cops, DA, and local judiciary. Period.
Matt
@El Tiburon:
Was just about to post that link: http://wonkette.com/542577/austin-police-chief-graciously-does-not-sexually-assault-jaywalkers-isnt-that-nice
Citizen_X
I probably would have lost it when the cop walked over and, oh lah-de-dah, how are you doing, think I’ll just open the fucking door and start nosing around.
And then I would have gotten shot.
Jacks mom
@Botsplainer: Hopefully this type of bullshit will never happen to you or anyone you care for. I live in a small town in SW Colorado in a fairly red county. These cops are out of control when it comes to young people, native Americans and basically anyone who doesn’t look like them ie white males.
Southern Beale
Cops are as irresponsible with their guns as the average nutjob. Just last week there was a story about a Chicago cop who accidentally discharged his gun, hit a water pipe, and flooded the police station.
SP
I didn’t think he was even being that much of a dick at first (he was kind of dickish with the prosecutor, I’m not sure I buy the explanation he gave for watching the tape by himself first- obviously the prosecutor could still have gotten it on his own and coached the cops so being a dick didn’t really seem necessary.) But at the beginning he got out, gave the information the cop asked for, and only got pissed when the cop started searching his car without even saying he was going to, and even then he said he objected to the search. The cops escalated because they figure anyone objecting to an unannounced search has drugs or guns in the car, and at that point he got into “fuck you with the constitution, are you a jackboot” mode with the cops (totally appropriately in my opinion.) The citation for failing to show his license was total bullshit, the modern version of the –smash– “It appears you have a taillight out, sir,” I’d have done exactly the same thing with that citation.
The way the prosecutor was talking about not having respect for law enforcement and everything would be easier sort of reminds me of Jim Crow- if people just know their place and are polite everything will go smoothly, it’s when people get uppity and start quoting laws and such that people take offense. The south was so much more polite because of that, don’t you know.
wick
He did fine at the scene, but representing yourself in court is leading with your chin.
It worked out for him, but kids, don’t try this at home.
Hungry Joe
@Laertes: No, the guy most certainly is not kind of a dick. At least, he’s not being a dick in either of the videos: He’s politely insisting on his rights. A couple of times, when the cops were clearly violating those rights, he got a little sarcastic, but good god — they’re just policemen, and this is the United States of America. What, we now have to go into our Ultimate Omega-dog Subservient Behavior Mode when we address a uniformed officer, or risk a beating and/or a felony charge? Sure, cops have to be careful. Sure, we should talk to them respectfully. But this … this is madness.
I mean, the cop asks him if he’s starting to get an attitude. What if he DOES have an attitude? Is that illegal now? If so, arrest him for violation of proper attitude. If not, well, you’re a cop: Act like one. No — act like a GOOD one.
chopper
@Howard Beale IV:
I hope botsplainer gets pulled over, beaten and tazed and his dog gets shot, AND his house burns down.
what do I win?
Jamey
There has to be a fence on the border, pronto… to keep these people OUT of Mexico.
Howard Beale IV
@chopper: Too gauche.
Violet
@SP:
That part was amazing. I know the prosecutor was telling the truth and offering some advice, but it’s scary. Everyone know their places, especially darkies and wimmin.
The part where the prosecutor was trying to intimidate him was scary too. The prosecutor knew he’d fucked up by giving him the video and was trying to scare him into giving it back.
Laertes
Oh fuck it. Fine. The guy wasn’t a dick. Those whiny remarks about jackboots? That was absolutely the sort of thing that a reasonable person would say under the circumstances. And that stuff with the prosecutor and the DVD? That wasn’t in any way an utterly pointless refusal to extend common courtesy that’d cost you nothing. You guys are right. Observing that the cops in that case were power-tripping douchebags who ought to be stripped of their badges and forbidden to ever wear one again necessarily also means that we must agree that the motorist was in all respects a thoroughly pleasant person.
I agree. Fuck you. Go pile on someone else.
Laertes
Or to put it more concisely: Of course the guy was a dick. But he’s allowed to be a dick, and cops have to let a little of that shit roll of their backs, something that a lot of officers are manifestly unwilling to do.
Also, wake the fuck up: It’s possible to be a dick and to be right at the same time. Fucking hell, do people really think no farther than “whose side am I on?” Christ. I need a drink.
FridayNext
@Hungry Joe:
The Greenwood character lost his contract to be the Electra City Attorney
http://www.texomashomepage.com/story/d/story/electra-city-commission-votes-not-to-renew-city-at/14832/wKx9_hrpdkuCV0-IjX-KBw
The police chief was fired. Though whether it was because of this is unclear.
http://www.texomashomepage.com/Story/electra-police-chief-fired/d/Story/TKuiEQwQi0WLDPPtcwZYNA
And he is suing for age discrimination and open meetings violations.
http://www.texomashomepage.com/story/d/story/former-electra-police-chief-files-lawsuit-against/27363/9GMguzoEsEK66xwgVndcUA
And that’s just with a few seconds of googling.
kc
@Laertes:
Well, no, it wasn’t; if you watched that far, he had a reasonable explanation for it. The prosecutor was the one being dickish about it.
kc
@Laertes:
Well, no, it wasn’t; if you watched that far, he had a reasonable explanation for it. The prosecutor was the one being dickish about it.
liberal
@poco:
Yep.
gussie
@Laertes: The kind of person who cares if the motorist was ‘in all respects a thoroughly pleasant person” is the same kind of person who cares if the young lady was showing perhaps a little too much leg.
FridayNext
@Hungry Joe:
My comment went into moderation. Because it had a bunch of links to stories of actual people, like the attorney Greenwood and the police chief, losing their jobs.
You’ll have to google it yourself. It isn’t difficult. Don’t know about the two specific cops in this case, but the repercussions were more than nil.
Hungry Joe
@Laertes: Well, you’re right when you say “But he’s allowed to be a dick, and cops have to let a little of that shit roll of their backs, something that a lot of officers are manifestly unwilling to do.” As for the piling on, etc. … jeez-us, I was just disagreeing with you a little. And if you took it as more than that, well, aren’t I — even I! — allowed to be a dick every now and then? Even if I think I wasn’t being? (But then, I never do … )
liberal
@Laertes:
Given they opened up his car door without his permission, there was nothing dickish about what he did.
Foolish is another matter. I’m a fair-skinned white guy with blue eyes (albeit brown hair), and there’s no way I’d talk to a cop like that. Of course, I understand the point he was making.
Cassidy
I got the same vibe from this dude that I get from the Soveriegn Citizen folk.
Laertes
@kc:
I watched the whole thing, but I might have misunderstood some of what I was seeing. I thought the deal with the DVD was that the prosecutor had one copy, and that he intended for them to review it together and then give it to our guy. Meanwhile, our guy thought that the DVD contained evidence that he was entitled to review alone and then decide if he wanted to share it with the prosecutor. Which was pointless and rude since the prosecutor could obviously just get another copy.
And I hasten to add, in vain hopes of avoiding further piling on from enraged commenters, would be a perfectly reasonable mistake for a rookie to make. The Prosecutor is the professional here, and we should expect a lot more from him than from the pro se guy.
Anyway, did I get that bit wrong? Was the DVD drama significantly other than I think?
WaterGirl
@Laertes: I agree with you. The guy was kind of a dick. And he was certainly poking the bears with a stick, repeatedly, which I thought was unwise, even though he had the right to stand up for his rights. But the cops are supposed to be professionals, not power-wielding bullies.
I thought it was telling when my first response to the cop opening the door on the passenger door – where his wife was – was fear, not safety. If were the guy, or his wife, I would have feared for her safety. How sad is that when you have to be fearful that the cops might rape you/your wife.
That said, the cops were completely in the wrong, as was the judge, the prosecutor, everyone else.
Hungry Joe
@FridayNext: Thanks. Good to know … and I’m glad I was wrong. Will check it out.
Laertes
@Hungry Joe:
Okay, you’re right. I overreacted at you. Sorry about that. In my defense, I’ve been piled on here a few times for being like 2 degrees off the heading that everyone else was on, and I suppose I see it starting again sometimes even when it’s not.
Hungry Joe
@Cassidy: Okay, more and more of you people are saying that the guy was being a dick, or Sovereign-Citizenish, or something. Makes me think I should look at the video again. First impressions, and all that …
Laertes
I think that if I were him, there were lines that I’d want to go back and edit. All things considered, he did fine. Hell, better than fine: He’s a goddamn hero. Those cops are crooks with badges and they need to go.
On the subject of having a different reaction than the rest of the room, I read the prosecutor as a pretty decent guy. What looks to everyone else like intimidation looked to me like “Jesus, guy, be careful okay? These goons out here are not playing.” When he started going on about how crooked the local cops were, I had to back the tape up and check that I wasn’t totally confused. I thought maybe this was our guy’s lawyer.
I suspect this tape has done that prosecutor some harm. He said some hard things about his friends in the LEO community.
Hawes
I hate to bring up Greenwald, but things like this are so much worse than the NSA keeping a record of our phone calls. I realize that they are all linked in an statist attitude of power.
But all corruption in the country gets bigger the FURTHER you get from DC. We can fret and fume for months over the NSA links, but everyday things like this happen, and it’s 100 times worse if you’re dusky hued.
Libertarians want my support? Start agitating on this shit.
kc
@Laertes:
I think we just have different takes on it. The guy was worried that some of the cops’ verbal responses might not be audible on the tape, and it sounded like he just wanted to review it on his own and figure out what his strategy would be. Sure, the prosecutor could just go get another copy. But I personally don’t think it’s dickish for the guy to want to look at it for the first time without the prosecutor, who is his adversary and is trying to convict him of two charges, looking over his shoulder.
WaterGirl
@FridayNext: Very happy to see the outcomes at the first two links. Suing for age discrimination seems kind of lame since it was likely pretty obvious that he was being fired for what was seen on the video. What happened should have been an embarrassment for the entire town.
Weird to see some townspeople defending these guys in the comments at your links.
Laertes
@Hawes:
To be fair to Libertarians (spit) some of them are good on this. Radley Balko is an avenging angel on this beat.
kc
@Laertes:
I thought the prosecutor really lost his cool when the guy wouldn’t give him the video back. He did simmer down after that.
I do think he thought he was doing the guy a favor by telling him that some cops would just arrest him and then lie their asses off about it under oath.
Crouchback
Even if the guy was being a dick, you shouldn’t be a police officer if you can’t keep your cool when dealing with people. That said, I wouldn’t read too much into this in terms of the big picture. Law enforcement is very localized and there have always been places known for mean and/or incompetent cops. My mother was warned about cops in certain towns (Connecticut) when she was a kid back in the 1950s. Hell, read about the 1968 police riot in Chicago. The difference is we’ve got the internet and everyone carries a camera these days as Mitt Romney can attest. The sociologist Peter Moskos worked as a beat cop in Baltimore for a couple of years over a decade ago. One of the first things he was taught on the job was to assume he might be filmed and would have to explain his actions afterward. Not all cops have gotten the message yet. Little brother and sister are watching and the authorities need to adjust.
Laertes
@Crouchback:
THIS.
I already posted it upthread, but I want to do it again because I love this video so much. Here’s how a real cop deals with an unreasonable motorist: http://youtu.be/RxaVubJdsuU (The title on that video is stupid. There’s nothing at all bad about that cop. He’s a saint. It’d be a far better world if every cop had this guy’s calm professionalism.)
dmbeaster
Per the links provided by others above, interesting how the prosecutor and the chief of police lost their jobs due to this (no one seems to know what happened to the cops). Bad behavior did not go unpunished. Too bad the guy had to get jerked around in the process, but that is just how it is.
As for the DVD dustup, looked to me like the prosecutor just brought one copy with him, intending both to give it to the other guy and but also share it for the prelim. Sure, he could get another, but not without delay and hassle. When the guy wanted to look at it alone himself first, which put the prosecutor in a pickle, he got dickish about the situation and threatened him to try to get what he wanted. The fault is all with the public servant.
Violet
@Cassidy: I get the same impression from him. But that doesn’t mean that he’s not right about how the law enforcement stuff went down. He acted like a dick with the officers, but he didn’t break any laws. They should be trained to deal with dickishness. I wouldn’t have done that, but being female, I approach any interactions with men in power in a very different way.
WaterGirl
My mom taught me to always be polite and respectful when interacting with police officers, whether they deserved it or not, because they have all the power and I do not. Of course, I grew up in Chicago, so things may have been different there.
It was also true that everybody knew that cops always had the best dope. They would confiscate your dope and then let you go, which I would say was a win-win.
kc
The sad thing is, as I watched it, I thought that it was going to escalate to physical violence and arrest at some point, thus giving Botsplainer the sexual release he so craves. But although the cops were assholes, that didn’t happen, and I was relieved.
Pretty sad when your takeaway from a cop video is “Thank god the cops only acted like assholes and wrote the guy up on two bogus charges.”
FridayNext
@WaterGirl:
Well, the guy was an outside agitator. Everything was fine until his type came to town and riled everyone up.
Cassidy
@Hungry Joe: I’m not saying the guy was wrong for standing up for himself and assert info his rights or that the cops weren’t wrong in the execution of their duties. In my experience, when someone starts in with about how they only have to do [blank] and [blank] when dealing with the cops, that immediately brings to mind the SC and open carry folks who are just waiting to have a confrontation. That’s just my impression. I don’t think he was a dick to object to the search or to pursue this. I do think he was being a smarmy asshole about “jackboots” and whatnot.
kc
@Violet:
Did I miss something? I didn’t think the guy was dickish at all until the one cop opened the damn passenger side car door and started looking in the car. Even at that point, the guy was fairly calm in saying he objected to that. When he objected, the cops got increasingly pissy.
WaterGirl
@Laertes: That was laugh out loud funny! Do we think that was real? My favorite part was hearing the guy say his wife was going to have to take the 137.00 for the ticket out of her bank account ’cause he was broke.
kc
@Laertes:
That was hilarious. Good for that cop.
Citizen_X
@Laertes: Now that’s a cop. Love the “Bye!” at the end.
Howard Beale IV
@WaterGirl: Depends on where and when in Chicago you were in when you had your interaction.
Remember Jon “Cattle Prod” Burge?
MoeLarryAndJesus
Texas should be under federal receivership.
It is completely unable to govern itself in a civilized fashion. It is an embarrassment to the entire country.
Any Texans who want to whine about this opinion are cordially invited to run for office (if they’re not Republicans) or put plastic bags over their heads (if they are Republicans). I am sick to fucking death of Texans making excuses for their malignant, ulcerated society.
Howard Beale IV
@FridayNext: Seems that small town Texans don’t like to be made fools of-and it certanly looks like it was a top-down purge due to this event. The prosecutor really was the idiot here by opening up his yap and making the Deliverance reference.
Roger Moore
@Hawes:
I think you need to specify that “further” is on a political scale, not a geographic one. The smaller the power center, the fewer people are watching for corruption and the easier it is to buy off or intimidate the ones who are. Contrary to the people who want to distribute power closer to the people on the theory that it’s better, people are actually better informed and capable of making better judgments about national government than local. The scale of corruption in small town politics may be smaller than in DC, but the pervasiveness of the corruption is much greater.
Laertes
Link? I hadn’t dug up anything about fallout from this.
Violet
@kc: I thought asking the cops if they were jackboots was unnecessary and dickish. Some of the follow up in that encounter was also dickish on his part. The cops were much worse and should be prepared to deal with all sorts of people. This guy wasn’t that bad on the scale of things they should be prepared to deal with.
If he’d wanted to know if they had authority to search his car or if they were acting as “jackboots” there were better ways to phrase it that would have left them tied up in knots when trying to answer. He didn’t do himself any favors and he missed some opportunities.
Chris
@MoeLarryAndJesus:
The entire Confederacy should have been nationalized in 1865 and left that way for good.
Ruckus
@Violet:
Do you think things would have gone any different if he had not used those phrases?
@Botsplainer:
Please find for me where in the legal code it says he has to watch his language and can’t be a douche about having his rights violated. We don’t live under the UCMJ unless we are actually in the military. I’ve lived under both civilian law and the UCMJ, I’ve studied both and actually had to memorize the UCMJ. All of this has been a few years ago but I will say that I didn’t enlist and serve so that I could be treated like shit by cops. They need to do a better job, a much fucking better job. And they need to do a much better job of policing themselves. I believe that and was told that by a friend who spend 30 yrs as a CHP.
You normally seem to post pretty good stuff on here so I’ll give you some benefit of the doubt but on this issue you are totally wrong.
WaterGirl
@Howard Beale IV: Holy fuck. I read just enough to refresh my memory, then I stopped reading.
WaterGirl
@Laertes: See FridayNext links at #49.
JustRuss
Regarding the DVD, I still wonder what the big deal was. Part of me suspects that once he heard some of the crap coming out of the cops’ mouths the prosecutor would have insisted that it stay with him, and the suspect would get an edited version later. Or more likely, the cops and prosecutor would “lose” the video.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Laertes: <a href="FridayNext: “>This comment has links.
MoeLarryAndJesus
@Chris: At least that way there wouldn’t be a statue of that scumbag Stonewall Jackson in the middle of Richmond, Virginia.
Anya
@John Cole: I want to like this post a million times!!
Citizen_X
@MoeLarryAndJesus:
Gee, that’s funny. Up thread, people bring up similar issues in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, and North Carolina. And, no doubt, they exist in whatever state you’re writing from.
But go ahead! Keep pretending that you don’t live in 2014 USA, and that your local PD are reliably helpful, cheerful public servants, and that if they’re not, your noble local institutions will remind them of the limits of their power. Officer Friendly is here to help, Jimmy!
Villago Delenda Est
@Laertes:
The fucking cop did not understand what he meant by “jackboots”.
There must be a fire nearby you can go jump into.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hawes:
Libertarians are fine with jackbooted thugs as long as “those people” are who the jackbooted thugs go after.
Violet
@Ruckus:
I have no idea. No way to know for sure. The cops were wrong in what they did and they used language where they were clearly trying to intimidate him. That was wrong.
Whether or not him acting any differently would have changed anything, I couldn’t say. I don’t see the point of him calling them jackboots. When they didn’t know what that meant and he had to elaborate and mention Stazi and so forth, they didn’t seem to appreciate being compared to them. Rightly compared, but did it help his situation in doing that? I can’t see how it did.
If he’d asked them specific questions about, “Do police have the right to search my car without a warrant” and they’d said “Yes’, then that could be used as further evidence of misconduct, etc. If the video hadn’t been as good, something like that might have been helpful for him, had it been caught on video.
Again, in my opinion, the cops were the ones in the wrong for sure. The guy didn’t do anything wrong, but he made some choices that may not have served him as well as other choices.
Ruckus
@Violet:
I guess what I was asking was, In a perfect world he would have easily have chosen better words. But in that perfect world he wouldn’t have needed to.
I did a ride along with a buddy(not the one above) once, a sheriff in CA. We stopped to talk to a hitchhiker(who was legally hitchhiking) and my buddy just stuck his hands in the guys pocket, no asking, no telling. Pulled out about a quarter of a joint and arrested the guy for possession(this was about 40 yrs ago so any amount was illegal). After taking the guy to jail we went back out. I asked wasn’t that an illegal search? The answer – “Of course it was but I got his dope and he gets to spend 3 nights in my jail.” Cops have been doing this crap for a long, long time. Not all of them of course, but way too many think that the law is whatever they want it to be and that there will be no consequences to whatever they do. And frequently they are correct.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus:
That’s so true, and it’s so wrong.
notoriousJRT
I have to admit that the notion that citizens have to be deferential to cops who are throwing their weight around unnecessarily and illegally gets my goat. Dude’s big mistake was confusing Daryl and his other brother Daryl with a moniker that they admit to being (jackboots) and then get all exercised about when they have said term explained to them.
If these folks had, in fact, stopped to switch drivers, why all this strutting by the officers? “Well, we don’t know if you’re a serial killer or a bank robber!” No, and they don’t know if occupants of the van were Mother Theresa and her brother Paulo, either. What were the officers reasons for their official demands and attempts to search? Did they have a bank that had just been robbed or a serial killer they were trying to apprehend?. It is ludicrous. They get away with it because we are all schooled not to make a fuss. Just roll with it.
None of the law enforcement personnel in this story liked having somebody essentially say, “Sorry, the way you normally do things is not going to work for me, if it is not the law.” IMO, they all had problems because they felt disrespected by the people who pay their salaries. Cops may want you to ask “How high?” when they say jump – whether you deserve to be treated in that manner or not or the law gives them authority to make such a demand. The prosecutor does not like being challenged on his request for the friendly joint viewing of the video. What earns him any special trust for such a viewing? He is on the side of the cops – not the guy whom the cops have cited. I might want to see what is on the video myself first, as well, particularly if I felt I had already been treated to an abuse of power by this town’s law enforcement.
he prosecutor / city attorney acknowledges that rural police departments (I assume he is including his own) trump up charges and lie to make them stick. Is he doing something about that other than “warning” the city folks to watch their damn steps? Finally, his attack on the defendant for bringing his son to a court proceeding was an attempt to shame and bull – and a tacit expression of his opinion that the defendant was in the wrong. . I see no members of law enforcement covering themselves in glory here. But, I guess they get passes for being dicks, because, you know, be polite to kindly officer O’Malley.
This sort of stuff makes my hackles go up. I just could not disagree more with the comments that Ellis was a dick, but maybe that’s because I would have been every bit as confrontational with those officers, whose behavior would have been incredible to me.
Laertes
@WaterGirl:
The era of everyone’s got a goddamn video camera is going to be hard on them.
pseudonymous in nc
It’s possible to say “yes, kind of a dick”, but note that “kind of a dick” situations are basically the ones that end up in front of SCOTUS where, once upon a time, it was made clear that being kind of a dick didn’t mean waiving your rights, whereas now Sammy Alito and John Roberts will say “yay Officer Buford” and argue that being kind-of-a-dick actually means you deserve a good tazing.
The Very Revered Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Botsplainer: You really are just an all around shitty human being, aren’t you? I mean, I used to really dislike your knee-jerk homophobia, but now I see it’s just a side show in your big asshole tent. Fuck you. No, really. Fuck you. Die in a fire.
WaterGirl
@Laertes: Here in Illinois, it is illegal to record a police officer. Hard to believe I agree with the Tea Partiers on one thing: Where the hell is the America I thought I lived in?
mclaren
We need to hear from some of the usual authoriarian bully-worshipers like burnspbesq and Yutsano and Mnemosyne and eemom and Americafuckyea and raven that I’m “mentally ill” and “off his meds” for pointing out that the constitution has gone away and we now live in a garrison state under effective martial law.
In case you’re in doubt, this is why it matters whether Barack Obama and his DOJ and the JSOC assassins in the Pentagon’s death squads flagrantly violate the constitution by kidnapping and murdering and torturing U.S. citizens without a trial and without criminal charges. Because the fish rots from the head down. Once people get used to the president doing it, people lower in the food chain expect to be able to ignore the constitution too.
There’s a word for a society without the rule of law.
The word is “barbarism.”
Incidentally, these kinds of suspicionless searches are now becoming standard operating procedure among our muggers with badges, as this article at boingboing.com points out.
mclaren
@Botsplainer:
Spoken like a true blackshirt. Mussolini would kiss you on both cheeks and give you a medal.
mclaren
Various people have described the person detained by the police officers in this video as “a mook” and “kind of a dick” and “a douche.”
Can someone please cite the specific section of the Texas state criminal code which makes it a criminal violation for someone to be “a mook” or “kind of a dick” or “a douche”?
WaterGirl
@mclaren: Since I am one of the people who said he was kind of a dick, I will copy my entire comment as an answer to your question. If you re-read the thread, you will see that almost no one suggested that the guys actions were criminal or that the guy being a dick excused the actions of the police, etc.
mclaren
@Ruckus:
Q: What is wrong with this picture?
Constitution of the United States of America
Amendment 5
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Violet
@Ruckus:
Yeah, there are a lot of things that could have been done better in that whole situation. And yeah, cops have been screwing over people forever. Like the prosecutor said at the end of the video, in the 80’s or 90’s there wouldn’t have been video or audio with the video and the guy would have been screwed. So things are improving in some ways. Getting worse in others.
Laertes
@mclaren:
Can you please provide support for your belief that it’s impossible to be a dick without committing a crime?
Honestly. What’s so fucking complicated about “he was kind of a dick, but it doesn’t change the fact that the cops were completely in the wrong?” Are you even reading the shit you’re replying to? There are people in the room who think he wasn’t a dick. There are people in the room who think that he was a bit of a dick but it doesn’t matter. Except for one idiot troll who dropped one early remark and bailed there isn’t anyone here who thinks that the guy is anything less than a hero.
So just who the fuck do you think you’re disagreeing with, and on exactly what point? Name names.
Ruckus
@Laertes:
Give it up Jake, it’s Chinatown. No wait, I misspoke, it’s a troll. Not in every comment she makes but in such a high percentage that the margin of error has been covered.
angelfoot
This, and the fact it’s his birthday, puts me in mind of Robyn Hitchcock’s “Do Policemen Sing.” Witty! Trenchant! Mildly lysergic. And it Rocks, cathartically, even.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvreV805SYI
mclaren
@Ruckus:
Excellent!
Citing the constitution of the united states now makes a commenter a “troll.”
Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at our destination: fascism wrapped in the stars and stripes.
Ruckus
@Violet:
I still disagree that the man should have spoken with more respect(my words). Under the UCMJ a person has the right and duty to disobey an unlawful order. You have to have a pretty good understanding of what is and isn’t a lawful order and you better be right about it and the shit will hit the whirllies before it’s all over but that’s what you are supposed to do. Under civilian law I’d like to know the statute that says I have to respect cops doing unlawful stuff. In fact I feel I have a duty to not obey and to make sure as best as I can to report it to someone who can and will do something about it. Now I know in the real world that getting my ass beat, or tazed or dead is a very real possibility and that does make me think a bit and maybe decide it’s not worth the trouble. But that’s exactly what the cops(and the legal system generally) expect. That I will be docile and go along. I am actually sort of proud of this guy. He didn’t go along to get along. He was pissed and rightly so. He made it clear that he was pissed and had the cops number. And he did it without threatening them. That he didn’t get beat or tazed or dead is still sort of amazing. It shouldn’t be at all.
burnspbesq
@kc:
In fairness to the cops, the guy’s a little off on the law. He’s conflating two exceptions to the warrant requirement. All that is required for a valid warrantless search of a motor vehicle is probable cause. Consent (or lack thereof) don’t mean diddly in this situation.
That said, it’s pretty clear that there wasn’t probable cause, so on balance, this guy should end up with a nifty little award of damages, plus an award of attorney’s fees, and the department should end up under a Federal consent decree to improve the crappy training they give their officers..
stepped pyramids
@Botsplainer:
Reactionary, authoritarian fool, begging for the state to use its power to crush the people you hate. May your corrupt heart be a weight in your chest always.
mclaren
@Violet:
A lot worse:
“AG Holder Acknowledges Drone Killings of Four U.S. Citizens,” 23 May 2013
A whole lot worse, actually:
“When the U.S. Government Can Kill You, Explained,” Mother Jones, 5 March 2012.
Laertes
@Ruckus:
Yeah, I think you called it about right. There it goes again, flailing at imaginary enemies (notice how it can’t name anyone who takes the position it’s attacking) and then going OT with some kind of rant about how bent cops are just like drone strikes. Jesus.
Rafer Janders
@WaterGirl:
Here in the United States of America, it is not. The Supreme Court overturned that law (technically declined to hear an appeal that the ACLU had won to block the law in federal court).
mclaren
@Hawes:
Source: “Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens,” Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian, 5 Feburary 2013.
The attitude of these Texas policemen becomes inevitable once the president of the united states asserts the alleged authority to order the murder of U.S. citizens without citing the secret law or the secret evidence by which such assassinations are authorized.
If the president can murder American citizens under a secret law using secret evidence, surely ordinary police officers can search the car of a U.S. citizen without probable cause on the basis of secret laws and secret evidence which also cannot be disclosed.
The fish rots from the head. When the people at the top of the government throw out the rule of law, everyone else in the law enforcement community feels free to do it too.
Rafer Janders
@burnspbesq:
If there is no probable cause, then consent (or lack thereof) does mean diddly. He understands the law perfectly well, since “this situation” is one without probable cause, and therefore only one exception, consent, could apply.
mclaren
@Laertes:
Laertes and Botsplainer and Watergirl are trying to defend the arrogant illegality of the police without actually supporting the police, because their arrogance and lawlessness is so obviously insupportable. So all three of these classic bully-worshipers do the next best thing: if you can’t defend the lawless muggers with badges, smear the victim as a “dick” and a “douche.”
Standard operating procedure from 1930s Germany, where the victims got blamed because they were “subhuman Jewish vermin,” to 1950s Stalinist Russia, where the victims got blamed they were were “counterrevolutionary running-dogs hooligans,” to 1970s Cambodia, where the victims got blamed because they were “filthy parasites on the body of the glorious Khmer Rouge.”
All standard stuff. If you can’t defend the thugs, smear the victims. Anyone who speaks up to defend the victims is a “hooligan insulting the dignity of the state,” a “counterrevolutionary intellectual class traitor,” or, in the new parlance, “a troll.”
mclaren
@Rafer Janders:
Remember: you’re dealing with a shit-for-brains tax avoidance lawyer. Debating the law with him is like discussing calculus with a cockroach.
Laertes
Laertes:
Laertes:
Laertes:
Laertes:
Laertes
@Laertes:
@Laertes:
@mclaren:
Mandalay
@mclaren:
Right. A similar thing happens here whenever there is a thread about revelations from Snowden and Greenwald. For some the information revealed is secondary; the important thing is to launch irrelevant attacks on the character of Snowden and/or Greenwald.
Laertes
@WaterGirl:
@WaterGirl:
@mclaren:
Laertes
On the bright side, mclaren, you’re right about botsplainer–he’s wrong.
However, he dropped his idiot troll remark something like six hours ago, and not since then has there been anyone in the room who thinks the guy is anything other than a hero.
So you’re shouting at nobody. Bad enough that you’re a troll, but do you have to be a chickenshit troll? There are rooms out there where you could find people to take the other side of the argument you’re trying to have. Don’t be afraid. You don’t have to hang out in rooms like this where everyone basically agrees with you. Grow a pair.
Mandalay
@Laertes:
Apart from two posts from you, where you called the hero a dick. When you’re in a hole, stop digging.
Laertes
@Mandalay:
You know who’s in a hole? The idiot who sided with mclaren just as mclaren was getting pwned right off the internet. Stop digging.
gogiggs
To be fair, Laertes and Watergirl’s comments make a lot more sense in the original German
Cassidy
@Mandalay: @gogiggs: Spoken like jackasses who didn’t bother to read anything. Fucking useless sacks of shit.
rea
Well, it’s not just Texas, since this reminds me very much of a casee in which I was involved in Michigan (except my client ended up getting tazed three times).
WaterGirl
@Rafer Janders: That’s really great news. So glad that awful law was overturned.
WaterGirl
Now I know why I always skip over comments by mclaren and any replies to him. What a waste of space.
Jennifer
A few years ago I had a close brush with the law. I was going to lunch with my boss; we had parked and were crossing the street in a crosswalk. As we started across, a car was approaching from a block away. Instead of slowing down for pedestrians in a crosswalk, the jackass speeded up to the extent that he missed clipping us by about a foot. I had been staring down the car as it bore down on us, and as I reached the center line I turned and stared it down as he zoomed past a foot away, then turned and continued walking across the street. The car got about half a block past and screeched to a halt, then backed up – with the light on the dash flashing. It was a cop in an unmarked car. He backed up even to where we were standing on the sidewalk and rolled the window down and said in his best intimidating cop voice, “Do you have a PROBLEM?” My boss at this point was literally shaking – as the guy was backing up he said, “that’s a cop,” to which I replied, “so what? It’s not illegal to give a cop a dirty look.” By the time the cop tried out his intimidating question, several other people had gathered, wondering what was going on. In response to his question, I replied, “no sir, I’m just wondering what in the world you were thinking, speeding up as you approached us crossing the street. I would think you of all people should know better.” He didn’t say anything for a minute and then said, “uh…I didn’t think I was going that fast,” to which I replied, “you were going fast enough that if either of us had tripped, you would have run us over.” At this he said, “uh…sorry,” and rolled up the window and sped away. I almost WISH he had tried to ticket me, so he could explain to the judge how I had violated the law by staring down someone in an unmarked car (so clearly, I didn’t know it was a cop as he was speeding towards us) who had almost run me down. It took my boss quite a while to get over it – we were halfway through lunch before he got his color back. But as I told him, there’s no law against giving a cop a dirty look, saying something he doesn’t like, or even flipping him off. Having a badge doesn’t mean – or it shouldn’t mean – never being called out when you’re in the wrong. In my case, the guy at least apologized when he was called out for being a dick. Had there been no other witnesses present, though, I’m not sure that’s how it would have gone down.
Jennifer
A few years ago I had a close brush with the law. I was going to lunch with my boss; we had parked and were crossing the street in a crosswalk. As we started across, a car was approaching from a block away. Instead of slowing down for pedestrians in a crosswalk, the jackass speeded up to the extent that he missed clipping us by about a foot. I had been staring down the car as it bore down on us, and as I reached the center line I turned and stared it down as he zoomed past a foot away, then turned and continued walking across the street. The car got about half a block past and screeched to a halt, then backed up – with the light on the dash flashing. It was a cop in an unmarked car. He backed up even to where we were standing on the sidewalk and rolled the window down and said in his best intimidating cop voice, “Do you have a PROBLEM?” My boss at this point was literally shaking – as the guy was backing up he said, “that’s a cop,” to which I replied, “so what? It’s not illegal to give a cop a dirty look.” By the time the cop tried out his intimidating question, several other people had gathered, wondering what was going on. In response to his question, I replied, “no sir, I’m just wondering what in the world you were thinking, speeding up as you approached us crossing the street. I would think you of all people should know better.” He didn’t say anything for a minute and then said, “uh…I didn’t think I was going that fast,” to which I replied, “you were going fast enough that if either of us had tripped, you would have run us over.” At this he said, “uh…sorry,” and rolled up the window and sped away. I almost WISH he had tried to ticket me, so he could explain to the judge how I had violated the law by staring down someone in an unmarked car (so clearly, I didn’t know it was a cop as he was speeding towards us) who had almost run me down. It took my boss quite a while to get over it – we were halfway through lunch before he got his color back. But as I told him, there’s no law against giving a cop a dirty look, saying something he doesn’t like, or even flipping him off. Having a badge doesn’t mean – or it shouldn’t mean – never being called out when you’re in the wrong. In my case, the guy at least apologized when he was called out for being a dick. Had there been no other witnesses present, though, I’m not sure that’s how it would have gone down.
Another Holocene Human
@Laertes: From the accents, that was way up in New England, possibly even Down East. Apparently towns up there aren’t taking the narc money like every shithole in the South and the cops are more Brit-like in that they stay calm and don’t arrest for every little thing. Needless to say, BPD is not like that in the slightest.
Another Holocene Human
@Original Lee: I flew into San Antonio, didn’t drive. Although I was trapped in car with a craaazeeee officer’s wife with, er, control issues, in retrospect I’m glad I didn’t drive. The wedding was in the boonies, freaky Baptist country with a beer/dancing/tamales saloon on one side of the street, church on the other, fucking whiplash is what I call it.
San Antonio the city was very pleasant and the food out of this world (mmm, lard in my beans) but I was told that the weather usually sucked humid donkey balls so idk, right?
Another Holocene Human
@Hawes: Yup. 100%. And libertarians do talk about this stuff on paper, but it’s clear they put all their energy into a federal government that’s already under enforced restrictions, unlike these local PO’s that are doing whatever the fuck they please. Carry out vendetta against your buddy’s ex-wife? Sure, why not! Whereas employees at State get shit-canned for unauthorized access of passports.
My other thought is that the man who represents himself has a fool for a client. And you know why? It’s stupid, but a lawyer will have relationships with other lawyers (such as prosecutors, judges… and other judges in other jurisdictions), if the judge runs for office, if the defense lawyer is well-connected, you can’t just steamroll your own group and get away with it for long, however, random losers can be crushed like ants. Of course you need to pick the right lawyer for this. But the guy who did this video doesn’t seem to understand social engineering or the humans much at all. And he got squashed like an ant.
kindness
There are several reasons I won’t ever live in Texas. This is just one.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: And when everybody knows each other there are strong social forces actually preventing people from whistle-blowing or otherwise stopping the fraud. Very small town city commissions can act like CEO boardrooms voting themselves perks and raises. So can small organizations. Look at all the unions that end up under receivership. “Sure, paying for this is reasonable. Gee, I wouldn’t want you to be put out for all the work that you do….”
AnonPhenom
@Rafer Janders:
The federal ruling allows for video recording of police officers, audio recording is still determined by state laws (in other words in some states you can record both, in others you must turn off your audio)
AnonPhenom
Everyone can benefit from viewing this and passing it along to their friends and loved ones.
The Very Revered Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Rafer Janders: Yeah, I work in Illinois, and carry a copy of the court decision in my briefcase, just in case I’m ever challenged on this one. I work with kids who have often have legal issues in small towns, so I have lots of opportunities to educate the cops on this one.
Chocolate Covered Cotton
@dmbeaster:
Want to bet that the prosecutor wasn’t fired for the first part, losing his cool and attempting intimidation, but for the second part, revealing the truth about what non-local people can expect from lying and bullying rural cops? And that the police chief wasn’t punished for employing two lying bullies but for failing to back up the prosecutor’s first attempt at intimidation?