Crucial point. Whenever a police officer is caught doing something wrong, the "few bad apples" argument is made. Here we had several officers, including a supervisor, colluding to invent charges against someone as casually as they might order their coffee and donuts in the morning. This indicates a problem that is much broader and fundamental than a few bad apples. And from the perspective of the average citizen, unfortunately it means that police do not deserve the automatic benefit of the doubt which they claim a right to.
One bad apple spoils the whole barrel.
There is no such thing as a "few" bad apples.
[https://idiomation.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/one-bad-apple-sp...]
Not that reasoning by proverb is great in the first place.
It is basically the worst partial idiom to uphold the dignity of police officers
http://postharvest.tfrec.wsu.edu/pages/N4I1C
Trapping that gas is why confined bananas will ripen faster.
Instead of saying the whole org is bad, it expresses that the org 'is going bad'.
So even in the land of "free speech" alot of criticism against their institutions is veiled in various ways.
Unfortunately people don't become cops out of a love of justice; or, maybe a few do, only to quickly realize they've made a terrible mistake.
That said, I think we're in agreement that this is wrong. I'd just take it further and state that, if police officers file a charge, then I think they're obligated to do all the extra work to see that charge through, maybe within a reasonable window like 30 days. Subjecting someone to arrest, physical injury, and a night in jail only to throw out a charge as unfounded should come at some cost to the officers who caused it. If coders, lawyers and doctors did only a quarter of their jobs, or made a bunch of work for others that ultimately amounted to nothing, they'd be fired.
It's wrong, and a prosecutable offense, if you or I invent a story that leads to charges against someone. It's insanely wrong if police officers do the same.
I'm not saying what they did was OK. I'm just saying it's easy to understand why it happens.
And settled on an illegal way of doing so. When they are law enforcement officers. It's hard to understand that anyone signing up to "protect and serve" would think that they are given the right to do whatever it takes as long as they think they are doing right by the greater good.
If you cannot conduct yourself in a law-abiding manner as a LEO, you deserve to go to jail.
And you deserve to go to jail for longer than a regular citizen should if you do it in the performance of your job. I never agreed to follow any laws, let alone enforce them -- they did.
You obviously do not watch American TV. This is EXACTLY what is popularized.
I do agree with your opinion, unfortunately Andy Griffith is not the norm any more.
so at some point the cause of alot of problems lies at corporate media production creating a positive feedback loop of shitty culture (low quality information).
The longterm solution is clear, its a waste of effort to try and put the tubepaste back into the tube.
Is that true? The story doesn't say that. He was standing out of the way and holding a sign, legally. How that does amount to impeding the officers? How often does seeing a random protestor on the street make you suddenly belligerent with officers, and what evidence did you read that makes you think that happened here? It seems like you're making big assumptions.
If he's impeding police, what is YouTube doing with its thousands of checkpoint videos?
> I'm not saying what they did was OK.
Good? Because it was illegal what they did. Against the law. It was not only not OK, it was bad and wrong. Doubly so because the protestor was being peaceful and legal, and also because the police are charged with representing the law and upholding it's values, and they have a responsibility to not seize property, to not escalate a situation to violence, and to tell the truth about what happened.
It's a shame if this is easy to understand and commonplace, we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than this.
It is easy for me to understand that if I have a heart attack then my chances of dying in the next hour go way up. That does not mean I want to have a heart attack.
Understanding why problems happen is the first step in preventing them. Professing ignorance at why a problem could happen is not laudable.
I'm just staying that if you start with "I don't understand why our law enforcement standards are currently so low!" then you're probably not going to be helpful in fixing the problem.
Gotta diagnose first. Diagnoses comes with empathy and understanding.
Yes! Agreed, and the good news is we can do both, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. We can have empathy and high standards at the same time.
It's just much easier to rationalize it away than it is to stand up against injustice.
It's dumb....but also an understandable facet of human nature. ;-)
But even if that was it, it'd be like going into an article about a rape and saying "Well, he was horny. Not justifying, just explaining..." Of course the rapist was horny, and of course the police were annoyed at having their authority questioned. But offering these explanations when they aren't needed is explaining-away their crimes.
Certainly it's better than throwing up your hands and saying "I don't understand how anyone could ever commit rape!"
The way they sought to prevent his protest was by breaking the law without punishment.
The statement 'the charges were not based in fact' - is a statement by the ACLU, and there's no reason to believe that they are objective about the situation, we don't know what happened.
Maybe they were too aggressive in their laying of charges, if so, hopefully the will be thrown out and authorities will have a closer look, sadly, I doubt anything will come of it.
Also - the 'protestor' was carrying a weapon and acting directly against state authorities. If someone in my neighbourhood had a gun, was standing on the street trying to prod police officers, I would definitely want the police to be checking him out. That said, I don't know if he was actually breaking any laws.
The line between legal/legal and appropriate/inappropriate is really thin. Also, why everyone needs to be carrying guns all the time is beyond me.
That is the basic definition of a "protest": to prod the authorities. It is a basic right in any free society.
> That said, I don't know if he was actually breaking any laws.
Which is the crux of the matter. The cops should just STFU and move along.
NO. Totally false.
Carrying a gun, and trying to arbitrary stop cops from doing their jobs is not 'protest' - by any stretch.
In fact, I'd suggest that he could be charged with a small crime in many reasonable countries. For example, in many places, it's not legal to alert others of a speed trap at a certain spot. (Radio programs have been stopped from doing this).
"It is a basic right in any free society."
Possibly legal, but completely inappropriate the point that I, and most regular people will have little sympathy for this guy if he ends up having to go to court only to get the charges thrown out (though I don't think he should be charged with anything).
So many people fail to grasp the difference between the law, and reasonable behaviour. Running around with guns hassling cops is not reasonable by any stretch - and people shouldn't do it.
If he was holding a sign, in front of the Police building, without weapons, trying to call attention to a specific issue that would be fine. But this guy is just trying to cause problems, and stop police from doing their very important jobs.
There are a lot of ways to constructively protest without carrying weapons and prodding cops.
Except that's not what happened. His friend was holding up a sign that said there was a checkpoint ahead, and to keep silent. He was filming the police from the side of the road. Neither of those is interfering in any way with police activities (and are protected speech). He was carrying a non-concealed gun, for which he had a permit, and which is not illegal. And we 100% know this was legal, as all of the charges were dropped by the prosecutor.
The police aren't 'Appropriate Enforcement', or 'Unlaw Enforcement'. They are Law Enforcement. The enforce the law, and can do so with lethal force. The law says that it's perfectly OK to stand on the side of the road, holding signs warning people of upcoming checkpoints, and recording police while they enforce a checkpoint.
You keep bringing up the gun. He was legally allowed to carry a gun. Connecticut is an "open carry" state.
The difference is that our justice system should only be concerned with enforcing the law. Even if one concedes (I don't) that his behavior was "unreasonable", that's not sufficient for the police to involve themselves.
How do you reconcile this quote?
“Let’s give him something,” one trooper declared. Another suggested, “we can hit him with creating a public disturbance.” “Gotta cover our ass,” remarked a third.
"And then we claim that, um, in backup, we had multiple people, um, they didn't want to stay and give us a statement, so we took our own course of action"
> there's no indication that anyone made up any charges, the cops were deciding what to charge him with given the situation. That's what cops do every day.
Which is a crime. If the police don't believe you've broken a law before they arrest you, they're doing it wrong. They should never need to discuss it at this point.
> That said, I don't know if he was actually breaking any laws.
Right, and you know from this article that the police were breaking the law. They assaulted him and tried to break his camera, even if you don't believe the false-arrest aspect. But you're still trying desperately to make it look like the victims fault.
> The line between legal/legal and appropriate/inappropriate is really thin.
Not really, it's always been massively illegal and massively inappropriate to frame someone and knowingly file false police reports.
I take it you missed the part in the video where they said they would say that there were witnesses who didn't want to leave their names/information.
Somehow this kind of thing never happens when it's open carrying NRA members outside abortion clinics.
I don't understand how other officers could ever defend colleagues who do this type of activity. It's so anti-justice it should make them crawl in their skin.