Depends on the situation. You'd absolutely be arrested. Get in front of a jury of 12 people and you might have a chance if you have enough evidence for a self-defense claim and the cop acting outside of the law.
Not true. There is case law that allows for self-defense against unlawful use of force, or when when you reasonably believe the force was not coming from an officer (didn't announce, were not uniformed, believed to be imposters, etc).
But - to the OP's point, if you're trying to defend yourself against what appear to be police officers illegally shooting at you, the situation is just going to escalate. One police officer firing at you will shortly become many police officers firing at you. Taking cover or running is preferable to firing back at police.
Okay, but what if they just wear masks and use unmarked vehicles?
Then do they get a pass for shooting you in the back?
I was lucky that for unrelated reasons the trial didn't happen and none of the jury selection stuff went through, but in a few states you cannot just rely on this as an easy out. This is awesome, because for true believers, you can actually do jury nullification. This was actually somewhat recently and notably used: https://www.eenews.net/articles/bundys-acquitted-in-huge-set...
The whole group felt the felony charge was too much for that series of events. Somebody said "I don't want to vote on this". I suggested that is a valid option. The vote was the weakest of all the cases we covered. Several abstentions but just enough to send the case to trial.
To me that is nullification in practice. It is "the community" deciding that they don't believe the State is right in pursuing conviction. Juries are meant to be a randomized "council of elders" type body not just cogs in the machine.
Using your belief in jury nullification as a tool to get out of your duty as a citizen rubs me the wrong way. You have to participate in the functions of civilization if you want it to reflect your beliefs.
Steal a car to rush somebody to a hospital then return it after and the letter of the law will convict you as a felon. It is the jury that could decide, as representatives of the community, that you should not be a felon for saving somebody's life even if you technically stole a car.
In most states the jury instructions are to make their judgement based solely on the evidence presented to them. These instructions make a jury a cog in the prosecution machine. The purpose of a jury is a final check on the government's execution of the law by members of the community.
I think you're think of grand juries. They decide if there is enough evidence to go to trial, I.e. if the prosecution is just.
Even without grand juries, we'd still have juries that decide the verdicts. They decide if a conviction is just.
The main problem is the idea that I'm held captive by some fake contract to the state. I'm lucky that where I am the law is more just/libertarian than in most other places - meaning that in general the average arrested person is more likely to be actually guilty, but especially in places that are ultra authoritarian (i.e. Virginia), I need all the power I can get to protest their unjust system or I'm not going to have my time wasted.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-backs-chal...
Hunter Biden trial would never have happened now too because of this - many people at the time wanted him to fight it out and be the poster child for this rather than the Pakistani guy in this version of the case.
So actually, you can indeed just say "yes" and than "vote your conscious" anyway, even openly - at least in the case of the few states that don't have "willing to nullify" as an acceptable reason to strike a juror during jury selection.
Note in this case guy was in an illegal state and also had cocaine.
As long as they shout "police", they can knock down your front door, throw a flash-bang into your infant's crib and disable them for life, then go "whoops" when they realize they have the wrong address and you'll be on the hook for replacing the door they destroyed.
If LE "just" shoots at you (i.e. you're not actively firing or an immediate threat - and without commenting on the "should" of that) then... you might be "fine", once you're disabled.
If you're actively firing at LE, they're going to hit you with "overwhelming force" (ever seen a news story where there's 50+ bullet holes in a car, or a suspect shot 15 times, by police? That's "overwhelming force") and any survival on your part is going to be sheer dumb luck and "not very likely".
Oh I wonder what kind of terror he's talking about
> Illegal blocking of sidewalk selling fake handbags
Jesus Christ. If this is what brings you to a surveillance state with open arms maybe you should talk to people outside of your bubble.
People selling handbags neither threatens my dignity nor makes me indignant.
When I think of "terrorize", I think of things like.. y'know, people strapped with explosives, blowing up buses full of civilians. Or something like the Rape of Nanking, where Japanese army killed and raped their way across the city. The Japanese terrorized the city, literally instilling a nightmarish-level of fear.
I can't place "they're terrorizing me by selling handbags" anywhere in the same universe. If you're genuinely frightened by this, I would like to gently suggest you talk this through with a therapist.
I don't. I work every day to help my community and I hope you do the same.
> You don't need a surveillance state
Then don't call for one. If you'd like to change your community, again, I'd recommend you to stop being scared and just start talking to more people around you.
I guarantee there is _some_ group that finds some aspect of you, your life, or that of some of your loved ones at least as annoying as you find those things.
checks, it's "people selling untaxed marijuana"
Yeahhhh, we have radically different ideas about what constitutes "they're terrorizing my city".
Casual use of heavy-handed law enforcement makes things much, much worse, not better.
This wasn't a thing 10 years ago and we weren't in a police state
Curious then that you are arguing in favor of a police state with mass surveillance to solve these issues...
I don't think you need to arrest someone because they're selling an untaxed legal substance, no. (And: weed should be legal, if we're talking about a place where it's not).
You can manage this situation better by getting their info and issuing a ticket. On its face, it doesn't warrant an escalation of force, the extra paperwork, or choking up the jails -- all of which represent very real costs to us, the taxpayers.
> This wasn't a thing 10 years ago and we weren't in a police state
Buddy, I have some news for you about the history of the US. Ten years ago, which country/countries had the highest incarceration rate in the world?
And fear, whether real or induced by manipulation, has precipitated a -lot- of atrocities in the world.
But go look at the conviction rate in Japan - it's not because their police are just so much better than ours that they just never get the wrong person. I would never argue for the Japanese legal and police system in America.
>There was a lot less of this petty criminality 10 years ago.
No there wasn't. Or are you saying that because material reality is now encroaching on your bubble?
But I am not Japanese. I have no ties in Tokyo and they have a sensible immigration policy that doesn't allow just anyone to come.
I'm American and want to make America a safer and better place for the 95% of people that want to live in an orderly society.
Of course there was less crime in NYC 10 years ago. Don't gas light me. Bootleg handbag sales were Chinatown only, there wasn't weed sales on every corner in midtown. Fentanyl zombies weren't a thing. Things weren't perfect, we still had subway dancers and pushy CD scammers, but it wasn't nearly as bad
See Demolition Man (1993) for an example of this.
If you consider that terrorizing, you need help.
Yes. That's exactly the point. Comply with every little thing, no matter how absurd, or else your life will unravel.
Look through a historical comment (especially from back when "big data" was the buzzword) thread on any subject where HN is pro regulation and pro government. This is EXACTLY what the useful idiots want.
They want some NYC liquor store owner to pay a hundred grand to the state because that one time he visited NH he loaded up his van with tax free henny to sell back home.
They want that exurban undeveloped lot owner to lose their house for letting their buddy with a tree service dump there and fill in a few hundred square feet over the course of half a decade.
They want some random industrial employer that makes nuts and bolts or something to be fined millions of dollars because their maintenance employees spray painted a piece of equipment in the parking lot without the PPE and pollution compliance measures befitting a commercial paint operation.
They want the jackboot on the throat of everyone who steps out of line on any axis that they care about.
They see the way the banking industry tries to stay away from weed, porn and guns because the upside isn't worth the risk of being combed over by the enforcers. And instead of seeing it as cautionary, they see it as a model that needs to be scaled down to the small businesses and the lowly individual peasants.
Of course they don't lay it out so plainly. They use words like "negative externality" and "antisocial" and "dis-incentivize" to whitewash it but that doesn't change what it is.
Instead of arguing against actual regulatory policy, you are mind-reading malicious intent into hypothetical scenarios (and people) you just invented. Or real examples that you're broadstroking against a "they" which is somehow "HN."
I am not sure how you can justify trying to paint so broad a stroke across an entire community, or feel justified in creating a bucket of "useful idiots" into which you just throw whole classes of unnamed people without engaging with any particular argument.
I get you're angry, my man, but maybe you should question exactly who it is you're angry with.
American police kill over 1,000 civilians and 10,000 dogs per year.
They routinely wrongly arrest people, and create life-ruining situations, especially as American workers do not enjoy as much job protection as Canadian workers.
I get that you want to be offended by his post, but maybe you should question why exactly you're offended at a post that has, at its heart, a lot of actual reality about life in America.
Read what he wrote and I wrote again. Nobody is excusing American police. I'm griping about his attempts to smear random people on this forum.
Nowhere did I tell you you're wrong to worry about American police. FFS, I worry about American police and I don't live there. Hence why I won't even go there.
I said that if you go into policy discussions where HN is pro regulation you can see all sorts of commenters cheering for the pro-jackboot takes and peddlers thereof.
It's a subtle distinction between that and "the whole place is stupid" but it's there.
> I'm griping about his attempts to smear random people on this forum.
Want me to name names? I can go right down the leader board saying who wants jackboot applied and on what policy axis. I don't think that's productive.
Link for the curious
https://www.thedrive.com/news/how-flock-cameras-wrongly-trac...
You can be mauled by a police dog and if you hit the dog, you get an assault on a police officer charge. It's bad enough a cop can permanently disable you if you can't follow 3 conflicting orders being yelled, but they can also send an animal who literally doesn't know better.
https://www.kxlf.com/news/america-in-crisis/aurora-police-de...
> "Why are you now placing these children on the ground face into the concrete? It's hot! In front of all of us? Screaming at them. They are telling you they are hurt," witness Jenni Wurtz said.
I cannot believe LE will use this technology within ethical bounds, since they are willing to force a very young child onto the asphalt of a hot parking lot, who cannot possibly have posed a risk to their safety.
Cops need to be on a leash because the profession attracts the untrained pitbulls of humanity.
These people should be digging ditches half the time, yet they're the ones with qualified immunity and guns.
I'll bite. I'm sure it has happened. But how often?
https://www.techspot.com/news/113320-one-california-town-fou...
and the saying OP is looking for is "You can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride". A police saying since the early 70s.
"This will ruin lives, even if they're eventually let go. Jobs lost, evicted from homes, cars towed, pets surrendered and put down."
No. The 'domestic violence and prohibited substances' is the part that will ruin lives directly.
Domestic violence, bad. The drugs, debatable, but that's a matter of getting 'weed' made legal, not a surveillance issue.
It's not 'destroyed lives from crime' - it's the 'destroyed civic fabric from an authoritarian surveillance state' ... that is the problem.
It's not the 'incident' that is the problem, because Flock is not helping cops be 'dirty cops' or anything.
It's the totality of it - and the pernicious grinding away of common civil liberties.
Probably we should not be able to use this 'interstate' unless for 'in pursuit of violent criminals leaving the scene of a violent crime' ... which is so rare that it wouldn't make sense.
The only place this should be tolerated is in 'acute areas of high crime, with annual review and judicial warrant' - aka where there is literally that much crime that it's a serious civic concern - and it has to be part of an overall civic plan by the municipality, in conjunction with social services, investment etc - never as a 'lone tool'.
Yes it very much is, there's plenty of evidence
Note that all the other charges against this person were dropped.
This is not like something that helps them cover their tracks, or hide behind some tool.
I don't like Flock, but it's the 'surveillance state' part of it that is bad.
In terms of 'cops being bad cops' - that's a separate thing.
Also - Flock for sure should not be allowed to be used in this kind of speculative kind of thing.
What about when they stalk and pull over women they're infatuated with? That's not being a bad cop? You know they do that, right?
This literally does help them hide behind some tool. They can get away with all sorts of rights violations by the nature of "we didn't collect the data, we bought it" in the first place.
Just like cops should not be able to ram their cars into people , or pepper spray peole in the face just because someone refused to show their id?
Like - you people have any sense at all of the difference between laws, policy, training, tools, rules of engagement etc?
Some tools are more amenable to abuse than others.
Some tools are far more dangerous (guns) than others.
Some tools are more easily abused without repercussion.
Some tools (Flock) can have audit trails aka information access - and also therefore limitations - like 'warrant' and 'court order', and 'access history' etc..
The moment the system has access registry, and the law says 'can only be used for such and such' - then defense lawyers can request access to logs to show unlawful access.
That's a great feature, and it will aboslutely curb lazy or bad cops from doing bad things.
That doesn't mean flock is good or bad, it's characterizing.
That's exactly what Flock is doing. It's just the latest variation on "power corrupts".
I don't think this is reasonable or principled.
The evidence here is that Flock can be used maliciously, I don't think anyone doubts that, the question is it a tool that is inherently bad in it's normal functioning, and I don't think so.
Like ... 'pepper spray' can be used maliciously by cops, since it's 'less apparently extreme' they can get away with more shenanigans. But it's not 'inherently' bad tool, and perpetual use won't change policing.
If you see a story where cops use pepper spray maliciously, and it harms someone ... that's evidence of an incident, not of a bad tool.
The 'evil' of flock is the surveillance state, not in bad apple cops.
That’s an uncharitable strawman.
We have checks against police abuse in place. Probably not enough in the US, but they exist. There’s no meaningful oversight in the US of Flock camera usage, though. And frankly, meaningful oversight will kill Flock’s business model - which it should. Nothing Flock is doing should be allowed in a democracy, in its current form.
Let's say your just broke up with your girlfriend, shortly after, her house get burgled and a bunch of jewelry is stolen, including some you gave her when you were together. A surveillance camera catches the burglar, a drug addict with a criminal record, he gets caught, tried and sentenced to 2 years in prison. The kind of case that won't get a news article, you may not even be aware of what happened.
Without the surveillance camera, you would be a prime suspect, and even if you don't get convicted in the end, there is a good chance for the police to give you a hard time.
Here is the asymmetry, if a surveillance camera prevents a wrongful arrest, no one will notice, because you don't notice things that don't happen. Only wrongful arrests caused by surveillance cameras will be noticed.
More surveillance doesn't mean more arrests, trials and convictions. These are limited by the availability of police forces, magistrates and jails respectively. Even with a total surveillance zero privacy dystopia, you can't have more arrests without the means to do so. What will change is on what grounds the arrests are made: video footage, a witness testimony, etc...
It doesn't mean I support mass surveillance (I told you I was going to play devil's advocate), but that alone doesn't mean more wrongful arrests as a whole unless something else in the system is promoting wrongful arrests.
There are legitimate concerns about Flock that don't involve wrongful arrests, such as misuse of data by operators, like for stalking, data security, which may leak to criminals, and usage for purpose other than law enforcement, like marketing. The fact that it is a private company funded by public money with dubious contracts is another concern.
>you can't have more arrests without the means to do so.
Not exactly sure what you're trying to say... you can always have more arrests. Make more things crime. Pre-crime, thought crime, speech crime. When you run out of physical space you start stacking the prisoners 10 deep. When that runs out of space you start executing them and putting them in ovens.
Why do you think people get away with minor traffic offenses all the time, something right in front of an officer? There simply isn't enough means to deal with these, so they just ignore most of them.
Search "Brady violation" on youtube for some examples.
Then you get hella hard time because technically it's an evidence and arguing against evidence is always way harder, even if the argument is "if you squint and imagine that this guy wore a wig and painted his face, here's an expert opinion that height and figure difference could be an illusion from camera position". Court almost always defaults to evidence and experts.
Or it wasn't a burglary in your girlfriend house, but face/plate-matching algorithms screwed up.
It's hard to choose between "police give hard time to victim and victim relatives" and "police randomly decides who fit the bill and get this person sacked"
This sounds like a problem with an unaccountable police force. London has had a CCTV system for 60 years.
This will ruin lives, even if they're eventually let go. Jobs lost, evicted from homes, cars towed, pets surrendered and put down.
Lives will be completely derailed, police and judges will not be held accountable. The wrongful arrestees will still be in debt to the local jail and court for various fees they racked up. Trust in the justice system will continue to degrade and more and more violence will be used against people to maintain order.
We hold police to high standards for search/arrest because they have the monopoly on violence. Even if they're wrong, you can't shoot back. Even if they're slamming your loved ones into the pavement, breaking their teeth, you cannot kick the cop in the head or else they have permission to murder you both.
Mass surveillance is a loophole to this contract.