Auditors are seen as annoying antagonists, just like the people who open carry in places that cause the police to get panic calls. But without them the police get too comfortable breaking the laws with no accountability.
I don't have the time, money, or balls to be an auditor, but the ones who know the laws and do it without bothering the general public are good in my book.
You should know what a Terry stop is. You should know you have the right to remain silent, know what the true meaning of "I got 99 problems but a bitch aint one"
Nobody going about their day should have to take a bullshit case to the supreme court (or even district court). These folks help change policy intentionally instead of someone just living their life having their day / week / career / life ruined.
I used to think of auditors as annoying antagonists (in my real life people never ever carry lethal weapons and police are reasonable people) until I started watching their Youtube videos.
There was one where a somewhat post-middle-aged guy is walking on the side of a busy road or highway. He's legally blind and he has a folded cane in hand, which the cops stop him for and threaten to arrest him.
Then there are the more innocuous ones, where a person is on public property just video recording public buildings from the public sidewalk, and cops come to threaten him with arrest.
I remember one where a guy is video recording in a public library and they call the cops, who come and explain that a public library is public.
And it is a him. Always a him.
In all of these the police, who are visibly and egregiously breaking laws themselves, never apologize and even when a superior tells them to screw off and leave the law-abiding private citizen alone.
Open carrying is a right. Not getting "panic calls" is not.
Furthermore, anyone who freaks out and calls 911 because someone is walking around not breaking the law is the problem, not the person exercising their rights.
Too many people treat the police as social tech support, not as law enforcement.
Sure it's a right. But you won't see me walking down our main street with my AK47 on my back because we know the outcome, and that's my point. No one is arguing what the rights are, my context is they are pushing the boundaries to assert their rights and change how the police interact with people.
the police should be held to a far higher standard, tho. I agree auditers are being provocators, and people can consider them jerks, but you are allowed to be a jerk, if you are not breaking laws. We give police the trust to serve and protect, and give them high levels of immunity. They should be significantly better than the common man.
No, my son would be shot while his White friends would probably be looked at suspiciously. But get a pass.
You can look at however you want. But what right does anyone have to walk into a police station with a gun? Who exactly are you protecting yourself from?
The fact that the line is associated with Jay-Z (it's an Ice-T lyric he stole) AND people think it's actually about a dog is one of the most impressive PR accomplishments in music. Bravo, Jay-Z's PR team in the #metoo era.
Don't care for his music, the person, but my point still stands that you can't be held up for a drug dog at a traffic stop is a real thing you should know and according to Jay Z himself it's exactly what it's referencing.
Whether he stole the hook or not doesn't really matter in this context, and has nothing to do with #metoo, I don't even know where that fits in as well.
Here is a question: Do you think he had millions of dollars of incentive to lie about this? Regardless of the truth or what you think the truth is. Do you think he had an incentive to lie?
Do you really think his fans are going to be up in arms about it even if he did mean it literally?
Ice Cube makes family movies when he use to rap about “F^^^ the police” and “With a white Jew tellin' you what to do“. The entire lyrics of “No Vaseline” was racist and would be considered homophonic today - ie “Mista S%%%packer, bend over for the goddamn c%%#}r”.
He never apologized for anything and no one cares.
Ice T went from “Cop Killer” to playing a cop on TV for two decades. Dr. Dre sold his company for billions.
Hell we elected a President who bragged on tape about forcible “grabbing a woman by the p%%%%” and he is worshipped by the “religious right”.
Here is another question, besides yourself, who else is concerned about the authenticity of some rap lyrics from a 2004 song and whether they apply to a woman or a traffic stop that happened in the 90's? And if the former, how do the lyrics make any sense? I just find this hill to stand on kind of ridiculous.
It's weirder to care in the other, PR-narrative-preserving way. But yes it's weird to care. No it's not a hill for me because I don't lose friends or experience other consequences for disbelieving media narratives. I'm mildly amused you phrased it that way.
Here's a question: do you think you're asking leading questions? Regardless of the answer you expect. Do you think ignoring the points in the original comment and asking a question about something we can only speculate on is leading?
What a weird hill to try and die on, especially being 100% wrong about it.
His first verse is about ignorant rap critics, exploitative advertisers, and fickle radio stations, and uses the 99 problems lyric to reference them.
His second verse details a police stop where he was transporting drugs, and the 99 problems lyric is to reference the K-9 that is due to arrive.
His third verse he talks about a physical altercation he had with another man who was performatively aggressive, without anything to back it up. In that verse, he makes another point about how he is using a term often used for women, but he is not using that way "A nigga like myself had to strong-arm a ho/ This is not a ho in the sense of having a pussy/ But a pussy having no goddamn sense try and push me". At the end, the 99 problems lyric is used to reference this senseless man.
No where in the song does he talk about ex-girlfriends, strippers, club hookups or literally anything about women. The song is completely structured around clearly and consistently setting it up and paying it off as wordplay against things that aren’t women.
It's funny to me seeing this "uproar" after watching the Prodigy's Smack my bitch up "uproar" from much earlier. Probably with a smaller audience though.
If you call someone a woman as an insult, that's misogynistic towards women, even if the person you're calling a woman isn't actually a woman. It doesn't even make sense as an insult unless you're a sexist.
Again with the hill stuff. Are you really not allowed to disagree with celebrity gossip in your life?
>Have you ever heard of someone refer to traffic stops as "girl problems"? This conversation is ridiculous. One verse in the song is about a traffic stop-- that specific lyric is a play on the line, not all the lyrics. Jay-Z got rich on sexism and now he's getting richer on anti-sexism.
>people think it's actually about a dog is one of the most impressive PR accomplishments in music. Bravo, Jay-Z's PR team in the #metoo era.
>Do you think he had millions of dollars of incentive to lie about this?
You asserted over and over that the song was about women, and that Jay-Z is now lying
You weren't saying whether it was or wasn't misogynistic or sexist. You were asserting that it was about women and Jay-Z is now lying and saying it wasn't about women as some sort of PR push related to #metoo. These are two different things. The lyrics of the song makes it crystal clear what is being talked about. Each verse is talking about a very specific thing and the entire verse is focused on that one thing. That isn't PR or gossip or media narrative. That is simple reading comprehension.
It is about women. A comparison necessarily involves two things. Do you think he's calling the other rapper a drug-sniffing dog? This conversation is still ridiculous. He's a sexist and a sellout. You were never cool for liking him.
The Wikipedia cited reference for the lyric being about a police dog (but only when sung after the 2nd verse) is from 2011, so I think you have your #MeToo timetable wrong.
Considering that Jay-Z himself tells us what those lyrics mean to him in his 2011 book, how would you consider that a "PR accomplishment"? The person who wrote the song ("stolen" line or otherwise) is the best source for what the artist intended, no?
Releasing a book in this century, if you're a celebrity, is most often a calculated PR move to control the narrative, yes. Books are PR instruments, fodder for articles for months.
Have you ever heard of someone refer to traffic stops as "girl problems"? This conversation is ridiculous. One verse in the song is about a traffic stop-- that specific lyric is a play on the line, not all the lyrics. Jay-Z got rich on sexism and now he's getting richer on anti-sexism. Anyone who eats it up is a fool.
I once had to go to my local station to get a copy of a police report that resulted from harassment by a neighbor. I was legally open-carrying my sidearm and had a camera on my hat recording the interaction.
While I was waiting for the report to be printed, two uniformed officers emerged from the back room and started interrogating me; they obviously were trying to intimidate me and get me to say something that would allow them to arrest me. It was incredibly unnerving and put me off from ever wanting to set foot there again. I felt lucky to not have been arrested and charged for no legitimate reason.
As far as I am concerned, the police are a gang of thugs and crooks. They cannot be trusted.
I am trying to think of a good reason to open-carry into a police station apart from "making a point".
You won't be the "good guy with a gun" in an active shooting. You won't be robbed. You won't be attacked.
If you draw your gun at a police station for any reason you will be arrested or killed.
Like, technically in my state I have the right to open-carry a rifle past a school while wearing a ski-mask as long as I'm off-property. Completely legal.
If I did that while picking my child up from school to "assert my rights" surely you'd think I was being insane, confrontational and threatening because I could have no legitimate interest in doing so.
It seems very odd to not just leave your gun in the car. Perhaps you're a principled pedestrian or cyclist? That I could see.
The United States is a very large place. I currently live somewhere relatively civilized. Here, I have a permit for concealed carry but I never actually carry.
In a past life, I lived somewhere much less civilized. There, I carried (either open or concealed) as a matter of course in my daily life. While I was always cognizant of where I was allowed to carry and where not, I never removed my gun unless legally required to do so. This is both a simple matter of convenience and a practical matter of security, as a gun on my person is inherently more secure than a gun stored in my vehicle, even though it was doubly locked while in the vehicle.
I always wondered this. If someone meant to do you harm with a gun, what are the chances that they would give you the opportunity to defend yourself? The perpetrator would already be prepared and you wouldn’t.
Well it depends. Part of the reason I was/am comfortable carrying is because I have the appropriate professional training to do so safely. Both as a result of that training and as a matter of habit, it is possible to be cognizant of potential interactions and mostly not put yourself in situations where conflict is likely. In other words, part of responsibly carrying is to always be prepared.
In the event I find myself in such a situation anyway, there's a good chance the other party won't know I'm armed unless I want them to. As for the rest of the time, I think potential aggressors as both dumber and more emotional than you're imagining. I've never come remotely close to shooting anyone, but the times I've had to actively think about it were because I people were acting in a way that telegraph ill intent long before they were in a position to do anything to me.
My wife and I are doing the whole “digital nomad” thing across the US half the year for the foreseeable future. I’ve walked around liberal lead cities where conservatives swear it’s dangerous because of homelessness (Seattle, San Francisco) and cities in conservative states (Dallas, Houston, Nashville, Charleston , etc).
I’ve lived in small town GA, a few cities around Metro Atlanta and worked in a few others. I can honestly say I have never in 50 years felt unsafe anywhere I’ve been and I can’t imagine me by myself carrying would make me feel safer against a possible ambush.
Not to mention that according to CDC statistics, gun violence is the 50th leading cause of death in the US and most of that is either suicide or being killed by someone you know.
I’m more likely to die from hamburgers and too much salt than anything carrying could prevent.
A few days ago, someone was walking along the Bay Bridge (between SF and the East Bay) shooting a gun at random cars. IIRC the cars were stuck in traffic, so avoidance was no use.
In that situation, would you feel safer with or without a gun?
Maybe safer because you could quickly immobilize the shooter?
Maybe less safe because you'd feel an obligation to attempt an intervention, but doing so could draw attention (and draw fire)?
And then when the police come not know who the actual perpetrator is and/or worry about somebody who thinks they are the “good guy with a gun” shooting and hitting an innocent bystander?
But you noticed on the other hand that I am focused on what I believe is the statistical futility of carrying a gun and not focused on having one in your car or home?
If someone came into my home where I’m laying next to my wife - the only other person who should be in my home - and my alarm went off that’s a completely different scenario. While I can suspect someone in public is meant to do my harm, I’m going to assume anyone who breaks into my house is trying to do me harm and I don’t have to worry about either police or the Justice system not believing me.
> It seems very odd to not just leave your gun in the car.
Never leave an unattended weapon in a car. Especially outside a police station. Either leave it at home, or keep it on your person. There are some products out there for securing weapons in vehicles that could work but if you don't have one don't leave your gun in your car.
It seems to me that if you haven't invested in a proper gun safe for your car you shouldn't be carrying in the first place because there are definitely places that you cannot take a gun into, even in Texas. I have never known a gun-owner who did not purchase a proper gun restraint for their car.
Still, if you don't have a gun safe in the car surely you do the same thing as you would when going to court, a school, a church, an amusement park, voting at a polling place, a racetrack, a hospital, a nursing home, or to any other business that prohibits handguns on the premises. You leave it at home, right?
Generally speaking I'm pragmatic when it comes to carrying a weapon. The same as carrying a tourniquet, first aid kit, or helmet. Personally I live in an extremely safe community with almost no violent crime. So carrying a weapon is comparable to wearing a helmet while driving a car. While it could save my life, it's too much trouble considering how rare such situations are.
However, I understand there are hundreds of reasons to carry a weapon and everyone's situation is unique. If you want to put up with the trouble to carry one, it is literally your right. I just wish people would be more responsible about their weapons in general...
The "like your reaction" isn't applicable, because one would reasonable expect those with different senses of modesty, etc. may not agree with someone being topless in public.
The "donut and ice cream for every meal" is equally ridiculous -- yes, it's legal, but (a) suggesting otherwise is farcical, and (b) anybody with common sense knows that it would both be lacking in nutrition, and lead to other health issues.
By contrast, OP engaging in regular business while happening to be enjoying their constitutionally-protected rights, is not "dumb" or something they "shouldn't do" -- the only thing that "shouldn't" be done in this case, is be interrogated for simply open carrying -- they wouldn't have batted an eyelid if GP had a CCW and was concealed-carrying.
If you're going to make an argument that GP was "dumb" for open-carrying in a police station, make that argument -- don't resort to childish and laughable attempts at puerile analogies.
> (b) anybody with common sense knows that it would both be lacking in nutrition, and lead to other health issues
Anyone with common sense knows you don’t need a gun in a police station because the police have already secured the police station.
Everything you said in your comment as a rebuttal to my analogy fit my analogy perfectly.
Let me reiterate: “interrogation” as described in this story is legal. It’s just a forceful word for asking questions. Police are allowed to ask questions in almost any situation, which is why they do it so much. They don’t have to automatically tell you that you’re not obligated to answer or stick around.
> Anyone with common sense knows you don’t need a gun in a police station because the police have already secured the police station.
Reading this subthread, it seems pretty clear that one wouldn't legally carry in a police station out of fear of needing it, but out of fear of having it stolen from their vehicles.
You're being deliberately disingenuous again, there's a massive difference between securing something on your person, and leaving it unattended in a vehicle - especially given how commonplace vehicle thefts and break-ins are.
If you're going to troll to push your anti-gun rhetoric, at least try and go for reasoned arguments rather than ridiculous hypotheticals and apparently-serious hyperbole.
It’s sad to think that we’re so deep into the gun lobby’s idea of normal society that you think what I am saying is “pro-gun rhetoric.” No, it’s not, my rhetoric is that of a person that wants to live in a society as the rest of the developed world understands it.
Here’s my reasoned argument: our government is verifiably deeply intertwined with gun organizations and manufacturers.
Without this influence we would see our nation’s wildly statistically abnormal situation as a cause for urgent action. Instead, we’ve been trained to think of that anything against our “freedom” to own guns as “anti-gun rhetoric.”
Who is "we" in this? You're making things up, casing baseless assumptions, and I said "anti-gun rhetoric," not pro -- so if you're going to lie, at least don't make it something instantly disprovable.
Your rhetoric is by your own admission rhetoric, and is demonstrably anti-gun, therefore "anti-gun rhetoric" is an accurate observation to make -- why are you getting triggered about that?
I didn't say the NRA wasn't a steaming pile of trash. I didn't say there weren't issues with big gun manufacturers getting into bed with politicians, just as happens with corporations across the entire capitalist hellscale -- that's the nature of it.
Instead, you just made baseless assumptions (which you're patently wrong about) and lashed out with your spiel.
Don't assume. Quit trolling. Try harder next time.
Sorry are you saying rights don’t matter if it makes coppers uncomfortable? Sounds like approval of gang/crook intimidation behaviors from public servants
It doesn’t sound like the cops as described in the scenario did anything illegal. They just asked a bunch of questions. It sounds like voakbasta was free to leave at any time.
voakbasta just didn’t like the fact that people reacted to him doing weird but legal stuff outside of social norms.
A major argument that second amendment originalists make for the need for personal firearms is to provide personal protection, but a police station is an area that is already protected by law officers who are armed, so there’s no reason to open carry there. It’s like bringing an air conditioner to a hockey rink.
I personally feel much less safe around police and I know many who feel the same or experienced unjust harassment and violence from them, especially nypd and including inside their stations. I know people who were tortured by county jail guards, ostensibly there for protection, while holding them awaiting trial (including later being proven innocent). I don’t agree that when encountering police that everyone should surrender or otherwise dispose of their firearms. I think that would make police even more aggressive at scale. Police are adversarial, not protective for common folk. I would advocate for the opposite - police should not be allowed to carry, and I think they are weirdos for doing so
That "it sounds like" assumption is holding a whole lot of weight there, buddy.
You don't know that they were free to leave, and the fact that you think it's "weird" for someone to open carry suggests implicit bias demonstrated by your further comments.
It's nothing about "originalists" either -- whether for the exercise of constitutional rights, their own desire, or protection, if GP chose to open carry, and it's legal to do so, they shouldn't be randomly interrogated about it -- especially when making a routine enquiry.
You're also forgetting that plenty officers have both assaulted and used their arms against peaceful citizens, including in police custody and police stations, so "there's no reason to open carry there" doesn't apply -- you don't know if GP was simply walking home and went in to get this report copy on the way -- more ridiculous analogies don't make an actual argument, you know.
Going back to your initial "sound like," if police are using tactics they've learned to coax information out from suspect and display authority and force, it could absolutely be illegal, ranging from harassment to intimidation -- short of wearing a t-shirt saying "kill all cops" or waving their firearm around, there's no reasonable circumstance why they should be challenged like that, purely for open carrying -- as I said to you before, if they CCW'd there wouldn't even be an argument, so passing judgement on GP because of your own clear anti-gun bias is transparent as heck.
> You're also forgetting that plenty officers have both assaulted and used their arms against peaceful citizens, including in police custody and police stations,
So realistically, how do you think it’s going to work out if you used a gun in a police station against a police officer for self defense? How do you think it’s going to work anywhere if you used your gun against a police officer?
That’s just like all of the yokels who have guns to protect themselves against the federal government when even a small town SWAT team could take them out let alone the FBI.
Yes, I am biased against people who open carry and I think they are weirdos. I also think the second amendment should be repealed.
I can believe that widespread ownership and carrying of guns is dangerous and weird while at the same time acknowledging that police commonly abuse power and need more oversight. The two concepts aren’t mutually exclusive.
Also, I’m just going off of the story. I’m sure if the person in the story was detained or arrested they would have mentioned it.
It's amazing how people keep looking past the question.
I am saying that a citizen walking into a police station with a gun is obviously in more danger than a person who goes in without a gun. Absolutely that's intimidating.
It's not about rights. I just don't trust the police enough to open-carry into a police station. Why take that risk? What do you gain? Is it just capital-F "Freedom"?
Well, I might not think it’s right that when I jump off a 50 story building that I’m likely to die.
Whether it’s “my right” as a Black guy to legally carry a weapon into my local police station in a county that two decades ago was a famous “sundown town” and is still less than 5% Black, I’m not willing to get shot based on my principals and then the police just lie about it.
Actually, it wasn’t because other Black people moved in. It was because builders took advantage of cheap land. Built houses and younger White professionals moved in from other parts of metro Atlanta and out of the state and overwhelmed the more backward looking people.
When we walked into the community, the builder could care less what color we were as long as our credit was good and we had the down payment to get our house built - in 2016 a 3200 square foot house for $335K.
This[1] young girl would disagree with you, as would this[2] man.
Also committed while in police custody, not necessarily in stations, bur certainly where you could also reasonably try and claim "you won't be attacked": [3], [4]
It's incredibly ignorant to make out like someone visiting a police station will magically be fine, because the police are the "good guy with a gun" in your scenario.
As for going into the station, it doesn't matter whether GP is "principled" or not, (a) they're allowed to carry, and (b) a car is not a holster.
If GP had been concealed-carrying you wouldn't have had any argument, you're trying to criticize open-carry as if there are only certain situations where it's acceptable.
If GP is legal to open-carry, they can do so wherever they like, providing particular legislation or bylaws don't prevent it.
Not sure why you're deepthroating the boot, but happening to be (legally) armed while making a regular request, is not a reason to be treated suspiciously by police.
These are attacks on people in custody. How is that remotely relevant? None of these people had the opportunity to open carry a gun when those attacks happened.
Regardless, I am not saying he should not be allowed to do it. It's not boot-licking. I am wondering, practically, about the motivation.
Drawing a gun in a police station is a death warrant. Even looking like you're going to pull it could get you shot or arrested.
I don't normally go around wearing something on my belt that could get me killed if I move my hand near it. I would only do so for a very good reason.
So I'm looking for a better reason than "because I can". I don't see one in your response.
1) I always carry. Everywhere. I live in a very rural area. Police response time is 15 minutes or more. But so what? They have zero obligation to protect you, even if they could show up in 30 seconds. I will never willingly abdicate my right to self-defense to anyone.
2) I do not have a place to secure my gun in my car, so that was not an option. Leaving guns in your car is not a good idea, so I usually avoid going into places that require me to disarm.
3) The camera was a result of the harassment by my neighbor. I did not mention that one of them is a cop. They filed a false report against me and then tried to have me arrested under those false pretenses. I started recording everything that I did, to provide an affirmative defense against accusations in situations without objective witnesses. Basically, everywhere and always.
4) I went there as a routine errand, going about my daily business. I never expected a confrontation to ensue. I never expected to be treated like a criminal from the start of the conversation. I was friendly and open in my interaction and sure as hell was not trying to provoke this kind of encounter.
5) I don’t have video because the first thing that they did was intimidate me into stopping the recording. They insinuated that my recording there was illegal and that was why they they approached me. My gun then became another lever for them to attack me.
6) I believe that the main thing that saved me was thinking quickly, knowing my rights, and articulating that understanding and resulting position in a way that made it clear that I was not going to be an easy mark. I use big words and seem intelligent, which I think intimidated them a little bit. That, and I luckily happened to have a friend with me who watched it all go down, and that could have been inconvenient when they went to tell lies on an arrest report.
Where was this? Even the more 2A literalist states often maintain that government buildings are/can be gun free areas for both open and concealed carry.
My thoughts are there are hardly any good police officers.
I think if any officer saw another doing anything illegal or would get them in trouble, 99% of the time they wouldn’t report them. The Blue Wall is real.
There has been substantial evidence of police hiding or deliberately not reporting misconduct from their colleagues, often because of fear of reprisals -- which absolutely is part of the system being objectively wrong.
Why did you go in with your sidearm and camera? Legal or not, it seems unnecessarily provocative, and that you went in with a camera because you knew it would cause a reaction.
Why is it provocative? The police also have firearms and cameras, does that make them "unnecessarily provocative" when they're walking the beat?
Would you be as critical if GP's firearm was concealed, or if the camera used was one in their phone, and not on their hat?
Sounds like you're making a lot of baseless and judgemental assumptions about voakbasda -- not everyone is a deliberately antagonistic self-professed "auditor," you know.
> open-carrying my sidearm [into a police station]
> camera on my hat recording the interaction.
> they obviously were trying to intimidate me
Someone involved in a harassment dispute with a civilian shows up at a police station in full Agent Provocateur kit, then complains about harassment by the police when [lawfully] questioned.
You sure seem to invite harassment. You weren't even detained or roughed up. You lived to tell the tale. Yet you want people to internalize that "the police are a gang of thugs and crooks. They cannot be trusted."
Where's the crime? Where's the deception? Where's the video?
Your story stinks. I call shenanigans. You're either a foreign agent or a professional victim.
I'll steel man against this argument. Even if OP was trying to be provocative, the police should be able to resist the temptation to intimidate them. Police have the power to arrest people (or worse) with impunity. They should be able to withstand someone using their constitutional rights in their presence without retaliating against them.
> You sure seem to invite harassment.
Serious question: What does this statement mean? Do you believe there to be conduct that is non-criminal and still validates police intimidation? What would that be? It's not like OP walked into the police station and hinted that he was a murderer.
> You weren't even detained or roughed up. You lived to tell the tale.
Do you believe that as long as someone isn't illegally detained or assaulted for behaving in a "provocative" yet totally legal way, they have no basis for complaint?
> Where's the crime? Where's the deception? Where's the video?
Is there literally anything on that video that could convince you the police mishandled OP's situation? The police know how to intimidate people -- doing so is literally their job when it comes to getting people to comply with orders or to answer questions in interrogation. The notion that the police officers in this situation acted to intimidate OP is not at all farfetched.
The fact that OP wasn't illegally arrested or worse makes the situation described that much more plausible. The cops know how far they can push things without risking accountability for their misconduct.
> Serious question: What does this statement mean? Do you believe there to be conduct that is non-criminal and still validates police intimidation? What would that be? It's not like OP walked into the police station and hinted that he was a murderer.
> the police should be able to resist the temptation to intimidate them
Both of you are throwing around the word "intimidation" to describe the police questioning why some idiot walked into a police station strapped and wearing a camera. Is he allowed to do it? Sure. The implication here is that the police aren't allowed to even question him though without it automatically becoming intimidation or interrogation (you're doing it too now), because that crosses a line somehow.
OP appears to be the frequent victim of "harassment," provides no evidence to substantiate his anecdote, and uses loaded verbiage like "obviously intimidating" to reframe perceptions of the alleged encounter and end it with defamatory accusations.
Ticks all the boxes in the performative outrage playbook.
> Is there literally anything on that video that could convince you the police mishandled OP's situation? The police know how to intimidate people -- doing so is literally their job when it comes to getting people to comply with orders or to answer questions in interrogation.
Not really. I'm surrounded by women and have a stepdaughter with terminal Munchausen syndrome so I'm used to histrionics and abuse of the courtroom Kuleshov effect. That one throws around sexual harassment allegations, trying to show individual text messages as evidence. Then you ask to see the full conversation and she gets cagey. You dig deeper and you learn she solicited the other party.
So here we have a guy who seems to get harassed everywhere he goes. We learn he is presenting himself in a conspicuously-threatening way, and are told that the very act of asking an armed man questions in the lobby by the police should obviously be interpreted as "intimidation."
Let's recap:
> Man threatens police, on their own turf.
> Police ask questions.
> Man cries police intimidation.
> Everyone is told to ignore the fact that man tried to antagonize police and nothing happened. Police are bad!
It's bullshit. Desperate attorneys do this florid dubbed-over visualization crap too-- "let me explain to you what you're actually seeing in this amateur video of a man--possibly woman, who knows (gender is a social construct after all!)--who looks like my client (but may or may not actually be), appearing to gently tap the victim with a roll of what could be soft paper towels, but it's possible if you look at it from a weird angle, it's possible it might look a little like a baseball bat."
The only reason I can think of other than "Standing on your rights" is that you normally carry, and don't want to leave your gun somewhere it can be stolen.
Kinda feels like more people should be doing this, but interacting at all with cops in America carries a nonzero chance of being abruptly murdered for no reason, so it's scary.
This doesn't meaningfully diminish the problem here: the police in the US are heavily armed, and are trained to manufacture pretext for violence (cf. any number of videos where police shout "stop resisting" or "hands up" repeatedly to people who are already complying).
Ordinary people, even ones who might hurt you, are aware that doing so comes with the threat of the law. The police are the law, and as such are emboldened towards violence when antagonized in ways that the ordinary public is not.
They also take part in community pickup games and are trained to interact with the community. 99% have never fired a weapon in the line of duty.
There are many more people who would kill you because they don't care or think they will be caught or forgot it all in the moment. You would be surprised how little your life means when someone needs a fix or a lot of money is available.
What we have here is the tv effect. Every cop show features a bad cop. Cop murdering black guy results in huge protests where 10 times more people get murdered by other protestors.
Your chances of getting killed at the protest is much greater than being murdered by the cops who everyone is protesting against
> 99% have never fired a weapon in the line of duty.
This is a misleading fixation: the police can beat, brutalize, and kill people without ever firing a gun. In fact, mistreatment at the hands of the police is probably overwhelmingly physical in nature. The fact that your community has sporty cops does not meaningfully change this truth.
By and large, the police in the US are subject to extremely positive media portrayals. I, like millions of other Americans, grew up watching Law and Order (the good one, not SVU); the police in these shows are shown, with sparingly few exceptions, to be virtuous public servants. Such positive fictionalized portrayals have been instrumental in the public's overall opinion of policing[1], even through real-world evidence to the contrary.
Also ordinary people can't get away with having used deadly violence after their pretext is thrown out of court. For police it's a regular Tuesday, and then back to work on Wednesday.
And I'm someone who respects the police and believes in the rule of law. But reality is reality.
Well ordinary people have an option of just walking away that police officers generally have a duty not to, meaning they put themselves into tense situations in the course of doing their jobs.
This is a common misconception: under the Public Duty doctrine, the police have no obligation to intervene in any particular public instance of crime[1]. Their duty to the public is a “general” one, which makes it an extremely weak duty.
As well as being consistently reaffirmed by various courts that the police have no constitutional duty to protect the public. Only the people in their immediate custody.
This might sound like common sense but the opposite is more true.
Police may walk away from just about any interaction with the public, even if they know that death or serious injury will happen unless they intervene (though there may be states that have legislated exceptions to this).
Most working people may be fired for not engaging a potential customer, client, vendor or someone else they’d normally interact with as part of their job. They can even be fired for simply not being friendly enough in one of these interactions.
Wasn’t it also in New York where an on-duty cop watched a guy get stabbed on the subway from a few feet away and actively chose to do nothing without punishment?
Hot take: Community policing should be separate from warrant enforcement. A huge part of police's 'fear' is from not knowing who in any interaction is at risk of being incarcerated for 20 years and has an outstanding warrant and might therefor do whatever it takes to avoid that.
Community policing should be about community policing and needs to be de-escalated. Warrant enforcement should be warrant enforcement. This would make police less fearful and less justified in their hostility.
Fear is often not a rational experience, though. Interacting with American cops has become scary, and thus we don't have a ton of people doing what this guy is doing.
I think in this case fear is a pretty rational response considering that police could rob, rape, or murder you and would likely face zero consequences for it even if it were all caught on camera.
Honestly yes. Obviously there's a lot of disparity in how video evidence of crimes committed by police are handled. Some officers do get charged and convicted, some get fired with no charges brought, others voluntarily retire, and some only get paid vacations before they're cleared of all wrong doing, but considering how often police have gotten away with outright executing people on video, is it really so hard to imagine it isn't happening with rape?
What I can say is that I haven't seen the footage of police raping someone shown by the news (with the exception of Daniel Wilkey - https://youtu.be/90UuIJkeZYg), and I imagine that many victims would object to that footage going public. I think it's reasonable to conclude that rape is less likely to be filmed (by police, victims, or bystanders) in the first place and more likely to go unreported entirely than the beatings and murders we usually see footage of.
Still, we know that police do rape people.
Personally, even things like this are terrifyingly dystopian:
But there's at least some thin excuse for why that should be allowed. We've also seen cops caught who ended up with a long list of victims and/or a history of complaints.
I'd like to think that today things are slowly getting better and that if a video was released which clearly showed police raping someone at least something would be done about it, but I really don't have any reason to think that police would get away with rape any less often than they do murder.
Is this your actual argument? You will accept nothing less than literally zero? Surely you realize that this is impossible among any group of people (including police) in literally any place on Earth.
What would your proposed policing system look like?
I would expect that if someone were killed by the police under suspicious circumstances there would be a meaningful and earnest investigation as to whether the police acted appropriately. If not, that their special authority be revoked and criminal charges be brought.
Ah, this I agree with. Qualified immunity has protected police in a few way-too-shady circumstances.
However, as a side effect, I think a lot of police would leave their jobs (or less people would join the police force in the future) without qualified immunity. In some cases this is good as it removes or prevents bad apples in the force, but in other cases I imagine perfectly good potential-cops are not going to put up with a dangerous, low-paid job that they can also be sued for doing at any time.
Sort of like aggressive medical malpractice lawsuits discouraging actually good/useful medical treatment as bycatch. Maybe there's some free-market equivalent of malpractice insurance for police (where the shadier they've acted, the more they'd have to pay for insurance)? Not sure the market is the right approach here, but I'm not familiar with any specific alternatives.
Or, to make everything a lot easier, just give every cop a bodycam and ~80% of the ambiguity disappears.
> * I think a lot of police would leave their jobs (or less people would join the police force in the future) without qualified immunity*
I'd rather have fewer police, even if that makes them dangerously understaffed, than the current situation where cops have very little accountability, and are unlikely to be punished when they break the law when interacting with non-cops.
Qualified immunity needs to go. Not just because it's a bad doctrine, but also because there's no basis for it in law; courts have just made it up with little legal justification.
> Or, to make everything a lot easier, just give every cop a bodycam and ~80% of the ambiguity disappears.
Body cameras are much less useful than we'd all like to believe. I think 80% is too optimistic. Cops can turn off the camera (or, "weird, it wasn't working"), and regular physical motion can easily blur the scene and make it impossible to know what's truly going on. I think cops should be required to wear them (and be auto-punished for turning them off), but I don't think they're the panacea many people think they are.
We might have a genuine disagreement then, because I have a very strong preference against police being "dangerously understaffed".
Given other societal forces (i.e. decreasing mental health care for those with the greatest need, since about the Reagan era), in my understanding we rely on cops to hold together denser areas. If policing were to substantially decrease, I'd want to be as suburban/rural as possible (whereas currently I'd like to be more urban). I might be in favor of less policing if it came after we had better services for the homeless & mentally ill.
Not claiming my viewpoint is morally or practically correct, only trying to give a better view of my perspective. I'm sure views on the police differ greatly by group membership (I am likely biased by police having low suspicion of me by default; I am also ~never going to "win" a physical interaction without backup.)
Qualified immunity as a concept is necessary in some cases. You don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. All you need is comprehensive and codified rules to prohibit certain police behaviors.
Miranda rights are a good example. Police don't get qualified immunity for violating Miranda Rights because they are codified.
Separating it Internal Affairs and police investigations under a different organization seems like a no-brainer. This would remove conflicts of interest.
The kind of person who is unwilling to be a cop without qualified immunity is 100% not the person who should be allowed to be a cop.
No other job in the US, including ones that can cause negligent death and send you to prison, has qualified immunity. If a cop can't do their job without breaking the law, something is very wrong with the law or their job description.
>dangerous, low-paid job
It is not even remotely either of these. Cops die less on the job than sanitation workers. Most cop deaths (excluding when covid was the primary cause) are caused by car accidents. Is the police union attempting to stop car chases which have shown to be dangerous and ineffective?
I think "the kind of person unwilling to be a doctor without [some level of] protection from medical malpractice lawsuits shouldn't be qualified to be a doctor" would be false - there's a lot of reasons someone might want protection from constant litigation in a high-stakes job, even if they are trying to do it well. What do you see as the key difference between doctors & cops here? Other jobs don't have qualified immunity per se (except other governmental jobs), but there are plenty of jobs with specific licensing/insurance that seems to be trying to do something similar.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Police and sheriff's patrol officers and transit and railroad police have some of the highest rates of injuries and illnesses of all occupations."[0] It's certainly not the deadliest job, but I'm guessing it is vastly overrepresented in deaths & injuries compared to most jobs (and many potential officers' next best option).
In 2021 police & detectives in the U.S. had a median wage of ~$66k[1], lower than the national median of ~$71k[2]. Again, not the worst paid by far, but below median.
Obviously a lot of this depends on location; different areas have vastly different crime rates, and police in a wealthy suburb probably are very well-off compared to the night shift in inner cities.
Police work is far from the worst job you can get, but it still seems harder than a lot of (most?) other work. Though I don't feel qualified to make a subjective comparison to other jobs of similar pay & starting requirements.
I'm not sure what you mean by police unions trying to stop car chases. Presumably chasing criminals through sometimes-dangerous situations so they don't get away is a core part of the job description?
in my case, it would not only enforce the law, it would obey the law, be culpable for breaking the law, and would actively route out criminals, and gangs that manage to enlist.
I think approximately everybody agrees with these ideals, but approximately nobody agrees on how to achieve them in the real world. Or agrees about comparative importance - ex. weighing being culpable for breaking the law against ability to enforce the law, if you see the discussion below about qualified immunity.
>I think approximately everybody agrees with these ideals
Maybe in vague theory but in the past several years, every time a cop shoots someone without just cause there are a lot of people defending them. Hell, they get donated millions to defend themselves in court! Strangers send money to a random cop so he can afford expensive legal council to keep him from being guilty of a crime. Surely that can't be read as everyone wants accountability right?
I'm wary of kicking the hornet's nest here, but just as a note, a lot of the highest-profile "just cause" cases have a lot of disagreement around the actual details. Thanks to the PETA principle[0] (section III is about exactly this), the events that make it into mainstream media almost always have intensely divisive details that do make an impartial ruling a lot harder. People that disagree with you would probably also disagree with how innocent/guilty you find the people involved.
I think pretty much everyone wants police accountability, but the cases where the police are most unambiguously & egregiously wrong on every level aren't divisive enough to stay in the news as long as divisive ones. (Not necessarily always true! Please do not take any of this as a strong personal opinion any any particular case(s)!)
> You're probably at a lower risk of being murdered with a bad cop than with your own family members.
Sure, and I’m much more statistically likely to be hurt by a dog than mauled by a lion. But I’m not going to give up my dogs and start wandering into lion cages at the zoo.
With travel, we often talk about deaths per x miles traveled. I think in this case a reasonable metric would be deaths or injuries per x minutes of interaction.
In a fascinating irony, more than 40% of cops admit to instigating domestic violence at home (which begs the question of how many more have, but don't admit it?).
Most automotive collisions happen within 50 miles of your home.
(You interact with your own family members many orders of magnitude more often than with the police; as such, raw numbers here would be wildly misleading.)
> You're probably at a lower risk of being murdered with a bad cop than with your own family members.
If you have a cop as a family member, you are at an elevated risk of each of those, and much of that is the special risk of getting both simultaneously.
"undermines the privacy of people who interact with the criminal justice system and compromises the integrity of ongoing investigations."
Crazy how dishonest this response from the police is. Public buildings have restricted zones that the public cannot enter, they are clearly defined by the law, such as a public lobby vs someone's office.
Some of these "Auditors" are just trying to stir shit up with cops for views, but plenty have done real work asserting our basic rights when interacting with cops
And the best way to disempower auditors is not to react to them. When the police learn not to react to lawful activities, the "auditing" movement will be dead. The "plenty" will be happy with this situation, because that is what they want.
I am certainly no auditor, but last week I felt uncomfortable with how a stop-and-search of a person of colour was being conducted in England last week, so I filmed it from a reasonable distance. There was no provocation from me, and the police didn't react - which is the right thing, and makes a boring video (which I had no intention of uploading anyway).
Despite this, when one of persons friends got close (~15 feet away) to talk to him (which is entirely lawful with a stop-and search), one of the police pushed (with force) him away. I interjected and told the constable he "could use words, rather than force", and his response was "I could have pushed harder if I wanted". If the constable was willing to have this type of interaction on camera, imagine what it could have been like if it wasn't filmed.
Why aren't you planning to upload it (or send it to some oversight board, if your community has one)? That shitty interaction you describe at the end should be publicized, or at least reported in some way, no?
The incentives, unfortunately, are not so neatly aligned, and the NYPD arrest at the center of this lawsuit is a prime example.
The officers were willing to make an arrest to retaliate against First Amendment protected activity because they knew they could do so with impunity. Would it have been less hassle to ignore him and let him do his thing? Yes indeed. But they assaulted and then arrested him anyway because it's a power thing.
> The officers were willing to make an arrest to retaliate against First Amendment protected activity because they knew they could do so with impunity.
It's worse than that, NY has an ordinance explicitly allowing people to film police. This is a case of the police enforcing laws that simply don't exist and prosecutors supporting them. It's by definition lawlessness inside the police force.
No? Ruby ridge and Waco made it pretty conclusive that any american response to that situation would be MORE militarization of police. When has any sovereign country responded to violence with a reduction in police authority and power?
Hell, for two decades we have taught our cops that the world is a warzone and all citizens should be considered threats. They're itching for a "war", for a chance to play with all their toys. There's a significant amount of literal right wing militias in the american police.
RR and Waco are fundamentally different because they involved the government cornering criminal groups and placing them under siege until they capitulated/died.
The scenario I'm talking about involves extremely difficult to detect and prevent vigilante action against corrupt individuals.
The kind of law enforcement that you're talking about who are itching for a 'war' will fold as soon as they face a threat like that. They're not actually there for a war. they're there to bully.
I've yet to see any evidence that the Branch Davidians had committed crimes that the ATF had enough evidence for to effect arrests. Even if the ATF had had such evidence of such crimes, that didn't justify ninja-style wall scaling and entering. No-knock warrants are a disaster for everyone: for the innocent, for criminals, and for the police who serve them.
As for RR, the ATF solicited the crime, and it took them a lot of effort to get what's-his-name to actually commit that crime. That is just not OK!
Not really the same thing as walking into the police station with the only reason you're doing so is to film the police as they work, or even heckle them with the camera rolling to see if you can rile them up enough to point your finger and say "ha! see? got you!".
> only reason you're doing so is to film the police as they work
I think that's a fine reason to do it. If we can get to the point where cops acknowledge that they can and may be filmed anywhere when they're on duty, that's a good thing.
Heckling and riling them up is crossing the line, though.
Unfortunately, the police have seized on this stereotype to try to discredit all auditors, most of whom are not looking to provoke police or anyone else, but are merely trying to assert their First Amendment rights.
In the NYPD raw footage, you can see an officer tell Mr. Reyes, post-arrest, "You wanted this." And Reyes responds, "I wanted my freedom to be taken away from me?" It's preposterous on its face. And if merely asserting a constitutionally protected right is synonymous with baiting or provoking law enforcement, what crazy world do we live in?
In other videos on his channel, it has become routine for police officers to pull public employees aside and say, "Look, he's just doing it for the views or to start a lawsuit." Essentially, they imply that he's trying to exploit some loophole of the law for personal gain.
In reality, though, like any other journalist, he's entitled to a source of income from the content he produces, and that doesn't mean he's doing anything dirty or sensational. And he's certainly not exploiting a loophole of the law. The right to do what he's doing is enshrined in the Constitution.
There's an interesting youtube channel called audit the audit that calls out the bad actors and praises the cops who do their jobs correctly. I'm glad folks are willing to do the work of civil rights auditing. I suspect most are just hoping it'll result in youtube views or a nice lawsuit with a large payout, but I don't mind. I value my life/time/comfort too much to do that kind of work for youtube ad money.
>audit the audit that calls out the bad actors and praises the cops who do their jobs correctly
This conflates constitutional rights violations by police with merely being an annoying "bad actor" civilian, which is intellectually dishonest and completely reprehensible.
You're right that bad behavior by police (who are also civilians) is a much bigger problem than bad behavior by the people they interact with, but the actions of both parties still matter. The channel seems to take into account that your average person doesn't interact with police very often, hasn't been trained for such encounters, and isn't under any obligation to act professionally. That said, they can still be reckless, irresponsible, and abusive. An auditor can also weaken their case if they're not careful.
"Stirring shit up" doesn't mean doing anything illegal. If they also get views WHILE calling out the bad stuff, why is that bad? They aren't violating the law. They aren't forcing anyone to do anything. I really don't see why not breaking the law is suddenly frowned upon.
I explicitly mean that some of these people know they get better ad revenue by being rage bait and getting the cops to do something to them, and are willing to cross lines that are fuzzy. That kind of stuff provides fodder for those trying to paint the entire movement as bad faith.
In this case it protects it. An auditor relying on a day job is at great financial risk by auditing. One that lives on ad revenue is free to keep auditing.
Plus, if police keep their emotions in check the auditor will likely have to look for a day job and have no more time to bother them!
If people can't exercise their first amendment rights in or around police officers/offices, maybe police shouldn't be allowed their 2nd amendment rights, and only allowed non-lethal firearms. Many other countries do well with that limitation.
While I of course agree that you should be able to exercise your first amendment (and other constitutional rights) around police officers, and I would also like to see fewer officers carrying deadly weapons, I don't see why they should be related?
If you exercise your legal rights and the police beat you with a baton, or cuff you and kneel on your neck for several minutes, or just detain you for the maximum number of hours without charging you, that's still a meaningful problem.
Some of these 'auditors' do OK work (referenced auditor not included), and I think it's necessary. Unfortunately many of them think that part of auditing is treating public servants like complete garbage to try and get a negative response that they can capitalize on with views and attention. This completely defeats the purpose of the work that should be done, and treating public servants as less than is unacceptable, whether it's a LEO or a clerk at a local town hall.
These public servants might be wrong when they say you can't film in a particular area, but that is an opportunity for education and not an opportunity to treat them like crap, and it happens constantly with these people. The 'frauditors' love to remind public servants that they work for them and then use that as an argument to talk to them like they are the lowest forms of life on the planet. It's disgusting and I hope the auditors out there that are doing this work respectfully and honestly are the ones that get the attention in the future.
Seems like if the cops keep a cool head and follow the law there’s no content, no?
Funny how the absolute bare minimum requirement that one would expect for police would make most of this simply disappear (obviously some of these are about actual laws which are unconstitutional, which may need to be handled in court post-arrest)
One of the things I've noticed with Long Island Audit is that he treats people quite respectfully -- until they start talking disrespectfully to him. At that point, he does veer into name-calling ("tyrants" is a frequent insult) but that's about as disrespectful as he gets.
But having watched his videos for more than a year, I can understand his frustration. Public servants routinely mistreat him. They bark orders at him that they have no authority to demand, they treat him as hostile for not immediately deferring to them, and at times they even physically lash out at him. After having that happen repeatedly, I'm sure he's fed up with it, and so I can overlook some verbal expressions of frustration.
I don't have the time, money, or balls to be an auditor, but the ones who know the laws and do it without bothering the general public are good in my book.
You should know what a Terry stop is. You should know you have the right to remain silent, know what the true meaning of "I got 99 problems but a bitch aint one"