The victim didn’t identify groman as the culprit. groman and his pals were in a vehicle that fit the description of the actual perpetrators. And, thus, groman and his pals were stopped correctly by the police who were, after all, investigating the criminal complaint initiated by the actual victim–just like groman says (s)he wants the world to work.
groman’s actual complaint is that (s)he was bothered, AFAICT. (S)He doesn’t want to be bothered, no matter if his or her activity is criminal. The complaint is that the police, in the course of their lawful duties, and the librarian, in the course of his or her legal responsibility, bothered groman.
You are going to have to define “many” then, because statistics sure as hell don’t. Many as a subjective term. Here, I’ll make it easy for you. In this case, one is too many. Are you going to demand a cite that there is at least one such person in the world?
You know, I didn’t know you needed qualifications to have an opinion on merit. What are your qualifications to evaluate that criminal approach to life is less deserving of freedom than yours? What’s that, you just don’t want murderers walking around your neighborhood? Well I don’t want collectivists as well as murderers walking around my neighborhood, because in my EYES, i.e. my very personal opinion, collectivism IS murder.
Well, then, why should anybody follow any system of ethics? Mine has more freedoms and is more dignified. No I don’t have a cite!
The description was make and color. So I suppose “make and color” is sufficient description. But it was kind of dark, so I suppose make alone, but actually how well can you tell a make of a passing car? How did the police officers know that the reported description actually fit the perpetrator, after all the crime was committed by radio waves.
Well obviously, I hope, nobody wants to be bothered regardless of what they are doing! Now, we get to share this god forsaken space rock among ourselves, and I really hope that when laws gets passed they make at least an attempt to make everybody happy. I am not happy with the current set of laws. You, apparently, are. I said that it’s not very ethical to report certain activities to the authorities because there might be others unhappy with the current set of laws, and just perhaps they don’t want you applying them on their behalf. I’m trying to come up with an alternative that will keep both of us happy. You get your murderers off the street and I won’t get bothered. If you’re saying my alternative doesn’t work, but insist on sticking with what we got, you’re just being arrogant!
Democracy isn’t mob rule. Democracy isn’t even majority rule. Democracy is a system intended to keep the majority from opressing the minority, at least in the USA. That intent is not being realized anywhere in the world, and I feel that is because of absolutist opinions such as yours. Where’s the compromise?
Nope. After all, we have you right here and now defining what’s right and wrong all by your lonesome. Of course, your so-called system fails on the most basic level and thus is quite laughable.
Well, a ridiculous opinion obviously needs no qualifications behind it. Now, an informed opinion, OTOH, is a differen thing entirely. You may wish to try one of those sometime.
My qualification is that I’m a responsible member of my society.
Of course I don’t. You, however, as I indicated in an earlier posting, obviously think that’s perfectly okay since the victim of a crime should be the only one, in your so-called system, to report the crime. If the victim’s been murdered, then it’s simply not possible for the victim to report the crime.
Care to parse that into one of the recognized versions of English?
More dignified for whom? More freedom for whom? It’s quite obvious that the answer to both queries is “the ciminals.”
I will ignore the rest of your posting, especially the asinine personal attack you made.
I may not hate them personally, but I hate what they represent.
Who says I’d be obstructing justice? I won’t lie to them. I simply am not going to volunteer any information to them unless I am legally required to do so. Is there any law that says I have to answer their questions unless they have a subpeona?
All too often though, there isn’t any probable cause. They merely ask, “can I search your trunk?” And all too often the person pulled over says “yes” even when they have contraband in the back. If they ASK, that means they don’t have probable cause.
Well guess what, the answer from me is, and always will be “No.” Not because I’m guilty, but because I don’t think he has any business searching my trunk.
Maybe if he wasn’t busy hassling me about what’s in my trunk (there isn’t anything in there by the way) he’d have time to catch real crooks. That’s HIS problem, not mine. If there’s an urgent matter he has to attend to I guess his radio will tell him that and it’s up to him to decide whether to keep hassling me or to move on to something else.
I am leaving this discussion because Monty apparently is unable to read my posts without spewing forth collectivist garbage about being a responsible member of society and me being an unqualified to discuss normative ideas, uninformed and so forth. I’ve never attacked you personally Monty, but now I feel insulted, and don’t feel like debating any longer. If you want to ridicule, insult or what have you further, please take it to the Pit or … you know… grow up?
Until you’re at home one night and you hear breaking glass downstairs. Then you’ll be on the phone to your enemies the cops in zero seconds flat.
It’s amazing how the crazy rationale can still lead to the right result.
You are perfectly correct: Always refuse consent to search. This is simply a prudent caution guarding against the admissibility of anything that might, unknown to you, be in your car. Perhaps you gave a ride to a toking friend and he dropped a baggie by mistake. Maybe you had the car in for repairs and the mechanic drove it to buy crack and dropped a little rock by accident.
But there’s no reason to reach this result by reason of animus towards the cops… your own self-interest compels it.
Cops have a very difficult job to do. It’s true that this places them in an adversarial position with people. But it also places them in the position of helping people that desperately need it. When one of your fellow citizens decides he wants to hurt you or take your property, you WANT the cops to get adversarial with him… right?
And yet nobody insulted you, not even in a veiled fashion.
Any longer implies that one has already been doing something.
Perhaps you should do that.
Another nifty thing would’ve been an honest expression of yourself as an anarchist. Collectivist? Care to toss in a couple of definitions for these words you’re making up? Now, I have no problems with folks creating words–I am a linguist, after all–but it might be nice to use the same definitions.
True. I suppose my dislike of the police comes from the association with bad stuff happening. If a cop knocks on my door it either means I’m a victim or they suspect me of something. Whatever it is, it’s not something good. It’s not like they’re the Publishers Clearinghouse Prize Patrol.
You could say the same thing about hospitals too since they are filled with sickness and death, but doctors aren’t engaged in an adversarial relationship with their patients.
Yeah, except nobody hates firefighters, and when do you need a firefighter it’s always something bad. The real reason is that cops and doctors ask you to do things that you don’t want to do, but firefighters almost never, in their line of duty, force you to do anything.
I’m forced to agree with groman, at least to an extent.
Calling the police when something that isn’t apparently criminal is taking place is an unethical POV.
If you call the police and they see fit to hassle the person or just arrest them and no criminal behavior took place, you’ve cost an innocent person a lot of money.
Hey, isn’t that theft?
Speaking from personal experience with the police, quite a lot of them are trying to make the world a better place…and quite a lot of them are sad little people who had no other route to any form of power.
I once locked my keys in my house and had the police called on me by someone that passed in a car.
“Of course! All you had to do was show you owned the house, then they’d be on their way to fight crime elsewhere!” you might say.
You’d also be wrong.
After 2 failed hours to convince them I really lived there, including showing them my driver’s license and the name on the utility bills, as well as the lease, they still wanted to arrest me.
Around 4 hours into this stupidity, I managed to convince them I really did live there. Now they want to search the house. No dice. Not gonna happen. I tell them to get a warrant.
Five hours into the parade, I’ve got 5 cops on my lawn all threatening to arrest me if I don’t comply.
Why not let them search the house? Well, it’s MY damn privacy. Not to mention I wasn’t a happy camper by this point, since it was 1 in the morning and I had to get up at 6.
After a total of seven happy hours trading joyful stories with our brave crimestoppers in blue, I finally got pissed off enough to call a friend of mine who happens to be a lawyer. A civil lawyer at that.
With the threat that I’d probably let them keep their jobs after I owned the city, they departed…But now every time they see me they seem to want to pull me over and search my vehicle, which of course I don’t allow.
On the other hand, I know quite a lot of cops that woulda just left once I’d proven I lived there (Which would’ve taken about five minutes.).
The problem some people seem to have is they view police as the evil monsters that want nothing more than to harass innocent bystanders.
The problem others have is they view the police as heroes that should just be able to do as they please.
Both are equally incorrect.
As an aside, stonewalling the cops is NOT obstructing justice.
Obstruction of justice is an attempt to tamper with evidence or intimidating a witness. I, too, would love to see blalron arrested for OJ, since he would have an easily winnable civil suit against whatever idiot arrested him.
Oh, and the beauty of probable cause is the cop knows if they search it when you said no and the court decides he DIDN’T have probable cause then even if they found a kilo of coke and 3 dead bodies they have no case.
Please reread groman’s OP and subsequent posts. That is not his position. His position is that it is unethical to call the police to report an actual crime if the person reporting the actual crime is not, in fact, the actual victim of that crime.
If you actually re-read my posts you’ll notice that I said “sometimes unethical” several times depending on the nature of the victim or the crime. In case of Seldarin the actions of the person reporting him were unethical because the person in a passing car has no way to ascertain who the house belongs to, and what is going on.
Now I’ve personally called the cops because a car parked on my street had an open door and property from within the car scattered around the roadway. I’ve reported it as “dangerous debris in the road way”, because that IS my concern since I almost ran it over and wanted the debris removed.
If the car was parked in a driveway in the same condition with no debris on the public road, I would not have called the police, because frankly, it’s none of my business and I could seriously hurt somebody by calling the cops on them. The most reasonable thing to do in that case would’ve been to leave a polite note on their mailbox with contact information explaining the situation. I wouldn’t even ring their doorbell because a) bothering people for the sole purpose of informing them of the state of their property is quite rude. It’s their property, and assuming they are not aware of its state is patronizing and arrogant. b) I don’t know these people and I wouldn’t want to infringe on their privacy by entering their property. I hate it when people come up to my door uninvited.
I had no way to ascertain the owner of the vehicle or debris and the debris was presenting a clear and imminent danger to others and their property, which is consistent with my proposed guidelines.
