If you genuinely believe you never break any laws, you’re an idiot.
Are you really telling me that you’ve never broken any traffic laws? Always followed every single regulation with paperwork or whatever and never cut any corners? Hell, if you work in food service and go to work when you’re ill, you’re breaking the law. I wonder how many people obey that one…
No, which is kind of the point. Nobody knows every detail of every law, and most of the time it doesn’t matter unless “the man” has some reason to want to get you. Which they don’t for 99% of cases of (for example) speeding, copyright infingement, underage drinking, personal drug use, and so on. Because nobody cares, except apparently busybodies like you.
I didn’t say I’ve never broken any laws. I have. But IF I break any laws in my everyday life, I don’t do it on purpose and THAT is what I’m talking about. Which, I’m sure, everybody else was smart enough to understand.
So can you tell me the laws you break on purpose on your everyday life ?
Also the question I mostly wanted you to answer was this:
Yeah, you work in some pretty shitty places. I have too, but I left them, rather than embracing their shittiness.
I don’t have to “focus” at all to catch when servers are not ringing in orders, or voiding orders, or using the same check for multiple customers, certainly not to the point of not noticing other things going on. I just have to open my eyes. I will also call people out for health code violations. At most places that I worked, when the health department came in, it was time to keep doing what you were doing, because what you are doing is right, rather than covering flaws. I work with the health department to ensure that we are using best practices, to prevent any possibility of harmful food being served. Sometimes they would find things that we were doing that were not quite up to code, they would give us suggestions on how to fix them, and come back to follow up later to make sure that we were.
For one, theft is harmful. That is money that was supposed to go to other people that is being taken for one’s self. It is harmful to me as a cook, that my food cost is high due to theft, as my pay is dependant on food cost being under control. Also, if you are turning a blind eye towards theft, it is not because you are instead focussing on things that are harmful, but because you are turning a blind eye towards everything that people are doing wrong, including health code violations.
But they should not be caught, because it would be petty and wrong for their co-workers to “rat them out”. It instead requires video that proves that the cops are lying, and a situation that further degrades the public’s trust in our law enforcement institutions before they may be punished appropriately. Of course, then people like yourself will still complain that it is unfair.
Getting kicked in the head like that can cause far more than bruises. Brain trauma can cause lifelong disability. In any case, it is not the officer’s job to deliver vigilante justice.
They would only get a hassle if they are breaking the law, rather than upholding it.
It’s not a minor problem that the police are assaulting people. It’s not a minor problem that the police are making them self the enemy of the people that they are supposed to be protecting. It is not a minor problem that you and people like yourself are trying to normalize the behavior.
My priorities are fine. Your the one who’s highest priority is towards protecting those who do harm to others.
I witnessed a co-worker giving classified information to a Chinese agent last Friday. And my cousin, who works in a fast food restaurant, saw one of her co-workers peeing in the chili. Too bad we can’t report them, because that’s what fascists do!
Seems to me to be an example of a cop with the wrong temperament and improper training. Shoplifting doesn’t warrant a gun being pulled on a person, and doing so illustrates that the cop is a) improperly trained; and/or b) too terrified of everyday situations to be a LEO. At least he didn’t shoot anyone, and apparently apologized.
I’m glad the man got a lawyer and is suing. In addition to showing these videos to everyone, it’s one of the few ways that police departments can be sent a message.
I think that blaming this on dumbassery is actually generous to the cop. As Orwell suggests, this incident is more indicative of a basic problem of temperament, attitude, and ability to deal appropriately with a situation. This guy’s actions in this incident suggest that he’s fundamentally unfit to be a police officer.
Yes and no.
It’s good that he’s suing, but if he wins there’s no guarantee that the police department will be sent much of a message. Any settlement will likely be covered by insurance (paid for by the city), and/or by the taxpayers of Buena Park. It probably won’t be taken out of the city’s police department budget.
When police officers violate the rights of the people they’re supposed to protect, the people get screwed twice: once, when the cop acts in a way that violates the public trust, and again when the penalty for such violations comes out of the money forked over by taxpayers. And in too many cases, nothing much changes in terms of police behavior. There are cities that have paid out millions in settlements, but that don’t seem especially interested in reforming their police departments. As the author of that article notes:
As he also notes, suing individual officers involved in misconduct or constitutional violations is even harder, because the doctrine of qualified immunity often shields them. Even in cases where courts conclude that an officer’s conduct violated a citizen’s constitutional rights, those same courts often refuse to allow the lawsuit to proceed. And in the small percentage of cases where courts allow lawsuits to proceed, any judgments against the officers are generally not paid by the individual officer in question, but are borne by the city (i.e., by the very citizens whose rights the officer is accused of violating).
I think that qualified immunity, at least as it’s currently interpreted by the courts, is one of the most troubling doctrines in the American legal and criminal justice system, and one of the areas most in need of reform. It’s a doctrine made up out of whole cloth by judges, and is probably one of the most obvious examples of true judicial activism in the modern justice system. I understand that public officials probably need some legal indemnity for job-related errors, but not as much as they get, especially when it comes to blatant and often wilful violations of people’s rights.
If somebody would point a gun at me out of blue, I probably would jump back and raise my arms to ‘protect’ me.
That is, I would’ve made a sudden move and raised my ( not empty ? ) hands towards the cop.
And then Steophan and Shodan would post here to say that it was all my fault that cop killed me.
Hypothetical: Two cops hop out of the car and run yelling at the suspect. The driver screams “Hands up!!”, while his partner screams “Don’t move!”. Who gets first shot at the suspect because he couldn’t follow both orders?
The driver because he has seniority?
The cop that shouts first?
The cop that shouts loudest?
If he raises his hands it’s OK if the “don’t move” cop shoots.
If he doesn’t move it’s OK if the “hands up” cops shoots.
After the first shot he probably won’t anymore obey the other order so it’s OK for both of them to shoot.
It’s hard to say for sure, but if the groundhog didn’t immediately run away, there is a good chance it had rabies. I can’t really fault the cop in this instance.