I saw this article (thread title is the same as the article) and thought it raised some interesting questions worthy of debate.
(from link above)
Granted this is in the UK but I think the questions raised apply equally well in the US.
On the one hand I understand that undercover police often do illegal things. For instance someone infiltrating a drug ring may need to do drugs themselves else it’d be trivially easy to prevent infiltration.
However, I have never understood the limits of this. What if the police want to get someone in really, really deep into an organization. Can the undercover cop kill someone on orders from the kingpin to “prove” their loyalty and it’d be ok (ok as in the police should not be held liable)?
Of course forming a relationship with a woman is not the same as killing someone but therein lies the debate.
Where are the boundaries here?
Does it matter if it is a global drug ring versus Occupy Wall Street being infiltrated?
In the end can forming personal relationships, even under these circumstances, be considered going too far?
On the surface it seems fucked up because it involves matters of romantic involvement, but really how different is that than, for example, Joey Pistone aka Donnie Brasco? He formed deep personal relationships with organized crime figures, some of them genuine mutual friendships, and in the end he turned on them, got them indicted and jailed, some of them even killed (not directly by the police of course, but his relationship with them was the ultimate underlying cause of their deaths).
It’s their job. Yeah, I agree it’s fucked up, but I don’t think they’re legally liable for it.
I think the interesting question involves a Brasco-type sent in to infiltrate a protest group – and who, for the sake of argument, forms deep personal relationships with assorted criminals who hang out thereabouts, for to get 'em indicted and jailed. But imagine he also spent much of that time hanging out with a law-abiding woman who sure wouldn’t sleep with a cop but would sleep with a fellow protester who believes in the same noble cause.
I don’t find the concept of entering a romantic relationship under false pretenses being a valid subject for a lawsuit to be particularly compelling, personally. People do that all the time, and while it’s assholish, I don’t feel it should be actionable.
I have little sympathy for the so called betrayed victims. If the Police officers acted contrary to regulations and procedure, then yes, they may have a case. Otherwise, just being undercover shows that the so called betrayed victims are nincompoops and idiots. Not victims.
You will note that the women are not suing the officers for false affection, but the officers’ superiors for sending them into the situation, purportedly to fake a romance for the purpose of establishing credibility.
People fake their way into relationships for various reasons, including self-delusion, all the time, but if the relationship was undertaken at the order of a superior to do just that, I can see a case for action against the superior. (I don’t know whether that action can or should have enough legs to win a lawsuit, but I can see the rationale behind the suit.)
Yeah, yeah. Anyone who can be fooled by a police officer has to be an idiot, (unless the police officer violated department standards, of course). :rolleyes:
That can get real murky. Lied about your age by a few years, that your divorce is more final than it is, claimed you make $100K a year instead of $20K.
Any fraud, if so I have had more than a few dates who claimed to be employed but were not, did I get raped? One claimed to be divorced but was married, shall we slap the cuffs on her?
Emotionally using someone connected to a criminal organization is probably not going to rate. I never would have slept with him if I knew he was a cop is gonna hold up as well as “I would not have sold him drugs if knew he was a cop”.
Some deceptions can give rise to that. For example, passing yourself off as a doctor or as the spouse. If you pass yourself off as a doctor, the person thinks the touching is a medical procedure.
If you pass yourself off as a spouse of the person, the person agreed to sex with the spouse, not you.
However, it is very unlikely that “I thought he was a swell guy who shared my values but it turns out he’s not” would be included in that category.
Since CitizenPained has said that it was sexual assault and she’s also said that she dates men based on their bank account, I’ll take her as an example:
If she agreed to sex with a man because she thought he had a large bank account but he turned out to be broke, she may want to get back at him but I think you can see why she shouldn’t be allowed to have someone put in prison and ruin his life with a criminal record for sexual assault for that reason.
I can see why you would require that when someone is involved in sexual touching, they know it’s sexual touching (rather than a medical procedure) and that when you consent to sexual contact with person A, it should actually be with person A. But requiring that every characteristic of the person you consider pertinent be truthful would far too much.
The police officers and the department might still be liable under some tort remedy I’m not aware of. But it’s not sexual assault.
When I thought it was some mafia molls like Adrianna from The Sopranos I was fine with it, but when I learned that it was a protest group, I immediately became offended.
At first, I thought this was a sign of some hypocrisy on my part, but actually I think there is (or may be) a legitimate difference here, to wit, whether the women were suspected on strong grounds of being involved in criminal behaviors themselves or whether the police were merely keeping tabs on a politically questionable group. I’m ok with the police using otherwise morally dubious techniques like deception in the course of fighting actual crime, but I think reasonable precautions should be taken to avoid affecting innocent bystanders. In the latter case, I think there are civil liberties issues with police investigating groups based on political activity or ideology, and while I can see reason for keeping tabs on such groups, I think they should use a very light hand. Forming false personal relationships maybe shouldn’t be illegal in the latter case, but it should definitely be against policy, and the police deserve a strong public backlash against them if that is what they have done.
Why in the world are cops “infiltrating” protest groups in the first place? You infiltrate things when you think there is some sort of coverup. It’s not the same thing as just being there to make sure crime doesn’t happen.
That’s where I’m upset. For them to be able to go to this level, we have to have a large campaign by cops to apparently thwart protesting in general. I get having cameras and no privacy, but I don’t get how a democracy can run without freedom of speech.
See, I could see the argument that it shouldn’t be criminal, but not that she shouldn’t be able to sue, assuming there’s actual proof that the guy defrauded her. That’s what this is: a lawsuit, not criminal proceedings.
I did say “The police officers and the department might still be liable under some tort remedy I’m not aware of. But it’s not sexual assault.” Some were talking about this possibly being sexual assault, which is a criminal category.
As for civil liability, what would the damages be? Tanaqui recently went on a date with a guy, they had sex and he hasn’t called her back. She thought it could be the start of a relationship. He only wanted to have sex. She feels badly about that. Should she be able to sue him? Did he defraud her of sex by making her believe he was interested in a relationship? If he did defraud her, should we consider the damages to be the psychological harm (therapy sessions needed to be paid for? Suffering?) or the market rate for the sexual services? Allowing civil liability when someone lets you down in your personal relationships seems like a can of worms.
Odd notion. You think that a defense by a person of a criminal act, (buying dugs), is equivalent to a complaint against a third party defrauding one into engaging in a non-criminal act, (becoming emotionally involved).
That fails on multiple levels.
For me, the line is easy: don’t do evil. Don’t victimise people just to make your job easier. If that means you can’t infiltrate an organisation, tough shit.
Absolutely. In the case of the global drug ring, I’d say it is immoral for the government to deliberately get an innocent bystander entangled in that sort of criminal conspiracy. So “I thought my boyfriend was a drug runner but he was really an undercover cop” would be less objectionable than “I thought my boyfriend worked the night shift at the factory but he was really involved in a drug ring (as an undercover cop)”.
For Occupy Wall Street, the infiltration itself is the issue. I think it’s reasonable to object to the police being used for political purposes in this way, or to object to unknowingly being used enable such behaviour.
No they were not “raped”, a word that gets thrown around a lot too easily these days. They misread their partner’s creditworthiness, you can only have rape in a circumstance like this if they had been misled as to identity.
A possible source of confusion here is what is meant by the word “identity”. You don’t fall victim to it but perhaps others do.
For example, if I say “John isn’t the same person since he quit drinking” and if I say “John isn’t the same person as Jack”, in both cases, I am saying “John isn’t the same person …” but the expression “the same person” doesn’t have the same meaning. Rape by deception would apply to the latter case, not the former.