# High-Speed Chases -- moved again to fix up line length **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 2, 2000, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-chases-moved-again-to-fix-up-line-length/17127 "2000-01-02T05:12:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![NanoByte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2000, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-chases-moved-again-to-fix-up-line-length/17127/1 "2000-01-02T05:12:00Z")
After messing up this theme line-wrap-wise a second time in [this previous thread](http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/004294.html), I now transfer my recent posts to that thread over to this one. The posts I respond to immediately below and in my next 3 posts following that are over in the above-linked post (unless moved here by their authors). * * * Monty: You too mutually admiring characters seem to post what ads up to next to zilch. I apologize for the “out their”. But can you really convince yourself of what you say in this sentence: > [@](#): > > Also, I find it extremely funny (ironic, even) that nano flailed into me over > a mistake in grammar and then posts “out their.” My mistake here was merely one of those annoying homonymic typos, of course, which couldn’t possibly have caused you any difficulty in understanding what I was saying in the sentence in which it was used. OTOH, although, I **think** I got the gist of what you were trying to get across in your outrageously complex and definitely incomplete sentence (and which your addition thereto **still** still did not complete), certainly that mess-up of your greatly disrupted your communication to me and to anyone else here (most of whom no doubt gave up on the reading of it). > [@](#): > > California’s courts go by the written law, not some supposed superiority of an > unwritten code of common law. That is a gross falsehood going back to include 150 yr. of [CA.US](http://CA.US) jurisprudence. If you believe that, just state – on the one point I raised in respect to what we were discussing, i.e., the [Provocative-Act Murder Doctrine](http://thereporter.com/Current/News/99/01/daily012499.html#Cases_spur_look_at_use_of_law_on_provocative_acts) – what code supports this doctrine (which wouldn’t be called a ‘doctrine’/‘rule’/‘theory’ if it were codified as a statute). CA Penal Codes 187-189 do **not** support this theory, as you tried to claim. And in general, [CA.US](http://CA.US) legal judgments are based on unwritten common more-or-less-English law in any instances where no [CA.US](http://CA.US) or US statute covers the particular issue (or possibly an especially pertinent CA, UK, AU, etc. law). Ask any lawyer or judge. I think it’s about time to ignore your and Rmat’s contentless, unbacked-up denials and directives., but I’m going to clean up my two extensive posts and repost them in a new thread where they’ll wrap right, in case someone else wants to comment. I can’t legitimately repost the posts of you two, but you two are, of course welcome to do so in the new thread. Ray ---
**Author:** ![NanoByte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2000, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-chases-moved-again-to-fix-up-line-length/17127/2 "2000-01-02T05:14:00Z")
> [@](#): > > No, Nano; you appear to be the incomprehensible one. I merely left out “dictates” in the posting to which you refer above. So you put ‘dictates’ in as verb of the predicate of ‘law’; then what is the object of ‘dictates’? Why don’t you try to diagram that silly sentence of yours! Even if you fix it up to technically be English (or any other language), it’s even more absurdly complex than some of my overdone sentences. 😉 > [@](#): > > Homicide is any killing of a human being, such as an execution. Thus, the “cause of death” block on a death certificate for an executed convict having the word “homicide” listed. Well, technically, within law and considerably beyond it, apparently, you’re correct, but in under fairly formal situations, in some cases, the word appears to be used to mean, I guess, ‘suspected/alleged or adjudicated murder or manslaughter’ – as in: ‘There have been 67 homicides in Oakland this year.’ (Actual figure for 1999. Down from over 100 some years ago.) Therefore, I don’t think you can always neatly say ‘homocide’ means simply the killing of a human being. And this quote is from the [CA.US](http://CA.US) Penal Code index: > [@](#): > > TITLE 8. OF CRIMES AGAINST THE PERSON > CHAPTER 1. HOMICIDE…187-199 This says homicide is a subset of the concept of crime. > [@](#): > > Please reread your own statement above about “malice aforethought.” The courts in this state (you might try to recall that this particular state hasn’t always been English, > gut that’s another issue) have held that the act of driving drunk is malice aforethought. In the definition of ‘murder’, “malice aforethought” refers to foregoing malicious thought directed toward the act of murder, as opposed to both 1) only instanteous emotional reaction resulting in homocide and 2) foregoing malicious thought directed toward some other act or no act at all. Thus it would, in somewhat of an extension of the notion, be reasonable to argue that driving drunk involves pre-existing malice toward a right of others to safety on the highway that one might drive on, but it should never count as malice directed toward homicide; i.e., an accident resulting in death of another, that is caused by a person who was driving while intoxicated, should result in enhancement of the penalty against that driver because of his/her drunkenness, but it should never raise the category of offense from criminal negligence, including manslaughter, to intensional homicide, i.e. murder. [CA.US](http://CA.US) was never “English,” as you imply. There may be some subtleties in CA law that result from Spanish or Mexican heritage here, but I don’ recognize any. We basically follow English legal theory and practice in matters of law. I don’t know what any of this has to do with anything here. Are you people in Monterey getting carried away with some heritage that existed there before you? Your name sounds pretty Scottish to me. > [@](#): > > You don’t like it? Tough. I don’t like what? The statutory criminal law of CA in re this subject matter looks OK to me. The statutory CA civil law in re the liability of authorities in HSCs clearly violates the innocent public’s constitutional right to life, and promotes behavior on the part of peace officers in CA that verges on (malicious) murder, in the interest of high-activity sport – disguised as some kind of nonexistent right of authorities to “get their man” “by any means” (the same past stance as Louis Farrakahn). Yes, it’s “tough”. Those of us thoroughly outrage by this stance, and the actual results thereof, ought to have more political power to do something about this. As for you, perhaps someone ought to put your relatives out their\* as pedestrians in crosswalks or as drivers in cross traffic, at the time these gung-ho official monkeys test driving expertise. Tough? Ray \*This homonymic typo has been brought to my attention by the eminent Monty. ---
**Author:** ![NanoByte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2000, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-chases-moved-again-to-fix-up-line-length/17127/3 "2000-01-02T05:14:00Z")
Rmat: I certainly know that malice can be either express or implied. This is covered in CA Penal Code 188, which says: > [@](#): > > Such malice may be express or implied. It is express when there is manifested a deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow creature. It is implied, when no considerable provocation appears, or when the circumstances attending the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart. When it is shown that the killing resulted from the intentional doing of an act with express or implied malice as defined above, no other mental state need be shown to establish the mental state of malice aforethought. Neither an awareness of the obligation to act within the general body of laws regulating society nor acting despite such awareness is included within the definition of malice. All that just has to do with proving a subjective “fact” in any given case; once either type of malice is “proven”, which type has no bearing on the categorization of the type of crime being, or having been adjudicated, or codewise-explicitly on any penalties to be, or having been, imposed upon conviction. Thus that distinction does not bear on the issues we have discussed here. What are your qualifications that make your impudnet, extremely limitedly contentful posts overriding on what I have posted here? I’m going to correct, using HTML instead of UBB for the linking of the long URLs, the text of my prior two extensive posts, and repost them in yet another thread, in order to correct the lack of wrapping here. Ray ---
**Author:** ![NanoByte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2000, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-chases-moved-again-to-fix-up-line-length/17127/4 "2000-01-02T05:15:00Z")
Monty: You too mutually admiring characters seem to post what ads up to next to zilch. I apologize for the “out their”. But can you really convince yourself of what you say in this sentence: > [@](#): > > Also, I find it extremely funny (ironic, even) that nano flailed into me over a mistake in grammar and then posts “out their.” My mistake here was merely one of those annoying homonymic typos, of course, which couldn’t possibly have caused you any difficulty in understanding what I was saying in the sentence in which it was used. OTOH, although, I think I got the gist of what you were trying to get across in your outrageously complex and definitely incomplete sentence (and which your addition thereto still still did not complete), certainly that mess-up of your greatly disrupted your communication to me and to anyone else here (most of whom no doubt gave up on the reading of it). > [@](#): > > California’s courts go by the written law, not some supposed superiority of an unwritten code of common law. That is a gross falsehood going back to include 150 yr. of [CA.US](http://CA.US) jurisprudence. If you believe that, just state – on the one point I raised in respect to what we were discussing, i.e., the Provocative-Act Murder Doctrine – what code supports this doctrine (which wouldn’t be called a ‘doctrine’/‘rule’/‘theory’ if it were codified as a statute). CA Penal Codes 187-189 do not support this theory, as you tried to claim. And in general, [CA.US](http://CA.US) legal judgments are based on unwritten common more-or-less-English law in any instances where no [CA.US](http://CA.US) or US statute covers the particular issue (or possibly an especially pertinent CA, UK, AU, etc. law). Ask any lawyer or judge. I think it’s about time to ignore your and Rmat’s contentless, unbacked-up denials and directives., but I’m going to clean up my two extensive posts and repost them in a new thread where they’ll wrap right, in case someone else wants to comment. I can’t legitimately repost the posts of you two, but you two are, of course welcome to do so in the new thread. Ray ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2000, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-chases-moved-again-to-fix-up-line-length/17127/5 "2000-01-02T08:38:00Z")
ExTank (from GD on 12/22/99) So you write all these words in response to a post of mine that you chose not to read. Well, then, we certainly ought to listen to your well-informed words, spoken against that of which you’re not aware. You accuse me of having an “axe to grind”. Perhaps I don’t know how you wish to use that phrase, but would you wish to suggest what that axe might be? I’ve never been closer to either personal or property damage from HSC than to read of it in newspapers, magazines or other documents. I have never known or spoken to anyone involved in same, other than one police chief and one police spokesperson, in order to hear their excuses for their officers killing one innocent person each. My stance comes simply from what I think the majority persons in this country and in most others think are the relative priorities in basic human public ethics and law enforcement – notions that are reflected, under the subject of right to life and due process of law, in the US Constitution and the constitutions of all the states of the US, and no doubt in most similar documents of other countries. Is there a dull axe in there? > [@](#): > > I used to think much like you seem to do: that cops had way too much authority and too little accountability for their actions for the public good and the continued well-being of a free society (I think I’ve accurately summed up your general feelings on the issue). Well, those are my **fundamental** “feelings” and basis of reasoning on the subject, but they immediately fall out from what I’ve stated above as to where I come from – when you look that the data on the chases and the malarkey doming from police authorities, and note how much is hidden from the public by extended “investigations”, until cold or forever. I see it as basically mainly an issue of 1) right to life of the innocent individual, but also 2) right to due process of law in regard to punishment of criminal fugitives and criminally negligent or worse police officers. One generally thinks, or used to think, of law enforcement as a service to the innocent public in the interest of their safety. Some cities, such as Sunnyvale, [CA.US](http://CA.US), combine their police and fire departments into a "safety department. “Getting your man”, particularly getting him post haste, when he could be gotten later, should be secondary to this. > [@](#): > > But your average, everyday cop is just another working stiff trying to do a dirty job, and do it well, with what seems to them to be very little in the way of public, political or judicial support. That is clearly a non sequitur. You would also argue that a physician should poison a moderate number of people in order to learn how to keep the particular poison involved from later possibly **poisoning** a large number of them. One with your slant on things, and moreso others here, could well push for such behavior of a physician just “trying to do a dirty job”. . .but which, incidentally, he likes to do. Cops revel in the excitement, and sometimes revenge, of HSC chases. And, of course, they compromise there own safety in doing so, and then we have to go out and find more cops, and decent material for such a job is getting harder and harder to find. More and more of those recruited turn out to even go beyond the civil or criminal negligence, to the intentful crimes. This sort of the-public-is-fodder cowboy HSC sport is not, in the long run, going to increase public support for the police. > [@](#): > > . . .some **individual** cops abuse the power. . . I’m thinking of the shoplifter who was shot in the head Is shooting a shoplifter in the head worse than chasing, at speeds grossly above a those safe for the instant conditions and where a bystander can easily be killed, a wild teenage driver obviously high on a drug, as to which driver no prior open or closed crimes are known to be attached? This goes on far more often than the shooting of a shoplifter in the head, and the casualty is apt to be less criminal. > [@](#): > > . . .those **individual** officers should be held accountable in a court of law for their actions, and punished to the same extent as any other criminal if convicted. But there, you make my point: 1) In [CA.US](http://CA.US), VC 17004.7, together with the federal _Lewis_ constitutional decision, completely removes **all** liability for deaths of third parties, resultant from criminally negligent cops in HSCs, thus leaving VC 2800.3 to pin the full blame of the deaths on the fleeing motorist, encouraging those cops to see themselves without blame and free and licensed to kill some more, and 2) whatever fugitive, and even possible perpetrator of an earlier open crime, who should be executed in such a chase, is certainly in no position to be “held accountable in a court of law.” The game is all just cops playing Terminator. > [@](#): > > But if an honest cop is doing an honest job. . .and someone else is hurt. . . They will beat themselves up. . .even committing suicide. Yeah, I hear about those every day^¡^ (sarcastipoint) What I hear about every day, is people, from completely innocent to guilty of fleeing from an officer, getting seriously injured or dying in high-speed chases. You don’t think the goal should be to prevent the accident, rather than to feel sorry for the cop? See, you don’t think frist of public safety; you think first of nasty trouble in ‘getting the culprit’. Well, OK, you and your family get out there in line of that cop’s car and be “nasty trouble”. Then the rest of us can get this matter settled. Hey, only people kill people; cars don’t kill people, 'specially when they’re driven by “good” cops. > [@](#): > > There may very well be a need to review policy and procedures. . . . . .this is what you really seem to want (rather than just bad-mouthing all law enforcement). I’m not sure whether that is a ‘you’ = ‘one’ or whether you are referring to me, but what I want is, not just the cops reviewing their policies and procedures (The do that, or say they do, all the time), but they, their jurisdictions’ bureaucrats, politicians and the public – all – getting their acts together, looking at practical alternate technology, and whether or not the latter exists, knocking this sport off, except only in such cases as where the fugitive is known to be heading to a nearby target to intentionally kill more than a few people. . .because **those authorities** are more likely to get a few people killed, rather than the fugitive on his own, at such time as he is not cognizant of any pursuers. > [@](#): > > In this aspect, I couldn’t be in more agreement. I want you to see that there isn’t quite such agreement here. And all that about exposing bad cops: That’s not what this issue I press is about. If all the “good cops” **AND** all the authorities over them, which should include politicians and the public, look at the **true** odds and then compel **cops** to **quit** this practice in all but extremely rare situations, **that and only that** will resolve this issue. > [@](#): > > “The world is full of bastards…” Not really. The world is full of people who get out of control because everbody starts stretching thin theories, accepting BS, pursuing what they like that is highly detrimental to others while making up absurd and fact-contradicting excuses for it, and not taking responsibility along the lines of what their jobs and those of their charges are all about. And anyhow, what’s the ---
**Author:** ![Nickrz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbce88/32.png) [@Nickrz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nickrz)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2000, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-chases-moved-again-to-fix-up-line-length/17127/6 "2000-01-02T19:26:00Z")
## Enough of this nonsense. This stuff belongs in GD. Nickrz GQ MOd