That being the case, the police officer should be charged under the appropriate criminal statutes.
Fishing expeditions happen all the time, as do leaks. I’m not saying that’s the right thing to do in 100% of the cases, but there are some where there should be a broader net cast.
In this case, there’s a dead baby and no good idea how that baby got there. The police have to start somewhere.
Robin
fishing expeditions may happen all the time, but not by a judge ordering for the violation of medical records of hundreds of innocent people on the off chance that one of them might have done this thing.
I repeat - there is zero evidence to suggest that the person who did this is in fact one of the people who’s privacy would be violated. You have no way of knowing if the person was driving from San Diego to Boston and just happened to drive through that town, just moved there the week before, never went for medical help, went for medical help out of town etc etc etc.
So, at best what the police will find is a list of people who had positive pregnancy exams. What then? they’d have to question not only the women but people around them. So, the woman who never told her boyfriend about the pregnancy will now get to be faced by the cops at the door, boyfriend finds out etc.
the woman who is just beginning to get over her miscarriage gets to have some cop at her door asking about her baby.
etc etc etc.
What should they do?
same thing they’ve always done when they have no frigging way in hell to find out who did a crime - publicize the hell out of it.
“POlice say that a caucasian baby male was found dead on June 30th at this location. Police ask that anyone w/information , who may have seen anyone near that location that night, or who appeared to have been recently pregnant and now isn’t, please contact them”.
mswas Nope, you are not alone. For a very long time now I have been watching with increasing alarm at how willing (even eager) people seem to be to give up their freedom.
Not entirely similar, injured people get tagged for PD all the time at hospital Emergency Departments. Example (suspect and cop exchange shots and both get hit, wounded suspect shows up for treatment, hospital calls police because it is obvious that someone shot him (and IIRC there are laws against such things). PD is looking for someone with a gunshot wound, ballistics checks will easily confirm that the bullet was from the police officers weapon, suspect placed under arrest.
Depending on the severity of the bite, the doctor could have taken the situation as this man was assaulted. So doctor says “Hey police I got a penis injury that looks intentionally inflicted, you know anything about this” they say as a matter of fact we do.
To the OP, still sounds a little vague to demand all positive pregnancy test results or prenatal care. Along the same lines as SuaSponte was going, wives, girlfriends, and close family of police officers could have extremely damaging information released. I would go the route of having the community report in. Its not easy to conceal a full term pregnancy under normal circumstances, I would be willing to bet there are at least several people who know who the mom is and that she is “missing” her baby.
If not maybe hitting up the county for birth certificates issued in the last month and go looking for those kids. Then they have somethign they can legally search, that 99.999% of babies born will have. If mom was suffering from postpartum psychosis of some kind, she probably had the baby in a hospital, properly tracked, etc. They could easily give a list to the hospital of all BC’s for the last 60 days and have the hospitals verify that all the babies are on the list. If a baby does not have a BC on record, then have a judge order the info release for the couple that do not have BC’s if none of the legit BC’s turns up a suspect.
My main question is why didn’t the police already check the BC’s.
A question for the legally-minded among us–
How likely is the following scenario: The local judge issued this order knowing that it won’t pass legal muster, and will be overturned up the chain. However, the judge knows that if he doesn’t make a show of helping the police find the perpetrator of this (admittedly horrifying) crime, he’ll have peasants with torches and pitchforks on the steps of his courthouse. Much safer to issue a daft ruling and let the far-off “bureaucracy” dump it, so there’s somebody to point a finger at.
This, obviously, is a pretty bald abrogation of the responsibilities of the bench, but given that judges are human beings I figure it has to happen at least every now and then. How likely is it that that’s what happened here?
Big slippery slope here people. Where does this stop? Hell, there are probably countless drug stores that sell pregnancy tests, better demand all of their credit card records (just to see who bought them), hell why stop there. They have the DNA of the baby, I bet that if everyone in the state were to have a court order that they give a DNA sample they could solve this case toot sweet!
I understand that a horror has been committed here, and that people want answers. That said, this sort of thinking on the part of the courts, and peoples seeming willingness to go along with it literally gives me chills.
Also, I am very interested to know why people aren’t freaking out about the assertation by ** sezyou** that the so called Pro Life clinics are not a part of this draconian net being cast.
Here’s a thought: As things look, the baby was probably thrown out, and then later run through the shredder.
IIRC there are people who do nothing but hang out at landfills and help people find stuff that they have thrown away by mistake (I believe that they are actually called Garbologists).
The way that it works is similar to an Archeologist going through the sedimentary layers of rock. Basically, by determining where in the pile something is, they can get a pretty good idea of what neighborhood it was disposed of in and so forth.
Just as a wild thought, what if they tried some actual forensic investigations before resorting to police state BS?
What appropriate criminal statutes?
And you further make the ludicrous assumption that the police officer who leaked the information could be identified
For the moment, let’s put aside that there are bright lines rules about this and pretend that the facts of the matter are relevant.
Why is this one of those cases where there should be “a broader net cast”?
This mother abandoned her baby, presumably because she didn’t want to be burdened with raising it. She has caused moral outrage in society, and she should be punished for it.
But what future threat does she present to society? More pertinently, what future threat do you perceive her presenting to society that outweighs the cost of (a) turning every pregnant woman in the community into a suspect; (b) violating doctor-patient privilege and exposing to the prying eyes of police (and likely, whoever they pass it on to) deeply personal and potentially harmful medical information; and © raising the threat of injury and retribution, particularly to women who had abortions?
What is your fear? That this woman had such a great time tossing her baby into the trash that she’s going to raid the hospital nursery to grab more babies to throw into a dumpster?
I mean, c’mon. If we are going to contemplate the idea of violating the privacy of a whole mess of people, 99.99999% of whom are, by definition, innocent (after all, only one person threw the baby away), let’s at least save such invasions of privacy for when there is at least the vague chance that the criminal is going to hurt/kill more people.
And if, without the medical records, the police can’t find the mother, then the police can’t find the mother. So be it. Because of our civil liberties, criminals get away with crimes. That is the inevitable result of civil liberties.
It is the price we pay for liberty. And it is a price we should be willing to pay. Because the alternative really, really sucks.
Sua
MyRobyn, your responses have been the scariest thing that I read all year. You work with medical records? <<brrrrrr>>
I see no reason that my privacy should be violated because someone in the same community with no obvious connection to me other than sex, or race for that matter, commits a murder. In this case we don’t even know what really happened.
Just because fishing expeditions happen all the time doesn’t justify them! I want my liberty; I want my civil rights. I have been victim of many crimes.I have been raped, beaten, stalked, and harrassed. I am not ready to hand over my freedom quite yet thank you very much and I would appreciate if those trusted with confidential information would keep it so.
This could be a possible happening. Hadn’t thought about it from that angle. I’ve seen shows about garbologists ( Staten Island, to be exact) who were absolutely amazing on what they knew and where to find MRS. X’s wedding ring that she accident tossed out in the garbage.
I think casting out this wide net is just fishing in murky waters and opening up a whole new kettle of monkeys.
It is truly Pandora’s Box. We all agree that Something Bad Has Happened and we agree that Something Must Be Done, however, none of us want to lose a smidgen of our rights, for like a barn door, leave it open a crack and before you know it, the entire herd has just stampeded right over you.