It certainly appears to be. It also appears to hinge on a fine point of law, which some trained attorneys failed to catch on to.
Honestly, I have no ire, I’m criticizing her choices.
This incident is like a microcosm of the differences between the interactions between whites and blacks with law enforcement. You have two people who are placed in a theoretically identical situation, being told they’ve been accused of performing a lewd act in public. The white guy basically asks the cop what he needs, and hands over his ID when asked. The black woman is immediately confrontational, threatening, refuses to provide ID, and accuses the cop of being racist. When she storms off, the cop is actually commiserating with the BF, who just moments before was accused of the same lewd act the woman was.
This all went on before the improper detainment.
You have a cop responding to a complaint, it’s his job, he pretty much has to do something resembling police work when he shows up, so he talks to the two people who the complaint is obviously about.
Now there is a choice, you can play ball, make life easy on everyone, answer questions politely, provide information if the cop wants it, and then the cop leaves and go on with your life. Or, you can make the encounter as painful and difficult as possible without actually committing a new crime in front of the officer, and then act shocked that the encounter is painful and difficult for you as well.
For example, the problems with your outlook are serious because you’re in favor of abrogating all sorts of civil rights, but your posts are not worthwhile because they’re panicky fluff and you’re a shitty debater.
I’m just kidding, of course. No, a thing can’t be serious and not worthwhile at the same time. Look at a thesaurus.
This thread is mostly about the Fourth Amendment, and in general your view seems to be that the government should be able to do whatever it wants as long as it means well. That’s antithetical to any kind of liberty. I ignored this at the time because you got busy saying other dumb stuff, but it seems to me you acknowledged that already:
Democracy is not about carrying out the will of the people. That’s one component of it, but limits on the will of the people are fundamental to democracy and those limits are hard-wired into every single part of our system of government because liberty is impossible without those limits. Anybody who paid attention in elementary school knows this, but I’m not sure you’ve graduated.
Not serious. Even so, this is one of the least stupid things you’ve said all thread.
The government’s job is to provide liberty to the citizens that create it and empower it. Liberty cannot exist without government.
Those limits exist because the democratic process created them. They could also be removed democratically if that’s what the American people wanted. If the American people decided they wanted to abolish the Fourth Amendment in numbers sufficient enough to amend the Constitution to that effect, that would be a valid exercise of democracy.
Question (I know this is the Pit, but I’m curious…feel free to throw in a FUCK YOU XT!! or whatever along with the answer :p)…what crime could the police be charged with in this case? I’m not a lawyer, and it seems a bit confusing to me. I was reading a CNN article that seemed to indicate that the cops had legal grounds to ask for ID, but the consensus in this thread seems to be that they didn’t, and that they violated the law by detaining her for not showing ID. So, what crime could the police be charged with, and what’s the probable outcome of pursuing this? I assume that there will for sure be a civil suit against the LAPD and that they will most likely be paying damages, but what about criminal charges?
Yes. For example, citizens are supposed to be free of the threat of unreasonable search and seizure of their persons, goods, homes, etcetera.
Well, sort of. They were created by a government that excluded the vast majority of people from the democratic process, but the democratic process built on them.
Thank you for another demonstration of how democracy can be antithetical to liberty. I’m not sure how you think this proved your point, but I have to say I hardly need the help- I’m arguing with Smapti, for crying out loud.
If a cop can require that you go to the time and expense of going to court any time you want to exercise your right, you effectively are denied that right.
The whole point of a right is that it is a basic assumption of living everyday life.
Cops should be taught what people 'a rights are and they should be taught not to infringe them in the first place.
If the assumption is that the cop is always right and until and unless you can take a matter to a court then you should defer to the cops, then you’re living in a police state.
You should only have to go to court in borderline cases in which the extent of your rights are in dispute.
And which provided for their democratic ratification and modification.
If the people decide that they don’t want liberty, should they be forced to have it? Seems to me like a lot of the biggest boondoggles our country has gotten into in recent decades have been the result of trying to “spread liberty” to peoples who weren’t interested in it.
You agree in theory. I see no evidence you agree in practice.
Another “sort of.”
Hey, another irrelevancy. I didn’t see that coming. Anyway, no, the people are not allowed to vote away fundamental freedoms. The bar on altering those is incredibly high - so high as to be deliberately undemocratic.
The bar on altering them is so high that it would be deliberately undemocratic not to allow it if the people so overwhelmingly favored that course of action.
If 90% of the American people supported amending the Constitution to abolish the 4th amendment, it is your assertion that it would be “undemocratic” to allow them to do so.