As a citizen of the county where former sherriff Hege ruled…I am pleased to say that he is now a convicted felon!
Yes there is a God.
Liberal…not only were the walls pink, but they had teddy bears on them. Not to mention he didn’t allow books (other than the bible), TV’s at any time, and mattresses were picked up in the morning.
I’m with World Eater et al on this one.
On the one hand, I can recognize that it’s important for strict and strong limits to be imposed on authorities, lest they abuse their power.
On the other hand, this really doesn’t open any doors to abuse that weren’t already there. What stops a cop from using this new ruling as an excuse to harass random people for no good reason? The same thing that prevented it before… nothing, except the fear of retrubution when/if people wrongfully harassed complain.
If a cop violates your rights, we have a system for administering justice on that cop.
Posted by Eyer8:
Rats, you’re right. Most irritating. I failed to notice the “A.M.”
Maybe this ruling isn’t as big a deal as I thought, but it’s still part of a long trend that disturbs me. One of the many reasons to worry about Bush being reelected is the strong possibility that he’d get to make at least one Supreme Court appointment, maybe two, and God knows what kind of rulings we could see in coming years. Miranda reversed? Who knows?
A perfect example of what I mean. We trust our officers of the law to recognize that the long-term consequences of negative behavior will grossly outweigh the short-term satisfaction they may get for being abusive.
Unless he’s Vic Mackey, in which case I hope t’ hell he gets away with it!! 
Fair enough, but it’s easy to think you’re talking about something else when you post things like this:
Hopefully, you see now that it does nothing of the sort. It’s not even in the ball park. Think: If they can’t demand ID, they sure as hell can’t search your pockets.
You haven’t even really provided an argument against the ruling. All you’ve done is repeatedly misstate the facts.
And if you’ll pay attention to my original post you’ll see that a refusal to identify led to the behavior of the police rooting around in my pockets. No mis-statement of anything. It was simply an anecdote about what lengths local police will go to when one denies them their information.
I still think that this decision gives the police a little more “tooth” to trying to obtaing information from a citizen than they previously had, but as I’ve said before, I could be wrong and this will all work out for the better.
Sam
Well, see, the whole “refusal to identify” thing kinda counters your claim that it was for “no good fucking reason”, now, doesn’t it?
Now, if you feel that they had no reason to ask for identity to begin with… well, that’s when you say, “Sure, lemme have your badge number.” One phone call later and Overeager Cop #2,097 is sitting in his captain’s office trying to explain the accusation of abuse.
No, actually it doesn’t. A man in front of his domicile having a talk with a friend amounts to “no good reason.”
Actually, the police officer refused to give his name or badge number to me, or a card, and when I actually DID call to file a complaint, I ended up talking to his watch commander who said that the officer was “in fear for his life” and needed to make sure that a barefoot dude in front of his house wasn’t a threat to him.
Sam
I was wrong about this. Upon further checking, I find that there was a description of a vehicle that matched the vehicle the defendant was driving.
I’m sorry it went down that way, man, and I understand you’re a little apprehensive about giving potentially-asshole cops more rope.
However, what I - and I think a few others - are saying is that this law wouldn’t have caused that… the asshole cop woulda still been an asshole cop.
'At’s all.
Now go play some Vice City and take out your frustrations on an army of squad cars.
Y’know what, I’m sorry too. I’m also sorry I didn’t push my complaint because the same cop was back at my house on 4th of July for a guest lighting off a few firecrackers. He went into my back yard, pushed his way into my house, herded everyone else outside and began tossing my house. He overturned garbage cans on floors, humiliated me in front of my friends and the 6 other cops that were there when he :gasp: found porno mags, accused me of stealing the electronic equipment in my home, ate a freshly cooked steak, insinuated that I belonged to a “militia” because I had about 10 rifles :rolleyes: , cuffed me, threatened me, told him to tell him where all the drugs were :rolleyes: did the same thing to my fucking younger brother. He found some pot that a guest brought with him and left inside my house. Propably less than a grams worth, and wrote me a ticket for 17 grams. He accused me of burning a house down the night before with a bottle rocket when I was out of town and then accused me of lying to him-until I told him I had mass quantities of video from the party on my “stolen” video camera.
When I went to court to fight it and complained that the officer barged his way into my house without any sort of cause(there were no fireworks visible to the officer, and no signs of fireworks visible to him either), the Judge said that since I didn’t tell the officer to get out of my house that I consented to the search.
So ya, I’m a bit leary of giving our police forces more power.
I’m not saying that this law would have allowed it to happen either. What I am saying is that this new decision might give the police just a little more tooth when requesting information on citizens who get under their skin and it might possibly allow abuses like in my case to happen more often. It might give the officer something more to fall back on when they see “suspicious behavior”, or receive a tip about a possible crime within a certain geographical area.
Sam
My condolences and my congratulations all at once. He was indeed eventually put down, but not until he had destroyed many many lives. I hope you and yours somehow escaped his tyranny.