Cops

So Which Is It?

There are people who comment on this site that Flock cameras are simply filming you in a public place, and they don’t have a problem with it. OK, so then why do cops have a problem with you filming them in a public place, to the point where they will approach you with a threat of arrest while off duty?

If cameras aren’t a threat, then why are these cops taking action?

Again, cameras aren’t the issue. A person filming me isn’t a threat to me, as long as he is doing it in public. What’s the issue is what is being done with that footage. Are government officials building a database? That’s an issue.

Is the guy filming the cops just posting the videos online? Not an issue.

Is the guy filming using that footage to threaten or harm cops or anyone else? Then it is an issue, but you have to have more evidence to arrest or even detain than “guy is filming.” That’s why the standard is “reasonable articulable suspicion.”

Discuss

By Divemedic, ago

Legal Blood

Years ago, when I was still a paramedic with the fire department, we would occasionally draw blood from patients and turn it over to the police. More than once, I drew a resisting patient’s blood while a police officer held a taser to their neck.

Why would I do that, you ask?

Florida has long had a specific statute, § 316.1933, covering crashes involving death or serious bodily injury. It provides that when an officer has probable cause to believe an impaired driver caused a death or serious bodily injury, the officer shall require a blood test. The statute also expressly authorizes the officer to use reasonable force if necessary, and it authorizes physicians, nurses, paramedics, and other qualified personnel to draw the blood at the officer’s request. It also grants immunity to those assisting with the draw when acting under the statute at the direction of a law enforcement officer.

For many years, the prevailing view, based largely on the earlier U.S. Supreme Court decision in Schmerber v. California (1966), was that alcohol dissipating from the bloodstream created an exigency justifying a warrantless blood draw in many DUI cases. The person’s liver was literally destroying the evidence every minute, and the delay in obtaining a warrant was the difference between a DUI homicide and a drunk walking away.

I understood why the law was there, and I also disagreed with it. My favorite quote is “better 1,000 guilty go free than 1 innocent person be convicted.” The truth is that the DUI law changes have had no discernible effect on the rate of traffic fatalities. Of course, the fact that the government uses traffic offenses as a cash cow, with Florida making $100 million a year from traffic tickets has nothing to do with it. In California, it was discovered that 1,600 DUI checkpoints yielded only 3,200 DUI arrests (two per checkpoint), but resulted in $40 million in traffic tickets and 24,000 vehicle confiscations. Cops also won, being paid $30 million in overtime to staff the checkpoints.

That was the law when I retired from the fire department in 2011. Then in 2013, the Supreme Court decided Missouri v. McNeely. The Court held that the natural metabolization of alcohol by itself does not automatically create an exigency. Instead, officers generally need a warrant unless the facts of the particular case make obtaining one impractical.

After McNeely, Florida appellate courts repeatedly held that, despite § 316.1933, the State still had to show either:

  • a warrant,
  • valid consent,
  • or a recognized exception to the warrant requirement (such as genuine exigent circumstances).

By Divemedic, ago

Your Cars Are Snitches, Bitches

In a sign of things to come, a Waymo autonomous vehicle in California pulled into a parking lot, locked the passengers inside, and notified police when two 15 year old passengers were drinking alcohol and shooting nearby pedestrians with water guns.

There are those who would call me a criminal lover for being opposed to that. Consider where this is going- your car will monitor you for everything illegal and drive you to the cops when it detects lawbreaking behavior. Tore the tags off your mattress? Didn’t follow the instructions on that can of bug spray to the letter? I promise you that each and every one of us breaks the law each and every day.

  1. If you are using a household cleaner, and the label tells you to mix a cap full of the cleaner with a gallon of water, and you only mix it with 3.5 quarts of water, you have just used a labeled product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling. Felony.
  2. In Texas, it is a felony to own more than 4 sex toys (chapter 43). 11 of the 2,324 acts that the Texas Legislature thinks are worthy of being called felonies, have to do with acts that you can commit with or to an oyster.
  3. In Montana It is a felony for a wife to open her husband’s mail.
  4. In Florida, it is a felony to access WiFi without permission. There was a man who was convicted in 2005 of using the WiFi of a restaurant that advertised free WiFi for customers, because he was using the access from the parking lot while the establishment was closed. Since it was advertised as free WiFi for customers, and he could not be a customer while the business was closed, hello felony.
  5. It’s a felony to have a raffle in Georgia, unless you are registered as a non-profit organization with the state.
  6. In Michigan, it is a felony for a man to seduce an unmarried woman, punishable by 5 years in prison. Adultery is also a felony in Michigan, but only if the spouse being cheated on is the one who complained.
  7. In Mississippi, if you promise to marry a woman, have sex with her, and then decide not to marry, you are guilty of a felony punishable by ten years in prison.

Soon, your television, car, cell phone, and everything else you own will be monitoring you to ensure you are following the rules. All of them, even those that no sane person would consider to be a crime. Again, the only power a government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Making more criminals makes the government, and those who are employed by it, more powerful.

Of course, not everyone will be tossed in jail. Instead, you will be used as a confidential informant to help convict your friends and acquaintances. Being an informant means getting away with continuing your criminal career, but with protection from the cops. My brother found that out firsthand when a couple of meth users who were CIs for the local cops tried to rob him at his place of business, and he was the one arrested when the criminals escaped and then called their cop handlers.

I don’t know how I got on this dystopian timeline, but I really wish I were in a different one.

By Divemedic, ago

Only Ones

Here are a couple of cops who were arrested for billing a neighborhood for security service they didn’t perform. One of the officers ripped them off for over $15k. I’ve long had a problem with cops working as security.

They wear their department issued uniform, carry a department issued firearm and radio while driving a department issued patrol car. They reimburse the agency they work for for the use of those items, then are free to rent themselves out. Depending on the situation, they are considered to be security guards or police.

If they want to search you but don’t have a warrant or probable cause, they are security guards. If they ask you a question and you lie, they are then cops and you have broken the law. If you resist them in any way, they are cops. They get to have things however it works out best for them. As this great grandmother found out, when Disney security searched her bags as a part of a security check and she was arrested for having CBD oil. The charges were later dropped, but this illustrates the problem I have with cops as security. They can search you, and you have no constitutional protections. But let them find something illegal, and they instantly can use the fruits of what would otherwise be an unconstitutional search and arrest you.

Oh, and should that cop have to use any sort of force, you can bet your ass that they will be fully covered by magic police immunity.

This entire practice is also a clear conflict of interest. There are quite a few Orlando Police who work for Universal Studios. I once watched a famous singer use a shit load of drugs while backstage at a concert at Universal Studios, right in front of uniformed OPD officers working off duty security. Those cops didn’t do shit, because they know that pissing off their employer (the Studios) by arresting performers will ensure that their cushy and lucrative off duty gig will go away. In some cases, they make more working as security than they do as police officers. They aren’t going to let anything like the oath they took to the law and the constitution get in the way of that.

I don’t think the general practice of off duty security should be legal.

By Divemedic, ago

Nope

Several members of Congress have introduced a bill that would allow current and former members of the US military’s special forces to carry concealed weapons nationwide, despite any other laws to the contrary. I’ve seen stories about this bill in a few places over the past few weeks, and I just can’t support it. The idea that we are going to pass a Federal law that grants some sort of “super citizen” status to certain people, who then have rights not available to the rest of us?

No.

I would note that all three of the congressmen who sponsored this bill are former special forces. It’s typical self serving crap that politicians vote to give themselves more rights than the rest of us. The same thing happened with LEOSA. The entire premise behind that travesty of a law was cops might run into some criminal they arrested and need to defend themselves, as if some cop from Bumfukt, Iowa has a higher chance of running into a criminal while spending the day at Disneyland in California than I would is simply ridiculous, and there is no evidence that it actually happens.

The same for special forces soldiers. They don’t need such a permit while carrying out their duties, because they are on duty. For former soldiers, there is no need for them to have more rights than the rest of us. Don’t give me the line that this will be used as a stepping stone for more bills later- as soon as cops got their special LEOSA rights, they promptly turned around and lobbied against our right to carry. I’m not falling for that one again.

If these Republicans want to expand carry rights: do it for everyone, not just yourselves and your friends.

By Divemedic, ago

Karen Fatigue

These were the most chilled out cops ever. I will certainly call out the cops when they are wrong. In this case, they handled this traffic stop in the most professional way.

This entire interaction was due to the US “the customer always gets their way” approach to customer service. These women have learned to just scream for a manager, who will come and kiss their ass, letting them have whatever they are demanding. That doesn’t work on police, and it shouldn’t. If you are on a traffic stop or are getting arrested, the only response people should get when demanding a supervisor is “No”

If you have a problem with your arrest or stop, fix it in court.

By Divemedic, ago

Shooting

A Walmart in Poinciana Florida, an unincorporated community that spans Osceola and Polk County, had been hiring off duty Sheriff’s deputies as security. One of them confronted a group of “teens” who had been shoplifting. That’s when one of the youths decided to pull a gun on the Deputy, thereby changing his crime from misdemeanor larceny into armed robbery, a forcible felony.

The Deputy conducted an impromptu ballistics test of his .45 ACP caliber Glock, which performed as expected. The crowd became a bit irate because the deputy shot a “kid,” so another off duty deputy, along with an off duty firefighter, both of whom happened to be in the store and were armed, assisted the original deputy in securing the crime scene until others could arrive. I can’t post the link to the tweet with the video, because it’s been restricted. Click on the tweet below and take a look.

By Divemedic, ago

Pull Them Out

Yet again, we have a case where the American public is told that cops don’t have to protect you. The school resource officer from the Uvalde school shooting was just found not guilty of all charges for standing outside of the school and hiding while the shooter massacred the students that the cop had a duty to protect.

It turns out, the cops don’t have a duty to do a damned thing except collect a pension. This echoes the case where the coward of Broward, Scot Peterson, was allowed to retire with his pension intact, even though he hid during the Parkland School Massacre and as the School’s Resource Officer, it was his job to protect the school’s students.

If police don’t have a duty to do anything, then why do we even have SROs in school in the first place? In shooting after shooting, we know that the police are cowardly pussies who will take cover while our children are slaughtered. That’s how we know that they aren’t about to go door to door to take shit.

Pull the cops out of the schools and cut police and school budgets by an appropriate amount. School resource officers are a horrendous waste of money.

By Divemedic, ago