The Glade 4.0

Ahh.. potentially. Yes, they potentially can do that. Some, in fact, do. However, if you view all of them that way, and refuse to see any of them, especially the ones you know nothing about, as honest public servants until proven otherwise, then the lack of confidence is the fault of the person having it. That's just bigotry. You're viewing them as a criminal for no reason other than that some members of their group turn out to be criminals... ironically, exactly what you want law enforcment not to do.

There's a huge difference between viewing police as criminals and not trusting them.

We've had this conversation before. I don't view them as criminals (some I do, but that requires specific action on their part), but I do not trust them. As noted, police have far more potential ability and inclination to dramatically affect my life for the negative than just about any other group. The only other potential exception to this is child services. I don't trust them either.

While these groups perform important roles, they have the task of finding and addressing violations of law or policies. When someone's focus is finding problems, I don't want them around me. It's not in my best interest. I don't trust them to have my interests in mind.

That does not mean I won't call the police if I need a service that only they can provide. But it means I'm doing this as a last resort, reluctantly, and with apprehension.

Now, it's worth noting that your arguments actually worsen my view of police, not improve them, do to the complete auto-dismissal of any concerns. The leeway provided by a an actual cop on these issues has always been alarming to me.

Just to quantify things....in 2012 only 16% of folks claim little or no confidence in the police, while 56% have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence. See page 2

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/confide ... tions.aspx

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled arguments...and they are regular as clockwork, with the usual suspects proclaiming the usual things.

SURPRISE, Ariz. (CBS Cleveland) — Arizona authorities charge a man for driving under the influence despite him blowing a .000 on a breathalyzer test.

KNXV-TV reports that 64-year-old Jessie Thornton – a native of Ohio – was recently pulled over by Surprise police after he recently left an LA Fitness gym. Thornton then says the officer accused him of driving drunk.

“He walked up and he said ‘I can tell you’re driving DUI by looking in your eyes,’” Thornton told KNXV.

Thornton was then given a sobriety test.

“I take my glasses off and he says, ‘You’ve got bloodshot eyes.’ I said, ‘I’ve been swimming at LA Fitness,’ and he says, ‘I think you’re DUI,’” said Thornton. “He goes, ‘Well we’re going to do a sobriety test.’ I said, ‘OK, but I got bad knees and a bad hip with surgery in two days.’”

Documents obtained by KNXV shows that Thornton did have hip replacement surgery shortly after his arrest.

After the sobriety test, Thornton was handcuffed and placed on the curb.

“I couldn’t even sit on the ground like that and they knew it and I was like laying on the ground, then they put me in the back of an SUV and when I asked the officer to move her seat up because my hip hurt she told me to stop whining,” Thornton explained to KNXV.

At the station, Thornton took a breathalyzer test and was examined by a drug recognition expert. The breathalyzer test came back .000 and the tests done by the drug recognition expert showed no signs of drug abuse.

“After he did all the tests, he says, ‘I would never have arrested you, you show no signs of impairment,’” Thornton told KNXV.

Despite the DUI charge being dropped, his car was impounded. He is now suing the City of Surprise for half a million dollars.

“This is a case of D-W-B, driving while black,” Marc Victor, Thornton’s attorney, told KNXV.

The Surprise Police Department did not comment on the case.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

I doubt he pulled him over on the basis of his eyes, but rather by his driving. You can be driving impaired by lots of different things including fatigue.

Odds are he was pulled over for reckless driving, the officer suspected he was DUI, charged him with that, and then the DUI charge was dropped when the rest of the evidence was collected.

Hey, DE criticized a cop. +5

Having discussions with law enforcement personnel about government tyranny - the ability of said LEP to take a critical stance is important. Otherwise, the entire discussion is a waste of time.

I understand probable cause searches, but I'm not sure on this. What would constitute probable cause? Having a cellphone and being at fault? You can get the usage data later (with a warrant) if there is reason to believe. I feel it is unreasonable to search the cell phone without going through the proper channels Get A Warrant.

I think this bill is too targeted. I think if they wrote it just to seize cell phones from the population for destruction, it would garner widespread support.

New Jersey Just Banned Trash Talking in High School Sports

Zenon Evans|Jun. 24, 2013 1:21 pm



Daniele ZanniStarting this fall, high school students in New Jersey who taunt each other during games will be subject to investigation not only by the state's athletic association, but the state's government.

“The days of taunting, baiting and trash-talking during high school sporting events are over,” reads a press release from the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA). Thanks to collaboration between NJSIAA, the New Jersey Attorney General, and the New Jersey Civil Rights Division, "discriminatory conduct will also be reported to the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights and may result in further investigation.”

Not everyone is as thrilled as the NJSIAA about this new encumbrance on youth games. According to the New York Post, administrators, coaches, and athletes question whether or not this is a practical or effective policy:

A top administrator from New York’s Catholic High School Athletic Association says New Jersey’s new initiative “seems like an overreaction.”

[…] CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens president Ray Nash said... “Every time a kid trash talks there will be severe penalties? I don’t know.”

Thomas Jefferson boys basketball coach Lawrence Pollard says those rules would be hard to enforce in the Public Schools Athletic League.

“You would see a lot of technicals, a lot of ejections, because one thing about New York is there’s a lot of friendly rivalries, so many schools close together and guys living in the same neighborhoods and projects,” Pollard said.

Lincoln star Thomas Holley, an All-American defensive end and forward on the basketball team, says “it’s sports – there’s always going to be trash talking, no matter what.” “Trash talking has been around forever,” he said. “To try to get rid of it now, it doesn’t make any sense.”

The rule comes as a new addition to New Jersey's “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights.” The article cites the aid of the Coalition for Racial Equality in Education, which The Daily Caller points out is “mysterious umbrella group of organizations that promotes anti-discrimination initiatives in education and doesn’t seem to have any web presence whatsoever.”

The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights, which came into force in 2011, already restricts what students are able to do and say. It prohibits:

“any gesture, any written, verbal or physical act, or any electronic communication, whether it be a single incident or series of incidents, that is reasonably perceived as being motivated either by any actual or perceived characteristic…”

The policy covers not only school property, buses, and sponsored events, but also states that it even applies “off school grounds.”

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/06/21/cheese-lovers-fight-idiotic-fda-ban-on-m

You should just click that one and read. I don't even know where to start.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

I must say, my concern about government overreach is seriously mitigated by the realization that there are cheeses out there where mites are an integral part of the product.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

US Marshal Upset That Couple His Police Gang Terrorized Went to the Press
J.D. Tuccille|Jul. 21, 2013 12:23 pm



ReasonWhen you're a police officer searching for a suspect who you believe has taken shelter at an apartment complex, of course you politely knock on the doors of the residents, most or all of whom must be innocent, and politely show them a photo— Oh, who am I kidding? Polite cops are so old fashioned. Of course you put together a massive tactical team, point guns in kitchen windows, brutalize the inhabitants, and then take offense when somebody has the nerve to call a reporter.

From the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:


After leaving her operating room scrub nurse duties at Sarasota's Doctors Hospital on Wednesday, Louise Goldsberry went to her Hidden Lake Village apartment.

Her boyfriend came over, and after dinner — about 8 p.m. — Goldsberry went to her kitchen sink to wash some dishes.

That's when her boyfriend, Craig Dorris — a manager for a security alarm company — heard her scream and saw her drop to the floor.

Goldsberry, 59, said she had looked up from the sink to see a man “wearing a hunting vest.”

He was aiming a gun at her face, with a red light pinpointing her.

“I screamed and screamed,” she said.

But she also scrambled across the floor to her bedroom and grabbed her gun, a five-shot .38-caliber revolver. Goldsberry has a concealed weapons permit and says the gun has made her feel safer living alone. But she felt anything but safe when she heard a man yelling to open the door.

He was claiming to be a police officer, but the man she had seen looked to her more like an armed thug. Her boyfriend, Dorris, was calmer, and yelled back that he wanted to see some ID.

Note that the officer at the door, Matt Wiggins of the US Marshal's fugitive division, responded to the request that he prove his claim to be a police officer by cursing and threatening to shoot the frightened couple.

Dorris ultimately took the plunge and emerged to establish the raiders' identity. He found 30 or so marshals and Sarasota cops who handcuffed him, ransacked the apartment once Goldsberry emerged (she was also cuffed), showed the photo of the suspected child-rapist they actually wanted, and then left.

The journalist Goldsberry called, Tom Lyons, seems to have a refreshingly skeptical attitude toward law enforcement behavior for a modern newspaper reporter.


The tip was never about Goldsberry's apartment, specifically, Wiggins acknowledged. It was about the complex.

But when the people in Goldsberry's apartment didn't open up, that told Wiggins he had probably found the right door. No one at other units had reacted that way, he said.

Maybe none of them had a gun pointed at them through the kitchen window, I suggested. But Wiggins didn't think that was much excuse for the woman's behavior. He said he acted with restraint and didn't like having that gun aimed at him.

“I went above and beyond,” Wiggins said. “I have to go home at night.”

Goldsberry was at home, I said. She had a gun pointed at her, too, and she wasn't wearing body armor and behind a shield. She had no reason to expect police or think police would ever aim into her kitchen and cuss at her through her door to get in. It seemed crazy. She was panicked.

“We were clearly the police,” Wiggins insisted. “She can't say she didn't know.”

She does say so, actually.

Ultimately, Marshal Wiggins is upset that he has to answer a reporter's questions about his conduct while conducting a sweep through the war-torn streets of Kabul an apartment complex in a peaceful Florida city.


Goldsberry wasn't arrested or shot despite pointing a gun at a cop, so Wiggins said, “She sure shouldn't be going to the press.”

Let's hope Wiggins and his hopped-up gang don't decide to shoot first, in the future, just to avoid dealing with unpleasant reports in the press.

This seems like a good moment to mention former Reason staffer Radley Balko's new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, about militarized policing.

And, as a side note, on New York City's WOR radio, yesterday, I was asked by guest host Brett Winterble if America is now a police state. Yes, I said. Yes, it is.