CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police | Hacker News Reader

CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

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Seems like the guy calls himself a "copchaser" and is used to actuallly chase police officers, annoyingly record their action and make sure to insult them while teaching them a lesson about how to do their job. And he calls all that "standing his ground".

I am sure police officers can be jerks or even completely criminals, but this guy really seems to be crossing the line of common sense.

Source: the YT channel himself posted https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgnVXppkmzBKfTOwe-KqAJQ/vid...

"Seems like the guy calls himself a "copchaser" and is used to actuallly chase police officers, annoyingly record their action and make sure to insult them while teaching them a lesson about how to do their job. And he calls all that "standing his ground"."

That's what I was seeing in the video I watched. Dude is a disgrace to activists. Last thing we need is more people acting like that toward police in a way that makes corporate media regularly. Voters would be pushing against police accountability more than dealing with police corruption.

Best this stuff is done in a neutral, polite way from terms used (eg CopWatch vs CopChasers) to how one speaks to the cops (respectfully). Activists need the moral, high ground against the cops when viewers or juries start asking where the problems in a confrontation really started. "And if he acts this way on camera, what might he have said off camera to them?" they'll ask.

ie a demand for us to be excessively passive and make their be an asymmetry in favor of the aggressor, ie why girls like criminals now, while they just to like knights before, the good guys, anyways, what you advocate men to do would be cede the asymmetry in favor of aggressors/criminals, police & criminals (same group of people, if you've ever had those sorts of friends they often just decide to try to be a cop later to maintain a few things, anyways, we cannot seed any situation to these people.

anyways, my father's house was just broken into, a few other things happened, and we have enough cops, but stuff still isn't being taken care of, anyways, the most important part is the courage to contest

What the hell are you talking about? Im not encouraging weak behavior. The goal of the videos is to convince public to change law and policy. It's proven fact that more of public will buy into the cops being the aggressor if the activist isnt actively trying to piss them off by doing them dirty or threatening them. Im advocating doing what helps the cause instead of what makes you feel like an alpha-male/female in heat of the moment.

that asymmetry decides which side women like more, (noob), women will always like the side that wins in the intimidation hierarchy, or the side of the most aggression without repaid cost.

Maybe. The others still got the most done for underrepresented's freedom (see Civil Rights movement). Including women.

And why shouldn't they? Police departments and city officials across the US routinely lie, obsfucate and remove any sense of accountability for police officers who commit crimes or make mistakes.

Look at the case of the murder of Laquan McDonald in Chicago. The lying and stonewalling is a common occurrence. It's not just a few bad apples, it's a bad system that promotes escalation and grants power without accountability.

It took the prosecuting attorney 15 months to charge the Chicago cop (Van Dyke) with first degree murder. And this was long after the family resigned to believe their son was at fault. It took a whistleblower to come forward to start a long figh for the truth.

After the courts forced the police to release the videotape to the family, whereas the City Council immediately votes to give the family $5 million with the agreement to keep the tape private before they even filed a lawsuit. It took someone else getting the video for it to become public and the cop to be charged.

Being annoying or insulting to governmet employees isn't a crime.

>>Being annoying or insulting to governmet employees isn't a crime.

Sure, but distracting and harassing law enforcement officers while they are trying to do their job can be grounds for obstruction of justice. It's one thing to record them from a distance, another thing to constantly hurl insults and condescending remarks.

Don't get me wrong, the police in America have serious problems. But this guy seems to be approaching the issue in a bizarrely antagonistic way. I don't know if his arrest is justified but it's definitely not surprising given his behavior.

I absolutely think you should be able to record the police. But following them around is potentially unsafe for everyone involved. It's also a good way to harass good people out of the profession (the worse a job is, the more you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to fill it). In addition, it absolutely can be a misdemeanor to harass people, government employee or not. No one deserves to be insulted.

The problem here is lack of reason on either side. People being unreasonable just escalates the unreasonableness on both sides of the equation.

How is following police unsafe for everyone involved?

Because police routinely go right into the middle of situations that are already unsafe. That's their job. Additional persons getting involved unnecessarily in those situations is a random factor that is unlikely to make those situations safer.

Because police engage in dangerous situations by their very nature. Following them around will likely put followers in unsafe situations as well. Following them and engaging in antagonistic dialog will detract from their ability to do their job. Imagine trying to asses an area before entering a building to deal with a domestic (likely one of the most dangerous things an officer deals with on a regular basis) when someone is antagonizing you.

Filming should be legal. If there is an interaction occurring, police should have the expectation of being filmed. They should be required to wear body cameras. They should be accountable. But what this guy was doing seems to slip over the line into obstruction.

Honest question: Are you serious?

I can think of a number if situations in a number of jobs I have had were people following me around could have been dangerous (farm hand, concrete work etc).

I didn't ask how following around a concrete worker could be dangerous.

But - in my opinion obviously - if following even someone like me around might be dangerous in certain situations then definitely I can see how it might be dangerous to follow police around?

That said, I am not saying you shouldn't be allowed to folliw police at a safe distance, at a safe speed, recording what you see etc as long as it isn't obvious that they are doing something that temporarily needs to be kept secret.

For the same reason most fire trucks in the USA have plastered on the back "Remain at least 300 feet behind vehicle".

... "Emergency vehicles" such as fire trucks and police vehicles respond to Emergencies. Emergencies are by definition unsafe.

So you could "follow" (from very far behind) -- but it's implied often times that individuals are following closer than permitted in order to provoke a response, or simply without discretion to the publics safety.

I feel like in this case, if this person is in fact a "cop chaser", the issue is that they follow the police around and essentially harass them. It's one thing to be off minding your own business, it's another to make a hobby or career out of going out of your way to swear at cops and try to record them responding in a negative manner. YMMV.

Following them around is originally what the Black Panther Party would do to keep tabs on them. But without actually interacting with them. So no insults or entering the situation unless actual police brutality or a miscarriage of justice was occurring. If they had smart phones I'm sure they'd be filming the whole thing too.

> And why shouldn't they?

This is a leading question, which is to say it's not a question that can be answered in a rational way. If one desires removal of choice in the conversation, they may answer it irrationally.

> Look at the case of the murder of Laquan McDonald in Chicago.

The use of a separate case of an individual having choice removed, or individuals in a group removing choice for an individual, applied to the officers involved in this video (and conversation here) is illogical. Just because someone of the group "law enforcement" acts irrationally one place does not mean all will act that way everywhere else.

> Being annoying or insulting to government employees isn't a crime.

When Alex Jones presents his words as truths it is also not a crime. However, while holding the separate goal of being "controversial" and "in your face", the dissonance that is created by such actions is palatable, and akin to a crime of logic or truth. If one attempts to disrupt the arrival of a truth in a given situation, they seek to create additional work for the aggregate to determine truth.

In this case, the officer wanted to know why someone was shining a flashlight (changing colors no less) around in the general vicinity of the stop. The reply was along the lines of "no concern of yours", when in fact it WAS a concern of the officer. In essence, the individuals filming were actively removing choice from the officer to be concerned, speaking for his actions (by implying he was or was going to run plates) and in general acting in a way that would encourage the future event of confrontation. In other words, they are acting in an irrational way to cause further irrationality to occur, when none existed.

I've been kicking around a framework for detecting and describing these types of logical "arguments" which are all verbally spoken or written. In the case of comments on HackerNews, I regularly point out the dissonance in the argument, and attempt to show how these arguments can spread if the irrationality is intended to disrupt, as is done with leading questions that blame using biased arguments.

Even if that behavior is questionable, there is at least merit in raising the argument of parity. If it is unreasonable for this man to behave like that, then why is it reasonable for men vested with the authority to enforce the law for the peace of society?

If we can succeed in proving that this man's behavior is contradictory with what we want for society, then it should follow that the same applies to the police force.

You answer your own question: society vests them with the authority.

As a similar thought: why do we only allow police to give citations for crimes, instead of allowing anyone to cite anyone for a crime?

Chris acted irrationally and had the right to do so. However, by his intent to spread irrationality by removing the officer's choice, the officers were eventually baited into acting irrationally which then led to the arrest. If they knew more about these types of removal of choice, and how they may spread by their very presence, it may have had a different and more desirable outcome for all involved.

Detecting trolls is important, in other words.

Stating it is reasonable that an individual has a right to choose irrationality removes the leading portion of your question which itself is a removal of choice by those who attempt to answer it. Applying rational thinking to answering it reveals an important question to ask ourselves:

> Why is it reasonable for men vested with the authority to enforce the law for the peace of society?

I think it is somewhat rational for individuals of a group to elect a sub-group to make choice for the individuals. In the case of law, which is suppose to be a rational instantiation of future choice for the group, it is the peacekeepers that are responsible for making choice of who is removing choice from other individuals or the group, as a whole.

However, irrational laws and expectations do creep into the group from time to time. Benjamin Franklin once spoke to this by stating, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

A corollary to this insight would be: "Those who would give up temporary Rationality, to purchase a little temporary Liberty, deserve neither Rationality nor Liberty."

Edit: Safety equated to Rationality.

Seems like 'provocative' and 'provocateur' are reasonable descriptions of this behavior and this person.

If these people didn't antagonize and harass the police, they'd rarely obtain any interesting footage. That says a lot.

These people have an agenda. They need to show the police in the worst light possible, and they don't have time to sit around waiting for news to happen. They have to make the news.

Great post. If only such logical formalities were applied to law enforcement and the courts, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Cops routinely exceed their authority and misrepresent the law. I can only provide you hundreds of examples and case studies to substantiate that this group of people routinely act irrationally. Or as I would say, illegally.

>And why shouldn't they?

Because one person (cop or not, doesn't matter) breaking the law over here doesn't in any way justify unreasonable harassment of another person (cop or not) over there?

Let me put it another way, how is this behavior intended to improve policing in America, and do you think it has a chance of doing so?

Given the complacency cops have toward the indiscretions of other cops, I can't agree with that. Perhaps if the good cops worked harder to root out the bad cops, instead of hiding behind the thin blue line, I'd agree.

Are you arguing that there are no good cops, only bad cops and all cops deserve to be treated by default as the worst cops?

I'm arguing that if there are good cops, they need to prove it. And the best way they can prove it is to stop protecting the bad cops.

It improves policing because now police know that they will always be watched.

And any excessive force or mistake that they engage in will be trending on YouTube in under an hour. So you better be damn careful.

> And any excessive force or mistake that they engage in will be trending on YouTube in under an hour. So you better be damn careful.

And what's the best outcome, huh? They get out on temporary administrative leave? Ha. Go ahead and record the police. They don't care. We on HN don't care. And you won't care after a week.

If you start applying violence you'll be no better than them. Batman fights killers, but he himself doesn't kill. Be like Batman.

So people should just do nothing in the face of police brutality and misconduct? Bringing awareness to issues like this takes time. United's problems have spearheaded a ton of attention to the US airline problem because people recorded incidents. We could finally see much needed airline reform like removing the foreign investment restrictions on airlines and more antitrust activity.

Anything worth fixing or building takes a tremendous amount of focus and time. This comment makes me sad, as it mirrors general millennial sentiments on civic engagement.

The question is if this guy is merely monitoring police, or also actively trying to harass them or interfere with what they're doing.

The problem is this isn't a video in which cops are watched, it's a video of cops being unreasonably harassed. Those are two very different things

Being annoying or insulting isn't a crime, but there are lots of other things that are crimes. If you want to hold the system accountable, don't give them any excuse to take you down. If you're going around filming cops, there may not be any legal requirement to be polite and respectful, but you had better be polite and respectful if you want to be effective.

> Being annoying or insulting to governmet employees isn't a crime.

Harassment is a crime, at least in the US.

This applies to everyone, regardless of their employer.

There is a mindset amongst many that police should never stop, question or even talk to people without some level of suspecion of wrongdoing. They see most any checkpoint as a threat to basic libery. Such "chasers", rather than the silent watchers who dont scream at officers, are extreemists who take laws and constitutional constructions far to literally.

It's called probable cause and it's recognized by the courts in any other police interaction except for checkpoints.

And it's backed by the 4th Amendment, which is neither a law nor a rule. It's an acknowledgment of an innate natural right that all human beings have which includes the right to be left alone except when there's reasonable suspicion or probable cause.

Except there are limits to what constitutes Probable Cause. A cop still needs to demonstrate that there was reason to believe they had Probable Cause, and things like a person's skin color don't factor into it.

I threw the thing in about skin color not because I have any reason to believe you are racist, but because we are talking about cops, who in many areas have been shown to be quite racist, and have been shown to pull persons of color over far more than white people.

That's not a mindset, that's the actual, current state of the law. Police pulling you over without cause is considered by many judges, jurists and supreme court justices to be a violation of your fourth amendment rights to privacy and your fifth amendment rights to due process. The alternative to this is stop and frisk.

Yes, the law is muddied, and yes, there are many, many exceptions... most notably those as defined in Terry v Ohio (ie, Terry stops), but even with Terry stops, officers need to have a reasonable suspicion that you're either presently armed, or should be considered dangerous enough to warrant a stop.

It isn't extremism to interpret the law as it is written, and as it is considered by many courts to be valid, that requires police to need at least some mandate to being pulled over (whether a traffic violation, exigent circumstances) more specific than "this guy was black", or "this guy was poor", or what have you.

The problem is that with qualified immunity and deference, we allow the police to get away with a lot of stops that don't even meet the legislative standards we've set, and as we allow these things to continue, from one generation to the next, the standards for what is or isn't a valid stop gets lowered.

TLDR, if a cop pulls you over just because he can, and he cannot formulate a reasonable suspicion, then he has overstepped his boundaries in the eyes of the law, even where that law seemingly has bent over backwards to accommodate arbitrary stops.

> "There is a mindset amongst many that police should never stop, question or even talk to people without some level of suspecion of wrongdoing."

Or in other words not be harassed. This is also pretty well covered by the fourth amendment.

I don't think we should have checkpoints, ever, unless perhaps there is an imminent thread you are trying to stop, like a felon racing away in the car and you know she's there. In my state, Washington, I have never seen a police checkpoint. Somehow we have managed to survive up to this point

I'm genuinely surprised to learn that sobriety checkpoints are considered to violate 10 states constitutions, including Washington's. I wonder if this has any impact on the rate of impaired driving in these jurisdictions

Do you mean in the sense that "we find more impaired drivers because we look" or "we find fewer impaired drivers because of threats"? According to the top hit on Google for "washinton state dui rates" Washington is still top 10 [1]. I can't really speak to what a good source for these statistics might be, though.

[1] https://www.injurytriallawyer.com/blog/washington-state-dui-...

Being a douchebag is still protected by the First Amendment, though.

True, but if you are being a douchebag in such a way that it interferes with a police officer's conduct of their duty, then that effect is not protected. So prosecuting this person for what they said would be wrong. Prosecuting for interfering in a Police officer's discharge of their duty would be though.

Incidentally this is my take on the 'shouting Fire in a cinema' issue. Shouting whatever you like shouldn't be a crime, just as firing a gun isn't in itself a crime. Context matters. Deliberately causing a panic is a crime, as is killing a person with a bullet fired from your gun. Intentions matter and even unintentional but negligently caused effects matter.

> actuallly chase police officers, annoyingly record their action and make sure to insult them

As for the insulting part - sure, that's always a shame.

But what's wrong with following bearers of state power and recording their actions? That's precisely in the spirit of the first amendment.

Insulting is likewise precisely in the spirit of the first amendment.

Well, it terms of defending-what-you-say, I won't. In terms of defending-your-right-to-say-it, I will.

However, for the recording thing:

In terms of defending-your-right-to-do-it, I will. However, in this case, defending-what-you-do, I'll do that too.

So it's a little different. Although I acknowledge someone's right to insult someone, I assert that it's not particularly good for society. However, for recording police, I both acknowledge their right to do it and assert that it's of global benefit to society.

A book you might enjoy reading: Civil Disobedience [1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Civil-Disobedience-Essays-Thrift-Edit...

Haven't read the work, but it appears that Project Gutenberg has a freely available version.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71

Here are the most recent videos in the playlist linked in that post. Parts one and two of a 'confrontation' with Officer Hans Chapman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDtsXYG9b9Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWkefVqO9vw

Basically, a couple of guys looking to provoke a reaction, and a cop who interacts with them respectfully and is primarily concerned for everyone's safety.

I wonder how similar the scenario described in the post was to the videos in that playlist...

> Basically, a couple of guys looking to provoke a reaction, and a cop who interacts with them respectfully and is primarily concerned for everyone's safety.

yep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDtsXYG9b9Y&t=45

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDtsXYG9b9Y&t=90

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWkefVqO9vw&t=10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWkefVqO9vw&t=73

These guys are a couple of attention seeking jerks.

I recall a detailed blog post of some guy who claim he was arrested for trying to "help" while a cop was managing a scene outside a bar. I wish I could find the link. Some people can't help but try to inject themselves into a commotion (especially when they've had a few), and can't grasp that they just become another variable for the police to worry about. This particular guy then got belligerent when asked to simply leave and go about his business.

In my county they opened fire on someone filming the police recently. Turns out having video evidence is the ONLY way a policeman can be wrong.

Where?

Sacramento County

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/dad-im-shot-man-...

Not excusing the incident but the fuller story is a little more complicated than the police shot someone just because:

"The incident happened Thursday when Sanchez's next-door neighbor, Ben Ledford, was allegedly "firing up to 100 machine gun rounds at a home across the street, killing a dog inside the house," CBS Sacramento reported. Ledford surrendered to police, but officers fired at Sanchez after they saw him stand at the edge of his open garage and extend his hand out with an object—which turned out to be his cell phone, local NBC affiliate KCRA reported."

Excusable in a war zone, not in a policing action. Then again a man firing 100 machine gun rounds would be almost unheard of in any other developed country, so maybe the US does qualify as a war zone.

There is a bit of truth to that. England and Wales had about 10 murders per million people last year, versus 50 per million for the U.S. The cities that show up in the news, like Baltimore, are at about 500 per million people.

To put that into perspective: Baltimore, a city of just 620,000 people, had a roughly comparable number of homicides as the entirety of England and Wales, a country of 56 million people.

Wikipedia[0] seems to indicate that Baltimore is about on par with Venezuela and Lesotho, as far as murders per capita go, matching the US Virgin Islands' rate quite well.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

I think last time I ran the numbers I concluded that Troubles Belfast in the 1970s (troops on the streets, authorised to use deadly force consistent with rules of engagement, versus actual armed terrorists, plus loyalist militias engaging in terrorism of their own) was still safer than 80s Detroit.

> so maybe the US does qualify as a war zone.

It sure does. We are constantly at war against tyranny and citizen owned guns are one of our best weapons. I don't think any other "developed country" has been democratic as long as we have without lapsing back into tyranny every other century.

1. Are you sure about the correlation between the two?

2. Off the top of my head, the UK, France, Sweden, etc. have been democratic since at least the end of the 19th century.

> Are you sure about the correlation between the two?

No, but can you point to any effective tyrannies where the citizens can freely buy and own guns? It seems as though a universal prerequisite to tyranny is gun control.

> Off the top of my head, the UK, France, Sweden, etc. have been democratic since at least the end of the 19th century.

That's not very long. It turns out that long term democracies are really hard and without constantly reinforcing checks against tyranny, you'll find your country has slipped back into one before you know it. It's happening right now with Turkey.

The best defense against tyranny is an educated populated, not guns.

Look at what's happening in the US right now, despite it being brimming with guns.

I agree. But just because education is the best defense doesn't mean it should be the only defense. Guns are literally the very last resort to prevent tyranny after all other safeguards have failed.

They come with a ton of downsides... I'm European, I don't think that the benefits outweigh the downsides.

If my country is at the point where there's enough popular support for a tyrannical government to take root, things are already lost. In 1989 in Romania not even our generals had the guts to shoot our own citizens, despite being drilled for it during 40 years of very oppressive Communist dictatorships. Why? Because they knew that the government didn't really have popular support.

Your Turkish example isn't fully representative since Turkey hasn't ever had a stable democratic regime for more than ~15 years. Even Atatürk, who was a great man in most regards, was more of a benevolent dictator for life than a fully democratic figure head.

Guns come with downsides, true. But so do a lot of freedoms. Alcohol? Do the benefits of alcohol outweigh the downsides? I would argue alcohol has an even worse impact on society than guns. Of course you'll say "yes, but regulating alcohol is impossible, at least regulating guns is feasible". Yet, we can sleep at night knowing our favorite vice kills tens of thousands every year in the US alone (not to mention the mental health issues and child abuse that stems from it...).

Education is effective. If education is an effective tool to combat alcohol abuse, it can be an effective tool to combat gun abuse as well.

Europe should want guns even more than America. It wasn't that long ago that Germany was blitzkrieging across borders and the citizens were defenseless. It would have never worked in America because as soon as the Germans drove over the border, millions of American civilians (not soldiers) would be pulling out their family rifles and gunning down the German soldiers from every side.

Interesting, could you point out some recent (anytime post 1780s) examples of the armed US citizenry using our weapons to defend against tyranny?

Guns are are more like mosquito repellent with tyranny being the mosquito. I.e. it's usually a passive defense against tyranny not an active one.

I can give you examples of countries where guns are banned and the governments eventually rode roughshod over the citizens (who couldn't do anything about it): For example, when the Jong-Il family came to power in N. Korea they cracked down extremely heavily on gun ownership to ensure armed uprisings were impossible. It has been an extremely effective measure and now N. Korea has the lowest gun homicide rate in the world.

I think the fact that this us unheard of makes it even more excusable. I don't think that the police had faced this kind of sitiation too often.

That it was so unheard of should have invoked far greater caution and hesitancy to fire.

The news article was wrong, it wasn't a machine gun. It was a semi-automatic rifle, hardly different than the rifle that Anders Breivik used to kill scores of people in Norway.

An example of actual machine guns used would be the rifles used by French citizens to kill over a hundred people in the Bataclan theater (AKMs). They also used hand grenades and high explosive (TATP) suicide belts. In the Charlie Hebdo attacks, besides machine guns they also had an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade).

It seems like organized criminals in Europe have greater access to automatic firearms than in the US. I'm guessing that's because in the US you're dealing with stolen/straw-purchased legal firearms, whereas military/police arms from former Soviet-bloc countries circulate in Europe. I have nothing to back this up.

If you search for Ben Ledford's arrest record in Sacramento County's inmate records database (http://www.sacsheriff.com/inmate_information/SearchNames.asp...), one of the items he is charged under indeed is PC 32625(A) -- possession of a machine gun.

So, not sure if the news article is necessarily wrong. Clearly there is some prosecutor out there who believes that what Ben Ledford possessed qualified as the definition of a machine gun under California law.

Huh I stand corrected. I've seen ATF agents[1], FBI agents [2], as well as US district attorneys[3] incorrectly refer to semi-automatic AR-15s as "assault rifles" (which in actual fact are subclasses of machineguns), but since they charged him with that I assume it really must be a machinegun then.

But now I'm really curious to know more specific details about this firearm. Particularly if it was a legally transferable machinegun (legal federally, obviously not in California), or if it was an illegally modified semi-automatic (probably most likely) or a black market gun.

[1]: http://ktla.com/2015/12/02/mas-shooting-suspects-had-assault...

[2]: http://documents.latimes.com/lax-shooting-cell-phone-search-...

[3]: https://www.scribd.com/document/293561681/Enrique-Marquez-ch...

It was actually a Glock hooked up to one of these http://www.sidehustlenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/o...

Having videos on the police (and anybody with power) is the only good answer to "who is watching the watchers ?". Answer : now everybody. And that's a good thing.

Source?

Guy videotaping from his garage.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/dad-im-shot-man-...

To be fair, it probably looked like a gun from a distance.

The police were in the neighborhood confronting somebody with a machine gun - not smart to take an action that looks like pointing a gun in a type of situation where one side has decided they need machine guns.

It's not to excuse the behavior of the police..., but if you're pointing something at the police from across the street, it's hard to see the profile of said object...

Shoot first! Ask questions later! mirite?!

When someone was firing a "machine gun" in the vicinity, that might not be the worst idea. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Absolutely yes, in this case. I'd prefer the officers went home to their families. If you want to go around pointing your phone at everything, you need to stop and think about the consequences.

Assuming it's necessary to shoot at all, aiming to kill is even more rarely the right thing to do.

In real life, there is only "do not shoot the firearm" and "shoot the firearm with the intent to kill". There is no practical aiming to disable or similar with a lethal firearm. There's no difference between the two, and no distinction to be drawn.

Thank you for mentioning this. One minor adjustment I'd make to the above statement is "shoot the firearm with the intent to stop". This is a small, but important distinction. It doesn't change anything with respect to how the firearm is used (e.g., point of aim). At least from the perspective of police use of deadly force, the goal isn't to kill, it's to stop the person from continuing to be a threat. The outcome may be that the person does die, but if the person is stopped and doesn't die, that's an acceptable outcome once the decision has been made to use deadly force.

It's not minor at all, and it's exactly what I was hinting at.

If the person is stopped, doesn't die, and can be subject to trial in a court of law, that is a _better_ outcome.

Would you clarify what you understand as alternatives to "aiming to kill" and how they would be effectively different from "aiming to kill"?

Edit: clarified question.

They aren't different at all from "aiming to stop", but the difference from "aiming to kill" is enormous. For example, aiming at the leg can be just as effective as aiming at the heart.

Sorry, I can see how my question was unclear. I mean how "aiming to kill" is effectively different from "aiming to stop". I've edited it for clarity.

There are a couple of issues with the idea of, say, aiming at the leg.

* A leg wound may not stop the person.

* A leg wound can be lethal: you can bleed out very quickly if the femoral artery is hit.

* The trajectory of a bullet (and its fragments) once it impacts the body can be very unpredictable: a bullet entering the leg may strike bone and enter the chest cavity.

And all of these assume precise aim under stress. You mention aiming for the heart: police won't generally be aiming for something as small as the heart. Police (and all people using firearms) should receive the best training they can (and likely more and better firearms training than is often available today), but precise aim under stress is no easy task. They may be aiming for the torso (which of course includes the heart), because shots to the torso are generally more effective at stopping a person and it's a relatively large target: shots are more likely to hit and therefore less likely to miss (and hit something else: all bullets land somewhere).

Firearms are deadly force. Police have less-lethal alternatives available as well, and should be trained to use them effectively when it's appropriate to do so. If a police officer resorts to deadly force, the goal should be to stop the person as effectively and quickly as possible.

Not at all. In civilized countries, police are specifically trained to stop, not to kill. Sometimes one may imply the other, but not necessarily.

I'm 100% certain that you're absolutely right. Yet, I'm not aware of any way to use a lethal firearm in a capacity to stop in a way that is in some important and practical manner distinct from stopping a person lethally. I'm sure this is just a failure on my part to comprehend your point. Can you clarify, to help me with my personal failures? Perhaps you could detail what you mean about how police are trained in civilized countries?

Perhaps what you meant to communicate is that weapons other than inherently lethal firearms should be deployed?

I'm by no means an expert gun-handler, but the only constant instruction every time I go to a range is "Don't point the gun at anything you are not ok with completely destroying".

I understand police should be better trained, and ideally they must shoot to stop vs shoot to kill.

> ideally they must shoot to stop vs shoot to kill

Would you clarify what you understand as the practical, effective difference between the two?

Safety on, unless you're actively practising.

Keep guns pointed toward the ground or the air when handling, don't point at things and never point at people.

Only have your hands on the trigger if you are planning to shoot. (Corollary: if someone has hands on trigger, consider that he's gonna shoot.)

P.S. That's what I've seen at European ranges, let's assume they are taking security more seriously than American ones :D

They already have non-lethal options available if they intend to stop someone. I feel like this would increase the lethality of situations where non-lethal approaches are warranted rather than decreasing the lethality of other ones.

Firearms should not be treated as implements of lethality and nothing but that. Imagine how many police shooting cases we'd see where cop claims he was shooting to wound but 'missed'

Genuinely confused about this morality. Why is it more correct that the officers "went home to their families" than that this innocent guy died in front of his?

I mean, I can understand arguing that sometimes protective violence is necessary and accepting that tragedies happen. But you're literally taking a side here and saying that police lives are more important than ours. Why?

You're making this argument with full information. Police acting at the scene didn't have this luxury.

It is very easy to tell what others should have done in a situation that they perceive as life and death.

The point is they're scaredy cats who jump at shadows and create deadly situations out of things that aren't.

If they want me to care that they perceive things as life-or-death, they need to adjust their perception. Being scared of your shadow holding a gun and pumping a house full of rounds isn't something I'm going to think is reasonable, even if you were really scared.

Soldiers in literal warzones facing trained adversaries trying to murder them aren't as jumpy as cops in a suburban neighborhood dealing with normal people.

Cops need better trigger discipline.

Well the person they were arresting was not quite normal. At least some part of your comparison is incorrect.

It's not a rationalization that police lives are more important, but rather about the stupidity of holding up a phone in such a way towards the police engaged in a dangerous situation that it appears as though you are acting aggressively towards them. The officers only have a limited time to assess the threat of any given person before more lives are lost due to an unknown danger. It's a high stress situation and wrong decisions are easily made. The officers weren't right in their immediate assessment of the danger, but that doesn't mean their actions were unwarranted.

So... the police made a mistake, but that's OK. The guy made a mistake, but he died and that's warranted (your word!).

It's the asymmetry of this morality that horrifies me. I can understand people who think this is a terrible mistake but still sympathize with the officers and don't want to see them punished. But you guys... yikes.

For the equally callous flip side, we pay LEO to put their lives at risk and potentially die every day. We do not compensate citizens to put their lives at risk when a cop is around. In this cold and calculating scenario, maybe dying is what they're paid to do, kind of like soldiers. Except soldiers have massively more training and seem to be pretty decent at verifying an individual is a combatant before opening fire.

Because LEOs were dead wrong in their immediate assessment of the danger, that means exactly that their actions were unwarranted. When you act upon a false and unwarranted belief, you don't get to say your actions were warranted.

Military's are more than professional, get paid less, and still risk your life much more, being a LEO is not harder than being in the military.

I wasn't trying to take sides. One set of people were doing their jobs, another person was doing something without thinking about consequences. I don;t hold this opinion in general, for example when someone videotapes police in a city street.

Several people were pissed off about privacy violations when Google glass was becoming popular. I'm trying to apply the same principle here. Yes, ideally the guy shouldn't have died, but if I have to take sides I'm supporting the cops doing their jobs over the person doing something without full knowledge of the situation. Shoot first, ask later, was a perfectly good response in this situation, IMO.

So ... you're not bothered that in this instance, LEO demonstrably "did something without full knowledge of the situation". Seems we should be holding LEO to a significantly higher standard of having full knowledge of a situation before doing something like employing lethal force. That's what we pay them for, and it shouldn't be to much to ask them to take an extra moment of extreme caution to verify the difference between a phone and an assault rifle.

"without full knowledge of the situation". Seems to me that the LEO had as much information about the situation as was possible in the timeframe required to act. Someone, at night, was pointing something at them from across the street during a gun battle with someone else (to be fair that's entirely based on information from this thread so we can treat it as a hypothetical situation if you like). I think it's pretty reasonable that a phone can be easily mistaken for a handgun in those circumstances (not sure why you're suggesting the comparison to an assault rifle).

That demands an immediate assessment of threat. I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that they just needed to wait a bit longer for more/better information to arrive when their current assessment based on the information available at that moment suggested a high risk to themselves or others.

LEO often have to deal with situations where information is imperfect (poor visibility, multiple actors, etc), and make judgement calls about what's the best/safest thing to do in the circumstances. Sometimes they get it wrong, because the information wasn't accurate enough, and sometimes they get it wrong because their training was insufficient or their judgement was flawed.

Clearly if training or poor judgement (or attitude) were factors in taking the wrong action then that should be addressed (and there may be a fair point to be made that in some jurisdictions LEO and their organisations are not held accountable enough for failures there).

And sometimes they get it right, and save the lives of themselves or others because they acted immediately.

Full disclosure: I have LEO family members (Canada), so I recognise I have some obvious bias on the topic.

[edit] looks like 'at night' may not have been correct; not sure where I got that from. I don't think it changes the argument much - information at hand is often imperfect; LEO need to act in some cases regardless of imperfect information due to the level of risk involved.

>>>I wasn't trying to take sides

hmmm

>> I'm supporting the cops doing their jobs over the person doing something without full knowledge of the situation

Sure sounds like you are taking side....

I see this often when people excuse police abuse and over reach. They often claim they "dont want to take sides" or "dont want to defend their actions" but then proceed to defend the actions and/or take the side of the cops.

You forgot this part :)

>>> but if I have to take sides

>If you want to go around pointing your phone at everything, you need to stop and think about the consequences.

You should be embarassed of this comment.

>I'd prefer the officers went home to their families.

I'd prefer that unarmed, innocent civilians went home to their families.

I'm fairly sure you're being ironic, but I don't think it comes through in text very well.

Nope! I'm still learning to say potentially offensive things in a non-offensive way, so maybe that didn't come across well.

(Unless you are sarcastically saying that I must be trying irony.)

I'd prefer everyone comes out of such encounters alive.

At the point these folks thought someone might have a weapon, the prudent thing to do is hold back and carefully plan your next moves. One of the first things would be to verify your suspicions - that there was, in fact, a gun.

They knew going in that folks hold things that can be mistaken for guns. Like phones and a myriad of other things - even during normal activities like running. Protocol should reflect that knowledge and err on the safety of everyone. Things change if there are actual shots fired from that direction, but caution before such time.

Absolutely not. We hold cops to a higher standard. And I would have liked this guy to have gone home to his family.

I think it's fair, if you're going to use deadly force, to first find out with a much, much greater degree of certainty, that there actually is a weapon, and if so that they actually are in danger. Too many cowardly and scared police shooting at shadows and noises.

"It's not to excuse the behavior of the police.."

And yes, your comment is excusing the behavior of the police. Just saying that you didn't just excuse their behavior doesn't mean that you didn't just do exactly that.

Taking time to raise level of certainty will, with high probability, give the other guy time to shoot you.

This is one untypical case that makes the news, so you're thinking about optimizing decision making for this case; all the cases where police actually get shot don't.

This isn't an issue in any other developed country. People don't want to shoot cops. Even if it was a gun, they shouldn't have shot him

> Taking time to raise level of certainty will, with high probability, give the other guy time to shoot you.

In war, soliders are required to have an extremely high degree of certainty before opening fire. I think it's pretty safe to hold a higher standard to a police force that is dealing with primarily innocent civilians.

If they don't want to risk their lives, they can find another job. That may sound unfair, but it's more unfair to kill and murder someone who poses no threat.

Handling atypical cases well is the distinguishing feature between good and bad.

That applies for business and software in addition to morals...

If soldiers can do it in combat zones, LEO can do it in our city streets.

I tried to have it more along the lines of:

"you're stupid if you expect to go to a really shady part of town and not get mugged. If you get mugged, technically, it's not your fault, but you should have seen it coming."

And that's what I think about this guy getting shot. It was less about the police being justified, and more about that person not thinking about the surroundings.

Edit: FWIW I do think the policeman was overzealous.

Police officers shot and killed last year: 63

Unarmed people shot and killed by police last year: 48

It's a touch predicament, but I don't see a universal lack of prudence.

https://www.odmp.org/search/year/2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...

>To be fair, it probably looked like a gun from a distance.

Maybe we could train police to distinguish between rela guns and from the multitude of other things that people might hold. Maybe we could even give them binoculars or something.

Seems with the advent of body cameras, someone ought to help all the trigger-happy LEOs out by doing some auto-recognition and alerting that what the camera is aiming at does, in fact, identify as a statistically great probability of being a firearm. Maybe Google or Snapchat should offer LEOs some cool specs they can wear to do this with AR.

> with a machine gun

Ugh. I wish reporters would stop embellishing stories like that with words they don't understand. An AR-15 is not in any sense a "machine gun".

It is in a US legal sense.

(The National Firearms Act doesn't analyze the tactical utility of the weapon, just whether it fires multiple rounds per trigger pull or is easily converted to do so)

> It is in a US legal sense

You'll need to cite that. It is not in any jurisdiction I'm aware of considered to be a "machine gun". "Readily converted" is a legal term that is defined by the BATFE, and AR-15s are saleable to the public expressly because they are NOT considered readily convertible to firing multiple rounds.

If they were, they would be barred from regular sale per the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act. As an AR-15 does not require a tax stamp, it is not legally considered a machine gun. Nor is it fully automatic, easily converted to fully automatic, nor capable of select fire.

https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/atf-national-firearms-act-...

That's the specific part I guess, not "the AR 15".

Once it has been modified to full automatic fire the ease of conversion also isn't relevant.

Right. In the same sense that a Subaru Legacy isn't considered a sports car, but with an engine / suspension change, it becomes one.

Regardless, the AR15 is not in any way considered a machine gun until and unless it has been converted to be one.

Yes, sloppy delivery on my part.

The weapon in the link had apparently been converted and thus fell under the NFA. I was pointing at the NFA definition and included the broader provision in my summary, I didn't mean to imply that the convertibility would have been an issue in the incident being discussed.

No worries, I just find it's important to be specific when dealing with firearms and legal terms, because the average person really doesn't understand these issues, and the political landscape is muddied by a bunch of folks who think they know things that are false.

Indeed, that's an assault rifle, predecessor to the M16. Only available as semi-automatic for civilian, if not modified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-15_variant

I don't know how you American call that, but I'd consider that as war equipment.

I don't know how you American call that, but I'd consider that as war equipment.

The rest of your comment is informative and adds to the discussion. Your parent is making a similar point, which you expand on. This last statement you add is can be read as inflammatory. Gun discussions are contentious enough as it is, particularly on the internet, and they all to often derail into all manner of increasingly flamewar topics which are tangential to the story. Can you clarify why you added this?

Because there are different culture surrounding firearms, particular classifications and regulations.

In most countries, this sort of equipment is definitely classified as war guns. You are prohibited from possessing one, let alone use it.

In the USA, it's more opened, some stuff you can buy, some stuff you can't buy, not sure where this one is. I believe it's being discussed in another thread here.

This has implications on the story. Knowing the kind of weapon and the local norms would give more context about the situation. Expect the police to react differently against a handgun and a military grade assault rifle (not the same type of individual on the other side either).

Judging by the "hundreds of rounds", it might have been modified to automatic or it's an old model.

> Judging by the "hundreds of rounds", it might have been modified to automatic or it's an old model.

Most likely not, you can empty 30 round mags in 15 seconds or so.

Correct me if I am wrong but this weapon doesn't come with 30 round mags and these mags are not easily accessible for sale.

Depends on where you are. In some states 30 round magazines are quite easy to come by. A quick internet search will provide many legal retailers.

In California, where this took place, we're allowed to have 30 round magazines for a few more months. Even if he only had 10 round magazines, reloading really doesn't take that long (even with a bullet button)

"Assault Rifle" is a defined term as well which is basically the same as "machine gun". Both require the weapon to be "select fire" which means it can be set to fire more than one round per trigger pull.

An AR-15 is neither an Assault Rifle nor a Machine Gun.

In actuality, an AR-15 is the same as any other semi-automatic rifle in function. It just looks scarier so it's treated different than others. For example, many states list the AR-15 as an "assault weapon" (made up term with no concrete definition) but don't list the Mini-14. They both fire the same round, accept the same magazines, and have the same rate of fire but the Mini-14 typically has a wooden stock which makes it "less scary" to people.

I hate that I have to be a stickler for defined terms, but on the topic of guns there is so much misinformation out there that us gun people try to correct it whenever we can.

> "Assault Rifle" is a defined term as well which is basically the same as "machine gun".

The usual definition is quite distinct from the usual definition of machine gun.

> Both require the weapon to be "select fire" which means it can be set to fire more than one round per trigger pull.

Actually, no; the term is "selective fire", and while that's part of the usual definition of an assault rifle (which typically have semiautomatic, burst, and sometimes full-auto modes), it's not for machine gun, and machine guns are quite often full-auto only. An assault rifle also is a weapons that is deisgned to be fired unsupported (though it may also integrate a bipod) and which has a fixed, folding, or telescoping butt stock. While a machine gun may have none of those things, and may be designed to be fired only mounted.

> In actuality, an AR-15 is the same as any other semi-automatic rifle in function.

AR-15 is problematic to categorize, since the original Armalite AR-15 is a selective-fire traditional assault rifle, and other rifles to which that moniker is applied (which is sometimes used as a catch-all for the whole family of variants of that original design, which the US military adopted as the M16 series, and the M4 series) may either also be selective-fire assault rifles or civilian variants of the same design with variations in a few key components that render them semi-auto only.

At the same time, Colt currently markets a subset of it's line of civilian semi-automatic variations of that design as the AR-15 line (which was done after the Federal Assault Weapons ban specifically to take advantage of the AR-15 moniker's association with assault weapons.)

> For example, many states list the AR-15 as an "assault weapon" (made up term with no concrete definition)

Every state that has an "assault weapons" law also gives it concrete definitions. Typically, that's done by identifying both feature sets and a set of named existing weapons which are included (along with any copies or duplicates) regardless of whether they meet the feature sets.

Agreed on all points. I just tried to keep my response concise for the "non gun people" here.

And for the last point I know states have defined the term individually. However the ATF has never issued a letter defining "assault weapon" like they have for other grey area weapon classifications. So it's just a hodgepodge of messy rules random states have (mostly based on cosmetic features).

I don't know anyone who has ever used a firearm who, outside of the context of political debate on gun control, would describe butt stocks, pistol grips, foregrips, attachment points for accessories, grenade or flare launchers, or detachable box magazines (which are many of the typical features used in determining "assault weapons") as cosmetic features rather than ones with a substantial impact on use and function.

Do you have a reference for knowing the firearm was an AR-15? The original CBS Sacramento article[0] (which the above Ars Technica story references), a neighbor was reported as "firing up to 100 machine gun rounds at a home across the street". From this alone, it's pretty ambiguous as to the firearm involved. Granted, often journalists all-to-often misreport "automatic" vs "semi-automatic" and "machine gun" and "assault rifle", so that may be what happened here as well.

[0]: http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2015/09/11/bystander-with-cel...

I don't have any info to add about this particular case, but in CA the law he was charged with breaking (the articles I've found just say "assault with a machine gun" ) covers actual machine guns, 50bmg rifles, anything that California deems an assault weapon (which more or less means centerfire rifles with adjustable stocks or pistol grips, eg most AR-15s).

>>It's not to excuse the behavior of the police..

Sure reads like an excuse, Justification and Full throated defense of the police actions to me

No. That is not fair at all.

You conveniently left out the part where the "victim" was shooting dozens of rounds at a nearby house (!!!).

You are mistaken: the man shot by police was the neighbor of the person firing the machine gun (who as it happens had already been apprehended).

>Turns out having video evidence is the ONLY way a policeman can be wrong.

Even then, video evidence of police wrongdoing is hardly a guarantee that they'll face any or proportionate consequences. See: the murders of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Oscar Grant, Jamar Clark, and countless others; oh and of course the assault of Rodney King.

Filming police isn't against the law in the US, so that wasn't the charge as the clickbait title states. If the guy wanted to be forthright he could have listed the complaint(s) that are on his summons instead of making up a different scenario. This guy's obviously looking for trouble; filiming police for no good reason; getting himself arrested for no good reason; then going online and being deceptive about it to get support for himself by stirring up more trouble. It's no wonder he's such a frustrated person.

He says pretty early on that what he actually got was a disorderly conduct charge.

Edit: Hey -> He

He did. He says it was disorderly conduct, and that it will likely be changed anyway. The whole point is that the disorderly conduct charge was "trumped up" because he was filming them. I don't really see the title as click bait at all. I'm not saying we're hearing the whole story here, either, but I think it's a little extreme to call this click bait. And if it bothers you so much, why didn't you explain the charges in your comment?

> it's a little extreme to call this click bait

Headline: CEO of ThinkPenguin is arrested for filming police

Reality: CEO of ThinkPenguin is arrested for disorderly conduct

It's like saying Al Capone was arrested for having too much money. I mean, I guess. In a manner of speaking.

Disorderly is code for contempt of cop

He was arrested for disorderly conduct. The only conduct he was conducting according to his account was filming the police, so it seems clear that filming the police was the disorderly conduct for which he was arrested.

Filming the police isn't (or shouldn't be) illegal in the US, but catch-all laws which are enforced at police discretion make it de facto illegal where police decide it is.

I think of you're accusing him of making up a different scenario here, you'd need to have some evidence which wasn't presented.

I think "disorderly conduct" fits some of these videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgnVXppkmzBKfTOwe-KqAJQ/vid...

> filiming police for no good reason

The existence of the state is reason enough - that's the whole point of the first amendment protections for the press.

This sounds very much like one side of the story.

"I was essentially arrested for filming a police checkpoint in Manchester, New Hampshire"

I don't want to defend the police, but that sounds like there is a lot of information missing here. Why was he filming the police? What did other people do at/to/near the checkpoint? Was he alone or part of a group or even a mob?

A commenter in the post suggests the CEO was verbally instigating in one of the linked videos. I didn't watch it so I don't have an opinion.

Yet you'll happily repeat a bit of hearsay that is contradicted by in fact watching the video.

Some New England states do random police checkpoints to try to curb drunk driving. Many people think this is illegal (stopping without cause) and try to fight against it, film their interactions at the checkpoints, etc.

Don't forget US Border Patrol has the authority to setup checkpoints or pull over anyone within 100 miles of the border, without cause. A lot of people might be aware of this with respect to the border with Mexico, but it applies to Canada as well. In the northeast that covers about half of the states of Vermont and New Hampshire, basically all of Maine, and a lot of New York north of the Thruway (Syracuse/Albany).

There should be a police report filed. I'm not sure the date of the incident.

http://www.manchesternh.gov/Departments/Police/Police-Log

> Why was he filming the police?

Why would this be relevant?

> What did other people do at/to/near the checkpoint?

Same as above: Why would this be relevant?

> Was he alone or part of a group or even a mob?

Could be relevant.

> Why would this be relevant?

Read other posts here about this person being a "cop chaser".

His reasons for filming the police are still irrelevant. His methods of doing so are relevant.

I dont understand all the downvotes. Just a few comments up someone talked about a cop firing on someone filming, which sounds awful, but when added with context (there had been 100's of rounds shot from a machine gun earlier), seems understandable. I agree this is only one side of the story, and more info would be great.

Except that was a lie - it was rounds fired from a rifle, not a 'machine gun', and that's STILL a pretty flimsy excuse.

Tell me you've been in a gunfight before and I'll accept you as a subject matter expert in quantifying what is "flimsy" or is not a "flimsy" excuse is when it comes to shooting or not shooting.

Same goes for you I guess! Showing up in milspec combat armor because of someone popping off a .22 or something and then killing a dude with a camera seems pretty unprofessional of a paramilitary org like modern US police. I don't know what actually went down, but there are a lot of ways to respond to that kind of call without killing some random citizen, and that's what makes it flimsy - there was no gunfight. There was a guy with a camera.

When someone includes "essentially" in their statement, it means they're giving you their opinionated distillation of the facts.

Seems incredibly ill-advised to be publicly discussing what is sure to result in legal action. Even as one-sided as this is, the best he can do is incriminate himself. The other side will wait until due process requires them to disclose their case. At best he's trying to rally opinion (why?), at worst he's just seeking attention, and either way he's just making things worse on himself.

As a CEO he just associated his company with poor decision making.

If this guy has a lawyer, he should consider listening to them.

But IANAL, so who knows.

Or maybe he thinks the issue is important and the imperative to discuss it outweighs personal legal risk and association of his company with "poor" decision making. (Given the content at ThinkPenguin's site, I'm not sure that the target market agrees with you about "poor", btw).

I don't know anything about this issue, to be clear. But the fact that you personally don't like to see stories about police misconduct doesn't seem like a very good reason for finger-wagging at those who experience it.

Good point about ThinkPenguin's target demographic. I think you're right—I presumed too much about his business without looking first.

(Sorry I upset you, btw.)

Agreeing with ajross above. Indeed, Chris disclosing his legal strategy may prove unwise to his own case, but his experience is becoming common enough to be relevant to anyone who may observe (what they think to be) police misconduct.

Publicity is probably far more valuable in this case. Even if he loses the suit he will be able to brand himself as someone who stands for common sense rights and get even more publicity eventually.

Interesting how the prevailing mood on HN is very much pro-cop. Kind of surprising for a hacker forum.

You don't really see what a system is made of until you stress it: filming police is one way to stress the LEO system. It's an unfortunate reality that it often does not produce good results.

I think this is generally because of the audience here – I know there's a solid international contingency, but the US one is likely biased by privilege and hasn't experienced police corruption/harassment first hand like lots of less privileged people have, so they assume bad cops are an outlier and not part of an institution which props them up.

I was definitely one of those people until recently, and it unfortunately took an incident I was directly involved in to change my mind, now when I hear someone else's story about police harassment/abuse, I put the burden on the police to explain why it was justified, not on the victim as to why it wasn't. It took a long time for me to have this POV, I expect it will take others who haven't had first-hand experience with bad law enforcement a long time too :/

Have you watched the linked videos?

I have gone on at length about the issues with our militarized police agencies in other threads. We have turned cops into soldiers, and soldiers need an enemy, which fosters an 'us vs them' attitude. It is a major issue (one of several) that certainly needs to be addressed.

These 'CopChaser' folks are only looking to antagonize. Rather than improving the situation, they are feeding in to the "us vs them" mindset (despite that, in most of their interactions, they are the ones who come away looking like jerks (while patting themselves on the back the whole time)).

Yep, I agree, going out of one's way to antagonize the police is not helping with making police more transparent or accountable.

I was really just responding to the parent realizing the generally pro-LE attitude, which I do think extends beyond this thread, for the reasons I stated, in part.

I didn't mean it as a way of excusing the OP of the videos.

At the same time, if the OP didn't do anything illegal, they shouldn't have been arrested, even if it's "annoying." If this kind of thing interferes with the police, there should be some legal precedent set before you get thrown in jail for it (maybe there is, if so, hooray!)

edit: the shade of your text is getting lighter, to be clear – I upvoted your comment, it was completely reasonable.

imo, HN (and programming in general) has shifted from the highly skeptical-of-authority descended-from-hippie culture to one where authority/power is celebrated and lionized. It might be said that the old business programmer culture has eaten up hacker spaces.

I've never had a bad experience with a cop: I'm as almost privileged as it can come demographically. I just know that they are not always acting in your own best interests. History teaches us about power and the abuses thereof: and I read a lot of history.

I'm not sure it's so much pro-cop as it is anti-asshole. The guy in the video was acting like a total turd, and that's not cool.

> I'm not sure it's so much pro-cop as it is anti-asshole. The guy in the video was acting like a total turd, and that's not cool.

Demanding the cops be impartial is in opposition to giving them latitude to be jerks to jerks. We demand our police be impartial. It's part of their training.

The best cop is the one who acts the same to the polite citizen and the jackass citizen: no favoritism. It's a justice system, which is blind.

I wouldn't describe the prevailing mood as pro-cop. That seems reductive.

The guy in question would probably receive more sympathy if he went to one of the places in the US where police corruption and brutality is known to be a real issue.

He's part of "New England Cop Chasers." Their YouTube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgnVXppkmzBKfTOwe-KqAJQ/vid...

Snapshot since site is overloaded: http://archive.is/g0Kes

So has anybody written an app for streaming video directly into cloud storage?

I believe there was an app called Quic that shut down, but I heard that Facebook has some sort of live feature for streaming video.

FB live, Instagram live, YouTube live (though YouTube limit it to only certain users because they've timid). Everyone does this now.

All of those sites are easily bullied with subpoenas, DMCA takedowns, etc.

A gag order preventing the public from seeing your evidence would really hurt your case. :(

If your facebook friends downloaded and reshared the video, it may be the only defense.

The ACLU has some app listings

https://www.aclu.org/feature/aclu-apps-record-police-conduct

The ACLU maintains a list of such applications:

https://www.aclu.org/feature/aclu-apps-record-police-conduct

I have my state's version of the "Mobile Justice" app, but I worry that it doesn't really stream into the cloud in real time, so a badged thug could erase the evidence by destroying the phone before it got a chance to upload after the recording was complete. We'll need a true streaming upload app once the pigs figure this out.

Nagging question - why would this need to be state-specific?

The ACLU has apps that will send video to their servers/cloud. It doesn't appear that the video is streamed or uploaded until the users stops recording. https://www.aclu.org/feature/aclu-apps-record-police-conduct

There are tons of such apps [1] for a phone (which I assume you are asking about, not much use streaming from a laptop). However, the part I'm not having success with is finding an app that hooks into the voice recognition, and starts within a second of getting the command to launch, because both Android and iOS currently do not provide a way to certify and enable apps that can be launched from the lock screen without first unlocking.

The phone OS would provide specific services to keep such an app ready to launch at any moment, so it doesn't even need to be loaded from flash storage, and give it the ability to let the user set overrides on normal preferences like WiFi/cell signal to enable location services as soon as it starts, etc.

Elsewhere on the technology fronts, we need lower energy consumption for selectable lower-quality video and audio, to enable constant audio recording, and video when the phone detects the camera is out of a pocket/purse. Then the "...but you don't know what happened in the seconds leading up to the start of the video..." defense falls apart as non-HD-but-acceptable-quality-for-admissible-evidence becomes a matter of course. Some automatic rotation to save space, hook up to social media like Twitter to detect geographical hotspots of controversy to, or other measures to try to stymie gaming the rotation.

In the US specifically, but also elsewhere where it applies, we also need legislative overrides on two-party consent recording rules: any official, in any capacity, unless explicitly named in a national security letter or similar, receiving or benefiting from any public funding, is subject to one-party consent recording rules.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=live+stream+video+to+cloud&i...

Youtube?

I've seen this stuff before. Police doing their job on the street trying to keep order in potentially volatile situations and some fool with a camera insinuating himself into the mess who wants to start an ad-hoc high-school forensics debate about police power. Bad idea.

If the "fool" is obviously in the wrong, it's in the officers' best interests not to escalate the situation, or let their egos get involved, and subsequently shoot themselves in the foot.

Much better to deal with it as calmly and professionally as possible. The worst thing you can do around a heckler is react. ;)

Go watch the first couple videos in the YouTube playlist in this blog post.

The cop is calm and professional, despite the antagonizing behavior of the "CopChasers".

You can almost tell by the attempt to write "legalese" that this guy was looking for trouble. Every other sentence is "clearly this", "clearly that"... no, it's really not so clear.

> I was essentially arrested for filming a police checkpoint ... (my video was seized, but experienced correspondents bring back up, as I did, we had several people apart from the nearly 20 activists protesting the checkpoint with video cameras)

Emphasis mine. What happened exactly? There's more context gone unmentioned and he knows it. All one-sided stories sound open-and-shut.

> You can legally get as close as a foot to an officer provided there is no interference. So for instance one can get a few feet from a scene as a member of the press where an officer is ticketing somebody for an offence.

Does the person being ticketed have no rights in this situation? I think I'd be pretty upset at the reporter if they got all up in my business like this.

In a public space, no. You have no right to restrict others from observing or recording.

It is not "your" business, according to the law. It's an event occurring in public and is everybody's business.

I guess it begs the question, is this a decent thing to do to someone?

I don't think so. Let people sort their business out themselves.

Whether or not it's decent isn't at issue. The issue is the arrest.

There's quite a bit of indecent, perfectly legal activity which will often result in illegal abuse of authority. For example: Standing on a street corner yelling "cops are pigs, fuck the police" is both somewhat indecent and entirely legal and well protected by the first amendment.

Engage in such behavior and there are good odds you will become the subject of an illegal abuse of power.

Does the person being ticketed have no rights in this situation? I think I'd be pretty upset at the reporter if they got all up in my business like this.

Reporting on people being charged with a crime is not just legal, it is extremely common. Also, I'm pretty sure you don't have any right to privacy when you're out in public.

Ah, the old "contempt of cop" charge. If taxpayers knew or cared how much money is wasted by police acting macho and lording it over citizens even to the extent of violating the law to do so, there might be some actual change in this area.

No they wouldn't. They see headlines occasionally about the cost overruns of the military (F35!) contracts and they don't do anything.

There are very few details in this forum post, just some nonspecific mentions of an individual recording a police checkpoint of some kind. What type of checkpoint? Why did this person feel it necessary to record the police? Why did a confrontation start? What were the circumstances of the escalation?

In general, if you interfere with the police (even if you disagree with whatever it is they're doing) you can expect some trouble. I will be the first to acknowledge that sometimes the police (especially small town cops) can get a little too full of their own authority and take it too far.

On the other hand, their job is to keep the community safe, and save for the very worst cops (which are in the minority), they take the job seriously. There is (and should be) a pretty high bar to harassing or interfering with the police.

Increasingly, if you're a police officer who interferes with a citizen who understands their Constitutionally-protected rights to film you (even if you disagree with those rights), you can expect some trouble.

Video recording of encounters with authority is the single-best hope we have to resolve the political turmoil caused by the perception (not necessarily the reality) of widespread abuse. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said: "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants".[1]

[1] http://3197d6d14b5f19f2f440-5e13d29c4c016cf96cbbfd197c579b45...

It's interesting that you say that "filming the police" is either harassment or interfering with them.

The post gives very little information about what actually happened, so I'm interested in why you made that leap.

> On the other hand, their job is to keep the community safe, and save for the very worst cops (which are in the minority), they take the job seriously. There is (and should be) a pretty high bar to harassing or interfering with the police.

US police shoot and kill very many more citizens that other police forces. Why is that?

It's not just because citizens are armed: unarmed US citizens are also far more likely to be killed than EU citizens.

> save for the very worst cops (which are in the minority)

This is debatable at best.

Try talking to some. You'll be surprised that most are actually pretty good people trying to make a difference in a very difficult job. They see nothing but the worst of humanity day in and day out.

I did. I definitely wouldn't use the word "good". More like improperly trained, unprofessional, aggressive, ignorant and trigger happy.

There are no good people, only good systems. The German people didn't turn into monsters in 1938 and become decent people at the end of 1945, they were just participants in a broken system. The Rwandans didn't suddenly become the worst people in the world for a few months in 1994. Perfectly decent people are capable of utterly abhorrent things if their environment is sufficiently toxic.

US police officers aren't bad people, they're just poorly trained and held to very low standards of accountability. They do bad things because they're operating in a system that incentivises them to do bad things.

> "There are no good people, only good systems."

Nice quote. Can you recommend some reading on this topic?

The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo is a satisfactory primer.

https://www.amazon.com/Lucifer-Effect-Understanding-Good-Peo...

One bad apple (spoils the bunch). It is amazing how often the first part, but not the last, is applied to police officers.

Indeed. Good cops who protect bad cops are not good cops, and bad cops are generally well protected.

Criminals and accessories.

I just bought a wireless card from ThinkPenguin a couple weeks ago. Very pleased with the transaction.

There are innocent people losing their lives in confrontations with cops (including the good cops who get killed just doing their job) and this guy is creating drama and looking for more attention from it. Just look at how long his posts are and at how he is begging for attention from everyone (the media, the tech community, etc). His altercation with the law (a misdemeanor at the most) doesn't warrant all of this extra drama he's creating. And what the hell does he want strangers to do about it (stop their busy lives, filled with real problems, to fight his battles and stroke his balls so he can feel validated about this self-inflicted wound?). The term "get a life" was creates specifically for these moments and types of people.

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