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...
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.
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.
The problem here is lack of reason on either side. People being unreasonable just escalates the unreasonableness on both sides of the equation.
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.
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).
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.
... "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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Harassment is a crime, at least in the US.
This applies to everyone, regardless of their employer.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Civil-Disobedience-Essays-Thrift-Edit...
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Or in other words not be harassed. This is also pretty well covered by the fourth amendment.
[1] https://www.injurytriallawyer.com/blog/washington-state-dui-...