Police can get your data – even if you aren’t suspected of a crime

(1) It offers a check on legislative and judicial power. Consider ~2005-2018 where some states had legalized marijuana but the federal government explicitly had the power to enforce marijuana laws. Selective enforcement allows those agencies to decide to uphold states' choices.

(2) To the extent that human cognition is a necessary component of the legal system, it's cheaper and easier for everyone involved to shift some of those decisions earlier in the process, much like shifting software bugs earlier in the development process. E.g., there was a period of time midway through the 2020 lockdowns in CA where the DMV might have been trying to process your new tags for half a year, where you might have paid for those tags long before they expired, and where you were technically breaking a law by not having new tags available to display on your car just after the extended governor's order halting enforcement expired. You'll get off scot-free if you take that in front of a judge, but it's cheaper for everyone involved for the police to just not write a stupid ticket in the first place.

(3) As a practical matter, not all laws can be enforced, so some level of discretion is necessary. If every CA police officer were working 24/7 then every hour of every day they'd on average have to police 320 car-miles driven on CA roads. Moreover, every ticket they write is a similar burden inflicted on the rest of the system.

So what happened in the example traffic stop? It could be a lot of things, but some combination of (1) and (3) seems likely. The officer might have (1) determined that the >=80mph punishment in that state was excessive given the circumstances and limited the legislature's ability to use that power here and (3) decided that if the speed were slightly dropped there would be a lot less incentive to fight the ticket and use up other government resources.

It's probably also worth noting that having a person on radar still doesn't necessarily suffice. In many states a +/-5mph tolerance is allowed in a speedometer, but speeding is still illegal. I'm not sure if the intersection of those two concepts is well tested in court (e.g., does intent matter in this case?), but in practice many cops, prosecutors, and judges are more than willing to drop 5-10mph off a ticket to accommodate such things.

Then there's the fact that some people fear repercussions for not donating. How did they get that impression? An honest misunderstanding, no doubt...

Then there's the repeated robocalling. That would certainly harass me.

This is harassment and intimidation.

Yes, I addressed that with my investigations link. Investigatory data, problematic or no, does not appear in cop car computers.

In which case the dispatcher should be charged with murder too, just like the officer has been.

http://www.stanislaus-da.org/pdf/news/2021/press-release-202...

The "warning" was based on an "officer safety bulletin" that was issued in response to Instagram posts, which I'm willing to accept was the result of a complaint (possibly someone namesearching for "MPD," we don't know). The police actually visited and interviewed him before determining that there was no threat. The original notice was rescinded and reissued saying he wasn't a threat. I haven't been able to find more detail, but it would seem the dispatcher took it upon themselves to relay the original bulletin. :shrug: It'll come out in the transcripts.

It seems to me that--unless you have other info--the police weren't tracking people so much as acting on complaints. I think we can conclude this was not information that appeared as part of the car computer, since the dispatcher thought it necessary to add to it.

I have issues with the idea of "officer safety bulletins" based on Constitutionally-protected activities, but that's a different story.