He could've closed the door in their faces and there would be nothing they could do about it. The company relied on theatrics and false threats to get back a legitimately purchased product.
In the US, that would be an exceedingly bad idea on the part of the Pinkertons. They don't have the same protections law enforcement has: they are treated legally the same as anybody else, which means that in 38 US states they'd be justifying the homeowners use of deadly force.
That may be starting to change, though.
Had he escalated and then drawn a weapon, odds are they would have shot him and may well have gotten away with it, claiming they were just asking questions and he immediately drew a weapon and tried to shoot them.
Remember that when some rednecks hunted down and killed a kid a while back for running while black(Ahmaud Arbery) the police initially wanted to drop the prosecution, and its quite possible that without the national attention of the Floyed case, and the murderers being dumb enough videotape themseles, they may well have gotten away with it. The simple fact that it was a discussion of if they would get convicted at all is just as telling. And police will generally back security companies more than rednecks in court.
That's a big claim, can you cite an example or two of Pinkerton kicking down doors an assaulting the residents?
I do not. I would like an example from within the last, say, 75 years. Regardless, you didn't even cite an example.
You’re trying to make an extraordinary claims play to deflect this part of the conversation and I’m not biting. If you don’t know the sordid history of private armies go do your own research. Don’t imply other people are wrong because they aren’t spoon feeding you facts that people who employ tactics like you won’t hear even if offered in earnest. As many people I’m the civil rights and LGBT community are now saying, it’s not my job to educate you for free.
Then you probably should not have responded to a question specifically asking for an example of Pinkerton kicking down doors. As you've clearly stated that you can't answer the question, but rather prefer to go off on some vaguely related tangent, then I will go on about my day.
I only knew the Pinkertons still existed reading about problems in the second gulf war, in which they were listed amongst the problem children. I thought that name was retired a century ago, turns out not. What I don’t know is any role they played in Afghanistan. Bracketing your base of knowledge is not weakness, it’s disclosure.
Also they all hire the same kind of people. Just because BP had the Deep Water fiasco doesn’t mean we forget about Exxon Valdez. There are no “good ones” just short memories and willful lack of imagination.
This is not high school debate class. Act like a grownup.
Dude... :(
From Wikipedia[0]:
"In 2020, Matthew Dolloff, an unlicensed security guard contracted through Pinkerton, shot and killed Lee Keltner, a conservative protestor in Denver, Colorado."
Not exactly kicking down doors and assaulting the residents, I know, but hopefully we can agree that its adjacent.
Of course the premise is that "they get away with it all of the time." If such examples existed, citing them would be contrary to the act of getting away with it. I'm not saying that I know for a fact that the Pinkertons or other such similar organizations "get away with it." But I know the United States has produced numerous examples of police officers getting away with it, and in my mind it's very possible that detective agencies do all manner of reprehensible things, especially to people in poverty, and get away with it.
We're hearing about it in the case of a YouTuber because they have a platform.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)
And that's an awfully long paragraph when "no" would have sufficed just fine.
Do you not see how completely fucked up that is?
We don’t talk to each other this way here. We shouldn’t talk to each other this way at all. The “gotcha” structure of debate will be the death of public discourse and with it, democracy, and with that the rule of law. When we live in Idiocracy it will substantially be because of people trolling “prove it” because it gets them out of thinking about uncomfortable things.
But this response isn’t about you. Not even a little. It’s for the other people reading this tree of replies, for the next time someone is trying to shut down conversation.
If you're assaulted at somebody's house but you overpower them, you don't get to loot them. This isn't D&D.
No one in their sane mind think the law is intended to allow the threats they made etc, or that they had the rights to do what they did, but they did it anyways, and as the story shows, they got away with it. Think about that again, they did this to some rich white geek with a platform and they got away with it. What do you think they would get away with against a known criminal...
Fait accompli is not a legal defence, it's a description of something that is now irreversible. And taking things entirely reversible.
This is not the same as taking back stolen property from a thief. If you want to stretch analogies, it's like beating up the kid that bought your stolen [still disputed] bike from a bike shop. The kid here didn't do anything wrong. If the goods were stolen, there might be an argument for a civil process to get them back to their owner, but if you commit a crime in the act of repatriating stolen goods, you could lose you right to them.
In this case they "got away with it" because this kid didn't know his rights, fell for the threats and let them taken the goods. It's nasty but a hundred million miles away from the felony B&E, assault and theft being described as acceptable a few posts up.
I thought it was already, but here we are.
These types flash a badge, mumble the words "detective" and "agency" in the same sentence, then immediately pivot to babbling about fines and jailtime before you have a chance to question their authority. It's a high-pressure sales tactic masquerading as law enforcement, without crossing the line of impersonation.
To those ends, they back down quickly when you poke back with childish questions like "wait, so you're not the police?" (If they say yes, they're in trouble.)
Society has an interest in ensuring that goons can't bluff their way into LEO privileges, so if that's what they did, we have a problem.
I haven't played MtG since the 90s, so I'm maybe not clued in on what a "typical magic player" is, but I would expect them to be pretty rules-lawyer-y (both on and off the table) and would stand their ground on principle.
If real law enforcement (or Pinkertons) showed any sense of legitimacy, the typical MtG player would bow to the authority. Whether it’s in the rule book or “unspoken rules by the venue”.
edit this occurred to my daughter in 2012 at FNM.