Texas traffic stop reveals pitfalls of police surveillance Intel
houstonchronicle.com
houstonchronicle.com
It can't be easy sitting alongside a highway for hours on end, waiting for someone to do something that requires your intervention.
Police engage in shared fantasies. Which can lead them to hallucinate. They often end up wanting a crime to be committed just so they can intervene and exercise and validate their skill set.
Civilian behaviors will be observed, recorded, and matched: against a theory of a crime which may or may not have been committed. Depending how bored and unfulfilled the coordinated LEOs are, a dark fantasy of ongoing crime can be enabled, and confirmation bias follows immediately, with every civilian action (or inaction) being re-interpreted through the lens of an understandable rampant LEO desire -- They want so much to catch the bad guys that they will actually manufacture probable cause from stretched whole cloth, so they can believe a crime is in their purview and they're righteously on the case.
Otherwise it can become a really boring gig.
Advances in surveillance technologies and predeterminations of crime probabilities via automated software will only serve to add fuel to the fire of the aggregate LEO imagination.
What we witness here in Texas is the result of a shared fantasy. Remember that shared fantasies become more real the longer they are shared and sustained... even the "trace" amounts of imaginary drugs on which Max the dog alerted become a part of the now-permanent interdiction team's backstory.
This kind of thing is happening all over America, all the time. We face a crisis of fantasy addiction. So many are unhappy with reality that they are constantly fantasizing something better for themselves.
Not to pick on the LEOs, but they are supposed to be the best of us, holding the line, and not compromising their integrity for the transient satisfaction of an imagined felony stop.
I mean for the most part this has never been the case. Cops themselves have not been very far about the criminals they are supposed to stop historically. Almost all improvements in policing have been forced upon LEO from outside organizations.
>is the result of a shared fantasy
One hundred percent. When I was younger I was around LEO quite often and they'd sit around and pass stories back and forth on how bad everyone else is, and how everyone was out to get them. Now they have the internet to sit around and feed each other bullshit, and worse, be propagandized to.
I do not blame LEOs for the growing encrouchments on my (our) personal liberties. I view them as bona fide public servants, motivated mostly by genuine generosity of spirit, wanting to help people.
But police culture is another matter, and it is the culture than corrupts. Because it is such a boring job (for the most part), management is always seeking new ways to keep their officers engaged, enthused, gratified.
That job, sitting alongside the highway, is less boring if there's an ongoing story that you're part of, a team that you serve, that's counting on you. So you're going to do your part, hold up your end, carry your weight, even if that means you need to do something that makes your conscience go squiggly, it's okay, it's just the compromise expected of a player, taking a little one for the team. That corruption is something that management enables, and wink nod encourages. And management does it, and gets away with continuing to do it, because a large portion of the public are okay with it too.
What are the chances that the next mistaken AI-assisted surveillance conclusion is going to capture you in its crosshairs? It's a small probabilty, right? Just don't drive near the border, don't drop any women off at motels, don't drive I35 in Texas: you'll be okay.
Was that pre war on drugs or just pre 9/11? Either way that world doesn't exist now.
Yeah, there's workplace dynamics to it and the individuals my not necessarily be bad but but the whole institution is rotten, mostly a reflection of the governments that they serve IMO.
To the average person interaction with the cops represents nothing positive.
IDK why it'd be any surprise when they start acting all capricious like municipal clerks dealing in BS paper pushing issues of no real consequence. "This guy looks sketch, no permit for him."
A big part of the problem here is that they're tasked with enforcing a bunch of what amounts to petty bullshit that only exists to legitimize the state in the eyes of the people who want to see petty enforcement (taillight out, are you f-ing kidding me? A $100k/yr employee doing taillight out stops?).
Like for all their ills you don't hear about "serious police" like swat teams and the like behaving quite so badly so regularly (not that they don't do plenty of bad stuff).
The old saying still stands: "Idle hands are the devil's playthings"
Do they?
Sadly true.
> would have very little impact
In my daydream, elected Sheriffs don't want to be dumped out of office - so they ignore crap-quality Intel, don't hire deputies based on phrenology, double-check the paperwork before releasing prisoners, ...
And in the wake of BLM, when Mayors and PD Chiefs were actually doing a fairly good job of trying to community build and form relationships, got on his bullhorn at protests and said that any Sheriff's Deputy who attempted to do so would be subject to disciplinary action and that he was going to be enforcing "zero tolerance" for any protest.
Summary:
1. WhatsApp chat group alerts sheriff's deputies in Texas (known as the interdiction group) as to 'target' vehicles based on their travel history as collected by traffic camera/license plate readers (LPRs).
2. Stops from the 'interdiction group' have gone up over two years w/suspicious reasoning for stops, based largely on the myriad of reasons Texas law enforcement officers (LEOs) are free to stop vehicles. The results of these increased N in searches have resulted in fewer (percentage) of findings of wrong-doing.
3. Dashcam footage from the citizen stopped counters the LEO's claims that he went over the fogline several times. Bodycam footage of the later search show no evidence to support drugs that were supposedly indicated on by the K9 unit dispatched. Said K9's reward system has allegedly been altered by its handler to alert for reward, not for the presence of drugs.
4. Fictitious reasoning for stops are glossed over with a 'warning' or no-action which appeases most. This particular person sued, even though they were free to go, and it started a chain of events which uncovered the wrong-doing by LEOs.
5. This is all security theatre, at the expense of the citizenry.
Additional fun fact - a huge swathe of Police Union Collective Bargaining Agreements forbid the use of this register in hiring decisions...
No crime was committed The pretext of the stop was a lie The drug dog falsely alerted probably due to manipulation of his training The officer repeatedly lied under oath
It looks like the entire interdiction operation requires that the officer lies at three distinct phases. (The pretext stop, the search, and in court)
Do we want our officers to lie under oath? Providing false testimony to the courts? Falsely accusing innocent people?
Pretty sure the answer is no. Pretty sure the bible has some things to say about Bering false witness or some such.
s/Bering/bearing/
Jesus H. N. Christ, people