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New Jersey prosecutors drop charges over tweeting a cop's photo [Updated]:
Update (~4pm ET): Mid-afternoon on Friday, August 7, the Essex County Prosecutor's Office dropped its cyber harassment charges against all five defendants, the Asbury Park Press reports. These charges stemmed from an incident involving a Tweet attempting to identify a New Jersey police officer. Our original story on the situation appears unchanged below.
A New Jersey man is facing felony charges for a tweet seeking to identify a police officer. Four others are facing felony charges for retweeting the tweet, the Washington Post reports.
[...] The complaint against Sziszak claims that the tweet caused the officer to "fear that harm will come to himself, family, and property."
"As a 20 year old that simply retweeted a tweet to help my friend, I am now at risk of giving up my career, serving time, and having a record," Sziszak wrote.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @02:52PM (32 children)
Then maybe they shouldn't be hiring fearful little cunts as police officers?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Sunday August 09 2020, @02:58PM (15 children)
What non-psychopath wants to be a cop?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @03:08PM (1 child)
some of us get warm fuzzy feelings from rescuing kittens in trees and shit
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Sunday August 09 2020, @03:12PM
That's a thing firefighters do. Cops show up to "prevent a suicide" then shoot your dog then shoot each other. [thefreethoughtproject.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @03:32PM (12 children)
What non-sociopath wants to be a criminal?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @06:44PM (3 children)
As if laws align with morality or The Constitution (or whatever higher law and rights enumeration your country has). Cops are mercenaries for an extortion racket. Cops who enforce drug laws and other unconstitutional bs commit sedition every day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @02:00PM (2 children)
Right up until your ass is being pounded into the ground. Or you get into a traffic accident and the other guy jumps out and starts pounding on your car. Or you get into a high speed collision. Or.....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @06:48PM (1 child)
what are you talking about, slave? i can defend myself and my family. i don't need some constumed thief to do it for me. you can shove that thin blue line shit up your ass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @08:01PM
Lol. Nice troll attempt. OK... be my guest and move to someplace that doesn't have police. I hear there are rural areas in Somalia that might be to your taste. Some favelas in Rio might also work for you.
Black lives certainly matter. But no, I don't really care if you can defend yourself. I can defend myself... but I'm also smart enough to accept the help when needed. Unlike you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @11:59PM
Someone who is poor and desperate.
A homeless kid escaping abuse who is too young to work legally.
Stupid kids who have not matured enough (science says not until 25 years old) to properly weigh the consequences of their actions.
etc.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday August 10 2020, @02:17AM (4 children)
Usually people who are particularly desperate. Drug addiction, less often those who have a sense of being trapped in poverty and crime being an (imagined) escape.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @02:13PM (3 children)
Less often? Many people commit crimes for drugs/drug money, but I think you'll find poverty a far greater motivator than you think. When your choices are working for minimum wage in a factory with horrible conditions, working for less than minimum wage + tips, or selling drugs, selling drugs isn't that bad a choice. If you happen to get a criminal record, it's often the only choice, as nobody hires felons in areas with high unemployment.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday August 10 2020, @02:35PM (2 children)
I get it.
But in general, though, people really don't want to be criminals and it requires a greater level of desperation than you think. Highly addictive drugs make reaching that point of desperation easier. And, as the GGP implied, a good solid third of convicted criminals are sociopaths with poor impulse control. Sociopaths with impulse control become like... investment bankers.
While I'm being totally honest, I think it's probably only about 40-50% of cops who are power hungry sociopaths who see a career that lets them be a bully. Less than that even if you count people who get into policing and don't stay.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @06:52PM (1 child)
selling drugs is not "being a criminal". it's none of the government's business unless there's fraud or force involved. Also, it's not just the $x% who are power mad sociopaths that are the problem. it's the overwhelming % who are just lazy minded idiots who enforce whatever unconstitutional shit the legislature passes because they don't know their duty or the higher law. Many are callous mercenaries who don't really give a shit either way.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday August 10 2020, @07:27PM
I agree with everything you've just said and don't quite grasp why it's posted in tone as if I contradicted any of it.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday August 10 2020, @06:52AM
Of course nobody wants to be a criminal. If you offered the Mafia to legalize their actions, I strongly doubt they would disagree (although they might ask for having a legally enforced monopoly on those practices).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 10 2020, @05:48PM
Odds are approximately 100% that you're a criminal, albeit one who has either paid your debts to society or wasn't caught or wasn't punished to the full extent of the law. I mean, have you ever:
- Parked in a metered spot without feeding the meter? Or parked in a spot that said "2 hour parking" for more than 2 hours?
- Driven faster than the speed limit?
- Crossed a street anywhere other than the corner?
- Had a drink before you turned 21 years old?
- Been around someone who was smoking pot, or smoked it yourself?
- Been a bit behind on paying your taxes?
- As a kid, swiped some candy from a store?
- Gotten into a computer system you weren't supposed to have access to?
- Gotten into a building or room you weren't supposed to have access to?
- Worked for a business that (possibly unbeknownst to you) had connections to organized crime?
- Brought back a souvenir from a foreign country without checking all the import restrictions and duties and such?
I can keep going. The point is, there's almost definitely a law that could bust you, and if you're thinking "Well, these are just petty offenses, they aren't the sort of thing anyone would get killed over", then you need to remember that Sandra Bland was arrested and probably killed for failing to use her turn signal properly, and Michael Brown was killed over what would have amounted to a jaywalking charge.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Steve_Baker on Sunday August 09 2020, @02:59PM (3 children)
Said the anonymous coward.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @03:31PM (2 children)
While true, you don't pay me for my comments, my testimony, or for shooting dogs, children, kittens, and pregnant women.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @03:35PM (1 child)
What are your fees for these services?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @03:42PM
I can do pan-sized pets and children for free, larger creatures will cost dearly.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Opportunist on Sunday August 09 2020, @05:22PM (11 children)
Or maybe stop putting up a cover for the bad apples?
You know, in my jurisdiction it's illegal to aid a criminal. If the criminal wears a badge, it actually makes it worse, not better.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by number11 on Sunday August 09 2020, @05:38PM (10 children)
And as we know, the expression is "one bad apple spoils the barrel."
Most of the places that have any "bad apples", they're all bad, it's just that some haven't gotten caught yet. True, some are badder than others. The one who shoots people is badder than the one who just doesn't turn him in. But that's a difference in degree, not in kind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @06:52PM (4 children)
and i don't think all of this discussion about race or mistreatment of any suspects or any other micromanagement bs is anything, but a clever diversion and way to manipulate people. What we need to be talking about is that these cops don't uphold their oath to protect and defend the BOR and The Constitution and the laws the legislatures pass are unconstitutional. If cops were out respecting the rights of the people these interactions would never happen in the first place, the people would support the cops overwhelmingly, instead of just old financially insulated people, (because they'd only ever be going after actual criminals. crimes are when someone else's rights have been violated. everything else is crime by the state), and the cops would have high morale b/c they'd actually be helping people like many of them joined up wanting to do. The People need to think bigger and do their goddamn duty.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday August 10 2020, @06:20PM (3 children)
It's not really a diversion to talk about racism in policing when one of the ongoing problems in policing for decades has been avowed white supremacists joining the police force and/or recruiting police to join them, and those avowed white supremacists using their authority as police to beat, kill, and rape black people. That's not me saying this: The FBI has specifically warned about this [pbs.org]. Or, if you don't trust them, just know that one of my personal friends was a cop for a while, and talked about how there were certain departments that every cop knew were the ones to join if the reason you became a cop was to beat up black people for fun.
The odds of cops upholding the Bill of Rights go up dramatically when the citizen they're talking to is white. As in, right now, you're less likely to be killed by cops if you're a white person who just shot and killed a bunch of people than if you're a black person carrying a legally owned firearm and doing nothing illegal.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @07:32PM (2 children)
My point is that you're never going to solve the problem trying to give cops sensitivity training or by creating politically protected identities. The problem, under the current reality, is that they are given the power to violate anyone's rights. Take that shit away and it gets fairer for everyone and you can start weeding out the totally bad cops a lot easier. Not that i think there's much chance this country can be saved as it is currently formulated.
That last stat you quoted is fucking retarded.
I think trying to fix the USA is probably a lost cause. Whites gave that country away already through ignorance and greed. All of the race related stuff will never be solved until we have ethnostates. Nature split the races/breeds for a reason. Probably to create specialization and at some point the groups didn't get along anymore. Here we are thousands of years later trying to cram them back together again at the behest of supranational financial elite hell bent on destroying what's left of once budding free societies: White societies.
Look at the demographics, and get real, people!
The White Nationalist Manifesto: https://thepiratebay.org/description.php?id=31425122 [thepiratebay.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @08:05PM
Unless you subscribe to the view that the whites never had legal claim to the land in the first place? Just sayin'.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:12PM
Ah yes! Nothing screams "utopia" like kicking out all the black and brown people no matter how brilliant or productive, while making plenty of room for every white thief, rapist, drug dealer, and murderer.
And I like how your solution to racist behavior by cops is to say "Well, let's just give them everything they want, and racism will be over, yay!" After all, that plan worked out so well for Neville Chamberlain, right?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday August 10 2020, @12:08AM (3 children)
Not really true, sorry. I'm in a profession where bad apples exist, too. IT-Security. The difference is that we ostracise them. We hang them out to dry in the desert sun and ensure that they don't work in that field anymore.
And lo and behold, in general we have a pretty decent reputation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @01:28AM (2 children)
And the reason that you run them out like the vermin they are is because they will utterly ruin you if you allow the least degree of tolerance. Because even one bad apple will spoil the bunch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @02:49AM
Which is also why we lock up criminals... or used to.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday August 10 2020, @11:25AM
Bingo. Security is a matter of trust. You have to trust me with pretty high security clearance in your system for me to do my job. Anyone betraying this trust makes my job harder.
There is a reason why having a police record is certainly not a letter of recommendation as some think it is. It's more a reason why you won't work anymore. Not in this town, not in this country, not on this planet.
(Score: 2) by Aegis on Monday August 10 2020, @02:28PM
ESPECIALLY when you aren't allowed to remove any of them.