SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 JoeMerchant on Sunday August 09 2020, @07:12PM (1 child)
So much depends on context, and on the internet there is no context, so you can pretty much assume the worst. Combine with current events and it's reasonable for the cop to be afraid that the post represents a potential threat to his personal, and family, safety.
That's what's wrong with the current state of affairs: cops have reasonable basis for fear for their safety.
How did we get here? Mostly by cops standing behind the thin blue line and defending their colleagues who act as judge jury and executioner, killing innocent people with no cause, and all the millions of other little daily transgressions that we all know are overstepping their official authority, but we also know that they're gonna get away with it because that's how things are.
How can we get to somewhere better? Well, it would be really cool if cops would stop the brutality immediately, but I think a more realistic first step is radical transparency, uniforms that include badge numbers writ large across the front and back. If you wanna be a cop, you should also want to be personally accountable for your actions (and also not accidentally mistaken for a power tripping neanderthal wearing the same uniform...)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @07:46PM
In this case the context seems pretty straightforward. A member of a group known to have little to no regard for the lives of the general public, and in particular people with skin that's not lily-white, was seen strutting about with a mask that clearly proclaimed that the lives of his clique matter more than those his clique is known to kill unjustly under color of authority. Someone spotted him proclaiming his superiority and asked if anyone recognized him.
It wouldn't be any different from posting a picture of an authority figure in Klan gear or strutting around with a swastika arm band and asking if someone recognized him.