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Who would have felt comfortable in these circumstances?
A Massachusetts man was driving in the town of Medford last Saturday night. He admits he took a wrong turn and ended up going the wrong way down a traffic circle. The angry man steps out of a truck and approaches him. Michael, seemingly -- and perhaps understandably -- frightened, reverses. The angry man follows him and Michael stops.
The angry man appears to show his badge and identifies himself as a police officer. Some, though, might be troubled by the officer's greeting: "I'll put a hole in your head." Michael is apologetic and explains to the officer -- now identified as Det. Stephen LeBert -- that he is being recorded. LeBert suggests that he will seize the camera.
"I'm a f***ing Medford detective and you went through that f***ing rotary," says LeBert. As Michael insists he didn't see a sign, LeBert demands his license. "You're lucky I'm a cop, otherwise I'd be beating the f***ing piss out of you right now," LeBert adds, shortly after calling the driver an a**hole. LeBert ultimately calls for on-duty cops who at least do a little to calm the situation. However, the fact that Michael posted his video to YouTube has led to an investigation.
Medford Police Chief Leo Sacco told MyFoxBoston: "It's not the proper behavior, but we only know about it when people tell us. And unfortunately, we had to get up this morning and see it on a YouTube video."
In the days before cameras proliferated, you had to rely on witnesses and hearsay. The police were more likely to be believed by those in authority. Cameras have begun to change that -- on both sides.
Sacco told the Medford Transcript: "The video is troubling enough, and it requires investigation just based on what we see here. The driver does not have to file his own complaint. He may, but he does not have to."
[...] Sacco told the Medford Transcript that LeBert was a good policeman. He added, perhaps unfortunately: "If you work hard you do step on people's toes, which generates complaints."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 01 2015, @05:45PM
I didn't submit this article, but I've been trying to keep the queue as full as I can since this spring when LaminatorX (I think it was LamX) sent up the cry for help with editing. Enough new editors were certified before I had finished the training, so I opted to help with submissions.
I do employ the copy & paste method for two reasons, though. First, I'm not an expert on everything and I don't want to mis-summarize an article or put words in the mouth of the article. Second, I don't have time to spend 30 minutes on a single submission; I scan a dozen sources I like, pick out the ones I think would be interesting or educational or fodder for a good discussion for the Soylent community, and throw it into the hopper.
In an ideal world we'd have an expert on gene therapy submitting an article on a new DNA manipulation technique and putting it into layman's terms for all of us non-geneticists, a rocket scientist submitting something about a new drive technology, etc. But we don't yet. I'd say about half of what you're seeing in the submission queue have been submitted by the editors, not by submitters, so they're actually doing double duty.
There have been a couple other prolific submitters who are not editors like HughPickens and gewg, but there have been so many slamming them for what & how they've submitted that their output has fallen off significantly. I too have been drawing a lot of flak recently from a couple of users for what & how I submit, too. Alas for them I have 25 years of grassroots activism under my belt and am long since inured to mewling, haha.
The absolute best way for submissions on SN to get "better" (for some value of "better") is for those who want things to be better to step up and make it so. It's a community site. If the community doesn't build it, then it will be built by a handful and the rest will have to content themselves with the maxim taught to my children in preschool: "You get what you get, and you don't get upset."
That sounds a bit vituperative, and it is. But for me it's more a plea and collegial invitation to pitch in and help make it better. I know what I read and where I get articles from, but I hunger to learn about more and see things in a way I haven't done before. That only happens when the rest of SN digs in.
Washington DC delenda est.