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posted by janrinok on Sunday August 09 2015, @03:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the sauce-for-the-goose dept.

Police who raided a marijuana store, destroying security cameras and the DVR, harassing the store's customers, consuming edible marijuana products, and playing darts, were caught on camera. The cops claim that said recording is illegal because the cops had an expectation of privacy after destroying all of the security cameras.

I wish I could make up this stuff.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2015, @08:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2015, @08:40PM (#220383)

    The 'good' thugs still enforce unconstitutional and unjust laws. The 'good' thugs defend the thugs who violate people's constitutional rights and abuse their powers left and right. There are a significant amount of thugs, and not enough actual police officers.

    Police are not lawmakers nor judges. Their job is to enforce the laws, not write them or repeal them, not pick and choose which ones they think should be enforced at any given moment. If there are unconstitutional and unjust laws on the books, that's your fault, as all the power of democracy lies with the people.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Sunday August 09 2015, @09:12PM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Sunday August 09 2015, @09:12PM (#220400)

    Police are not lawmakers nor judges.

    They are human beings capable of controlling their own actions. 'Just doing my job' is no excuse, so don't even try it.

    If there are unconstitutional and unjust laws on the books, that's your fault, as all the power of democracy lies with the people.

    Technically, it's their fault too, then. They can help by not enforcing those laws.

    But I wouldn't say it's any individual's fault. I and others use every available means to fight against these laws, but the ignorant and apathetic majority stands in the way. And two party winner-take-all systems don't encourage true democracy, because the majority is too stupid and short-sighted to realize that voting for The One Party instead of likeable third party candidates leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe it is my fault for not being omnipotent, though.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2015, @10:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2015, @10:58PM (#220462)

      They are human beings capable of controlling their own actions. 'Just doing my job' is no excuse, so don't even try it.

      You're right, I spoke too quickly without thinking it through properly so allow me a correction: as government agents, unconstitutional laws should definitely not be enforced - enforcing any law which violates the letter or spirit of the constitution should at a minimum cost them their job, however "unjust" laws are outside their domain and specialty. I don't expect them to be competent or informed enough to know what makes a law "unjust" (too subjective and too many ways a law could be "unjust", be it in its letter or in the consequences of enforcing it), however every officer of the law should be required to know the constitution inside and out because unconstitutional laws are void because they're unconstitutional.

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday August 10 2015, @05:03PM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 10 2015, @05:03PM (#220758) Homepage Journal

      And two party winner-take-all systems don't encourage true democracy, because the majority is too stupid and short-sighted to realize that voting for The One Party instead of likeable third party candidates leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

      It's a self-perpetuating situation. Given a choice between voting for the lesser of two evils and voting for a third option that everybody knows won't win, it makes sense to try to keep the greater evil out of office rather than wsting your vote.

      The simplest remedy to change this dynamic is a preferential ballot -- you get to specify a first choice, a second choice and so on. If your first choice doesn't get in, your ballot gets transferred to your second choice.

      This makes it feasible to vote for the third option without wasting your vote.

      True proportional representation s my preferred voting scheme, but it isn't practical in situation s where there has to be a single winner, and it's is a much larger change than switching to a preferential ballot.

      • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:59AM

        by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:59AM (#221015)

        and voting for a third option that everybody knows won't win

        Do you honestly not see the problem with this logic? You're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. And even if they have 0 chance of winning, I will never vote for evil freedom-hating scumbags, because I actually have principles. If that's the kind of thing you want to show your support for, you are the problem. I don't care if it's a 'lesser' evil.

        But third parties don't even necessarily need to win. Enough votes for third party candidates can scare candidates from The One Party into adopting some of their policies.

        This makes it feasible to vote for the third option without wasting your vote.

        The only wasted vote is a vote for an evil scumbag. I only vote for third party candidates, but not once have I ever wasted my vote. Not once.

        • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday August 11 2015, @01:03AM

          by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @01:03AM (#221017)

          Not to mention, if you keep voting for 'lesser' evils, the candidates can get ever more evil; it's just that one has to be less evil than the other.

          I do agree that our voting system is complete garbage and needs to change. But guess who benefits from it? That's right: The same evil candidates that people keep voting in. Our voting system won't change unless people stop being short-sighted. Voting for evil is not and never will be strategic.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @11:38AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @11:38AM (#221213)

          The "self-fulfilling prophecy" is there whether you liked it or not.

          You could call it the prisoner's dilemma, but it might be just a related phenomenon with similar consequence. The core problem is that optimizing for what's "good" for each individual voter (the lesser evil) does not yield globally optimal solution (3rd party).

          If people had a true hive-mind they could just take logical advantage of the expectation that everyone else will do the same and jump over the "cliff", but unfortunately we just aren't like that in the required magnitude.

          Don't confuse this with advocating voting for the lesser evil. That yields horrible results in time. The point is that the solution lies elsewhere if it exists at all. (ie. convince the rulers that changing the voting system is in their interest)

          Alternatively, you can buy that "scare the scumbags into adopting 3rd party policies" actually works.

          • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday August 11 2015, @11:50AM

            by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @11:50AM (#221217)

            The "self-fulfilling prophecy" is there whether you liked it or not.

            People create it. So yes, it is there whether I like it or not. Most people are extremely short-sighted and I do not expect anything else, but the answer is not to give up.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @03:03AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @03:03AM (#220528)

    So they can do anything they like, as long as they can say "I was only following orders" ?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @10:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @10:42AM (#220622)

    The police is generally not an expert on lawmaking so it might be not be reasonable to expect them to know what is just and what isn't. However, in cases where it indeed is, and obviously so, your line is known as the Nurenberg defense.

    The fallacy there is that one entity being responsible for the outcome doesn't mean that others aren't as well.

  • (Score: 2) by Zinho on Monday August 10 2015, @02:52PM

    by Zinho (759) on Monday August 10 2015, @02:52PM (#220704)

    Their job is to enforce the laws, not write them or repeal them, not pick and choose which ones they think should be enforced at any given moment.

    Not true. In the U.S., each branch of government (legislative, judicial, executive) has unique abilities that act as balances against the abuse of powers in the other two. The police (which are part of the executive branch) absolutely have the right to pick and choose which laws to enforce; as a city, state, and nation the law enforcement community has the authority to ignore unconstitutional/unjust laws such that they are never brought to trial.

    Lawmakers hate it, as they like to think that their "I will make it legal" powers are absolute; unfortunately for them, the founding fathers anticipated the results of an out-of-control legislature and built a solution into the system when our nation was founded.

    --
    "Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin