Hit & Run commenters are hilarious.
Accused Georgia killer has sat in prison four years without a trial, apparently because the state claims it can’t afford to pay an attorney to defend him.
Illinois police handing out tickets for air fresheners.
Sacramento police respond to wrong house after getting a call about a disturbance, then shoot and kill the family dog. Strangely, the police report says the family “praised” the brave officers for killing the dog. Related: Here’s a petition about a rash of cops-shooting-dogs incidents in Memphis.
Jacksonville woman who was tackled, arrested in emergency room by police will be permitted to sue for damages. She was in premature labor. Police chased her into the hospital, tackled her, and arrested her after she ran a red light.
TSA bans snow globes. Why does TSA hate Christmas and the Baby Jesus?
Government logic in action: Virginia has paid more than $60,000 in court costs and appraiser fees to avoid paying out $30,000 in an eminent domain case.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, November 14th, 2009 at 9:24 am by Radley Balko
and is filed under General Criminal Justice, Police Professionalism.
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TheAgitator.com
Gotta love the throw-in “driving is a privilege” quote from the Illinois trooper on the air freshener story. Refreshingly, it looks like the legislature realizes that the law is just a means for pulling brown people and hippies over and is working to revise it.
That’s true Eric, but remember we live in the freest most greatest country in the world. Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood say so.
On the eminent domain issue, you have to realize that the state wants to set the precedent (if they win) so that they can roll over countless future landholders.
It’s never only about the case at hand when you’re talking about eminent domain.
I hope the defendant in the Georgia case didn’t wave his right to a speedy trial…
I think the cops saying the family praised them for shooting their pet, has to be one of the stupidest comments ever uttered by the police.
Mack,
They may have just been grateful the cops didn’t just shoot them instead.
Regarding the snow globes. Maybe some of these TSA could be recruited to work for the military. I mean maybe they would have noticed the military officer on stage talking about killing infidels, their basic math skills notwithstanding.
TRUST me, the airfreshner thing is NOTHING NEW. It is one of the most common bogus ‘probable causes’ police use to initiate unlawful stops. In fact, I always tell my girlfriend to take down her windshield parking permit while driving to and from work.
Police brag that they can find P.C. to pull over virtually any car on the road. Here are some excuses. Memorize these.
-Obstructed windshield (crack or chip)
-Loud exhaust (accelerating)
-Erratic driving (briefly touching the lane divider in a turn)
-Lingering in the passing lane (driving in the left lane on a highway)
-Obstructing traffic (driving 1mph below the speed limit in the left lane on the highway)
-Speeding (driving 1mph above the speed limit on the highway, it is a myth that they can only pull you over for 10mph over, but most will only do that, because of the potential for increased revenue)
-As we all know, broken lights, expired registration.
-In addition many states have ‘move over’ laws, which mean that if you see a police car on the side of the road, you have to make an evasive maneuver into the next lane away from him, so his precious ass doesn’t feel the breeze of your passing vehicle, regardless of how that might endanger you.
If anyone has more, please feel free to share.
RE: The Virginia eminent domain article, this line:
“For decades, condemnations routinely have been farmed out to attorneys in private practice.”
makes it pretty clear to me that this kind of apparent bumbling fuckupery is a feature rather than a bug.
Air fresheners and other windshield obstructions can easily obscure the drivers view of motorcycles, bicyclists and pedestrians. I’m not saying I support what those cops are doing but vision obstructions are dangerous.
It’s really common for car drivers to claim they didn’t see the motorcycle they just ran down.
Air fresheners – again, I wade in with this: It Pisses Me Off that so many victimless crimes exist for drivers. I agree that some dangly things from mirrors are obstructive (often, surprisingly so). BUT. Whether cell phone, air freshener, DRINK, whatever – if you can drive the car normally without hurting anyone, you have not committed a crime (I consider “normally” to be kind of grey area; i.e, if you are all over the road drunk, it’s probably not a good idea to let you keep driving)(and, of course, speed in and of itself is NOT an issue either – I can corner with squealing tires just fine/totally under control thank you very much).
I still say the best answer – IF the idea were to actually make the roads safe – is simply to make people accountable – if you cause an accident for ANY reason – stupidity, vehicle maintenance issue included – you are SCREWED. If there’s some obvious exacerbating factor (cell phone, drink), you are REALLY SCREWED.
But it’s pretty obvious (to put it comically mildly) that better driving/road safety isn’t exactly the objective here….
Radley,
Thanks for the link to throatpunch.com. It looks like an update is in order, as there is now a “Supported by Drunks with Guns” in the banner.
Thanks again.
As to the air freshener thing – we need to get over the idea that driving is a special privilege which we are allowed to enjoy with the permission of the state, as the police officer quoted in the article maintains. I maintain that I have the right to transport myself as I see fit, as long as I do so without endangering others.
as there is now a “Supported by Drunks with Guns” in the banner.
You’re welcome. :-)
The state derives a lot of power from the whole “driving is a privilege” thing. It’s most commonly used for extortion but sometimes used for things completely unrelated to driving. You will pay up or comply or we will take away your livelyhood.
Nicely played, Johnny Longtorso.
I see someone donated under the name “DONDEROOOO”, too.
Accused Georgia killer has sat in prison four years without a trial, apparently because the state claims it can’t afford to pay an attorney to defend him.
EPIC FAIL.
Or, as Soundgarden would say:
LAME! LAME! LAME! LAME!
I got pulled over for the handcap placard bit. It did not significantly obscre my vision while driving. IMO, the cop was having a bad day and took it out on me. And–since I was only 1/2 way through my workday–I decided to let him live. ; )
Let the babies have their bottles. They’ll get cut off soon enough.
“Strangely, the police report says the family “praised” the brave officers for killing the dog.”
Can you say, “Stockholm (nee Sacramento) Syndrome?” Sure.
Continuing on my earlier post, here’s some more from the officer’s list of bogus P.C.’s for pulling over any random car:
-Unsafe for conditions (completely arbitrary for night, stormy, or foggy weather driving.
-Loud stereo (in my state, stereo that is audible 100 feet from the car)
-Turing from the left lane into the right lane of a perpendicular street.
-Lights not on when raining.
-Matched discription of wanted felon/stolen vehicle (most cars, any race of driver)
-Seatbelt violations on their own were previously not P.C. for a valid stop, but are now in most states.
I want to point out that most cops will not even bother wasting their time with trying to pick one of these excuses, they will just pull over car and claim an expired registration, then claim it was an honest mistake if nothing is found (similar ‘honest mistakes’ of course having been upheld by the Supreme Court).
In addition I have personally read a DEA narcotics manual that expressly states that if one is to encounter two Hispanic men driving exactly the speed limit on the highway, or a single woman driving what appears to be a large moving truck, that they should ALWAYS be pulled over and that the officer should just ‘walk your dog around the car to obtain probable cause’. YES it actually says that.
South Dakota is using this windshield obstruction also. While driving thru Rapid City the boys pulled us over twice the first time I had to explain to my then 5 yo son what was up and why the cop was searching our van. Then at the end of town they did it again and my son got to watch me cuss out a patrol officer. That was in ‘94, today i would have been tased and arrested.
Not this is a stop-inducing infraction, but I remember once I went off the road in a snowstorm and wound up getting a ticket for “failure to cite road conditions.” That was a new one on me, and pretty infuriating, but I enjoy the implication: that I was all like, “I’ll fucking show YOU who’s boss, snow. Also, physics.”
#2
I’ll see yr Lee Greenwood and raise you Lee Hazlewood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRkovnss7sg
Andrew, I’ll see your Nancy Sinatra doing a Lee Hazlewood song and raise you a Crispin Glover “singing” Lee Hazlewood.
I love some of the firedoglake comments. Much better than the comments at places like thinkprogress or crooksandliars.
Shorter Comrade Gillespie’s bio: I used my government supplemented education from two state univerisities to study things that make me unemployable in the Glibotopia that I dream of. That being said, please send cash.
Re: The air freshner thing:
About 1/3 of the cop cars I have seen have their radio mike looped over their rearview mirrors. But, of course, the law doesn’t apply to them.
If the TSA had banned snowglobes as a matter of eliminating tasteless objects, I wouldn’t mind.
TSA goons are soooo hilarious. I used to have a residence in the US as well as Canada so one day i decided to fly to Canada from Cali in just shorts, T-shirt and flip flops (no chedked or carry-on bags ). You should have seen the TSA loser trying to figure out why I’m not carrying any luggage. Got even the privilege of being wanded for extra security, not that there were many places that I could conceal stuff.
The USCIS were even better on the return trip. Kept asking me where my changes of clothes are and what I wore for a week while i was in Canada. Fortunately I was at the airport ahead of time so I could be entertained for a while.
These guys are such losers.
In the USSA, everything is a privilege…and don’t you forget it punk.
Bots Durkin “In the USSA, everything is a privilege…and don’t you forget it punk.”
Because we are endowed by our ruling elite with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are whatever in their great condescension they are willing to allow us at that particular time.
Haven’t talked much recently about how few rights you have as a teenager, so I thought I’d throw one into the random rights post :)
http://theodoramichaels.com/articles/meep.php
SamK, that’s really just unbelievable. The principal is the pettiest of small pond rulers. I think the whole thing is basically coming down to ‘Respect mah authoritah!!!’ on the part of that small-minded thug.
I used to live in Illinois and I knew about the obstruction of window bullshit since I was a youngin. They’ve been doing that for decades and it’s pretty retarded..
In regards to the GA case. Easy solution. Court orders a trial and the money is to be appropriated from the Legislatures budget. That would get them to resolve the issue fairly quickly.
I believe that if you drive into California with a New York car bearing the required (in NYS) inspection and reg stickers in the required (in NYS) manner, then you will necessarily be in violation of the California windshield obstruction statute.
On the Georgia case: they’ve probably spent assloads of money gathering evidence and hiring experts, but somehow can’t scrounge up enough for a lawyer for the accused.
As a police officer, I can tell you what I was taught in a “drug interdiction” class about rear-view mirror stops.
Cops pull people over for that to build a HISTORY that it is a normal/common reason for stops.
That way, when they do get the “lucky” stop that turns up drugs/guns/etc. they can pull out their hundreds/thousands of prior stops (documented via warning notices, usually not citations) so that the defense can’t say it was an isolated/unconstitutional stop.
Paco
Not to mention the possibility of how embarassing it would be if, after a lawyer was hired, he might look at the evidence and find that they arrested the wrong man.
Matthew Leavitt: From job to job, year to year
http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200911150269
A chronology of how a bad cop moves from town to town getting hired as a cop despite his record.
@37
Thanks for posting that MacGregory, I just added it to our news feed. Don’t often get the chance to peer into the history of a gypsy cop like that.
Packratt
Same douchebag, more detail:
http://wvgazette.com/News/200911140678
@39,
Oh, I already have him in our statistical database for his conviction, just didn’t see the timeline. I’m thinking about doing a piece about him and a few other gypsy cops so that was a good find for that, thanks!
Packratt
From the article, I get the impression that the problem is as much small towns trying to circumvent hiring restrictions as the “officers” themselves.
There seems to be an implication in the thread that, if the small towns paid better, they’d get a better quality of applicant.
OTOH, I suspect the “gypsy cops” are barrel-scrapings who keep going back to the only “job” they “know”. (I wouldn’t be surprized if there was an element of power-tripping in their motivation, however.)
Finally, I wonder how much of this ability to be rehired is a product of the “thin blue line” taking care of their own.
what about the plastic Jesus, would that be obstructive?
Aresen,
While Radley put up a post devoted to this one, which is great, I figured you deserve a reply here.
It is a part of the problem that small towns that lower their standards so they can hire on someone at a rate they feel they can afford, but not isolated to WV. After all there was the recent case of Michael Meissner in Texas who jumped around from small town to small town as a police chief / lone officer while running a child porn business and extortion racket on the side. (http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?p=925)
Of course, another portion of the problem is that, from state to state, there are different standards used and different criteria for pulling a police officer’s certificate, and in some states you can’t… and so long as a criminal history doesn’t include a felony, the officer can keep skipping from department to department.
Also, the other portion of the problem is that, since personnel records are a closely guarded secret, one department may not be able to see a prospective candidate’s misconduct record and history. Sure, a small town getting a deal might not check too hard to see why it’s getting a deal on a cop, but it doesn’t help that it’s so hard to track these guys and their histories.
It’s a complex problem… and this guy definitely isn’t the only one out there.
The last time I travelled by air, the TSA fools attempted to confiscate a quart-sized ziplock baggie.
Some people may not mind the aroma and taste of soap on their toothbrush, but I sure do.
Having a micro-sized bar of soap inside a ziplock baggie stored inside another ziplock baggie containing paste and brush proved too much for the TSA agent’s fragile little mind.
I’d indulged in a split-second of slack-jawed amazement upon hearing that my second baggie would be confiscated… before uttering “gimme back by bag” and snatching it from his fingers.
In retrospect, I believe I am lucky to be alive.
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I was going to suggest that someone should photograph the IL cops’ personal cars and see how many air fresheners, fuzzy dice, and plastic Jesuses are hanging from the rear view mirrors, but Aresen went one better:
“About 1/3 of the cop cars I have seen have their radio mike looped over their rearview mirrors. But, of course, the law doesn’t apply to them.”
Still, it would be interesting to go into court with a couple of photos and ask Officer Unfriendly about the windshield obstructions in his personal and duty cars…