The L.A. Times declares South Africa “the nation” is the World Cup’s biggest winner, praising the tournament’s “vibrancy and enthusiasm, and its ebullient African style.” Certainly, South Africa put on a good show, and proved wrong the critics who chastised FIFA for awarding the tournament to a country many feared couldn’t provide adequate security or logistical support.
But South Africa’s ability to pull it all together for six weeks doesn’t mean the World Cup will be a net benefit to the country in the long term. As the ESPN video below explains, South Africa’s government spent $6 billion on the tournament. Tournament-related revenues are expected to fall well short of that figure. Some of the hundred million dollar stadiums built for the tournament won’t get much use now that the games are over. The video points to one stadium built for the tournament which will likely remain vacant—it sits over over slums that lack running water.
Fond memories of the month South Africa performed marvelously on the world stage are nice. But $6 billion is a lot to pay for a memory. These spectacles—the World Cup and the Olympics—are nearly always money losers. They’re a lousy investment in wealthy countries. They’re particularly garrish in countries that aren’t as affluent. Economist Robert Baade ends the video with a strained search for a scenario where South Africa benefits from hosting the tournament in the long run. He doesn’t sound hopeful.
Two stories from the ongoing debate over recording on-duty police officers in public spaces.
The first comes from Oregon, where the city of Beaverton has paid a $19,000 settlement to a man arrested for recording police arresting his friends at a bowling alley. But Beaverton Police Chief Geoff Spalding cautions against interpreting the settlement to mean citizens have a right to record the cops.
Spalding said Oregon’s eavesdropping statutes, ORS 165.540 and ORS 165.543, are complex and intended to ensure privacy. Spalding said he believes his officers can arrest people who record officers’ private conversations without permission. But the likelihood of arrest, Spalding said, “is pretty low.”
“That is a technical violation of the law. That doesn’t mean there’s going to be an arrest,” Spalding said.
In fact, the Vang incident is the only time Beaverton officials can recall arresting someone under Oregon’s eavesdropping laws, Spalding said. In that instance, city prosecutors decided not to pursue charges against Vang — not because they thought the law had been misapplied, they said at the time, but because the audio quality of the recording was poor and may not have constituted a legal violation.
On Aug. 27, 2008, Vang used his cell phone to capture the arrest of one of his friends at the Valley Lanes Bowling Center in Beaverton. Vang made no attempt to hide his recording and even narrated what he was capturing, said Vang’s attorney, Kevin Lucey.
Spalding’s response is similar to the response I received recently from Maryland State’s Attorney Joseph Casilly, who is pursuing charges against Anthony Graber for recording a state trooper who pulled Graver over while Graber was riding his motorcycle. Casilly told me in a voicemail message that he had no problem with the students who recorded a police beating at the University of Maryland in February because the officers in that case were obviously in public, surrounded by people, and thus had no expectation of privacy. But Casilly said on-duty officers do have some expectation of privacy while on duty, particularly in their conversations with a small number of people. Though the officer who pulled Graber over was on a public road, and had drawn his gun, and was acting in his capacity as a cop, Casilly believes the trooper had the right to keep the audio portion of his interaction with Graber private (though Graber had no such right).
This is a huge problem, even if you don’t believe there should be a right to record on-duty public servants. We have a line, here. On one side of that line is constitutionally-protected speech. On the other side is a felony punishable by prison time. And even high-ranking law enforcement officials like a police chief and state’s attorney can’t give us a clear indication of where the line lies. (I have asked Casilly to clarify his response. I will post his clarification if he does.) If even a police chief or state’s attorney can’t say with certainty when we are breaking the law and when we aren’t, how are we supposed to know?
The result is that anyone who dares to record on duty cops in these jurisdictions risks arrest and the threat of jail time (I’ve yet to find a case of someone actually convicted and sent to prison for recording the police). So long as the law remains murky, there’s risk associated with training your camera on a cop.
Even in the few states where the law is clear, there’s still confusion. As I explained in my column last week, Pennsylvania is one of the few states where the courts have established a clear right to make both video and audio recordings of on-duty police officers in public spaces. But in the video below, a police officer attempts to get two protesters to stop recording him by falsely accusing one of them of violating the state’s wiretapping law. The woman, a lawyer from Philadelphia, informs him that she’s well within her rights, and challenges him to arrest her if he believes otherwise. He backs down.
But it makes you wonder how many times police in Pennsylvania have been successful at getting someone to turn off a camera by wrongly accusing them of violating the state’s wiretapping laws.
(I should add here that I know nothing and have no opinion about the underlying dispute between the women and local gun club.)
So it turns out that when conservative celebrities start spouting off about politics, they’re just as insightful, interesting, and valuable to the public debate as liberal celebrities. Which is to say not at all. (I realize I may be stretching the definition of celebrity, here.)
The Black Panther voter fraud case was actually downgraded during the Bush administration. There’s so much material over which to legitimately criticize Obama. Why waste time and credibility on this “he’s secretly racist” nonsense?
Minority groups much less likely than whites to support California’s ballot initiative to legalize marijuana. Not sure what to make of that.
United Farm Workers invites American citizens to apply for field jobs usually staffed by immigrants. They aren’t getting many takers.
Lawsuit: Pregnant woman was aiding neighbor who had a seizure when Indianapolis police beat her, causing a miscarriage. The police report says she was interfering with police and medics, then resisted arrest.
Possibly the best line from any news story this year: “Sgt. Greg Stewart said people who witnessed the crash initially thought the victims’ injuries were much more serious, because of the zombie costumes.”
Video of a Holocaust survivor, his daughter, and his grandkids dancing to “I Will Survive” at concentration camp sites around Europe. It’s strange, awkward . . . and triumphant.
Great article: “One man’s quest to liberate all government information — with or without the government’s help.”
Wonderfully quirky piece by Kerry Howley on cryonics enthusiasts and the (usually) women who love them.
Sidenote: I wonder just how wide the gender disparity is among people who want to have their heads frozen. And I wonder why this sort of craving for immortality is so much stronger in men than in women.
Also, it’s pretty awesome to see a Reasoner writing features for the New York Times Magazine. Congrats to Kerry, an amazing writer who is well-deserving of the platform.
Via my colleague Jesse Walker, here’s a fascinating interview with Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, in which Berlin calls Paul Simon a prick, and accusing him of stealing a song from the band.
In other Los Lobos news, the band announced last month that they’re cancelling gigs in Arizona in protest of the state’s immigration law. Which makes some sense, given that most of the band’s parents came to America illegally.
I did an interview with Louie Perez for Reason a few years ago that delved into the immigration issue. So much to like about these guys. Since we didn’t do a Five-Star Fridays this week, here’s the intense song Perez wrote loosely based on his parents’ journey to America: “Road to Gila Bend.”
Via the comments, here’s some interesting data on police shootings in California.
In most of the country, this information is extremely difficult to come by. There’s actually a federal law requiring the Justice Department to collect this information every year. The problem is that there’s no corresponding law requiring police agencies to provide it.
Speaking of which, I’ve received email demands that I post on the verdict in the Oscar Grant shooting. First, it’ll be the topic of my crime column Monday. Second, please stop demanding that I post on things, or drawing inferences about my opinions based on what I do or don’t write about. Most of the time, my failure to post on a story relevant to this site is usually a reflection of my having other things to work on. Or it may be that I’m preparing something longer than a blog post. Or that I need to find time to read more before I’m comfortable writing about it.
I think my favorite email in this vein said I’d be writing much more about this story if Grant had been white. There were two of those, actually.
Another arrest for recording police, this time in New Hampshire. The charges were dropped soon after. This is the second such arrest I’ve seen in New Hampshire. A Nashua man named Michael Gannon was arrested in 2006 for recording police who had come into his own home. Those charges were later dropped, too.
Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Barton Hinkle cites some of my work on cops shooting dogs and finds that like most law enforcement agencies, the Richmond Police Department does not give its officers training on how to deal with dogs.
This is such an easy problem to fix. Beat cops are bound to come into contact with stray dogs, attack dogs, and family pets fairly regularly. If not for mere prudence, respect for the citizens they serve, and the ability to do their jobs a bit better, police departments should at least offer training to fend off some potentially bad PR.
A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has rejected an Oregon man’s petition for habeas corpus relief (PDF). This despite acknowledging that the man has established actual innocence for the crimes for which he’s being imprisoned (sexual abuse and sodomy of a four-year-old). The reason: He was late filing his petition. By the panel’s reckoning, adherence to an arbitrary deadline created by legislators is a higher value than not continuing to imprison people we know to be innocent.
New York criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield comments:
…in the rare case where a defendant can prove that he did not commit the crime, but the information or evidence doesn’t manage to come into his hands until more than a year after the exhaustion of remedies, even if the cause is concealment by the government or incompetence by his lawyer, the 9th Circuit told us their truth. They don’t care. They just don’t care.
If aliens want to find us and eat/exploit/enslave us, they’ll find us. Can’t remember who, but someone’s Twitter feed a while back mused that at this point, Stephen Hawking is just screwing with the press for fun. I hope so. That would make me respect him even more.
Last week I interviewed a law enforcement official for a forthcoming article on recording the police. In arguing that it should be illegal for citizens to record on-duty cops, this official said he couldn’t think of a single example where video taken by a citizen bystander showed a police officer to have lied on a police report. There are plenty of such incidents, of course (just browse Carlos Miller’s website), but here’s one from just this week:
A Fort Lauderdale police officer has resigned after an investigation into a potentially unlawful arrest was taped on video camera by the suspect’s girlfriend.
Jeff Overcash turned in his badge Tuesday, according to the Broward New Times after giving a statement to the PD’s internal affairs detectives.
Overcash probably saw the writing on the wall as the evidence was stacked against him in the arrest of 26-year-old Brennan Hamilton, who may have been a punk, but was far less of a jerk thanOvercash in April.
Hamilton had the ‘cuffs slapped on him on a night out in downtown Fort Lauderdale after he asked Overcash for his badge number after the two got into a little disagreement.
Hamilton’s girlfriend whipped out her cell phone and started shooting video of the incident, which showed a cocky Overcash commentating on the arrest while ushering Hamilton to his patrol car.
Hamilton asks several times why he was being arrested and Overcash could only come up with, “I told you to get lost.”
The police report, written by Overcash, charged Hamilton with resisting arrest and disorderly intoxication, although the video never shows the suspect struggling and he doesn’t appear to be drunk.
Here’s the video:
If this had happened in Illinois, Massachusetts, or Maryland, not only would Overcash still have his job, Hamilton’s girlfriend could well be facing felony charges and prison time for shooting the video that ultimately heldOvercash accountable.
In defense of Warren Harding. By the way, the rankings themselves (PDF) break the presidents down in several categories. Oddly (or not), there’s no category measuring fidelity to the Constitution. In fact, as Gene Healy has pointed out, a willingness to exceed his constitutional authority usually moves a president up these lists.
TheAgitator.com
