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Tuesday November 13, 2007
All charges against Jeff Weinsier have been unceremoniously dropped. It is now this guy’s responsibility as a journalist to sue the police for false arrest. Update: Bob’s got the full text of the SA Maggie Gerson’s memo. I love her for her common sense (Rick should read this twice): “As to the . . . Failing to Obey a lawful command charge, the arrest may have been lawful had there been a lawful command. However, the command does not appear to be lawful in this case since being on the sidewalk in and of itself is not illegal.”
Tags: civil liberties, media, police · Comment feed: RSS, atom
As always the police can arrest you for no good reason, throw you in jail, require exorbitant bail, take your cameras and threaten you with charges, all before the “legality” of what they are doing is even considered.
I strongly believe that there should be department penalties for officers who make arrests with no merit that are thrown out on cursory inspection by the prosectors.
Alesh: I read it a number of times before I posted it at SotP. I’ve always used the “lawful order” verbiage when discussing the commands of law enforcement officers.
BTW, another officer was buried in Broward yesterday. The third SoFla officer to be buried in the last 4 months. I’m not really sure how many have been charged with false arrest or have done something else that catches your attention and fancy, Alesh, but do you think when the 4th cop catches a bullet and winds up dead at the hands of another guy, like you, who thinks nothing of cops, that you’ll at least mention his or her name on the pages of CM?
Maybe?
.
Rick~
The point being that when you say something is a ‘lawful order’ it doesn’t necessarily make it so!
My heart goes out to the family and friends of the slain police officers, and where applicable, I hope the departments fix the idiot policies that allowed those deaths to happen.
Carlos: You totally missed the point of what I was saying. I wasn’t comparing anything. I was addressing what Alesh chooses to cover on his blog. Which, btw, is obviously his choice. I just disagree with it.
Police deal with common criminals everyday and they know the difference between someone who is just being “an arrogant prick” – as you would say – and someone who would kill them in a split second.
This statement right here shows how much you don’t understand, Carlos. Talk to any PO out there and he will tell you that any situation can go bad at any time with any person he or she is dealing with.
I think they’ll tell you, Carlos, that if you make assumptions on the street, you’ll wind up dead real quick.
Nonetheless, you do make some sense in your last 4 paragraphs.
.
Okay, Carlos. Rolling Stones. Cool. Whatever.
.
If you start me up I’ll never stop
I’ve been running hot
You got me ticking gonna blow my top
If you start me up
If you start me up I’ll never stop
You make a grown man cry
wait a second, what were you guys talking about? Oh the police, yeah er… umm…sometimes they are cool and sometimes they are assholes, I guess they are just human like all of us…
I can’t compete with the riders in the other heats
If you rough it up
If you like it you can slide it up, slide it up
whoa, “robokid” . . . are you saying it’s fine for politicians to be corrupt sometimes? “sometimes they are cool and sometimes they are assholes, I guess they are just human like all of us”
That, my friend, is a pessimistic view of life.
Whoa Nelly!!!! No alesh… you just made a growm man cry! :-)
No… hahaha… Im not saying that is “fine for politicians to be corrupt some times”
sorry that you inferred that…it’s actually a kind view of life! cops are human, just like robbers, lovers, nuns, popes, and blogers..etc…
Descartes said that there’s no perfection in this world…we only have the idea of perfection…that doesn’t mean we should not strive to better our society…we should and we must… and that’s a positive way to look at it :-)
All in all, I was just trying to make light of two people (carlos and rick) getting into an obvious no-win Kobayashi Maru scenario…and I thought the rolling stones—also my favorite english philosophers—could lighten us all up…
a little bit of love mixed with a little bit of comedy, sorry it failed on you (no sarcasm) my point mainly was that we must learn to forgive and somehow find some Common Ground :-)
Even, or especially, if we disagree :-)
“Descartes said that there’s no perfection in this world…we only have the idea of perfection“
A typical Cartesian proposition: meaningless at best, wrong at worst, and irrelevant at all times.
Perfection IS an idea, a concept. We don’t have an idea of perfection, that would be to have an idea of an idea….do you take your redundancy straight or with cream and sugar?
Plus besides, DesCartes was a perfect horse’s ass. And one should never put DesCartes before the horse.
My favorite Brit philosopher is Ray Davies.
cogito ergo steve!