Couple Who Catch Cop Speeding Could Face Charges 876
a_nonamiss writes "A Georgia couple, apparently tired of people speeding past their house, installed a camera and radar gun on their property. After it was installed, they caught a police office going 17MPH over the posted limit. They brought this to the attention of the local police department, and are now being forced to appear in front of a judge to answer to charges of stalking."
The police are not there to protect the citizens. (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with public officials is that they have the right to use excessive force in order to protect their position. The average citizen has no right to call out any public official on any illegal actions since the average citizen has no real power against non-elected public officials. If a cop breaks the law, there is almost nothing you can do to fight them. There is a lot they can do, off the public record, that can harm you more than they harm you in their lawbreaking. Remember, cops are not here to protect you, there are there to protect their jobs -- and many of them love the power they wield over the average citizen. Why else do we have cop unions?
We are not free from the tyranny of cameras -- many police cars already have them, and they are not audited by any watchdog group. Our phones can be tapped, but we have no right to listen in on the phones of those who supposedly serve us. The public official is the watchdog of the general public, not vice versa. Is it any wonder that I am anti-State?
What you do on your property is no one's responsibility but yours. If someone's light-rays that bounce off their body enter your property, they are now YOUR property. You might even say that those light-rays are pollution, but I think that is pushing the definition of pollution a little too far. When a bunch of cops stopped an alleged speeder in front of my old house, I complained about the constant blue and red lights and strobes keeping me awake -- I was told I have no right to prevent it. If a cop speeds in front of my house, I should be able to to make note of it, but I can not. Informing your elected official about the problem will do only one thing -- give them reason to make a new law protecting their kin in tyranny. It surely won't help you, it won't bring you more freedom.
Don't be shocked as the tyrants find more ways to increase their power of tyranny. They are not here to help you, there are not here to protect you -- there are there to protect their own incomes and pensions, and you are powerless to stop it as long as you continue to vote into office people who love the authoritarian powers attached to both the liberal and conservative sides of the political system. When will people learn that it isn't left or right, it is pro-tyranny and against-tyranny -- liberals and conservatives are on the "pro-tyranny" side of the coin. The opposite side of the coin is not a libertarian, as some might think, but an anarcho-capitalist.
You will reap what you sow, friends. These folks put up cameras because the police did nothing for them to prevent speeders. This is to be expected -- when you need help, you won't find any.
...and camp the passing lane (Score:4, Interesting)
Then one time I saw a police car on the freeway that did exactly that. Thanks, Officer Jerk, for setting a great example.
Personally, I wish more cops would speed. Everyone feels compelled to go slower than the police, so whenever a police car is nearby, the cars around them turn to molasses. It's amazing.
Re:Well... the cop changed his mind. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Believe it or not... (Score:4, Interesting)
But I find myself insanely annoyed (border-line angry) at one thing she does. If she's driving towards you in the opposite direction and "thinks" you're speeding she will pull into the middle of the road with her SUV to get you to stop or slowdown.
WTF!
Yes people speed on our street, but not by much and not often. It's a short windy street that doesn't really take you anywhere. But the speedgun is a bit much. Heck, the street just loops back into itself to make a letter P so it's not like a shortcut to anywhere so there's little point.
And stopping in the middle of the street to stop cars is pretty hazardous.
Re:Well... the cop changed his mind. (Score:2, Interesting)
Why we need the "Transparent Society" (Score:4, Interesting)
Bring on the cameras! Just give the ordinary citizens the right to access the feeds and observe and watch those who are the watchers. If a police officer knew a live feed of their activities was going out via the web, don't you think they would be a little bit more carefully in how they treat people?
Yours,
Jordan
I'm not surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
Being from Georgia I can say that... (Score:3, Interesting)
One time I was driving around atlanta and was going about 15-20 over in the far left lane, when I saw a cop coming up behind me very fast. I thought I was fucked and would be getting a ticket, so I move over to the right, figuring he will want to pull me over on the right side. Instead he just blew by me like I was standing still.
The cops routinely get away with this because really, who is going to stop them.
Re:I see this all the time. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Believe it or not... (Score:3, Interesting)
Just this morning I went to pick up my kid from spending the night with her cousin. Neighbor put super glue in the locks of one of the cars. Due to previous incidents*, and the flanking houses being empty and up for rent there is no doubt as to who did the deed. Since there is no camera there is no proof. Looks like the same hooligans that did our car will do theirs next
-nB
* another busybody, who calls the cops if you park more than 18 inches away from the curb or on the sidewalk or too close to the mailbox or fire hydrant or any other number of things you do they don't approve of. The superglue followed several keyings and other vandalism, which only seems to happen if you park in front of their house. This is on a cul-de-sac with virtually no available parking. Personally I want to gorilla glue their front door shut.
Re:...and camp the passing lane (Score:1, Interesting)
I've considered doing the same thing. And in great big letters at the top: "A person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another."
Anyone wants to complain, they can whine to the Supreme Court.
Illogical (Score:5, Interesting)
a->b, a->c does not mean that b->c
For instance:
NFL Players are people.
People are women and men.
NFL Players are women and men.
I'm not saying there aren't bad cops by any means, just point out that it isn't good logic.
Re:Moo (Score:3, Interesting)
1.) They've got a certified, calibrated radar unit.
2.) They are certified radar operators.
3.)They have a Radar Operator's Log showing that the unit had been properly calibrated before and after, AND were able to testify that they operated it correctly and picked the correct radar target.
If they didn't meet all those criteria all they did was get a radar gun to show a number, as my town's judge would say.
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:5, Interesting)
No physics don't change, training does.
A cop is better trained in tactical driving than the average citizen. You may be a good driver, but it is fairly improbable that you have the requisite training to make you safer at speeds higher than the average speed of traffic around you (which *should* be at the posted limit).
I don't condone that they would speed when off duty, and I think they should get a mark for it or some such, but as to why things are different, it's training.
I worked with a guy (he was head of security for my old employer). He was on a local road with steep ditches on either side for a rather long stretch (5 or 6 miles). It is a two lane road and there was ample on-coming traffic. A paramedic turned on their priority lights behind him (thus they were in a hurry and he was obligated to yield), but there was no safe way to get out of the way. His solution was to speed up to about 85/90Mph (50 speed limit) and pull over as soon as the road widened enough to allow so.
Well a cop heading the other direction flipped a U-turn and promptly caught up and pulled in behind him, citing him for: Failure to yield, reckless, speeding, evading (apparently the cop figured since his lights were on our guy was running, never mind he couldn't see them). Cop refused to listen to the explanation of no safe place to pull over.
Come court day bob told the judge what happened and that his was the only reasonable and prudent course of action. Judge asked what experience he had driving at high speeds. Reply? Pursuit instructor and EOD officer for HM Army and MI6 back home in England.
Result?
Case dismissed instantly.
It's all about training.
-nB
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:4, Interesting)
a) have a very visible presence in traffic so that people could see that they are keeping tabs on it. Instead, they hide in the bushes so that drivers can't see them, and when people do see them they tend to slam on their breaks to slow down before they get checked. It can be argued that this causes way more accidents than speeding, but it is beside the point.
b) issue more points per violation on your license instead of a monetary fine. Don't you find it strange that the fines go up all the time, but the points you get per violation stay the same? If they wanted to slow people down, they'd start a "3 offenses and you get a suspended license" campaign.
Cops issue tickets to make money for the department, and thats the only reason. Case in point, in my home town during that midterm elections, we voted down giving the PD more funds to renovate their headquarters (the place is already pristine). The next day, they gave out a record number of speeding tickets.
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:3, Interesting)
You say that cops shouldn't be able to break the law just because they are cops, but your post implies that you think it's okay for you to break the law because it was a 2 mile segment. Either way, you both are breaking the law. I'm not trying to say that this makes the cop right. I'm just trying to point out that everyone has their own ways of justifying their law-breaking. If you want cops to follow the laws better, than try to get policies implemented that punish them for breaking the law, because right now, there aren't that many.
Note: If a cop in Phoenix gets a DUI, he is instantly terminated. That is actaully a new policy for Phoenix PD's.
Actually, a lot of detail seems to be left out. (Score:4, Interesting)
The speed limit in front of their house is 25 mph, coming kinda downhill. I think, in the Atlanta area where nobody drives under 50, this is just plain dumb.
They were the typical overreacting freaky parents who were making a stink out of nothing because they are a couple of those people who love to have something to complain about.
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:4, Interesting)
Heh, I live in North Pole, Alaska. Our cops are the constant but of jokes and curses because they won't spend any time solving crimes, they just want to write tickets.
Recently, the weather warmed up and the intersections got particularly slippery. At one intersection in particular there is a down-hill slope before the stop sign. A local cop would sit in a parking lot off to the side and ticket car after car that slid through the intersection for failure to come to a complete stop. Now, was he trying to enforce or encourage public safety? I think not. If he was, he could have put flares out or done something else to make people aware of a potentially dangerous situation until a gravel-truck could have been dispatched. No. Instead he was gleefully writing tickets.
This particularly upsets me because I used to be a cop and saw this mentality a lot. There is a lot of pressure to write tickets for several reasons: First, of course is the income from the fines, but secondly, it's a lot easier to justify your time when you can point to all those traffic citations than to report that you acted as road-crew for 4 hours while waiting for a gravel truck. That being said, some cops are just pricks and get off on that sort of thing - not even thinking about the emotional and financial impact on someone who has a hard enough time keeping mandatory insurance on their vehicle who now has to pay a fine and higher rates for the next 3 years.
I wonder how these people can sleep at night sometimes...Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:5, Interesting)
When my wife and I started raising a stink, and making public statements about the situation. Started taking photos, and logging traffic speeds... I received a phone call from the police department telling me "Your just trying to make trouble.", "You better drop this. We know who you are." Now, there are some who might claim that this was not a threat of violence, but I think most sane people would take it as a very real threat.
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:5, Interesting)
So, Yea, If you end up on the recieving end of the stick, Give them one chance to calm down. Sometimes these bullies just need to feel like they are in control and having one up on you lets them make this claim to themselves. If that doesn't happen and they constantly mess with you or you end up getting cited for something you didn't do, Make a case out of it. The cops do end up corrupt like this but they can be delt with. The key is not to lose your control and give them stuff to work with. Don't do anything that gives them an excuse to screw you were they would otherwise have to make something up.
On another note, I have been contacted by the same police department to help them in certain ways since this has happened. It is like a few bad apples were spoiling the bunch and that bunch is now gone. I don't hold anything against the law enforcment officials themselves, I know it was certain people who had a problem not the entire system (even though they used the entire system).
Slippery Slope (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Uh, wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
> to save the noncooperative git the transient pain of the taser?
The few descriptions of the incident that I've read said that the student went limp (passive resistive) when the officers tried to use physical force to remove him; Thus the officers repeatedly telling him to "stand up" between tasings as seen in the video. The student's actions were not violent, the officers simply refused to carry him out as they were supposed to and instead used a taser to attempt to gain compliance.
As I see it, one or two taser hits likely would have been enough to make the student perfectly willing to leave, but the student's unwillingness or inability to stand up was in defiance of the officer's will, so the beating continued.
Results with better radars (Score:3, Interesting)
For about a year, I had an Eaton VORAD radar pointed out my window at an intersection. This is usually used as an anti-collision device for heavy trucks, and we had one on our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle. So, for debugging, I had one pointed at the street, hooked up to a PC running QNX.
A VORAD is a real phased-array radar; you get bearing, range, and range rate, separately for multiple targets. The software took this in and produced a track on screen. I could watch cars making turns. With all that info, I could see speeding and dumb driving in any direction. Never did much with the data, though, other than use it for debugging the robot software.
The VORAD only has a 15 degree scan width, and a very narrow beam vertically. So it couldn't cover the whole intersection. The VORAD is ten year old technology. A more modern unit would be more interesting.
Re:Moo (Score:1, Interesting)
By the way: to all speeders, you can always be caught, there are many more people watching than you will EVER know! At least in America.....
The Fifth of November! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:4, Interesting)
What Officers are Taught (Score:2, Interesting)
And this is the reason I changed my major and my career plans, I don't want to become a police officer to protect fellow officers, I would become a cop to enforce justice, sadly that is a pipe dream in this day and age. There Are plenty of stories of police corruption and further protection of said police by courts. Of course what are we going to do about it, nothing because for now they are the in charge, and until things get really out of hand most of us are willing to sit back and watch TV, and play our computer games, most people are more willing to forget about what is going on around them then to actually sit up and pay attention to reality. To actually get up and go do something to change our system is against the way most of us were raised.
Don't get me wrong, I know plenty of straight officers. I know plenty of really good people in the justice system, and yet, those people don't do anything against those who are corrupt amongst them.
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not the best part though: Citizen Oversight is a clearing-house of all surveillance data--which is a terrifying thought in 40 years. Think of every single RFID chip, nano-camera, and swipe card going into one place. Imagine the immense power of that place.
Greg Bear posits that Citizen Oversight began as a way to keep track of population statistics and give the long view on civic needs. Then a very bad president named Raphkind comes along and says Law Enforcement has control over Citizen Oversight and America becomes an uber-police state. You'll get a fine in the mail for absent-mindedly dropping a bit of wrapper on the sidewalk or crossing a few seconds before the light changes. The people get fed up with this and Citizen Oversight is given to an ACLU-type organization with elected officials. It is no longer Big Brother and even the police have to come begging for info an a serial murderer. Citizen Oversight will only say if the murderer is in the country or not. Even if they have complete footage of the murder!
Anyways, Bear is an excellent author/thinker and his books give me hope for the future and my nieces and nephews. (Damned if I'm having kids.)
Re:Cops are less responsible than fry cooks (Score:1, Interesting)
I find people who say stupid things like this are generally naive kids (of any age) or punks with an inflated sense of self worth and entitlement who've gotten into a lot of petty crime. Two of my best friends since childhood are cops - one in an innner city ghetto and one in a upper-middle class suburb. I've done a lot of ride alongs with both of them, because I find it fascinating, While they do things differently, because the envronment calls for it, they do their jobs with the utmost fairness and professionalism, two words you seem to be unclear on the meaning of. They are treated like shit day in and day out verbally and physcially by douchebags like yourself who love to claim they "know their rights" (and rarely know much of anything). And I've never seen or heard of any of them using any more force than is required. They're far better people than you could ever hope to be, and I hope you remember that next time you need a cop.
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:3, Interesting)
Give them a call. I did to be placed on the 'reduced mailing list'. I get a begging letter once a year with my new card, and I'm a lifetime member.
ps
Yes I'm a gun-toting libertarian. I own all sorts of 'scary' guns. They haven't hurt anybody, at least since I've gotten them. Got a problem with that?
When one owns a used M1 Garand and Yugoslavian SKS, I can't say for sure that they haven't been used in anger.
Re:Service to whom (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Service to whom (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah, but that's only a requirement for the untrained civilian. The "highly-trained law enforcement officer" can take it as suspicious if you just don't feel like talking to him. If you run away, he can shoot you in the back and get off scot-free.
A couple of years back, down on the San Francisco peninsula, a large group of cops surrounded some deranged guy in a dirt area just beyond a freeway offramp. He picked up a rock and brandished it, so they blew his ass away. "They thought it looked like a gun." No charges were filed against the murderers.
I tried that... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Desert island (Score:3, Interesting)
You could simply set up shop somewhere on some uninhabited island, and it would pretty much become yours unless the government that claims it (or someone else) actually decides to go to the trouble of visiting the island with enough force to throw you off of it. That's more or less how Sealand came to be anyway, as England didn't seem interested enough in their old radar outposts to keep squatters off of them.
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Moo (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:3, Interesting)
It depends. Are they locked up properly when not in use? Do you have their serial numbers recorded so that the police can seize them when they catch the asshat(s) who stole your guns?
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:3, Interesting)
Furthermore, you don't have to convince the police officer or the mayor of anything. You just need to have a lawyer that can convince a judge and/or a jury. Completely different matter.
Re:The police are not there to protect the citizen (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine how productive they could be if they didn't have to spend a disproportionate amount of time on rare cases like murder, and could focus on traffic enforcement and copyright violations. Those are the kinds of activities that are pure profit centers. A well run government should be profitable.
Only whack jobs would think that a government should be of the people, by the people and for the people. Sensible people know that the role of government is to increase shareholder value at any cost to civil liberties. After all, the US Dollars that many of us know and love are just shares in the government. That should be obvious, seeing how many shares you need to fork over to buy enough politicians to get anything done. =)