Phoenix Police Seize PCs of a Blogger Critical of the Department 515
logicassasin sends in a story about a blogger in Phoenix, AZ, who runs a site that is critical of the local police department. The police recently raided his home and seized his computer hardware. "Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging. The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment — which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation." A local publication quotes Pataky saying, "We have heard internally from our police sources that they purposefully did this to stop me... They took my cable modem and wireless router. Anyone worth their salt knows nothing is stored in the cable modem."
Cable modem... (Score:5, Funny)
Which is exactly why I've stuck a flash drive in mine that I can run a USB cable to when I want to do some "backups to my modem".
Wink wink.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
More interestingly, is the use of the phrase; "Anyone worth their salt."
This is a very old phrase, originally used when salt was a very, very expensive commodity. Roman soldiers were typically paid for their duties in salt. So a good soldier was 'worth their salt.' (Obligatory Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary [wikipedia.org] )
So back to the topic on hand. I don't think this phrase is appropriate here, because we are taking geek assumptions (knowing that a router/modem do not store data long-term (ot
Re:Cable modem... (Score:4, Insightful)
We need a new mod choice: (-1 Overly Pedantic).
Re:Cable modem... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm going to counter that with (-1 Fact Nazi), and rate you (-1 Overly Eloquent).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
(+1 Now that's just plain silly)
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Hate to post this under a joke, but wouldn't the police have to seize your cable modem in any case involving Internet activity? The only evidence they'll have prior to getting a warrant to search your property is a bunch of logs from the cable company. Those logs won't point to an address, they'll point to a MAC address (or whatever cable modems use). The cable company's records will say that MAC address belongs to a modem at such and su
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Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Interesting)
This guy's obviously already been in court. ACLU time, and even up to the supreme court. The Phoenix police department is about to get a federal raping.
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it seems that if you want to blog and say anything remotely negative about the Phoenix police department, you better move out of Phoenix first.
This is tyrannical, a clear abuse of power. Everyone aware and responsible for this farce and the reason for the seizure needs to be jailed.
Apparently the standards and scrutiny imposed to ensure "probable cause" for a search before a warrant can be issued (or before a search can be done) aren't high enough.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I moved out of Phoenix 12 years ago, but I never actually had problems with them aside from 1 traffic ticket the whole time I was there. I did have to call them to, my truck was broken into, I was actually surprised they finger printed when they were obviously dealing with a junky stealing stereo's for a fix.
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone who was under L.A. Rampart jurisdiction for a while let me hip you to a little something, pecosdave.
There was one person who left prints in your car that would require almost no trouble for the police to track down and prosecute for a crime.. YOU.
A crime scene is a crime scene, you run all the prints - and no, they are not going to be paying lab fees to get an additional minor charge tacked onto a junkie stereo thief's sentence when they finally track him/her down for some unrelated crime.
This is a tactic pretty much specific to places that have gang/drug trafficking issues - and even 12 years ago the Phoenix street was heavy in that regard.
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Informative)
I already explained why I am not in shock - I dealt with Rampart for years, and my parents and grandparents all dealt with their own variations on the theme.
Abusive police departments are not only not new, they are as old as history.. which is why there are judges and all the other checks/balances in modern society.
The truth is, though, that the type of abuse that is currently causing you to PANIC and type in all caps has been the default experience for impoverished people in this country for generations.
Somehow we keep going... I'm gonna go listen to some Dust Bowl Ballads, excuse me.
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I did have to call them to, my truck was broken into, I was actually surprised they finger printed when they were obviously dealing with a junky stealing stereo's for a fix.
If I were a cynical type, I'd suggest that perhaps they were just taking that as an opportunity to collect your fingerprints.
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Interesting)
If they paid you $1,000, they'd stop you there and seize the money for being "probable drug-related"
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, the whole fucking country is crooked
FTFY
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone deserve to be menaced by a gun?
Yes, there are plenty [highbeam.com] of reasons [justia.com] that would cause me to "menace" [state.ok.us] you with a gun...
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Just like any other sort of job, there will be different cultures in different offices. To say that all police departments are equally corrupt is either incredibly naive or intellectually dishonest.
Any profession that deals with controlling people will have it's problems, but seeing corruption as a boolean is simply a childish view of the world.
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I'm beginning to think the world is one big Milgram experiment...
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But there's a _very_ easy remedy: his lawyer asks for summary judgement or a directed verdict in his suit against the cops. His case has been compromised, aned those are reasonable remedies.
Judges do not like to grant summary, so s/he might review the probable cause the warrent-granting judge signed off on. I expect some pointed questions under oath of the requesting officers
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:4, Insightful)
People need to wake up to the realities of this shit. Modern day police departments are filled with tyrannical people who enact tyrannical policy purely for the sake of their own egos. (Not all of them, but enough bad apples to ruin the bunch in a lot of cases.) The modern day police department is a THREAT to security and liberty in this country, not a protector of it, and in all honesty people need to start fighting back against it. Unfortunately, the police are also the ones with all the guns and tear gas and media connections who will label protestors, detractors, and other enemies of tyranny as "terrorists" or "criminals." And they have their egos in a bunch over their presumed notion that everything they do is "in the right," and anything anyone says or does against them is automatically "in the wrong," largely because we've let them think that way for entirely too long.
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Uh, I wouldn't go so far at this point as to say they're not a protector.
They may not always protect your personal liberty with every single action, but they do protect society, which ultimately protects your liberty in real terms.
Your ability to blog whatever you want is no good if hackers keep breaking into your web hosts servers and deleting all your content.
Your ability to blog whatever you want is no good if some stranger keeps breaking into your house and stealing stuff.
The very existence of
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your ability to blog whatever you want is no good if some stranger keeps breaking into your house and stealing stuff.
Like the Phoenix police dept?
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, I wouldn't go so far at this point as to say they're not a protector.
Your ability to blog whatever you want is no good if hackers keep breaking into your web hosts servers and deleting all your content.
Hacking is, contrary to myth, not that hard to avoid, no matter the resources. If push comes to shove, you could run the server yourself (as I do, though I don't blog).
To elaborate: Hacking is not like forced physical entry. It is entirely possible to perfectly lock out hacking your computer remotely. In contrast, you can only delay a determined person gaining entry, unless you are willing and able to use force directly against said person: No mere lock or wall will keep out a determined person.
Sort of like death really. TREMBLE BRIEF MORTAL! FOR I AM DEATH WHOM NO LOCK CAN HOLD NOR FASTENED PORTAL BAR! (yeah, yeah, shamely Pratchett quote there)
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Informative)
I was once told, point blank, by a captain of the New Castle police department that, quote "his job was not to protect me from criminals, his job was to arrest me for not toeing the line."
He probably told you that because he is a psychopath with a badge and a gun.
But, according the the Supreme Court, he is correct.
The seminal case establishing the general rule that police have no duty under federal law to protect citizens is DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (109 S.Ct. 998, 1989; 489 U.S. 189 (1989)).
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1976377/posts [freerepublic.com]:
"Police have no legal duty to respond and prevent crime or protect the victim. There have BEEN OVER 10 various supreme and state court cases the individual has never won. Notably, the Supreme Court STATED about the responsibility of police for the security of your family and loved ones is "You, and only you, are responsible for your security and the security of your family and loved ones. That was the essence of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in the early 1980's when they ruled that the police do not have a duty to protect you as an individual, but to protect society as a whole."
"It is well-settled fact of American law that the police have no legal duty to protect any individual citizen from crime, even if the citizen has received death threats and the police have negligently failed to provide protection."
Sources:
7/15/05 SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES No. 04-278 TOWN OF CASTLE ROCK, COLORADO, PETITIONER v. JESSICA GONZALES, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS NEXT BEST FRIEND OF HER DECEASED MINOR CHILDREN, REBECCA GONZALES, KATHERYN GONZALES, AND LESLIE GONZALES
On June 27, in the case of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the Supreme Court found that Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to individual police protection even in the presence of a restraining order. Mrs. Gonzales' husband with a track record of violence, stabbing Mrs. Gonzales to death, Mrs. Gonzales' family could not get the Supreme Court to change their unanimous decision for one's individual protection. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN FOLKS AND GOVERNMENT BODIES ARE REFUSING TO PASS THE Safety Ordinance.
(1) Richard W. Stevens. 1999. Dial 911 and Die. Hartford, Wisconsin: Mazel Freedom Press.
(2) Barillari v. City of Milwaukee, 533 N.W.2d 759 (Wis. 1995).
(3) Bowers v. DeVito, 686 F.2d 616 (7th Cir. 1982).
(4) DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189 (1989).
(5) Ford v. Town of Grafton, 693 N.E.2d 1047 (Mass. App. 1998).
(6) Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. 1981).
"...a government and its agencies are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen..." -Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App. 1981)
(7) "What makes the City's position particularly difficult to understand is that, in conformity to the dictates of the law, Linda did not carry any weapon for self-defense. Thus by a rather bitter irony she was required to rely for protection on the City of NY which now denies all responsibility to her."
Riss"Police have no legal duty to respond and prevent crime or protect the victim. There have BEEN OVER 10 various supreme and state court cases the individual has never won. Notably, the Supreme Court STATED about the responsibility of police for the security of your family and loved ones is "You, and only you, are responsible for your security and the security of your f
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's surprising that the police didn't realise that this would almost certainly look very bad for them, especially if there is already a lawsuit and the took files specifically pertaining to it.
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, this is the Streisand effect on steroids. The dirty cops and the people who would otherwise be embarrassed are obviously trying to find the leaky cops. But the more of a ruckus they stir up, the more people who are going to notice.
This is what brought U.S. Federal attention to Dallas.
An interesting thing though. Village Voice Media (formerly New Times before they bought VVM and took their name) is HQ'd in Phoenix... They own papers in several major markets which includes Dallas. I haven't checked yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to find a story or two surrounding any police corruption in Phoenix in the New Times publication in Phoenix.
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Begging the question, IMO. "See, he's acting innocent. Only the most hardened of criminals act innocent when confronted with their guilt, so he MUST be guilty of something!"
No. I think the argument goes something like this: An innocent person will proclaim his innocence. Most guilty people also proclaim their innocence.
The point is, you can't tell anything about the guilt or innocence of a person based on their statements regarding their own innocence. The statement is essentially meaningless.
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I know when I'm doing something very illegal, I'm going to draw as much attention to myself from the authorities as possible...
I think your scenario is kind of unlikely.
If the Phoenix police don't have a very good reason for this raid, the blogger probably won't need a job ever again after he sues the pants off them.
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, no, or at least, I hope not. In case you haven't noticed, this took place in the USA, where people are by law presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you just wake up from a 20 year sleep?
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Insightful)
True, we don't know anything with certainty. However, it sure is mighty suspicious when authority raids the home of someone critical of said authority.
It is incoherent to simultaneously assume someone not guilty and not believe them when they say they are, in fact, not guilty.
Do you have some statistics to back that claim?
Why would a child porn ring need a "front"? What could the blog possibly offer their operations? And if this hypothetical criminal organization needed a front, why choose one that was bound to attract police attention?
If you're going to go making wild accusations with no basis whatsoever, at least make them somewhat plausible.
So why read this forum? Go back to 4chan and learn to troll properly. Or did they ban you from there already? Or just laugh you out?
Here in Finland we shoot man-eating beasts as threats to public safety rather than give them a badge and a gun. But I guess that in Capitalist America, the beast shoots you !-)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"computer tampering with the intent to harass" sounds pretty close to what the blogger's accusing the police of.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Atlanta police "picked on" Kathryn Johnston and I never read anywhere that she did anything wrong or had any prior contact with them.
It doesn't matter what you did, what you were accused of, or how many times you've been to court in the past. The police are not allowed to harass, assault, "pick on", or take any unlawful action against you.
Your post is very similar to the posts I would expect from people who say things like "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about" or "I don'
Re:Phoenix has done screwed up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm, if he's already been to court, doesn't it stand the chance that maybe he's doing something wrong and deserves what he's getting?
Yes, he was in court before. Because he filed a lawsuit against them.
Cops don't just randomly pick people to pick on, even the most corrupt cops. They are after all, people, and for the most part they have better things to do, until you make yourself a target.
Except it wasn't random and he didn't make himself a target. He went through a bad divorce and his ex filed a lot of complaints against him. According to TFA some of the complaints happened when he was out of town.
Perhaps, just maybe, the slashdot assumption that a blogger did no wrong, is infact, wrong.
People are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty not the other way around.
This guy is doing exactly what any liar does, just like a politician does. Screams as loudly as possible to anyone who will listen that he has been wronged and trying to drag in a bunch of support from people who don't know what actually happened because all they've heard is his one sided bullshit story that paints him to be a saint.
The innocent should do the same thing, scream as loud as they could when wronged.
Falcon
No one left to speak for me (Score:5, Insightful)
When the Police came for the bloggers,
I remained silent;
I was not a blogger.
Then they locked up the rich,
I remained silent;
I was not rich.
Then they came for the gun owners,
I did not speak out;
I was not a gun owner.
Then they came for the press,
I did not speak out;
I was not a member of the press.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.
Re:No one left to speak for me (Score:4, Insightful)
Good thing people are talking about this, huh?
Re:No one left to speak for me (Score:5, Insightful)
Then they locked up the rich,
Fail.
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Yeah, this should never have happened. Unfortunately too many people stood silent on similar issues for the past ten years. When war protesters and anti-Bush people were being arrested and held without reason all over this country there was no real outrage. When the Patriot act was passed to "protect" us there was no real outrage. now the groundwork for real fascism is in place and it is happening.
The more I read your post the more ironic it sounds. Bloggers have been getting arrested and raided for years.
Re:No one left to speak for me (Score:5, Insightful)
When the Police came for the bloggers,
I remained silent;
I was not a blogger.
Then they locked up the rich,
I remained silent;
LOL!
The police locking up the rich is a very ironic concept, considering that their purpose is to protect the rich.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
All the available evidence [slashdot.org] points to thePowerOfGrayskull (905905) [slashdot.org].
Re:No one left to speak for me (Score:5, Insightful)
You, sir, are an idiot. Or a troll, but really, I'm leaning strongly towards idiot.
It's just that stupid "don't fuck with people in power" attitude that has plagued this country for years. If everyone had your idiotic attitude, the ghost of Richard Nixon would still be President after everyone completely ignored Watergate, allowed him to toss out the Constitution, and declare himself leader ever after. It's idiots like you who elected George W. (as in, "What do you mean the law applies to me too?") Bush, who then—you guessed it—tossed out the Constitution and conducted a reign of scaremongering with the threat that if you spoke out against him (or just had a Muslim-sounding name [wikipedia.org], you were a terrorist who could be packed up and shipped to Egypt, Syria, or some other godforsaken part of the world and tortured or killed. Hell, with that attitude, we'd still be a fucking British colony, you moron.
If the guy did something illegal, then let them prove it. As it is, though, all indications so far that the police are guilty as sin of gross abuse of power, and if so, every damn one of them who were involved in this should be heavily fined, jailed, and never allowed to work for law enforcement again.
If you RTFA (reported by the Arizona Republic [azcentral.com], you idiot, not just "some bloggers"), you'll see that a former homicide detective who is speaking out about crime lab mismanagement was also targeted. Of course, I guess that just falls under the "he should have just shut up and let the police do any damn thing they want" umbrella that is your philosophy on people who have the legal right to kill you.
I'm not even going to try to explain how law enforcement must necessarily be held to a higher standard of not retaliating when people do things that aren't illegal no matter how much they don't like it. I'm afraid it might explode your tiny little brain that can't comprehend that things like accountability and the right to free speech is a little more complicated than poking a bear with a pointy stick. Maybe we'll get lucky and some policeman who you pissed off will throw you in a cage with a hungry bear just because he can, then maybe you'll realize how stupid and facetious your analogy really is.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't actually know what word means, do you?
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"He is innocent until proven guilty, but the cops aren't? What kind of bullshit is that?"
The only bullshit here is your interpretation of the phrase "innocent until proven guilty". The cops aren't the ones being charged under the law, and the presumption of innocence applies only to those so charged. The presumption of innocence doesn't apply at all to criticism of public officials, which is apparently all this blogger is guilty of.
In any case, you are clearly an idiot. If I had mod points I'd have modded y
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you serious? I'm pretty sure they were adults and not 6 year olds saying 'sticks and stones my break my bones'
You can call me an asshole on slashdot all day long, and you'd probably be right. But when I come take your computer because it was actually stolen from my dad in the first place, doesn't make me a corrupt cop or guilty of being evil, it just means the public isn't aware of the fact that not only are you a name caller, you are a thief and in general a douche bag.
Instead your just assuming the
Backfired! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what happens when panic'd decisions are made. The police force thinks they can go in and silence the whole thing with a BS warrant and put an end to it, only for the story to be picked up nation wide and now they're drawing way more attention than ever.
Serves them right. This looks like a clear cut abuse of power by the department and now that the story is national, hopefully some heads will roll.
Re:Backfired! (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is, who's the judge who signed the warrant?
If the guy's done nothing wrong, the department either fabricated information in requesting the warrant, in which case heads should roll, or the judge is incompetent, in which case the judge should be fired.
Re:Backfired! (Score:4, Informative)
The real question is, who's the judge who signed the warrant?
FTA: "Maricopa County Judge Gary Donahoe (http://www.superiorcourt.maricopa.gov/JudicialBiographies/Judges/judicialBio.asp?jdgID=19&jdgUSID=121) signed the search warrant"
Re:Backfired! (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you fire a rubber stamp?
Re:Backfired! (Score:4, Informative)
The warrant the judge signed was for Petty Theft, and "Computer Fraud with the intent to Harass".
The blogger is suing the City of Phoenix over it, which means the judge and the police will both be examined, if the case goes anywhere.
The alleged petty theft was for several officer's nameplates, which are actually copies made at a local trophy shop. Etched black lettering on a silver 2x8" plaque, Times New Roman, 48pt for the title, 72pt bold for the name.
Re:Backfired! (Score:5, Informative)
You forgot the other option: There wasn't any warrant issued. I happened to "see" a raid executed several years ago without a warrant (in Dallas). When we asked to see it, the cop in charge said,"Don't worry, we'll have one by the time we get to the jail." I spent 4 days in a holding cell before being released with all charges dropped against me. My friend wound up in court with a disbelieving judge catching the arresting cops in lies, and who dismissed the whole case after 15 min of police testimony. It still cost my friend several months and thousands of dollars for his lawyer to prepare a defense.
That absolutely killed ANY trust in the legal system (there is no JUSTICE in it).
The real question is (Score:3, Interesting)
How long before people understand the Streisand Effect??
This just seems like bullying(who started it and why is something else). Do cops not know of internet cafe's? freedom of speech? or are people just willfully ignorant of reality around them. Like the town that tossed out google streetview. If I close my eyes the bad people can't see me cause i can't see them?
one day I hope humanity grows up? unfortunately I will have been long since dead.
Re:The real question is (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The real question is (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps it is too soon, but a search on Google news suggests that this story is getting little attention in news media.
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I think that has something to do with the media. They seem to be going down the road where they think something like this isn't news, isn't important, and nobody in America would care.
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Humanity will grow up and idiots like this guy will stop taunting people who can make their life a living hell...
I hope you are right. But I doubt it will happen anytime soon, as you have yet to figure it out yourself.
What the police were really after, (Score:5, Insightful)
Harassing a critic is just a bonus, what the police really wanted was the names of the internal informants so that they can be silenced.
No informants = No credible criticism.
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Which is why I have a battery powered wireless NAS that looks like a block of wood holding up my desk. The fact that it is made from a block of wood helps with the disguise.
My router logs are the only hint that it exists. but since logs don't show where physically something is hiding they won't ever find it.
And you know who they are *wink, wink*
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The problem is, when they see your collection of tinfoil hats, they'll split every molecule of your house in search of what you're hiding
We need to start passing laws... (Score:5, Insightful)
...to explicitly layout stronger civil and criminal penalties for abuse of office in the US.
Use of the office to start an unjustified war, death and 50 million dollars or 50% of your wealth whichever is greater.
Use of the office to murder, death and 50% of assets.
Use of the office to take bribes, death and repayment of any contracts lost by competing companies.
Use of the office to facilitate violence or cause violence against a person, 25 years to life.
Use of the office to intimidate, threaten or harass, 15 years.
Use of the office to deny someone their constitutional rights, 5 years.
Anyone want to help get this on the ballot in 50 states while we still have the populist fervor going?
Public servants need to be held to a higher standard because of the amount of power they have been given. If we continue allowing politicians and police to be above the law than we have lost our way as a people. We need to remake the laws so that this sort of thing carries penalties that these police officers and district attorneys will be forced to reckon with when they demonstrably are routinely operating as criminals with badges and warrants.
You missed one (Score:3, Insightful)
Using the office to put future generations into debt beyond reckoning should result in jail. Using the office to write laws to deprive them of their property (to include cash) for merely punitive matters should result in jail time.
I don't know why so many don't see their money being taken as a violation of their rights. It is the profit of your labor yet so many turn a blind eye to its taking and outright abusive spending.
Why should locals care? We let Congress run amok all the time so its not like the l
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I'm already starting to forget what life in America is supposed to be like. Please help me by indicating which of the following is appropriate:
A) Arrest the publisher, take all his property, and dump the body in the ocean.
or
B) File a libel suit and if it is determined that libel exists, receive compensation for damages.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What do we do to protect the police from rantings of ignorant bloggers who are pissed off because they got caught breaking the law in the past and can't except the results?
Two things can be done, start your own blog and sue the person in civil court.
Every fucking criminal on the planet says 'I'm innocent and this is police harrasment!!'
Innocents who are harassed say the same thing.
Falcon
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, the standard we hold schoolkids to is to either ignore the taunter or taunt him back. Do you think the police might be able to reach such level of maturity? Or are you seriously suggesting that "he called me names" is an acceptable reason to raid someone's house?
Seriously, grow a thicker skin. You're starting to sound like the musl
To quote a fellow slashdotter's sig: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:To quote a fellow slashdotter's sig: (Score:5, Insightful)
To quote another slashdotter's sig:
Please read 1984 before commenting on 1984.
Re:To quote a fellow slashdotter's sig: (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.alternativereel.com/includes/top-ten/display_review.php?id=00002 [alternativereel.com]
http://marchinred.com/BB1984.html [marchinred.com]
We should be glad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm wondering how long it will take to use pirating as an excuse to seize equipment for harassment purposes. The police get the records from the ISP, discovers their target has had a lot of torrent activity, and gets a warrant.
More (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More (Score:5, Insightful)
more than reported .. (Score:2)
"Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops
The link at the top of Badphoenixcops [blogspot.com] points to a video of cops cutting the wires to video cameras before they help themselves to the owners goods and money
"once the ca
Fortunately... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't live in a police sta%%%CARRIER DISCONNECT%%%
Well duh, none of us lives in a police station. Sheesh...
Dear Phoenix PD: (Score:2)
Enjoy your Streisand Effect.
grain of salt (Score:5, Interesting)
Second, this appears to be a simple domestic dispute. Guy gets a divorce and wife starts accusing him of what he says are false claims. Judge, probably just seeing that this couple can't stand each other, and probably does not want to waste time sorting out the truth, just drops the charges. Who knows who is telling the truth in such cases. I know people who have been accused of cutting other peoples phones off to harass them. I know for a fact that they didn't do it how can you prove it one way or another?
So what does this guy do. Start collecting 'tips' from persons inside the department and posting these accusations online. OK, that makes sense, you get slandered by unsubstantiated charges, so you go out and do the same? This is a good way to make friends with the police. Tell the world that one of them is a child molester, even though it may or may not be true. I telling you this is what I live for. Trying to do my job by helping two people that are too immature and uncivilized to get along with each other, I mean the police are required to investigate any reasonable charge, and then what do I get. My face plastered on the internet as a child molester. Oh yeah, that brightens my day.
Predictably this guy goes too far and gets himself in trouble and the police uses the excuse to take out a problem. Again, overkill, but so is calling a soon-to-be cop a child molester on the internet is not the way to go, especially when all the documentation is apparently yet to be delivered.
Arizona seems to have it's share of messed up policing, but there must be a better way to go about this than ranting on the internet with unsubstantiated claims.
Eugene, Oregon too... (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out the video. Some college kids from the UofO are out in the "Ken Kezzie Free Speech" plaza in Eugene protesting the spraying of pesticides and get harassed by the cops and the taserd.
I mean look at the kids out there, 18 or 19, doing one of the great things about this country and that is letting you're thoughts be voiced.
This is crazy!
Re:Eugene, Oregon too... (Score:5, Informative)
Cable modem... (Score:2, Funny)
Something tells me he hasn't heard of the mysterious black smoke.
Mature people (Score:2)
those police folks - aren't they?
One has to wonder how they react in a real emergency situation. One can feel very protected by this kind of police....
backups (Score:4, Insightful)
âoeThey broke into my safe and took the backups of my backups,â he said in a phone interview with Photography is Not a Crime on Wednesday.
Let us use this as an instructive moment: Always keep important backups at a seperate physical location.
Especially if we are dealing with information that important, powerful, or underhanded people may want destroyed.
Heapin' helpin' o' salt, folks. (Score:3, Interesting)
The guy was, at best, running an ongoing campaign of character assassination against certain Phoenix police officers. No crime there, although what he said may have been libelous. But if he was accusing police officers of breaking the law, then it is his duty as a citizen to present his evidence to whatever the local equivalent of the Internal Affairs Department is. If he was withholding that evidence, he was obstructing justice.
Bloggers aren't journalists. They don't have to live up to any standards of ethical journalism, and so they don't get protection for their sources. If that's what he's claiming, he's going to get a rude shock.
Bottom line is, we don't have all the facts. Phoenix isn't some podunk town. It's hard for me to imagine that both the cops and a judge in a large metropolitan area would do something this egregious.
Re: (Score:2)
And the smoke blowing begins.
Said the spider to the fly.
You seem to have confused
Re:Heapin' helpin' o' salt, folks. (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, the subpoena was so outrageous that the recipients published it, and the law enforcement authorities then "lost" their copy. For a document like that to go missing intentionally would be criminal on so many levels that I'm not sure where to start. It also means that the editors can try to justify their "act of civil disobedience" by saying that they knew that the justice department was crooked, and was likely to illegally destroy its own incriminating documentation (even when that documentation has been signed personally by judges), and that publication was the only way to ensure that the document used against them could be preserved for potential future legal investigation.
It certainly sounds crooked. It's not good when reading an online newspaper article about a potentially crooked policeman leads to a subpoena demanding that the newspaper give your IP address to the police department involved, so that they can investigate you as a potential trouble-maker.
Apparently, reading a newspaper article about police corruption can make you a legitimate target for police investigation these days. Goodbye freedom of the press, and goodbye the citizen's ability to read about the news on their PC in their own home without the police looking over their shoulder and monitoring what they're reading.
It'd seem that the editors probably realised that the subpoena was the bigger story, and that the Justice Department did too, which is presumably why someone there illegally destroyed or "relocated" the document.
I was also struck by the case listed where the parents of a mentally handicapped man asked for police help to remove him from a store, the police took him away and put him in a restraint chair, then the guy then mysteriously died from a massive methamphetamine overdose. It sounds like someone in that local police force is killing people and trying to make the deaths look like junkie deaths.
A Judge issued a warrant for this? (Score:2)
Wow, so let me get this right, he is in a lawsuit against the Phoenix PD for harassment, they seize the computers that contain the harassment evidence for 'unrelated' reasons; I wonder if this is more than retaliation, a quick sneak peak at his sources, evidence, etc...... talk about stacking the deck. I'll bet there will be goat.se or alter boy photos found somewhere on his system.
Not so obvious (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone worth their salt knows nothing is stored in the cable modem.
I don't know about the USA, but in France, all major ISPs provide their customers with "boxes" that can not only act as a modem/router/wireless access point, but also provide phone service over IP, IPTV, and sometimes include a hard drive for PVR functionality; mine can even act as a FTP server (that's an advertised functionality), with either the included hard drive or even a USB flash drive plugged into the box.
Anyone worth their salt knows that, right? Anyway, I don't expect the police to be fully aware of the latest advances in consumer hardware, so I don't think it's completely illegitimate for them to seize anything that looks related to computing equipement.
The blog in question (Score:3, Informative)
http://badphoenixcops.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Obviously the AZ police didn't like what this guy was publishing. I figure the more exposure it gets, the better.
He's lucky... (Score:4, Insightful)
Quote - Thought Police 1984 (your fav quote ?) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Critical of officials? (Score:4, Funny)
Phoenix? Minneapolis? It looks like its really all the same.
Greek names?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Then, they fight you. Then, you win. (Score:4, Insightful)
Gahndi won. India is free today. Some people have greater goals than their own self-preservation. That is the concept behind medals, and other forms of recognition. In fact, that is the concept behind serving one's country - in the military, or otherwise.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What do you want to bet his wife was right about the harassement to begin with ?
"Many of the reports she filed accused him of doing things when he was out of town....When he went to trial in May 2008, his charges were immediately dismissed because of lack of evidence"
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So if you read the article with any sense of fairness rather than biasing yourself against the police
You mean, if you read the article biasing yourself in favor of the police...
# ... he harassed SEVER
# He responds by not following the proper course of action and filing a police report, he instead, in his words:
So he began filing complaints with everybody from Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon down to Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris to no avail. He was eventually indicted for harassing his ex-wife.
# Read that again