Facebook Won't Take Down Undercover Cop Page In Australia 254
New submitter jaa101 writes "Facebook has refused a request from Australian police to take down a page with details of undercover police vehicles saying it cannot stop people taking photos in public places. The original story is paywalled and it doesn't give a link to the relevant page which seems to be here . This page for the state of Victoria has 12000 likes but a similar page for the state of Queensland has over 34000, and there are other Australian pages too."
Wait, the police always said... (Score:5, Funny)
...if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. Are they now saying that information can be misused by wrong-doers, and that privacy actually has a value?
Re:Wait, the police always said... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they now saying that information can be misused by wrong-doers, and that privacy actually has a value?
Almost. They're saying their privacy has value and your privacy doesn't. Although this is hardly the first time authority has claimed exemption from its own laws. While I'm sure there are earlier examples, it was Syrus who first said "Ad calamitatem quilibet rumor valet", which translated means "Every rumor is believed when directed against the unfortunate." That's how authority keeps people supporting it no matter how bad the justification is. I could be a police officer and right now get up, walk outside, and shoot the first person I see in the head. No reason whatsoever. But here's the thing: The human mind can't handle reasonless action. All actions require justification, and so we fill in what we don't know with what we expect. What we want.
In the end, the guy I just shot in the head, well... he deserved it. He must have done something. Why else would me, the nice police officer, have shot him?
And that's how they get you -- every time. Authority is always right because authority is always right because...
Undercover? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unmarked != undercover... or is that what Aussies call their unmarked cars?
Re:Undercover? (Score:4, Informative)
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Right. These are generally used for traffic enforcement. The real undercover cars are generally picked up short term from Rent-A-Wreck or whatever cheap local rental outfit you have there.
For unmarked traffic enforcement purposes, something that is popular and blends in is what they use. Speeders can't be bothered to check a list of plate numbers and knowing that the cops use a silver Honda Accord will just make them jump every time one of a few thousand identical cars goes by.
The real criminals are screw
They should be thankful (Score:3)
The list of people following the page is a good list of possible suspects. The police should be thankful of Facebook for doing their job for them.
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34,000 suspects is hardly an ideal situation.
UC-Car vs UC-Cop (Score:4, Interesting)
So far, two people have been caged for that.
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The article questions whether retaliation is a legitimate charge because it can o
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Seems it aint so easy to do the same in the YouEssay -- at least not with an actual officer: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/16/melissa-walthall-texas-undercover-cop-facebook-arrest_n_1970479.html [huffingtonpost.com]
The difference being those are actually undercover cops, not just unmarked cars (which the story is actually about), which usually contain uniformed police and are not terribly hard to identify (except in the dark).
Shoe on the other foot (Score:4, Insightful)
Sucks when the law works against you, doesn't it?
Good for facebook - teach these little hitlers that society works both ways. Being a part of the executive doesn't provide you with special privilege.
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Good for facebook - teach these little hitlers that society works both ways. Being a part of the executive doesn't provide you with special privilege.
You're complimenting Facebook... on protecting people's privacy? It's fitting that they're supporting others' loss of privacy... since they're the worst thing ever to happen to it.
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Police didn't seem to care the last time (Score:2)
Crims hung out on Flinders street outside the WTC police offices and wrote down the rego plates of cars going in and out. It created a bit of a stir but they are entitled to hang out in public places and write things down.
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:5, Insightful)
If the police are being outed undercover then don't whine when crime occurs.
If "Law Enforcement" didn't regularly abuse their sweeping privileges, maybe this wouldn't even have come up?
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Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:5, Funny)
If you find a single biped not abusing sweeping privileges, please check for a pulse...
My wife gave me Sweeping Privileges, but I declined. Also, I am not Marty Feldman.
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:5, Funny)
My g/f turned to me on the way to bed last week and told me that she would do anything that I wanted. I asked her to paint the living room and for some reason she got upset and she never did paint the living room. Women!!!
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:5, Insightful)
The thin blue line should be thinner around consensual crime, and around extracting cash from motorists by parking themselves on mis-zoned "speeding hotspots", and thicker around thefts and violent crime.
The police near us regularly set up speed traps along a six-lane, divided road zoned at 60kmh (it was zoned thus 20 years ago, when it was just a two-lane road, and hasn't been changed as the road's grown) or just before the onramp to the freeway, where the speed limit changes from 60kmh to 110kmh over a few hundred metres.
Meanwhile, when some friends of ours were robbed, the police just told them to call their insurance company, and check out the local pawn shops.
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen brother. The police say that this facebook page is compromising police safety? How do you think people realized it was an unmarked police car? Because it identified itself when it pulled someone over for a bullshit traffic violation. If it's so urgent that the car's identity remain unknown, perhaps they shouldn't blow the cover over meaningless bullshit.
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah this is usually the case, criminals already know what the make and model of the unmarked cars are.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are they using them to fight crime? (Score:2)
If they're anything like the US, they're not really using the cars for fighting crime, they're using them to capriciously enforce traffic laws to generate revenue. It's quite a clever scam over here. They keep the enforcement just low enough that people get comfortable driving at a speed that is safe, but exceeds the posted limit. As long as they don't get too greedy, they can pick off a driver here and there and soak them with fines.
If they enforced better, either people would wise up and stick to the l
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"If the police are being outed undercover then don't whine when crime occurs."
Can anyone really be that dense? No wonder he has to hide as an AC. If you are being burgled, don't whine about it. I did not out the police so that has nothing to do with my upset when a crime occurs. Plain traffic cars are in no way related to burglaries. etc. etc. etc. No point, he is obviously too stupid to work out how to tie his own shoe laces.
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think an unmarked police car's primary purpose is catching people "driving 5 mph over the speed limit" then you've been listening to too much reactionary "why don't they go after real criminals?!" and "don't they have anything better to do?!" arguments, usually heavily promoted by people who have been caught breaking the law for 'trivial' reasons like speeding.
Unmarked cars *are* used for "better things" than catching speeding motorists (even ones doing a mere 5 over - no cop stops you for 5 over, especially not an unmarked unit, you also get a 10% leeway to account for speedometer inaccuracy so the only time that "5 over" would be even close to something you could be pulled for would be in a 30 mph zone) - they're used primarily in the investigation and containment of stolen cars and for major crimes involving motor vehicles such as drugs, burglaries, etc.
They certainly do stop ordinary motorists if something flags you to them (impaired driving, excessive speed, tax/insurance issues etc) but they're not there to "catch you out" - you make it sound like it's some trick to make you break the law when you think they're not looking.
I know for a fact that Cheshire Police in the UK doesn't care if you know what unmarked cars they use - I have seen them personally show large, unobscured photographs of them with number plates showing clearly in public settings - because they're not designed to trick you, they're designed to be less visible than a panda car so they can tail suspect vehicles more easily, and your "5 over" driver is not such a motorist.
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Police reaction to speeding in the UK and US is often quite different. The last time I took the wheel in the UK I made a 220 km journey, over mostly M roads, in an hour and got no tickets despite passing several marked police cars. I presume it's because I always stayed left except to pass, was diligent about signaling and generally being polite in my driving behavior aside from the speed.
In contrast, a co-worker of mine received a ticket for 2 mph over the limit last year in the US.
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In the past month, I've passed three marked state trooper cars on the expressway while doing 80+ in a 55mph. None of them gave me a second look because I drive like you described above - proper signaling, staying the driving lane except to pass, etc
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Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed, one is a unit of distance and one is a unit of speed. To convert, you take the 220 km travel distance, and you divide it by the 1 hour that the poster claimed it took him to make this trip. 220 km / 1 hour = 220 kph.
That being said, I don't see how your comment relates to the post you replied to.
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Because the original post said the person had drive 220 km, not that they had driven at 220 km/h. Even British police will pull you over for doing twice the national speed limit - 70mph - regardless of how well you're driving.
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Respectfully, I suggest you try reading it a little more carefully:
"The last time I took the wheel in the UK I made a 220 km journey, over mostly M roads, in an hour"
If the journey took an hour and the distance was 220km then speed (well, mean speed over the distance) is 220km (which as you say is just under twice the speed limit on the M-roads he mentioned).
Personally I think that's a load of bollocks - you can get away with around 80mph on the motorway (limit is 70) without pissing off the police here in
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You are correct, I missed the "in an hour". And I agree: it's bollocks; no-one is going to let you do 140 mph on public roads in the UK.
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Wow.
Even with the post fully explained you are still incapable of getting it.
Just wow.
If the OP stated that he went 220 km (Distance) in an hour (Time). Which by the way he did.
Then as the GP pointed out 220km / 1 hour = an average speed of 220kph.
Math. It works.
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Police reaction to speeding in the UK and US is often quite different. The last time I took the wheel in the UK I made a 220 km journey, over mostly M roads, in an hour and got no tickets despite passing several marked police cars. I presume it's because I always stayed left except to pass, was diligent about signaling and generally being polite in my driving behavior aside from the speed.
In contrast, a co-worker of mine received a ticket for 2 mph over the limit last year in the US.
Are you sure it was police you passed and not Highways Agency traffic officers? Their vehicles are marked similarly, but the traffic officers are there to attend to accidents on the motorways, maintain traffic flow etc., and not to arrest people. If you passed the police whilst travelling at 137 mph (almost double the maximum speed limit in the UK), it is very unlikely that you'd be spared a trip to court.
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Are you sure it was police you passed and not Highways Agency traffic officers?
in my experience the traffic officers cars seem to have black and yellow checks whereas police have blue and yellow checks, as opposed to green and yellow checks for paramedic cars.
when coming up from behind the obilique angle makes it hard to tell the difference between the colours,
snake
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:4, Funny)
When I was stationed in Yuma Arizona back in the late70s, I got pulled over for doing ... get this.. 56mph in a 55mph zone.. Since I was in the military, I was able to keep my California license and plates. When the cop walked up to the car, all mirror shades and swagger, and asked me "Do you know how fast you were going?" and I said "Yes, under 55mph".. The guy says "I clocked you at 56..." .. I realized if I called him an idiot, things would not go well for me... So I simply said, "I'll see you in court, Officer".. THEN he looked at the address on my license, which said Yuma, Arizona, and saw my military ID, and realized he WOULD see me in court, since I was not a California tourist who would just pay the fine and skip driving all the way back to Arizona for court. And yes, the judge chewed this cop out quite nicely in open court... Was a joy to behold....
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:5, Informative)
But the fact of the matter is that the focus of the police should be on preventing crime, not on increasing revenue. A clearly marked police car is the most effective thing there is for ensuring that everyone around is driving safely. You stick a cop car in the road and people will drive quite carefully. Unmarked cars are specifically meant to not be observed by people so that they will commit crimes in front of them and thus get ticketed, crimes that potentially would not have been committed if the car had been clearly visible. To me, this is like making the argument that police officers shouldn't wear uniforms so that muggers will beat up people in front of them and get caught, rather than the beatings never happening in the first place. I understand and respect that you can make an argument both ways here, that there is the potential for the mugger to commit crimes later, etc. but in my personal opinion, it is of dubious morality to allow people to be injured today in hopes of avoiding injuring people tomorrow. When I'm being assaulted, I want to be able to look around and run to the nearest cop car, not to miss it 'cause it's unmarked.
Ultimately, my complaint is that the motorists who get "caught" by unmarked cars who wouldn't by marked cars are the 5-10 over motorists. If someone is truly driving dangerously, they're not going to stop because of a marked car. If you're driving 100 on the freeway, you can't slow down fast enough upon seeing a cop car to not get caught. If you're driving drunk, you can't magically sober up because you saw a cop. The people get caught by unmarked cars rather than marked ones are the 5 over motorists, so I fail to see how they provide sufficiently valuable service to outweigh the crimes they fail to prevent.
Anyways, it's all anecdotal, and there are arguments for both sides. YMMV.
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See, I think this could be due to observation bias and a self-selecting bias. You're probably a good, upstanding citizen and so are the majority of your family and friends. Therefore, the vast majority of the police experiences you, your family, your friends, and your co-workers have is traffic tickets. This doesn't mean there *aren't* dozens of police who do nothing but write traffic tickets to earn money for the PD all day every day, but I don't believe that's all the cops are actually doing.
Looking at th
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I just claimed that the "stealth" cars serve little purpose other than writing traffic tickets, and so outing them isn't going to somehow result in a rash of major crime.
Maybe you dont live in a place where causing gridlock (sitting in intersections on red), or red-light running is rampant. I do; every single time I pass the 15th and constitution intersection I see about 5 cars run the left-turn red light because they think its their turn.
Honestly, I think we need fleets of undercover cops, so that maybe we could curb some of the worst of the "road belongs to me" behavior. Ive even seen metro busses blocking intersections, I dont think youre aware of how bad it can be.
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Because people who "think its their turn" will magically think it isn't if an unmarked police car is in the vicinity?
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crimes that potentially would not have been committed if the car had been clearly visible.
That is true, however preventing traffic violations in a small area doesn't nessacerally mean reducing the overall rate of traffic violations or improving safety.
Whereas if someone gets caught they are hit with a fine and here in the UK (and from a quick check on wikipedia a number of other places too) they are are also hit with "points". If they do not know where they are being watched then the risk of being caught will hopefully serve to discourage them from repeating the offense whereever they are. IMO t
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:4, Insightful)
Additionally, due to inaccuracies in speedometers and poor reaction times (e.g. to changing slopes of hills), it's impossible to drive at or under 60 without having your speedo sitting more like 53-55, in which case you will in fact be driving dangerously by going significantly slower than the flow of traffic. The problem with speed limits/speeding is that speeding is not inherently dangerous (at reasonable speeds; certainly driving 150 is). Rather, moving at a significantly different speed than the flow of traffic is dangerous. I am in fact putting myself and those around me in more danger by driving at 60 if everyone around me is going 75 than by driving 75 with them. The answer certainly isn't to abolish speed limits, but the point is that strict enforcement of speed limits increases revenue, not safety.
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Parent claimed you don't get pulled over for 5 over, but in fact you certainly can where I live.
Certainly you can, but it is very rare and there IS a viable defense for that if you can show your spedometer is 5mph off-- because certainly you ARE allowed to drive with that degree of error and AFAIK you cannot be ticketed for such an error.
Additionally, due to inaccuracies in speedometers and poor reaction times (e.g. to changing slopes of hills), it's impossible to drive at or under 60 without having your speedo sitting more like 53-55
What, is your reaction time like 10 seconds? You cant see the hills coming? Your car does not just abruptly jump up 5 mph on a downhill unless it is a very severe grade, and even then if youre engine braking / riding the brake you should be able to hold one or two u
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you've really never heard of inaccurate speed cameras or insufficient training in how to use them?
it happens [smh.com.au]
A portion of NSW speed cameras have been installed by Poltech International, some of whose installed cameras gave wildly inaccurate readings in Victoria. ... .... ...
Some motorists claimed they had been booked doing speeds their vehicles were not capable of reaching
Last month, following checks of these claims, it emerged that three of the cameras were faulty.
The readings had led to fines and licence suspensions for some motorists.
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Not carrying proof of insurance is actually kind of a problem if you get into an accident. Do you really want to hear someone say "ill call you with my insurance details"?
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Do you really want to hear someone say "ill call you with my insurance details"
Around here that's what we do. All you need to do is give their rego number (and hopefully name/drivers license number) to your insurance company. It is an offense to drive a vehicle with no plates and you are required to carry your license. Anyway, if you had good insurance it wouldn't matter if the other person didn't. Just snap a photo of the accident scene (presuming they didn't do a runner) that shows the plate numbers and you're able to claim.
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If you dont get their details and are unable to find out who their provider is, at least around here it impacts your rates.
Not getting their details on the scene changes it from "their problem" to "your problem".
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I've been in two not-at-fault bingles (rear-ended while stopped at lights both times), and each time all I needed to give my insurance company was the rego of the other car and the driver's name. Conceded it made it easier having their full details, but I have never been asked who insures the other party.
A little helpful hint - if your insurer is good, and you get choice of repairer then you should make the claim through your insurer even if not at fault. It shouldn't have any effect on your premiums becaus
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You breaking the law in another way that the officer can see isn't an excuse.
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:5, Informative)
It's nice that you've completely ignored the article in question, so I'll try and clarify.
This article is about Australian unmarked police cars, whose only purpose pretty much is to pull over speeding cars.
Because any police car can pull over any car for a random alcohol or drug test, they don't need to be in an unmarked car or have reason (ie, impaired driving). They're legally entitled to do it to anyone, any time, if they are driving a car.
Because in Australia there are no tax/insurance issues, because that's covered by the road authority and police have no authority to even ask you about it.
Because in most states of Australia there is no 10% leeway any more, it's a fixed leeway. You can and do get fined for being 5km/h over the signed limit. I once got fined for being 5km/h over because the road change from a 60 zone to a 50 zone and the unmarked police car behind me thought I didn't adjust me speed fast enough.
In Australia the unmarked cars really are there to catch people speeding, it's their primary purpose.
So perhaps you should pay attention to the context of the story, especially when every other reason you've listed as a purpose for unmarked police cars do not exist in Australia.
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I do agree with you, though I do think my fine for not hitting the brakes after a sign change was a bit harsh.
You're supposed to adjust speed slowly to avoid increased danger. Everyone hitting the breaks at the 50 sign wouldn't be safer at all.
But the point is actually that the cops in such cars are out there to raise revenue.
I'm not complaining about any fines, I used to pay them and get on with life - I now live in the inner city and don't even own a car.
I'm saying these cars are pretty much exclusively f
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Why not brake gradually before the sign? Just because the limit changes at the sign doesn't mean you have to go at that speed right up until that point.
If there's a radar-equipped car on that stretch it is just even more prudent to do it that way, especially if there's a 10% tolerance on Australia's tickets.
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There is a fun one near where I am at the moment: it's an 80kmph highway. However, it's currently Canada's third season of the year: road repair.
Just on the leeside on the corner of a hill is a sudden drop do to 60 kmph...with 'Fines are doubled when workers are present"
That said, the sign marking the site of the speed change is far in advance of workers (so no worker safety issue), there have been no police cars trapping it, and no one is actually braking for it (s
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It's worth noting that signs are not always visible with sufficient distance to change speed before them.
The laws here state that you're supposed to have time after a change of limit sign to adjust speed before you can be fined.
In that case it was a suburban area that entered a shopping strip and the signs had recently been changed. It used to be 60 along the whole stretch.
The 50 sign was not visible until you were very close to it.
With speeding tickets here you are assumed at fault unless you can prove oth
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Because you shouldn't have to micro-manage your speed. It achieves nothing except:
a)training people to drive along spending 3/4 of their time looking out for speed limit changes and watching the dash, rather than watching the road; and
b) not to use their own judgement when choosing how fast to drive. This becomes important when the speed limit is, in fact, too fast ("I was under the limit, it must have been safe!").
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Because you shouldn't have to micro-manage your speed. It achieves nothing except:
a)training people to drive along spending 3/4 of their time looking out for speed limit changes and watching the dash, rather than watching the road; and
b) not to use their own judgement when choosing how fast to drive. This becomes important when the speed limit is, in fact, too fast ("I was under the limit, it must have been safe!").
If you can't drive safely while observing the speed limit for the road then you shouldn't be driving a car in the first place. It's hardy "micro-managing" to drive at the speed limit - it's called "driving a car on a public road".
Posted limits also have nothing to do with your own judgement regarding the safe speed to drive. That's irrelevant - the road conditions and local traffic all need to be considered by the driver in question. The posted limit doesn't excuse you for having an at-fault accident when d
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I can drive perfectly safely while observing the speed limit. "Observing the speed limit" will mean +/- 5-10km/h depending on road design, geography, other vehicles, pedestrians, animals, etc.
If you are going to try and argue that exceeding the posted limit by a single km/h has any meaningful impact on risk, then I'm just going to point out that makes you completely ineligible to h
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I can drive perfectly safely while observing the speed limit. "Observing the speed limit" will mean +/- 5-10km/h depending on road design, geography, other vehicles, pedestrians, animals, etc.
If you are going to try and argue that exceeding the posted limit by a single km/h has any meaningful impact on risk, then I'm just going to point out that makes you completely ineligible to have a discussion on the subject.
I'm not making that argument. If the enforcement of speed is draconian, then driving under the limit is just sensible to avoid tickets. In that case, "observing the speed limit" does not mean "+/- 5 kmh". In that case you're simply courting trouble if the police are as draconian as you say. In that case, they are treating the limit as a hard limit, so even 1 over is outside the conditions set out for the road, whether "common sense" applies or not.
Personally I think that is overly draconian, and doesn't rea
Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score:5, Informative)
I should actually add a little more to that and point out that I have seen (and also been subject to, but did not speed up) unmarked police cars tailgating on freeways in an attempt to make people speed up to just over the limit and pull them over.
That's not only fairly dangerous, but should say a little more about the intent of the cars when they resort to such tactics.
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If I were in the "fast lane" I would certainly speed up, and move out of the way. If that officer gave me a ticket, I would ask him for his car's unit number and would be at the courthouse that same day with my ticket in hand asking for a subpoena for his police car's video. In most states, a judge would frown upon an officer who endangered someone to issue a speeding ticket. California, and most other states, have a basic speed law providing you with some flexibility on speed limits for anything under 5
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If you don't break the law you can't get a ticket.
because speed cameras have never been found to be faulty, badly calibrated, or officers insufficiently trained in their use?
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If you don't break the law you can't get a ticket.
because speed cameras have never been found to be faulty, badly calibrated, or officers insufficiently trained in their use?
My point still stands. It might be a pain in the ass, but a ticket issued under such circumstances is invalid and you can have it dismissed in court. My wording was less verbose than necessary to handle all the edge cases.
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That's a mighty fine soapbox you've got there. I want to see you use it sometime where it matters:
"No, officer, you can't give me a ticket! I wasn't breaking any laws!"
(As folks seem to be fond of saying these days, good luck with that.)
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That's a mighty fine soapbox you've got there. I want to see you use it sometime where it matters:
"No, officer, you can't give me a ticket! I wasn't breaking any laws!"
(As folks seem to be fond of saying these days, good luck with that.)
Nice twisting of my argument. That's not what I said and you know it, but you don't have a valid argument to reply with so you've gone for something I didn't address.
If a cop is giving you an illegal ticket then you just take it at the time and then take it up in court. You don't argue with them.
If you're not doing anything to warrant the ticket in the first place you're unlikely to attract the ire of the cop in the first place, of course. If one of them does pull you over then you don't whine at them that
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Not a twist on any argument, just a jab at an ill-placed absolute statement that is obviously false.
You keep on with your bad self and keep fighting the good fight, or whatever the fuck it is that you're doing.
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If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
Speeding isn't a crime, it's a misdemeanour.
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If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
Speeding isn't a crime, it's a misdemeanour.
Figure of speech is figure of speech.
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The point - and complaint - is that this sort of draconian speed enforcement has nothing to do with road safety.
Shouldn't be a "crime" in the first place. Your choice of tyres or maintenance
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They certainly do stop ordinary motorists if something flags you to them (impaired driving, excessive speed, tax/insurance issues etc) but they're not there to "catch you out"...
That's really weird. In the US, if an unmarked police car tries to pull me over for any of those reasons, this only means one thing, and it means that it's a criminal trying to impersonate a cop.
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They certainly do stop ordinary motorists if something flags you to them (impaired driving, excessive speed, tax/insurance issues etc) but they're not there to "catch you out"...
That's really weird. In the US, if an unmarked police car tries to pull me over for any of those reasons, this only means one thing, and it means that it's a criminal trying to impersonate a cop.
That varies by state, but they absolutely can pull you over in many of them.
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I've had two separate friends who were ticketed for going less than 5 km/h over the limit. I was in the car for one of them. In that case, it took about 10-20 seconds to pass the cop car, meaning there was a speed differential of maybe a couple km per hour. That's hardly leaving a margin for inaccuracies. His reasoning was essentially that it is illegal to pass a cop, as if police spedometers are international standard for velocity, free of inaccuracies.
These are the cops that give the rest of them a bad na
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If you think an unmarked police car's primary purpose is catching people "driving 5 mph over the speed limit" then you've been listening to too much...
TFA is about Australia. In Australia (especially Victoria and NSW - can;t speak for other states) there is zero tolerance for speeding. 1km/h over the limit and you get a ticket. Google it, there are tons of stories about it, I've seen the tickets personally myself. A lot of the time the Highway Patrol (the cops dedicated purely to traffic infringements) use unmarked cars. They are mostly jerks, even regular cops hate them.
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Maybe that is the case there but here I see the most unmarked police cars in the FHP (Florida Highway Patrol), and they always get people for traffic violations. One thing that California does right, in my opinion, is case law considers it a speed trap to intentionally use unmarked cars for traffic enforcement. The ruling from the bench is that the purpose of law enforcement is to deter crime, and you cannot do that if no one knows you are there.
If you want to do a really good tail on someone, you can't u
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Jo ham is a fucking idiot. Just my personal estimation.
My username begins with a small letter and has an underscore in it. Just my personal estimation.
Also, I'm sorry about your speeding fine. Maybe take more care next time, eh? Log in too - more carelessness!
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since the sight of a cop car is a powerful deterrent
Bull. People regularly slow down at the sight of cop cars or traffic cameras, but speed right back up again once they know theyre past them. It doesnt deter anything, it just postpones it.
which serve no purpose other than to try to catch people for traffic violations
Oh the horror, cops going after folks for violating the law.
Frankly, I like police vehicles to be visible so that I can find them in the event of an emergency if I need help
...Im pretty sure there is a phone number you can dial to have a cop on the scene in around 5-10 minutes. Im pretty sure the chances of just "happening" to see a cop in that time are pretty low, at least based on my experience in and around DC (where one MIGHT
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Frankly, I like police vehicles to be visible so that I can find them in the event of an emergency if I need help.
Drug dealers have the same desire. For different reasons.
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except odometers only have to be accurate to within 10% for a car to be roadworthy
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Then show your car is inaccurate by that degree and get the ticket thrown out.
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better yet get the thing fixed and don't go over the speed limit?
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even if we ignore the fact that they're not actually doing anything wrong and therefore shouldn't be liable for anything - there's still the point of it wouldn't be possible to link any specific accident to the page.
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They should also be held liable when that police office gets killed or the suspect they are investigating commits a crime.
But only if the person who took the pictures was the murderer.
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These aren't fucking undercover. They're unmarked. And there's a huge fucking difference. And you're a fucking idiot.
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Its Australia dude. Nobody is going to go about shooting at unmarked cop cars here.
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They might get you under a "retaliation" law
http://rt.com/usa/news/texas-felony-police-facebook-508/ [rt.com]