Cops raze art installation they thought was illicit cannabis farm

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/07/12/cops-raze-art-installation-the.html

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Are the police participants or vandals? Where does the installation end? Ce n’est pas un champ de chanvre.

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What were they smoking?

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“a simple sign would have helped.”

A simple call to the property owner or any sort of investigative action would have helped too. Way to put the onus on the private citizen who was doing nothing wrong you thug.

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I can’t help but imagine that line being delivered by Jean Reno, Jean Paul Belmondo, Vincent Cassel or Thierry Godard in a world weary, slightly hurt manner; with a fine Gallic shrug, of course.

(Appalling French courtesy of Google Translate).

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The definition of stupid.

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Eh… I’m sure the police could have been more diligent in investigating the circumstances but generally, one does not do police work by calling the suspects to preemptively ask whether they are committing a crime or not. The most common scenario they encounter is people illicitly growing pot. And destroying evidence if they feel like they might get spiked.

Didn’t the cops basically destroy the evidence themselves anyway?

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Uh, yeah, except that this “evidence” was “hidden” at

That would be a very strange place to hide your destroy-if-the-fuzz-gets-wise secret pot farm, and it seems that the police “found out” about the farm by seeing it. they could’ve just stood there until they got confirmation of what it was…

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“Attention Police: Art project, not Pot farm.”

Hmm, I wonder if that would work for other policing issues. Maybe a T-shirt:
Attention Police: Art project, not Black.

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It was performance art by the police.

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investigating crimes is someone else’s job, because it’s a lot easier to just punish people who have dared to confuse their betters.

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IMO good art is escalation. Unfortunately for art, cops are trained to respond to that, with violence.

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You are aware that questioning suspects is a thing? No one is suggesting that they should have just taken the property owner without double-checking, but yes, questioning the property owner should have been one of the things that they did.

Edited to finish changing the tense of the last sentence.

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le sot! le imbecile!

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Cops can read? The sign would have to be a pictograph at a minimum.

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Like when they storm a private adult masquerade, see an “armed” cosplay joker mid sex act, and shoot both he and his harley quinn too, for good measure, when they do not comply?. Because that happened the other day too.

Too many guns. Way way too many guns. Someone should disarm that gang.

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“Ist das Kunst oder kann das weg?”

Reminds me of the odd Beuys installation that got accidentally destroyed every now and then. Although it was usually the cleaning lady that hadn’t been briefed.

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“When I hear the world, “Culture”, I release the safety on my Browning!”

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It’s clearly either commercial or municipal property which means there is some sort of tenant. You don’t have to call the property owner and ask, “are you growing pot on your property,” but you could easily make some sort of inquiry about a complaint, code violation, or something innocuous about tenant information and judge their reaction. Plus it’s not too difficult to stick a cop by the property to make sure no one destroys evidence.

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