NYPD demands Google Waze stop telling us where the cops are

boing
21

I don’t agree at all. Ideally laws are enforced every time. We shouldn’t be happy that only some murderers are caught. I can’t see how it’s good that laws are enforced essentially at random. That does all kinds of bad things. It covers up racism by giving police a plausible excuse. It allows us to hide how draconian our laws are by only inflicting their punishment on a few people. It allows us to keep laws on the books that people actually don’t broadly agree with (and thus shouldn’t be laws in a democracy).

Enforcement should be compassionate by design, not faux-compassionate by mistake.

I don’t feel like my civil liberties are infringed on when the government unexpectedly inspects a meat packing plant to check for listeria. It communicates that the plant had better be on top of the listeria thing all the time because you never know when you might be tested. When they are used to target racial minorities, they basically communicate to the racial minorities the same thing: you better not be black, because you never know when we might check.

Trying to get people to be mindful of listeria: good.
Trying to get people to be afraid because of the colour of their skin: abhorrent.

The system of random checks is an effective system for accomplishing both.

5 Likes
22

Except they aren’t but painting legal activity as illegal isn’t anything new for the NYPD.

Citation needed. But seriously, encounters with the police are risky business. People would be well advised to avoid all interaction with police.

5 Likes
23

My experiences in Australia haven’t been that the police are quite so lax, but they definitely don’t have time to do random vehicle inspections. Police have a quota of RBTs to carry out, and are so under the pump that they have to make up figures just to meet their targets.

24

Be careful what you wish for.

Three Felonies a Day: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594032556/

1 Like
25

We don’t live in an ideal world. But the ideal we should strive for is the one where laws aren’t dumb as hell, draconion, implements of fascism, etc.

Three Felonies a Day is not a lawful society, it’s a lawless one. The entire population is free only upon the good graces of the police who choose not to enforce the law against them.

1 Like
26

Surprise and fear! And nice red blue uniforms…

6 Likes
27

Separate from any issues of the inequality of enforcement, random spot checks have a cost. I’m not primarily concerned with the monetary cost of the act of enforcing laws, but there are simple time and stress costs of being stopped and the nonzero risks of something going wrong in the stop. Is there any data that shows that random spot checks are the best for a nearly universal activity like transportation, or is it possible that the costs are higher than the savings?

2 Likes
28

“may be engaging in criminal conduct”

IANAL, but “may be” is logically the same thing as “may not be”, it just depends on which direction you’re trying to lead the witness. And prior restraint of speech which may not be criminal conduct, well officer, I have an amendment here for you.

2 Likes
29

tumblr_pd8ziwao6q1qfu7a3o1_540
tumblr_pd8ziwao6q1qfu7a3o1_540.jpeg540×662 58.4 KB

7 Likes
30

Well, since we don’t live in an ideal world and the laws are “dumb, draconian, and implements of fascism”, then we shouldn’t be “ideally, enforcing those laws every time.”

31

Secret cops in secret locations waiting for anyone to pass-by so that the NY Stasi Dpt can assist you in the involuntary forfeiture of your “civil” assets.

I say it’s well past time to reinstitute the stake as the primary punishment mechanism for cops pining for the establishment of fascism in America.

32

If I told you that independent meat packing plants are “randomly” selected for inspection at far higher rates than big corporate plants, would you be surprised? Ultimately the problem is that when the authorities are afforded leeway in how they conduct surveillance/enforcement, they will conduct it in a discriminatory way. It’s easy enough to say “authorities should have the flexibility to use unpredictable spot checks, and they shouldn’t discriminate”. But that’s wishful thinking: they simply can’t be trusted to do such enforcement fairly.

In practice, this means that we should organize to resist enforcement by the authorities in general, because it’s not a benign social force. Sure, in theory that speed trap is just trying to make the roads safer, but actually we all know it’s a pretext for pulling over minorities and hippies, so we should help neutralize it.

4 Likes
33

“Zero tolerance” rightfully has a bad reputation. Context matters.

4 Likes
34

gang%20warning
gang warning.jpg640×853 109 KB

9 Likes
35

I don’t agree at all. Ideally laws are enforced every time.

I would be bankrupt if I had to pay a fine for every traffic law I’ve broken. Yet I’ve never caused an accident or hurt anyone. Enforcing those laws every time would create an injustice.

We shouldn’t be happy that only some murderers are caught.

Not all crimes involve victims. Yes, it’s bad that not all murderers are caught, but that said, there may be some murders we prefer not to solve, like the one that puts a battered wife in prison for defending herself just because the prosecutor can convince a jury it was premeditated.

I can’t see how it’s good that laws are enforced essentially at random.

I can’t see that it’s possible not to enforce laws at random when imperfect humans are involved. Unless you have some totalitarian panopticon surveillance state, you’re not going to be able to catch every crime.

It covers up racism by giving police a plausible excuse.

This is a racist police issue, not an enforcement issue.

It allows us to hide how draconian our laws are by only inflicting their punishment on a few people.

So we should change bad the laws, not enforce them more.

It allows us to keep laws on the books that people actually don’t broadly agree with (and thus shouldn’t be laws in a democracy).

Again, change the laws, don’t over-enforce them to try to create a greater injustice to spur change. Innocent people will get hurt in the meantime and it’s possible that greater enforcement won’t spur that change.

Enforcement should be compassionate by design, not faux-compassionate by mistake.

I’ll take a mistake that yields justice over an intention that yields injustice.

2 Likes
36

I agree.

I’d see it coupled with an option to always route around checkpoints.

Could be fun though for a few friends or frat to all flag the same spot as a checkpoint and see the hilarity ensue.

37

Isn’t it the waze users (not waze) that tells us where the cops are?

2 Likes
38

red spinning light! red spinning light! red spinning light! red spinning light!

1 Like
39

That’s good. Hopefully, “upcoming” means “actually intended”. Cops, you see. :smiling_imp:

That’s the bridge between “mindless conviction” and “true justice”.

1 Like
40

Apparently I’m taking all comers here, so I’m not going to try to respond to everything everyone said. It seems a lot of people think that when I say that the ideal is that all laws are always enforced that I want to live in a police state that makes that possible. Which I guess I can see from the English words I used.

I was responding to the idea that laws not being sporadically enforced is a feature of the system rather than a bug. That is, it’s a good thing we utilize to achieve justice rather than a bad thing we have to work around to achieve justice.

What I guess I should say is that laws ought to be written so that it isn’t unjust to enforce the law, despite knowing it won’t always be enforced. Right now what we do is pass laws that are unjust to enforce and then say, “Well, it’s okay, it’s not like they’ll actually be enforced.” Basically I’m siding with Big Boi:

It’s shitty like Ricky Stratton got a million bucks
My cousin Ricky Walker got ten years doing Fed time
On a first offense drug bust, fuck the Holice
That’s if ya racist or ya crooked
Arrest me for this dope I didn’t weight it up or cook it
You gotta charge the world cause over a million people took it

It is unfair that some people are charged with doing something and other people are not charged with doing the same thing. Unfairness isn’t a feature of justice. It’s a bad thing we need to work around, and the work around that people try is to make the punishment be the harm divided by the odds of getting caught. But then no one actually buys into the rightness or fairness of the law and you end up with a situation like speeding where the majority of people don’t think it’s right that the law be enforced and yet the democratic society persists in having the law.

We ought to live in a world where we don’t think it’s unjust to enforce the law. I don’t think that is broadly unachieveable.

A quick note about “zero tolerance” though, because that was mentioned - zero tolerance is a policy of having severe punishments, not a policy of catching people doing things. Declaring “zero tolerance” doesn’t magically allow anyone to catch offenses they wouldn’t have otherwise caught, it means apply maximum punishments without thinking. I am in favour of dramatically lower penalties for pretty well all crimes and nearly all other kinds of offenses committed by humans.

4 Likes