Now children can play cops and robbers even when alone.
You have won the internets for today.
Carrying large amounts of cash is considered suspicious in this day and age, presumably because if you aren’t leaving a paper trail, you MUST be up to no good!
What’s that? You have a verifiable reason for having it? Pfft. Yeah, sure - junkie.
Pro-tip: don’t carry cash, use an offshore account.
It would be fun if someone would work out the statistical probabilities of getting robbed at gunpoint from a cop versus a non-cop (for a given location/skin colour/vehicle (type/age/colour/general condition)/racial makeup of a given area). I’m honestly not sure which is more likely.
BTW, what happens if a security van transporting cash is pulled over? Is such a service a good idea (insurance/cost of doing business) now that both cops and regular people are robbing at gunpoint?
I agree. If these people were really innocent, they wouldn’t object so much. Everyone knows only criminals try to argue their innocence. Our cops have a tough job to do, and we can’t expect them to just let everyone walk because they asked nicely!
…ack. I just sprained my sarcasm muscle.
Another option is using secret compartments. Because, as shown here, you always have something to hide.
Hmmm. They also spend hundreds of millions on brutality settlements.
There must be a flowchart for this somewhere.
Cavity search!
I didn’t say it was a perfect solution. But even if good enough for just 95% of times, still good enough.
The thing that blows my mind is, talking to cops I know personally they somehow manage to double-think themselves into thinking they are not stealing money from innocent people. They actually believe everyone is “a perp”.
I’m pretty sure that if you hide cash and a cop finds it, they will shoot you and charge your remaining family members for the cost of the bullets, dry cleaning (only the guilty spatter blood on a cop’s uniform) and six weeks of administrative leave.
If you don’t want to be hassled by the cops then you’d damn well better BE a cop or at least white, rich, and very powerful (Senator and/or CEO of a firm donating $1MM/year or more to a political party (Republican)).
Given that there are known “hot spots” in certain rural counties where police routinely “confiscate” cash and goods, at least in those areas I think it can safely be said that thefts by police far outnumbers thefts by everyone else, or they’d be having a hell of a crime-wave (and they aren’t).
I really don’t understand how this practice has been allowed to continue. If anything was a blatantly unconstitutional abuse of power, this is it. I mean, good gods, this country was founded in part to prevent exactly such abuses…
Those of us who are old enough to remember when America did have more safety from the legal system should be telling the young people in our lives that this kind of “legal” stealing was not always accepted as part of life. That said I realize that I see this through white eyes and I suspect it has always been worse for people of color. At least in the days of yore it was harder for the cops and other legal thieves to know who to bust. Now they know who and where they can get the best bang for their buck… or someone else’s buck.
Regardless kids/young people need to know that things have not always been so blatantly corrupt. Beyond telling kids they need to be aware of corrupt cops we need to give them suggestions on how to conduct their lives in ways that keep them safer. This might make a good topic of discussion especially if the insights of people of color were added into conversation.
But it’s only a few bad apples in the police that do this, obviously! /s
After a few years of indoctrination, cops come to see the population as divided into:
- Cop (includes immediate family) = Good!
- Not-cop = Danger!
Not-cops are further divided into:
- Perp = Evil!
- Vic = may possibly be not-evil (but still, never let your guard down!)
Everyone who is not-cop is a perp until proven otherwise.
Vic status lasts only for one incident at a time and can be revoked for any reason or no reason at all, at the whim of the grouchiest officer on the scene.
The crazy thing (as if that wasn’t crazy enough) was that I had multiple boingboing cavity-search stories to chose from.
GAH!
The only thing you should ever say to a cop when they hand your license back from a stop is “Thank you, have a nice day” as you drive away. If he continues to ask questions like “can I search your car” or “Do you have X?” only reply "No. Thank you."as you drive away. If they ask you to stay for a drug dog to show up, say “No. Thank you.” as you drive away.
Except that there have been cases where having a secret compartment was used as reason to seize the vehicle. You can’t win.
