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Cop snatches phone and smashes it (gets caught on video anyway)

Let's say that I give you a bowl of M&M's and tell you that one in 50 are filled with cyanide. Would you eat a couple of handfuls?
Is it my job to eat the M&M's? Am I given proper training to eat the M&M's? Am I properly trained on the "what if I eat a poisonous M&M" procedure? If it's my job to eat said M&M's then I do my job. Of course if the risk is so great that I cannot eat the M&M's in a proper manner than I'd just quit my job to eat cyanide laced M&M's.
 
Is it my job to eat the M&M's? Am I given proper training to eat the M&M's? Am I properly trained on the "what if I eat a poisonous M&M" procedure? If it's my job to eat said M&M's then I do my job. Of course if the risk is so great that I cannot eat the M&M's in a proper manner than I'd just quit my job to eat cyanide laced M&M's.

:) All good points. And in such an instance, you need to be trained on M&M procedure - because eating M&M's as a profession is dangerous.
 
Not a strawman. bud.

It is a strawman. You are demanding that someone defend an analogy as though it were not.



:shrug: the flip side would be if I were to declare that you were arguing instead that police officers never get put in danger from civilians, and demand that you prove that this was so. It's a stupid counter because it is built on an obvious strawman.
 
It is a strawman. You are demanding that someone defend an analogy as though it were not.



:shrug: the flip side would be if I were to declare that you were arguing instead that police officers never get put in danger from civilians, and demand that you prove that this was so. It's a stupid counter because it is built on an obvious strawman.




The analogy is wrong, you made a statistical claim, not an analogy.


Here are some other statistics.

You said there were around 700,000 cops I believe or law enforcment personel.

hmm....

In 2013, 27 law enforcement officers died from injuries incurred in the line of duty during felonious incidents, ALL incidents.

2 officers were fatally injured during traffic pursuits or stops.

FBI — Officers Feloniously Killed

So, "50 M&M's or 1 out of every thousand stops", is laughably innaccurate.

2, bro. 2 cops died out of lets say 500,000 for arguments sake, (not all are patrol officers right?), during traffic stops.



You claimed:

No. I am attempting to use an analogy to make a point. If the majority of times a cop pulls over a car on the highway, the guy in it won't decide to pull a gun to get out of a ticket... but he will one in a thousand times... and you conduct two thousand pull-overs over the course of your career, that means someone is going to try to kill you twice for the act of pulling them over for speeding.


hmmm..... I don't think so, bro.
 
The analogy is wrong, you made a statistical claim, not an analogy.

That is incorrect. I made an analogous claim that you are trying to pretend was a statistical one because it allows you to not have to answer the analogous point.

Here are some other statistics.

You said there were around 700,000 cops I believe or law enforcment personel.

I said no such thing. I demand you link where I gave that number or your entire argument is dismissed.


hmmm..... I don't think so, bro.

:) I think I rather know my own mind, bro. ;)
 
:) All good points. And in such an instance, you need to be trained on M&M procedure - because eating M&M's as a profession is dangerous.
Right I don't think anyone denies being a cop has it's share of dangers. But it's not as dangerous as many cops claim. And statistically it's not as dangerous as...

Drinking the blood of AIDS patients
Shark Trainer
Rabies Antidote Tester.

;)

My own personal issue is that when a cop messes up they're not held responsible. Making a cop responsible for their screw up takes a Herculean effort. Some people just don't like cops, I'm not actually one of them, despite what my posting history might imply. As a libertarian I want government agents held to a standard. Throwing destroying private property and insisting that their actions in public should not be recorded makes me all the more suspicious of them.
 
well, what would you suggest to end this militarization of police, and the excessive use of force problem that we see almost DAILY, these days?


And don't blame the military mindset on those opposing the military mindset, it came from the wars on terror/drugs, and the 1033 program. It came from the recruitment videos, and the "going into battle mindset". it didn't come from the people they are sworn to protect.

I don't have a simply answer for you. The answer is found in how you find a way for ordinary citizens to start respecting public institutions once again. If citizens don't respect those who work on their behalf, then you're not going to change how they view citizens. I've never had a single problem with a police officer and I've had several interactions with them both when working and in my personal life. They've always returned my respect with respect. If they ask me a question, I don't immediately get all butt hurt about my rights supposedly being abused or whip out my cellphone to video the discussion. Maybe the entitlement society is finally hitting the wall.

Simple solution - how about if everyone obeys the law and everyone chills.
 
After all the news the police force seems to be getting nervous. This guy should lose his pension.

Well he should be fired.

Watching the video, I saw assault, robbery, and destruction of property. Of course, there's obstruction of justice, and destroying evidence as well, and an obvious intent to violate the First Amendment.

Assuming that this is what it appears to be, this cop doesn't just need to be fired, or even lose his pension. These are criminal acts.

Malfeasance as well, since engaging in criminal acts goes against his purpose and duty of fighting crime.

He needs to be criminally prosecuted, and he needs to go to prison.
 
SO wait, I can't look at statistics and state that police work isn't as dangerous as we are led to believe without it being a blanket statement?


How what now? :lol:

You can do whatever you want. But if you claim that being a Walmart greeter is more dangerous than being a police officer, I'll just laugh at your idiocy.
 
Right I don't think anyone denies being a cop has it's share of dangers.

Reinoe: "Police work isn't that dangerous"

:shrug:

My bet would be that there is a wide disparity in relative danger. Being a cop in Mayberry probably involves less danger than being an ice-cream salesman. Being a cop in LA, probably not so much. That's another reason why the good Reverend's insistence on national statistics is somewhat problematic - he's attempting to argue for average situations when cops are responding to local conditions.


And statistically it's not as dangerous as...

Drinking the blood of AIDS patients
Shark Trainer
Rabies Antidote Tester.

;)

My own personal issue is that when a cop messes up they're not held responsible. Making a cop responsible for their screw up takes a Herculean effort. Some people just don't like cops, I'm not actually one of them, despite what my posting history might imply. As a libertarian I want government agents held to a standard. Throwing destroying private property and insisting that their actions in public should not be recorded makes me all the more suspicious of them.

:shrug: I would concur with all of that. :)
 
That solution seems to be awfully cumbersome on at least two counts.

1) We could choose to only record the actions of only some government employees.
For example
We could instead use some sort of cost/benefit analysis to determine which government employees are worth the trouble of recording.
Certainly with many government employees we already have a sufficient "paper trail" in the logs of their computer usage and what-have-you. For many other government employees the probability of their actions ever being worth the effort of viewing may be essentially nil.

We could just take a vote at the relevant levels of govt as to which employees we'd like to have recorded.
A community could have any number of reasons for wanting to have some government employees recorded that do not apply to all government employees.

We are not restricted to recording ALL government employees.
Recording all government employees is one of the things which makes your proposed solution seem impractical, inefficient, and inordinate.

2) Additionally, shipping the jillions of video logs around would be a great waste of effort and bandwidth.
It would be better to handle the records just as we currently handle video and other records--store them and let them be accessed as necessary.
CNN doesn't really want forty hours a week of officer Bob filling out paperwork, attending meetings, writing traffic tickets, etc.
No one else really does either.
All that's wanted is man-bite-dog stuff.

The solution you propose is both unnecessary and unwanted.
We should probably go with a system where the recordings of some government employees were merely stored and available for review as ReverendHellh0und suggested up thread.

Ftr, I think this is already how the recording of government employees is handled, fwiw.


To be fair, they made a few reality tv shows about jackasses getting arrested. I do not blame you one bit for seldom seeing the shows though.
Only watched 'em when my kin were in 'em. ; )

Crooks being regular jackasses about getting arrested is kind of dog-bites-man territory.


You may be relieved to find out that neither Johnny nor Jill have any such protection or power (with the possible exception of some minors).
Bodycam footage as well as dashcam footage and any other regular surveillance footage is covered under the FOIA just like any other record.


Obviously, your mileage may vary from the reasonable opinions expressed above.

Firstly - it's not my solution or claim. I was referencing another poster who claimed that all government employees who deal with the public are routinely taped during their work day. I called bull**** on that claim.

Secondly - any government originating taping of police interaction with a suspect who is charged will not readily be made available to the media - it will be subject to court proceedings and will also be subject to privacy legislation.

My original point, and basically my only point here, is that nobody in their right mind would voluntarily train for and apply for a position as a police officer in today's political/social climate. The constant scrutiny and second guessing is just not worth the aggravation.
 
I'm not convinced we can dismiss this one under the guise of network news motivations.

I get that in the course of police action one cannot interfere, but at a reasonable distance while *out in public* the Police have no expectation of privacy where they can demand to not be filmed. At the same time what the officer did do was destruction of private property and
arguably assault (the effort to grab the phone, again... arguably.)

I do not think as a society we can tolerate officers who look at their activity as being above the law.

That was assault. There is no “arguably” about it. Robbery as well. The use of physical force to deprive a person of her rightful property.
 
I can think of a couple of possible reasons why photography could be a threat. For example, if we caught you repeatedly filming how we moved through a city overseas, we knew that you were collecting against us for TTP purposes, and so not only did we take your camera, we took you and let you sit down with an interrogator and explain yourself. Additionally, there is such a thing as LE Sensitive Information, which does need to be protected.

The 10 second clip absolutely looks like he's in the wrong. My point is simply that we don't have all the relevant data, some of which may radically change how we view this situation. That is why I also point out that at this point, most of America was convinced that the guy in Ferguson was in the Hands Up Don't Shoot position, whereas now we know that those witnesses were lying.

Lying because they were mad that a cop shot a guy who was (apparently, the evidence says) in the act of violently assaulting him, having just committed a violent crime to which the officer was responding. Because there is a subset of our populace to whom cops are always in the wrong, and de facto The Enemy. And they will jump on or - in some cases - exaggerate to the point of fabrication any story that feeds that narrative.

While I agree that the lady may have very well broken the law with her filming as there is no way to tell from the short video. But let's just say for the sake of the argument that she did break some law. What right did that cop have to be judge and jury and come up with the punishment of destroying her personal property. That is my problem with this. I have never seen or heard of a law that gives cops that authority. And if there is not a law that grants him that then he should face the same penalties as if joe citizen broke did that to Jane citizen. I also believe that due to the authority given law officers and the fact that he has shown he does not respect that authority he should lose his job. With authority comes responsibility.
 
The Ferguson example hinged on limited information that became immediately available. So does this one. :shrug: I agree that it looks like it was wrong and abusive of the cop, I just also can imagine mitigating circumstances, and think we should wait to see if those are correct before we try to shoehorn this into some kind of national narrative about police.
If there are mitigating circumstances... and there could be, but I'm doubtful... it's going to be a steep road to climb to justify it.
 
That is incorrect. I made an analogous claim that you are trying to pretend was a statistical one because it allows you to not have to answer the analogous point.



I said no such thing. I demand you link where I gave that number or your entire argument is dismissed.




:) I think I rather know my own mind, bro. ;)



How is it analogous? It's not even that.


You tried to make the job sound far more dangeous than reality.
 
You can do whatever you want. But if you claim that being a Walmart greeter is more dangerous than being a police officer, I'll just laugh at your idiocy.



I never claimed this, what i was pointing out is statistically police work isnt dangerous. So any (idiocy) is all you, should any exist.
 
I don't have a simply answer for you. The answer is found in how you find a way for ordinary citizens to start respecting public institutions once again. If citizens don't respect those who work on their behalf, then you're not going to change how they view citizens.

That street runs both ways. It's a mistake to assume that any distrust and lack of respect between police and the community is caused by a few videos. They don't resonate with a public that otherwise has good relationships with their local police. They DO resonate and provoke backlash when those videos confirm what people already know from their own interactions with police. And I'm self aware enough that I know my own interactions as a professional white person living in the prosperous suburbs and only interacting with the police in fairly innocuous circumstances like at a ball game that my experiences are probably entirely different in kind and substance from those who live in the inner cities, and who are poor and often minority, and who are often presumed guilty, while I'm virtually always assumed to be innocent.

I've never had a single problem with a police officer and I've had several interactions with them both when working and in my personal life. They've always returned my respect with respect. If they ask me a question, I don't immediately get all butt hurt about my rights supposedly being abused or whip out my cellphone to video the discussion. Maybe the entitlement society is finally hitting the wall.

Same here for the most part, and I think police like everyone else - clerks, waiters, garbage men, etc. - should be treated with common courtesy. It's how civil society is expected to operate, police or not. But the police aren't in fact entitled to courtesy or respect as a condition for not mistreating those they serve. If some guy comes up to you and "disrespects" you, and you take his phone and smash it on the ground, you get arrested and maybe go to jail overnight.

Simple solution - how about if everyone obeys the law and everyone chills.

That's why when people who ARE obeying the law, like this woman, have their property destroyed by those paid to enforce the law, it's entirely appropriate to criticize the police for it and hold them accountable - enforce negative consequences - for breaking the laws they're sworn to uphold.
 
The whole notion the people must cater to the police is absurd.

We dont work for them.
 
Watch: LAPD deputy snatches woman's cellphone - One News Page VIDEO

More over the top actions by police who somehow believe they are above the law.

Note: The way she's holding the device and the loudness of the smash on the ground leads me to suspect it wasn't a cell phone, but as Today as reported a "camera".


That cop was out of line, imo. That said, there's an app created for just such situations called "MobileJustice" that automatically sends the video to the ACLU. But it also locates other MobileJustice app users in the area so they can record the police actions, too.


ACLU of Oregon's Mobile Justice | ACLU of Oregon


Interesting that the woman filming was herself being filmed.
 
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That street runs both ways. It's a mistake to assume that any distrust and lack of respect between police and the community is caused by a few videos. They don't resonate with a public that otherwise has good relationships with their local police. They DO resonate and provoke backlash when those videos confirm what people already know from their own interactions with police. And I'm self aware enough that I know my own interactions as a professional white person living in the prosperous suburbs and only interacting with the police in fairly innocuous circumstances like at a ball game that my experiences are probably entirely different in kind and substance from those who live in the inner cities, and who are poor and often minority, and who are often presumed guilty, while I'm virtually always assumed to be innocent.



Same here for the most part, and I think police like everyone else - clerks, waiters, garbage men, etc. - should be treated with common courtesy. It's how civil society is expected to operate, police or not. But the police aren't in fact entitled to courtesy or respect as a condition for not mistreating those they serve. If some guy comes up to you and "disrespects" you, and you take his phone and smash it on the ground, you get arrested and maybe go to jail overnight.



That's why when people who ARE obeying the law, like this woman, have their property destroyed by those paid to enforce the law, it's entirely appropriate to criticize the police for it and hold them accountable - enforce negative consequences - for breaking the laws they're sworn to uphold.

We generally don't disagree. However, I don't come from an expectation that police are unreasonably or unnecessarily violent with members of the public just for the fun of it. When an officer becomes unreasonably or unnecessarily violent, I expect him/her to be handled accordingly through internal discipline or through the criminal or civil law. However, I also come from an expectation that the vast majority of the time the police act reasonably and necessarily when interacting with members of the public.

Where I strongly disagree with your comments is your apparent assumption that only those who are white and affluent have good relationships with police and that those who reside in inner city neighbourhoods and are minorities naturally have bad/disrespectful/distrustful relationships with police. In my view, the vast majority of minorities in inner city neighbourhoods have very good relationships with the police because in many cases they rely on the police for their safety and a semblance of normalcy in their neighbourhoods. Without them, they know they'd be living under the control of criminals and gangs. Good, honest, respectful people are in the vast majority in pretty much every neighbourhood.
 
So than she should have been arrested if she was interfering with an arrest and had her day in court. What legal authority does the police officer have to find her guilty and the punishment is he gets to break her camera. Seems to me that if she was breaking the law the footage would be used as evidence against her. Probably shouldn't have smashed it in that case.

But to be honest I have never seen the law that allows the cop to determine guilt right there in the spot.

Again....proximity is the key here....Don't want that to happen? I'd suggest you don't make yourself a pest by trying to capture your footage so close to what is happening.
 
That cop was out of line, imo. That said, there's an app created for just such situations called "MobileJustice" that automatically sends the video to the ACLU. But it also locates other MobileJustice app users in the area so they can record the police actions, too.


ACLU of Oregon's Mobile Justice | ACLU of Oregon


Interesting that the woman filming was herself being filmed.

:lamo: thanks for that one....now that's funny right there...only thing better is if you'd have said once engaged with the app an ACLU liberal parachutes directly to the scene....hahahahaha
 
How is it analogous? It's not even that.

He said that interacting with X is not dangerous because most of X are not dangerous. I pointed out that, when you interact with large numbers of X, the fact that only a small percentage of them are dangerous still makes it dangerous.

You tried to make the job sound far more dangeous than reality.

No, I grabbed a quick analogy. You, however, are attempting to make a statistical argument, and are attempting to apply national averages to local conditions to make the job sound significantly less dangerous than it really is.
 
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