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Suspect Freed After Exposing Cop's Facebook Status
longacre writes "A man on trial in New York for possession of a weapon has been acquitted after subpoenaing his arresting officer's Facebook and MySpace accounts. His defense: Officer Vaughan Ettienne's MySpace 'mood' was set to 'devious' on the day of the arrest, and one day a few weeks before the trial, his Facebook status read 'Vaughan is watching "Training Day" to brush up on proper police procedure.' From the article: '"You have your Internet persona, and you have what you actually do on the street," Officer Ettienne said on Tuesday. "What you say on the Internet is all bravado talk, like what you say in a locker room." Except that trash talk in locker rooms almost never winds up preserved on a digital server somewhere, available for subpoena.'"
<NelsonMuntz>"HA-ha! Stupid Cop is Stupid!"</NelsonMuntz>
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Due to the fact that it was made as a public announcement on a publicly viewable board, it looses the "locker room talk" argument. Officer Ettiene admitted to bias in his police work and judgement. Training Day is a prime example of extremely poor police work, judgement, and ethics; needless to say outright criminality. By not sending a message to this officer, we silently condone him. An officer that exhibits bias cannot be trusted to fairly and impartially enforce the law and has therefore abused the public trust put in him. Officer Ettiene showed incredibly poor judgement and will most likely loose his job for it.
Yeah. Personally, I just wonder what his Fark or 4Chan handle is.
(and it's lose, goddamn you! Loses the locker room talk, loses his job. Loose is what you do to the hounds)
Police are there to enforce the law. Not interpret it.
Most of us know police only when they meet them in a bad situation and all too often the asshole cops are the ones to be the most vocal. We rarely see the cop that lets small infractions slide.
We rarely see the cop that even enforces small infractions without making them a big deal. Part of their training is supposed to include not escalating a situation into violence.
That little yellow square is not a posted speed limit, it is simply a recommended speed. Therefore, not going 45 is in fact, not a violation. On the other hand, traffic cops are given the right to cite people based on their judgement so even going 50 in a 50 speed limited zone could lead to a speeding infraction.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
Go to court a few times and you'll realize something interesting... for a lot of cases with the same charges, the officer's story is exactly the same, only with a few details changed to make it applicable to the particular defendant. Someone booked for DUI will always be slurring their speech, staggering, have bloodshot eyes, etc. Someone booked for resisting arrest will always have been waving his arms and cursing, etc. This isn't because all the offenses are the same. It's because the officer's testimony has no relation to the truth. He's simply telling the story that gets a conviction.
The term is "testilie".
That may not mean what you seem to be implying. It could mean they really didn't have anything to arrest him on. More likely it means there were so many different possible charges they didn't know where to start. In those cases they usually just kind of pick the most egregious thing and let the DA draw up the complete list once the suspect is in custody.
The alleged drunk driver refused a breathalyzer test at the time, which some people consider an admission of guilt.
Not to take away from your point, but according to the Chicago Sun-Times report, the driver requested a breathalyzer test on the scene, but the officer claimed he didn't have a breathalyzer device in his squad car. The driver only refused the test later, at the police station.
Exactly how many laws are on the books in the state where you live?
20,000?
50,000?
What about federal laws?
Does anyone honestly know?
The point is, that there are so many laws on the book, it is impossible to not be guilty of one of them. And also given the fact that a vast majority of them are punctuated with discretionary conditions in them, such as "what an average person would believe" or "Probable Cause" or "Credible Suspicion", etc., who is to say definitively? Afterall, the officer has sole discretion in interpretation of these conditions.
I know this might only seem like a small consolation, but the fifth amendment was designed to protect against this very type of situation. One of the most invaluable things I have *ever* seen since being on the internet is this video by law professor James Duane: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865
He also gives half of his lecture time to a police officer in hope that he might discredit anything he has said. Pay close attention to him quoting a Supreme Court justice and what that man has to say about the fifth.
P.S. I make it a point of watching this video at least once a year. Every US citizen should do the same.
As a native American, I can say that "sir" is used very often. Its use has been declining for the last 50 years, but it's very common to address any stranger, younger or older, professional or not, as "sir" or "ma'am". Not addressing a police officer as "sir" would actually be according them a lower standard of respect than is common for the public at large.
That said, you're right. People here say the words, but they don't have any idea about civics. Freedom is a state of mind and way of thinking, but it's easier just to say the words, recite the Pledge, and go home feeling smugly superior.
In Southern United States- everyone who deserves respect is Sir, period. It starts when your tiny- everyone who is an adult is yes sir, no sir. It carries on throughout life. It actually proclaims a position LOWER for the person who is saying sir, and puts the other person in a place of authority. I *still* out of habit say yes mam , no mam to people especially if they are giving me a command and/or I am in some sort of trouble, even though I'm an adult and do not live in the southern US anymore. Though, I have to say once I moved out of the south I've gotten weird looks for it.
You mean like the criminals here in Atlanta who murdered* an old lady after lying to get a warrant to do a no-knock raid on her house?
(*Of course, they got the charges reduced to "voluntary manslaughter" and "violating civil rights" because they happened to be cops in addition to being criminals.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"Resisting Arrest" is one of the nastiest part of the law. Basically, if they wrongly arrest you - that is they attack you without provocation - then by trying to protect yourself even by raising your hands to stop yourself being hit you are still in the wrong - because you DARED to try and defend yourself against the state sponsored thug.
I the UK its a staple of police procedure; they look for some kid from the estates who has by necessity learnt to resolve shit with his fists, back him into a corner, and intimidate him until he either tries to run or push one of the pigs just to get away. Then he is cuffed and dragged off for resisting arrest/assaulting an officer despite the fact they had no reason to approach him in the first place. Magistrates just wave this through (I know, I used to work at a magistrates court) and the police hoover up easy arrests at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people in society. Sickening.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I remember when I lost my faith in the police. I was in third grade and a girl came in to tell us a story about her dad getting pulled over for speeding going 5 mph over while people were zipping past him. He asked the cop why he was the one pulled over and the cop literally said "you were easier to catch". From that moment, I have never trusted authority. It has been an excellent policy for me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't know about general social mores in the US, and perhaps calling people Sir is something that everyone does, but here in Australia nobody calls anybody Sir except for people employed in the service industry and some children to adults. If I was being bailed up by the police and I started calling them Sir, it'd probably make things worse. Either they'd think I was a spineless lick-spittle trying to suck up to them and so not worthy of ANY respect, or they'd think I was taking the piss and being a smartarse and so worthy of a hard time.
Depends on your location. Down South (where we're usually known for good manners, if anything) we do indeed call just about everyone Sir or Ma'am. It's just a form of respect. The guy at Arby's who asks if I want extra ketchup with my sandwich gets a "No, Sir." reply. The janitor at work who asks if there's anyone else in the bathroom after I leave gets a "No, Ma'am.". It's just the way we're brought up.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
You want to know the reason nobody trusts those with power, and why power seemingly corrupts? Easy. Power doesn't corrupt, the corrupt seek power, and society hands that power to those who brag the best (ie: are the least stable).
I think both are true. There was an experiment where they randomly divided the test subjects into "prisoners" and "guards", and those who became "guards" quickly started acting in a sadistic manner towards the "prisoners".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_Scare
GP might have been referring to that. Two were arrested and charged with FELONYS! That is ruin your life shit right there. Seems a trend, eh?
http://www.prisonexp.org/
Stanford University
iirc they had to shut it down early because it got out of hand
"It's the Law of the Universe, and I'm the sheriff." Slash-cott 2/10-2/17
I've had the same experience. The cop I know best personally was a high school jock, his dad was a cop, and he's a very conservative catholic as well as a die-hard Republican. Despite all that, and being a police officer in a very diverse population, you simply cannot goad him into being a stereotypical mean spirited cop, a racist, or any of the other mean stuff you'd normally expect.
I've gone on a few ride alongs with him and he's very much the public servant with both crime victims and when he's made arrests.
About the worst thing I ever saw him do was take down a door-door "salesman" who had been canvassing our neighborhood well after dark (the cop and his wife lived up the block at the time). The cop's wife called me and complained that some weird guy banged on her door and wouldn't go away. I told her to call her husband who was at work (we live in the precinct) and I'd watch for him outside. He knocked on more doors as he moved down the block, and when the cop got to our neighborhood the "salesman" ducked between houses when he saw the squad and ran to the back road. They cut him off and stopped him on the street. They asked him what he was doing and who he worked for and he refused to answer or provide ID (he wasn't wearing the usual embroidered sales polo and had no sales materials or flyers), so the salesman got handcuffed face down on the hood of the squad and they searched him and his wallet, ultimately finding a business contact that verified who he was (some lame window company) and then they let him go and urged him to make his sales pitches when it was light out and respect people who said no.
I was the only witness (a half block away) and his wife had felt threatened by the sales guy -- they easily could have tuned him up and thrown him in jail on a resisting beef and nobody would have cared, but he didn't do it.
Anyway, I agree -- the blanket accusation that all cops are assholes and power mad jerks isn't true from what I've seen. Some are kind of weapons geeks, but that doesn't make them mean.
I've seen footage from the Milgrom experiment, which is what you're referring to.
It isn't about people being "given permission to be sadistic" - it was about people caving into authority figures when told to do something that they didn't agree with. The vast majority of the people who were being told to give extreme shocks were actually arguing with the researcher and refusing several times to keep going, but eventually they gave in. Far from being sadistic (taking pleasure in inflicting pain), the participants were nearly hysterical in several instances, begging to not be made to continue shocking a person they thought was seriously hurt or dying, and in several cases nearly physically assaulted the researcher, or threatened violence.
What it demonstrated was that most people, when they are confronted with an authority figure telling them to do something they know is wrong but that they've already kind of done anyway, will eventually give in and do the wrong thing.
This isn't really relevant to the thread, but it irks me that the experiment was so incredibly poorly represented in your post as something that it absolutely wasn't.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.