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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.'"
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".
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'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.