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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.'"
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The persona you show in the locker room or internet is your real self, or at least a closer version of it than what you show on the streets when anyone else but the guy you're screwing with is watching. I've seen fine upstanding cops like this lie their asses off in court enough to believe that if he jokes that 'Training Day' is great training that he more than halfway actually believes it.
The suspect, Waters, is obviously not a great guy, but I'm not convinced I can trust anything a guy like Ettienne says either.
A couple days ago, there was an article in the local paper. Someone (college athlete) had been cited for DUI but the charges were dropped. Why? Well, the arresting officer's report claimed he was visibly drunk, couldn't stand, was falling over, etc. None of which was corroborated by his own video taping of the event.
The alleged drunk driver refused a breathalyzer test at the time, which some people consider an admission of guilt. Now, I don't know if he was drunk or not, but consider this: can a police officer who lies on his police report be trusted to accurately report the breathalyzer result? (Keep in mind there's no evidence, just a number he writes down.)
People are always keen to say "such and such" is just talk but the fact is the language we use about ourselves has a profound impact on our behavior.
That's about the same logic as the wingnuts who claim that video games lead to real-life violence.
It's just make-believe. People with proper psychological functioning can easily compartmentalize fantasy from reality.
Obviously it is not a private area. Strictly speaking, his information is on display and is fair game. I believe however that ideally speaking there would be some degree of respect for what is essentially a personalized space. Of course we hardly live in an ideal world.
I was waiting patiently outside of a coffee shop with my puppy while my girlfriend was inside getting a couple White Mochas.
As I sat on the bench, two cops came and sat down right next to me. They were in the middle of a conversation, which I couldn't help but overhear.
Cop 1: "Why'd we arrest that guy again?"
Cop 2: "Man I don't even know!"
Cop 1: "Eh, whatever. He had it coming to him. They'll sort it out at the station."
Interesting how much of what the police can charge you with relies solely on the officer's report of it. Would it not be prudent that such stewards of community safety be at least reprimanded harshly for implying that they could be 'in a mischevious mood' or that they are 'watching training day for pointers' etc.
Whether it is bullshit bravado or not, what is different from this situation and that officer talking in the locker room about 'fucking niggers' and managing to arrest a disproportionate number of blacks? A bias demonstrated in the locker room or on the Internet is still a bias. The officer is clearly too stupid to be allowed even on Myspace, but nobody stopped him, now he got caught^H^H^H^H^H^H^H knows better.
This is little different than political correctness finding its way to the Internet via the court. Is it right? Perhaps not. Finding yourself the prime suspect in a murder investigation is exactly when you don't want someone telling the cops that they heard you say "I'll kill that SOB" about the victim.
It's a delicate balance indeed, but public figures should expect just a bit more scrutiny. On that note, lets smile now that we know exactly why video surveillance of all the population will cause as much problem for the 'law' as it will for anyone else.
Lets face it, there just are somethings you shouldn't be putting on the Internet. You can guess how many cops in that precinct will have myspace accounts now... can't you?
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This is so very painfully true. What makes me really, really angry is that if you (as a defendant) lie in court, it's perjury and you're in deep shit. If the police officer lies in court, the judge smiles and nods. If you call them on it, the judge says "ok, well we'll ignore that bit".
Justice system: 1. Justice: 0.
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If they do, they would have legal grounds for getting the officer investigated (vigilantism has been a crime for a while, and "terroristic threats" were added shortly after 9/11), possibly kicked out the force, and maybe even jailed.
This should not be considered a bad thing. Getting rid of bent cops is the only way you can ever ensure law enforcement is free of corruption. If the corrupt advertise their corruption, do not excuse them for it, nail the bastards to the courtroom wall.
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). If you want those with authority to be responsible, then do not permit the irresponsible within a mile of authority.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Au contrare. The precident set in this case would say that your facebook status shows prior knowledge of the action and therefore would secure your conviction.
Now, if the cop who arrested you had a facebook page status of "I need 3 more arrests to make my quota for the month", you might have an easier time of it. Who, in their right minds, is going to take the sworn testimony of a cop needing to make up numbers seriously?
In your example, the situation is reversed. Who is going to take YOUR sworn testimony seriously if you accuse someone of setting you up before the event in question took place? My guess is that your credibility would be zero, just like this cop's.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
always prefix and end your conversations with "yes sir" and "no sir".
This has always baffled me about you Americans, you viciously and readily proclaim yourselves as a nation of citizens over state power and the freest people on earth, but every single time a thread like this comes up people say baffling things like the above. Why would you, a free and presumably upstanding citizen of the community call a public servant "Sir" - in a manner that's really a bit too close to groveling for comfort?
How does having to grovel to police officers lest you upset them and they ruin your life (apparently they have this much power in your country) make you the freest people on earth?
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.
Whenever I've had association with police on either side of the law (more often than I'd like to admit now that I think about it), I speak to them in exactly the same manner that I would speak to any other reasonable and upstanding adult that I have just met. With general politeness and general respect, no more and no less, they're not gods and treating them as such is probably half the reason your police run around thinking they are. Wouldn't you get a bit of an ego if people were falling at your feet calling you Sir everywhere you went just because of some government power you wield?
Of course you're entirely correct about the temper and arguing, but attempts at gentle correction of inaccuracies in the officers claims are perfectly reasonable, they're just people after all and may well be wrong. And if they're a reasonable person and officer they'll listen to what you have to say. If they're a prick then all bets are off anyway temper or not.
I enjoy the internet, sometimes it lets me see how much better my own country is than others in various things, (the opposite too).
a girl showing her boobies 3 years ago when she was a sorority girl is not the same as somebody who's a cop right know joking about beating suspects or planting evidence.
The last 3 presidents openly admitted to smoking pot... What would be so different about it in 15 years when somebody digs up somebody's old facebook post from Freshman year?
IMNAL- But, I was looking and frightened by this. Due to imlications for future trials, like in a rape case. I can easily seeing this being used as proof to validate the facebook profile being used against the victim. Look- she said she was feeling sexy and horny- *that* made it consensual. And on her myspace page she talks about promiscuity.
Dangerous, Dangerous territory.
Does the facebook profile point out behaviors people don't want to see in cops- YES. Does it point out that the defendant didn't have a weapon? Absolutely not. They are different events at different times.
They should be calling you sir. You should be dealing with them in a polite but not deferential manner. Otherwise you are recognising that they hold some form of authority 'at large' over you, rather than merely an authority which is activated by a combination of the valid application of democratically passed laws and your conduct.
As a rule, police *do* address people as sir/ma'am (until/unless people start getting belligerent, at which point it becomes "scumbag" :)).
As for recognizing that they hold some form of authority over you, well, there's an old joke:
Q. What do you call a six foot negro with a seven foot spear?
A. Sir!
The simple fact that police carry lethal weapons has more than a little to do with the "sirs"...
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
Sorta like the arrest report I have that I've saved for over 20 years.
Reality: I'm sitting quietly on some church steps with a girl, a cop car pulls up on the lawn, I look up to see the cop's mouth move but can't tell what he said, so I ask "would you like us to leave officer?" (it was not unusual for cops to shoo teens along around that neighborhood.) He grins, says no, he wants ID, I have none, he arrests me.
His police report: says I was making a disturbance, refused repeated requests that I leave until finally he was forced to arrest me.
I'm lucky that's all it was, he threatened to add resisting arrest (which I of course didn't do.)
In the car on the way to the station I find out why I had just been arrested for sitting on church steps. Turns out I had made some wisecracking unflattering comments about the town's cops' weight and age in the presence of an undercover cop (who was busy checking someone else out at the time...) and the arresting cop says to me "how about we let you meet with him alone in a room and talk about just how fat and old you think we cops are?"
I was guilty of being a cynical 19 year old wiseass, is all.
COPS LIE. ROUTINELY.
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It's intensely hard to NOT resist slightly when someone shoves you hands behind your back and throws you to the floor or closest wall/car bonnet.
Try it - have one of your mates do it to you and see if you can resist the instinct to struggle. All your trying to do is get your arms out in front of you to stop your face taking the brunt - but this is resisting according to police.
It doesn't require you to have done anything threatening or violent for cops to act this way when arresting you - it just takes an arrogant arresting officer who is already sure you're scum.
*captcha: enforcer - don't tell me computers don't understand irony.
a few of my cousins work as cops up here in canada. they've told me that the hardest to catch drunk drivers are the chronic alcoholics ... they don't show visible signs of being drunk even though they've had over a dozen drinks. you might not know any of these people but be sure they exist.
if you (as a defendant) lie in court, it's perjury and you're in deep shit.
Really? In which country? In places I know of (European only, I'm afraid), the defendant does not (is not even allowed to) swear he's telling the truth nor can be punished for lying to defend himself. Only witnesses can be charged with perjury, not defendants.
The defendant is under oath in a British court, I know because I was once (wrongly) accused of a crime here and relied on that very fact.
When I got to the important facts the prosecution tried to shut me up and I got the court's permission to carry on (against the magistrate's initial ruling) by pointing out that I'd be breaking the 'Solemn Oath I'd sworn on the Holy Bible with our Lord Almighty as Witness' tell the whole truth if I was stopped from doing exactly that. The magistrate allowed me to carry on on religious grounds. I carried on pointing out the holes in the case and cleared my name, thankful that I was never asked if I actually believed in any of that god stuff.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Or he could list 'Nazi'. This is not a classic 'Godwin' statement: a number of British police were revealed to be members of the 'British National Party' when a membership list was revealed on Wikileaks (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/19/bnp-list). That's the Nazi party of the UK, and it's illegal for police to be members of it.
Wikileaks is wonderful for publishing criminal or abusive facts that 'those with the secret privilege' would like to never see revealed, and I applaud their work.
Great. How about a defendant who can prove that he can still talk properly and walk on a straight line even with 0.2% BAC because he's an actual alcoholic?
I am not for a minute defending drunk driving, but many people like that are far safer on the roads than plenty of people for whom it is legal to drive. For example, if you can't turn around to look behind you, you can NOT safely back up a car, yet there are many elderly (and simply disabled) people who physically cannot do this. Arguably, it should be illegal for them to even operate a vehicle which must be driven in reverse. They can have a prototype Tucker, but they shouldn't be driving so much as a fucking Honda Civic, which is still dangerous enough to be considered a deadly weapon if you try to run someone over with it.
The idea of drunk driving legislation is kind of ridiculous to me, because it is based on an arbitrary measurement. Some people can't drive safely at 0.03% (just to make up a number) and for that matter, some people never fucking drive safely. I was behind a woman driving a small car yesterday, going the same speed in my land yacht, she was over a foot over the double yellow while I was always in the lane. Unfortunately the cops came around the blind curve on the one curve she wasn't crossing - I live to see those people get tickets. I live in Lake County where we have [half of] a road called the "Hopland Grade", which is a portion of CA Highway 175 between Lakeport and Hopland. It is twisty and narrow and they fly a Cessna over the mountain and take aerial photographs of people driving over the line, then give them a big. fat. ticket. of about $240 for crossing that SOB. People crash in the road center all the time on that road, and many people also try to dodge the asshole in their lane and go off a big cliff, and the mystery is never solved. Some wanker wrote in to a paper about it being a secret toll road - the unanimous response was to stay the fuck home, we don't need you in our county. Point is, people are over that line generating revenue all day, and most of them are sober. They just think that the rules were invented to stop them from having a good time, and so they should not apply to them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yah, my dad told me that joke, too. Except his punchline was "You were the only one stupid enough to pull over".
Every good joke is based on the truth. On the other hand, this wasn't a joke. Nobody laughed. She was obviously upset by the experience. I believe her name was Bethany, but I don't remember the last name (or if I'm even right.) This was at Mar Vista Elementary School in Aptos, California. I don't remember a lot of detail from that period of my life, but the look on her face is one thing I will probably never forget - I certainly haven't so far, and I don't remember much else from that class except that the teacher was a prick who would have me "sit quietly" when I was done with my work; apparently, giving me something else to do would be disruptive of the other children. Then again, looking around the classroom was apparently something I did which was disruptive to other children. WE ARE DONE WITH YOU, CHILD UNIT. ENTER C1 SUSPEND MODE UNTIL NEEDED. Mr. Knudsen, you're a child abuser.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually something like speeding that has no direct victim shouldn't be illegal in the first place.
If you're going down that same hill at 20, 30, or 40 over and there's no one around, you're not even endangering anyone (excluding yourself, but you can legally smoke, drink, and play with knives) much less hurting someone. If common sense was more common the vast majority of traffic laws could be replaces with "don't do stupid things and you're responsible for your actions".
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
The magistrate allowed me to carry on on religious grounds. I carried on pointing out the holes in the case and cleared my name, thankful that I was never asked if I actually believed in any of that god stuff.
Yes, that bit does sound quite bizarre - he let you carry on on religious grounds, but not on the grounds of justice, you know, what the whole point of the court is for...
Interesting, I'm in MA, USA.
And in traffic court, the judge started out for the day announcing to everyone that based on the Cop's statement and claim of the speed gun reading, you're already guilty, and you need to prove your innocence. How exactly are you to prove you weren't speeding?
Having hard enough time fighting a parking ticket by private company handling the city's parking. You need to prove your innocence.
Similar (and safer) experiments have been performed using the ability to remotely shock a person and actors who would pretend to be shocked. On average, given permission to be sadistic, most people are.