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Phoenix Police Seize PCs of a Blogger Critical of the Department
logicassasin sends in a story about a blogger in Phoenix, AZ, who runs a site that is critical of the local police department. The police recently raided his home and seized his computer hardware. "Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging. The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment — which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation." A local publication quotes Pataky saying, "We have heard internally from our police sources that they purposefully did this to stop me... They took my cable modem and wireless router. Anyone worth their salt knows nothing is stored in the cable modem."
This guy's obviously already been in court. ACLU time, and even up to the supreme court. The Phoenix police department is about to get a federal raping.
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How long before people understand the Streisand Effect??
This just seems like bullying(who started it and why is something else). Do cops not know of internet cafe's? freedom of speech? or are people just willfully ignorant of reality around them. Like the town that tossed out google streetview. If I close my eyes the bad people can't see me cause i can't see them?
one day I hope humanity grows up? unfortunately I will have been long since dead.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Second, this appears to be a simple domestic dispute. Guy gets a divorce and wife starts accusing him of what he says are false claims. Judge, probably just seeing that this couple can't stand each other, and probably does not want to waste time sorting out the truth, just drops the charges. Who knows who is telling the truth in such cases. I know people who have been accused of cutting other peoples phones off to harass them. I know for a fact that they didn't do it how can you prove it one way or another?
So what does this guy do. Start collecting 'tips' from persons inside the department and posting these accusations online. OK, that makes sense, you get slandered by unsubstantiated charges, so you go out and do the same? This is a good way to make friends with the police. Tell the world that one of them is a child molester, even though it may or may not be true. I telling you this is what I live for. Trying to do my job by helping two people that are too immature and uncivilized to get along with each other, I mean the police are required to investigate any reasonable charge, and then what do I get. My face plastered on the internet as a child molester. Oh yeah, that brightens my day.
Predictably this guy goes too far and gets himself in trouble and the police uses the excuse to take out a problem. Again, overkill, but so is calling a soon-to-be cop a child molester on the internet is not the way to go, especially when all the documentation is apparently yet to be delivered.
Arizona seems to have it's share of messed up policing, but there must be a better way to go about this than ranting on the internet with unsubstantiated claims.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gr4RsI2V6Y
Check out the video. Some college kids from the UofO are out in the "Ken Kezzie Free Speech" plaza in Eugene protesting the spraying of pesticides and get harassed by the cops and the taserd.
I mean look at the kids out there, 18 or 19, doing one of the great things about this country and that is letting you're thoughts be voiced.
This is crazy!
The guy was, at best, running an ongoing campaign of character assassination against certain Phoenix police officers. No crime there, although what he said may have been libelous. But if he was accusing police officers of breaking the law, then it is his duty as a citizen to present his evidence to whatever the local equivalent of the Internal Affairs Department is. If he was withholding that evidence, he was obstructing justice.
Bloggers aren't journalists. They don't have to live up to any standards of ethical journalism, and so they don't get protection for their sources. If that's what he's claiming, he's going to get a rude shock.
Bottom line is, we don't have all the facts. Phoenix isn't some podunk town. It's hard for me to imagine that both the cops and a judge in a large metropolitan area would do something this egregious.
I piss off bigots.
So if you read the article with any sense of fairness rather than biasing yourself against the police
You mean, if you read the article biasing yourself in favor of the police...
# ... he harassed SEVERAL city officials, and then expects them to side with him and understand that he's not doing the SAME THING to his wife.
# He responds by not following the proper course of action and filing a police report, he instead, in his words:
So he began filing complaints with everybody from Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon down to Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris to no avail. He was eventually indicted for harassing his ex-wife.
# Read that again
In what way is "filing complaints" harassment? If you're getting ignored through one venue, why not try bringing your plight to someone else with power? What exactly would you suggest someone do who is actually being ignored by the police?
I also have no doubt that this guy is a douche bag who probably deserves more than he's going to get
You know what? You're a douche bag. That doesn't mean you deserve to have your possessions confiscated by the police. Advocating the abuse of police power because someone is a "douche bag" is way, way out of line.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Are you serious? I'm pretty sure they were adults and not 6 year olds saying 'sticks and stones my break my bones'
You can call me an asshole on slashdot all day long, and you'd probably be right. But when I come take your computer because it was actually stolen from my dad in the first place, doesn't make me a corrupt cop or guilty of being evil, it just means the public isn't aware of the fact that not only are you a name caller, you are a thief and in general a douche bag.
Instead your just assuming the cops are doing wrong and have no actual idea about what happened. Did you RTFA? He admits he's harassed several city officials in his OMG POLICE ARE EVIL AND RAPED ME! post.
What would be stupid, and is pretty much whats happened here so far is that I saw you doing something that resembled eating shit, and while my mouth was full of shit I've been eating, I screamed 'OMG HES EATING SHIT THATS WRONG!' and everyone ignores the fact that I have shit dripping from my chin and spewing out while I speak. And then tomorrow we find out that you were eating pudding, not shit. And then you proceed to feel like a douche bag for listening to the stupid blogger in the first place.
Is this whats going to happen? I have no idea, but neither do you as we have absolutely 0 idea about whats going on in this case, we just have a rant about bad cops who spends his days harassing city officials and blogging about bad cops.
You'll have to forgive me if I put a little more faith in the police than a douche bag blogger. I've also been around long enough to know these things are very rarely what they seem, thanks to the publics ability to run with sensationalist unverified blog spewings and idiots who blindly believe it.
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Well, the standard we hold schoolkids to is to either ignore the taunter or taunt him back. Do you think the police might be able to reach such level of maturity? Or are you seriously suggesting that "he called me names" is an acceptable reason to raid someone's house?
Seriously, grow a thicker skin. You're starting to sound like the muslims during that whole Mohammed cartoon thing.
Certainly. Perhaps you should consider extending this courtesy to the blogger?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."