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Motorcyclist Wins Taping Case Against State Police
stevegee58 writes "Slashdot readers may recall the case of a Maryland motorcyclist (Anthony Graber) arrested and charged with wiretapping violations (a felony) when he recorded his interaction with a Maryland State Trooper. Today, Judge Emory A. Pitt threw out the wiretapping charges against Graber, leaving only his traffic violations to be decided on his October 12 trial date. 'The judge ruled that Maryland's wire tap law allows recording of both voice and sound in areas where privacy cannot be expected. He ruled that a police officer on a traffic stop has no expectation of privacy.' A happy day for freedom-loving Marylanders and Americans in general."
Thank goodness. Lately all I've been reading about is how we're getting screwed by court decisions left and right. Good to hear something done right.
Life. Is. Good.
It's usually a bad idea for the police to meddle in the affairs of the members of the judiciary and/or legislative body. For instance, near my hometown in Cleveland, a cop pulled over one of the members Of the state legislature and gave him a ticket. Said legislator introduced a bill, the next week, requiring that all municipalities in the state must have, in order to patrol the highways within their jurisdiction, x size of population and y amount of highway running through it (something like, greater than a mile or two). The town in question only had a quarter mile of highway. They also realized something like 75-85 percent of their income via speeding tickets...all gone...
Rather than read about the judge's amazingly sane and rational decision, I would have preferred to see the video of him handing down the ruling, but I guess cameras are not allowed in the court room.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If the device is out in the open, and you disclose this to the other party? Can the other party actually require that you turn the device off even if it's on your own property? What about in your own car. I think that at some point, "recorded" is going to become more and more fuzzy.
What if I write something down as you're saying it? What if a robot hears and transcribes it for me into text? What if I commit it to memory? What if my memory is enhanced? Where does the line get drawn? Or does it?
Majority on that forum wished this stop would've ended in a not so favorable manor for the motorcyclist. That forum seems to hate 'civilians' for some reason.
The problem however remains that the judge did not sanction the DA or AG who decided that this obvious abuse of the law was a good idea.
And what stops them or the state patrol from doing it again? Just because the charges are dropped doesn't mean there's no penalty. Dude has an arrest record now, even if he gets that expunged, it's still in a database somewhere.
Unless the victims sue and start winning big judgments, this behavior isn't going to change.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The term is frequently misused, but it really only applies to rulings which go against traditional jurisprudence. A common trait is that applying the logic behind the new ruling would require former cases to be decided differently than they were.
Of course, almost no one bothers to contest a ruling they agree with. Only those negatively impacted by the decision have a strong incentive to look for weaknesses.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
I don't know about Maryland, but in my part of the country police NEVER make a traffic stop with an unmarked vehicle. There have been problems with women being assaulted by fake officers. But depending on the situation (it's not possible to determine when the patrol car arrived), if someone in an unmarked car like that cut me off, then jumped out and pulled a weapon, quite likely they would be removing my bike from his teeth.
The apparently off duty officer never should have been involved since there were uniformed officers in marked patrol cars present. This should be a training film on how to do something incredibly unprofessional and stupid that will get your ass fired.
Another day, another update to a Google android app.
One of the more amusing camera issues has been red light cameras photographing cops running red lights. The processing of the images is usually outsourced and automated, and the company doing the work handles the process. The cops have to either pay up or go to court. There is much whining about this.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw writes to other police departments: "Please advise your members if they are captured on camera in their vehicles running the red light at these intersections, they will be cited. The only remedy for relief will be through the traffic court system. All law enforcement personnel must understand the high standard of conduct is applied to them in order for the public to have confidence in their departments and the officers."
Somebody gets it.
Sadly, they're pretty damn common. The job is self-selecting. You generally need to be a cocky, power hungry bastard to want to be a cop. There aren't a lot of white knights becoming cops. Plus, it's pretty well documented that people get excused from being cops for I.Q. test scores that are too high. If you want to be scarred for life, here are a blogger couple who document as many of these morons as they can. They're pretty hardcore libertarian/anti-government, but they do link to all primary sources in the way of local newspapers. Unknown News: Cops you won't see on COPS.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Just remove the monetary incentive. Fines are a stupid idea for a punishment even in a capitalist system. They favor the rich and abuse the poor. Instead make the punishment for all minor infractions be community service. What you would see is:
People not speeding so they don't get caught because they don't want to do community service.
Cops not pulling people over that don't deserve it because it doesn't help their quota/benefit them in some way.
Cleaner streets, etc from people doing actual community service that benefits the community (once they run out of "good" jobs to give all the people who want to spend 120 hours reading to kids)
You could argue this benefits the rich even more at least the idle rich since they have more free time for community service, but they are less likely to want to waste their time on it.
Until he identifies himself as a police officer, he's just some guy waving a gun.
The big reason the police wanted the guy under the jail is that he had actual video evidence (You might want to skip to the 3:00 mark) of the police detectives dangerous and unprofessional behavior. The officer was entirely indistinguishable from a crazed road-rager. No lights, unmarked car, no uniform, no badge, just a gun. Notably, he claims it was a traffic stop, but no ticket book either!
It certainly looks a lot more like he was angry at being passed and thought waving a gun around was the answer. That's EXACTLY the sort of person we DON'T want carrying a gun in public.
The department's subsequent actions in working with the AG to twist a wiretapping law into a pretzel trying to go after the motorcyclist sure seems to be an indication that they were well aware of the problem. If they actually believed the detective's actions to be appropriate why wouldn't they publicize the video themselves?
As for the DC detective, note that his actions were not considered appropriate either. In fact, an internal affairs review recommended a 10 day suspension for his actions.
Police do have a bit more latitude in law and in practice are granted still more, but not THAT much, particularly when they fail to identify themselves first.
Having been in a position where I made the rules, I also learnt an important lesson that most people don't ever learn explicitly, but still treasure:
Rules give you certainty. In your examples, I as a driver never know when someone else (a cop) will consider my driving inadequate and cite more for it. With a fixed speed limit, I can glance at the speedometer and know for certain whether I'm good or not.
There have been a great number of interesting studies that show that clear and well-known rules, no matter how nonsensical and arbitrary they are, have a calming psychological effect while uncontrollable external judgement causes constant stress. So if you want to create a society of permanently stressed-out people, then by all means continue pushing for your proposal.
PS:
In my country (Germany), an equivalent of your rule already exists in addition to the usual rules, or rather as its preface. 1 of our traffic laws book says that drivers shall at all times drive cautiously and considerate. You don't easily get a ticket for violating that, but this is what gets you in trouble when you try to argue the sign said "80" in strong winds, heavy rainfall and 10m visibility.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org