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SFPD Breathalyzer Mistake Puts Hundreds of DUI Convictions In Doubt
Mr. Shotgun writes "According to CBS, 'Hundreds, or even thousands, of drunk driving convictions could be overturned because the San Francisco Police Department has not tested its breathalyzers, officials said Monday. For at least six years, the police officers in charge of testing the 20 breathalyzers used by the Police Department did not carry out any tests on the equipment. Officers instead filled the test forms with numbers that matched the control sample, said Public Defender Jeff Adachi, throwing countless DUI convictions into doubt.' Apparently this has happened before."
I want a whole bunch of doubt to be thrown on the judicial system. It's had such a great track record so far, after all.
We already know these things are horribly unreliable. If you're pulled over and asked to take a breathalyzer test, request a blood test. Breathalyzers are not dependable. Some types fail if you're diabetic. They're all sensitive to the different percentages of alcohol at different depths in your lungs. And obviously poor calibration is extremely common. You can't trust them to be accurate, and an inaccurate blood alcohol reading is something that can ruin your life.
...this doesn't surprise me in the least. You have a few that respect and understand technology, and all it can do for the dept, but most resent it and try to deal with it and little as possible.
This won't even change anything, really.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Will officers face sanctions for falsifying records?
The DA said:
Gascon said there did not appear to be any malicious intent behind the police officers’ actions. He said the coordinators were apparently just too lazy to perform the test required every 10 days.
Can I use that excuse when I get pulled over for rolling through a stop sign? "But I was just too lazy to stop, officer! Surely you can understand that!"
"Err, Opps! there is an error here. Let me check that again"
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
This is fraud: A police officer accepted a paycheck for work and services he did not perform. That's fraud, and the officer should be relieved of duty and terminated from employment. Cops aren't above the law, or accountability, and it sounds like whoever fraudulently filled out the forms using the baseline measurements engaged in fraud.
Who did what now?
Gosh. That couldn't happen before *cough* where I work *cough*.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
His real name?
A mistake would have been using the wrong calibration procedure or something. Deliberately NOT PERFORMING the required calibration and falsifying the report forms is not a "mistake", it is outright FRAUD, and the pig or pigs responsible need to be held responsible.
Of course, that ain't gonna happen here in the United Police States of Amerika...
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Even though you'll most likely have your driver's license suspended if you refuse a breathalyzer, it's best to refuse it anyway if you're drunk.
Once you refuse the breathalyzer it gets complicated for the police and the clock starts ticking to get that blood test done in a timely fashion.
Do you want to
a) Test these breathalysers
b) Have a doughnut
Yeah, I thought so.
That's not a mistake. That's negligence and dereliction of duty.
Cops are always telling us the shit they do is about our safety. So this must be about not giving a damn if we're safe. Fire 'em all.
That a police department would use questionable tools and tactics to secure large numbers of convictions that also result in large fines.
take THAT offfficeer i-know-everrything
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What idiots. Any time you use a piece of scientific equipment regularly, you have to be sure you're calibrating it. Even better if you're checking your calibrations multiple different ways.
I hope they get their ASSES sued! If it happen to me, and I had to pay fines, spend time in jail, lose my license, my job, reputation, etc. etc., I'd get the best lawyer and SUE them!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I love this part:
"Gascon said there did not appear to be any malicious intent behind the police officers’ actions. He said the coordinators were apparently just too lazy to perform the test required every 10 days."
No malicious intent? Lazy? Really?
Public Official acting in capacity related to public safety + laziness = malicious.
At the very least it was fraud and therefore should be investigated accordingly and if sufficient evidence is found, prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
IMHO, testing ought to be done by the vendor and calibration ought to be done by cognizant, technical individuals who have a minor amount of ethics. For a test person to fill in "sample data" is evidence that (a) these things don't work, or (b) the test person was either incompetent or unethical (and neither of these is acceptable in an industry related to the security of the public like law enforcement).
...but incompetence is okay? They should get fired. It's not like they made an honest mistake. It creates two issues, one, people under the limit might have been wrongfully convicted and two, people who were over the limit get to walk.
The doppler radar guns used to catch speeders have to be properly calibrated and regularly serviced as well, and if you challenge the police to produce the documentation for that, chances are you will get off. In fact, some units require an accompanying electronic tuning fork to be used whenever the gun is moved in order to properly calibrate it; ie, whenever the police car moves. Most police don't carry these calibration devices (kept in a properly padded and thermally insulated case), so if that is the situation, they cannot accurately determine your speed. I've got out of tickets because of this in the past. If they were to object, then the resulting legal fallout would do to all the speeding tickets in the state what this is doing to DUI convictions in San Francisco. Finally, it used to be that the California Highway Patrol never used radar because of these issues. They had calibrated speedometers instead, so if they gave you a ticket for going 20mph over the limit, you WERE going 20mph over the limit! I don't know about today.
I hope they get their ASSES sued!
Yeah! That'd be SO much better than if they get their LEFT ULNAS sued!
The important question here is: Does this invalidate the Mythbusters "Beat the breath tester" result of BUSTED? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2003_season)#Beat_the_Breath_Test
Of all the idiotic things I have heard of police departments doing, this has got to be very close to the top. This is right up there with the Eugene cop who tazed a Chinese U of O student because the student didn't speak English!
Punitive damages, anyone?
Here's my tweet from a few days ago, "Do Americans not like government, because theirs is so bad? Cause or effect?" https://twitter.com/#!/stephanwehner/status/176761789281869824
S
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
...the calibration of devices for measuring car speed was a well-known leapfrog appeal.
I'm surprised it's taken so long for testing of police revenue generator technology to reach US courts. One would hope that, in law, a device has to be tested to a particular standard before it becomes a device suitable for measurement of some metric which may lead to a criminal offence. Otherwise it'd be trivial to argue reasonable doubt. What's wrong with your lawyers?
So... the big question
(Such a dream I have):
Will the officers in charge of testing be charged with:
- falsifying evidence
- forgery
- fraud
- willful violation of civil rights & breach of 42 USC 1983, causing a loss of all rights to departmental representation and aid during trial
- conspiracy
- obstruction of justice
- likely perjury
- misprision / malfeasance in their failure to act or report each other
- RICO violations
Times however many instances of people convicted. I mean sure, it's throwing the book at them.. but that *IS* the DA's job. And in this case, their acts *by definition* have deprived thousands of justice. Even if most of them deserved to go to jail for DUI -- they were still entitled to a fair trial. Most serial killers only get to hurt a few tens of people. The world record, Luis Alfredo Garavito killed about 400. These guys probably hurt an order of magnitude more.
Consigned their pensions to damages, take their homes when they lose departmental representation and are sued civilly (along with the city of course), and then throw them in the brig for the rest of their lives. Not jail. They're servants of the public, and they destroyed that trust.
I mean ... they were just "lazy". It's not like any documentation was willfully forged.
Oh right... police & DAs are worse about omerta than the fucking mafia.
For extra fun -- I bet at least one person was forced to either lose their vehicle, or install ignition interlock -- the complete cost of which should be reimbursed with years of interest, damages for social costs, and since the convictions were obtained (and became a matter of public record under false pretense) -- not quite libel on the city's part (who could not have known any better) -- but individually.
I don't think you fully understand how a DUI works. A breathalyzer is not conviction-worthy evidence. It is merely a field test which leads to a U.A. or blood test which can provide accurate readings. Yes, sometimes users of other substances are caught up in this, and unlike with alcohol, we have limited ability in terms of establishing current intoxication with any other mind altering substance. I have heard people speak about dwi charges for marijuana that was smoked over 4-8 hours prior to driving. Point being, however, that this doesn't challenge the legitimacy of the charges. It challenges the competence of the officers, but that really isn't a surprise. Most cities require a short period of professional training (tech school) and a pulse. Testing a breathalyzer is simple and takes barely a moment. To save themselves several seconds, they B.S. it? I find this strange, and disappointing. We barely catch 10% of drunk drivers. I wonder if it is less being underfunded/staffed and more being lazy and incompetent.
DUI is a serious crime and deserving of very serious penalties. It is a shame that numbskulls like these people can not properly follow procedures to make sure their equipment is functioning properly.
After 10 days hours, the unit would refuse to do any testing unless it were recalibrated. How would they recalibrate if the unit refuses to test? Make it so that it *would* work if plugged in. So, they have to bring it in to do the calibration. At least once every 10 days. There's probably some workaround for this, but hopefully it would be more effort that it's worth.
Here in NY, a local town court hands out 15-20 DUI convictions a week, each totaling $900 in fines
No justice without profit
Thanks.
That would explain why a cop claimed he measured me at 91, even though my cruise control had been set to 79 (plus four over the speed limit). His equipment was probably not calibrated and giving false readings.
I'm tempted to just throw the ticket in the trash. I don't think a New Mexico cop is going to come after a guy living in Jersey (2000+ miles away),
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Everything about this story is MISLEADING.
Only with a careful reading do you find that they are talking about PRELIMINARY breath screening devices, i.e. portable ones the cops use on the street. A smart person NEVER blows into that one, as all it is for is give the cops a reason to haul you in, just like all of the other “field sobriety tests”. Doing any of those tests only give the cops the ability to say “well, he failed this, stumbled there, slurred words there” when you pass the breath test at the station and they don’t have the slam-dunk easy conviction they thought they would.
If you ever get pulled over for drunk driving, don’t do ANY of the field tests. No harm comes from not doing them and other than you will have to take your time to go to the station for the REAL breath test, which you’re going to get to do anyway.
Unbelievable. I worked for Phoenix Police for nine years doing computer work. We had implemented an optical document management system when DUI attorneys started subpoenaing Intoxilyzer maintenance records as SOP when it came to cases, so we started scanning all calibration and maintenance records as part of our SOP. It also made it ridiculously easy to fulfill the subpoena. Our Intoxilyzers were calibrated by the crime lab, so it was actual chemists with a vested interest in accuracy, so it was done right. And this was back in the 90's!
Just unbelievable that SFPD could be so stupid. There's no excuse for this, whoever is in charge of that calibration really needs to get their heads handed to them. And so does the prosecutor's office for not checking this.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
I dunno. That specific cop may not come looking for you- but they could put a warrant out for you that a Jersey cop would respect.
It's probably not worth the escalation that not showing up to court could bring to you.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Are you committing fraud by reading/posting on /. from work?
We're talking about police here. People who are empowered to take away our freedom and put us in jail. And we're talking about drunk driving where, no thanks to MADD, you are guilty until proven innocent. So, even if you were completely SOBER when these fraudulent Breathalyzers were used, you would have had to spend time in jail, most likely lost your job, spent tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees, and in the case of these poor bastards, have a wrongful criminal record.
And by posting on Slashdot during work hours is comparable to that how then ?!
A judge in New Mexico can have your Jersey license suspended. They undoubtedly will, and you'll find out about it in a few years when you get pulled over for something really minor and end up going to jail for driving with a suspended license.
Prosecutor's office? How about the defense attorneys! Holy crap I'd be pissed off if my lawyer let something like this slide.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Ya know what else doesn't get calibrated?
The scanners run by the SA at airports. At any point of time there could be a mechanical failure and the machines start bombarding passengers with lethal (or cancer-causing) doses of X-rays and nobody would ever know, because the machines are not regularly tested (as is required in hospitals and doctors' offices). I don't think I will ever voluntarily step through one of those things.
There's a reason the European Union banned their use. I wish OUR union would wake-up and ban them as well (but of course the CEO of the scanner company has bought the politicians that make those decisions).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
In my own DUI experience, the calibration sheet for the breathalyzer had 3 separate "trials" where they were supposed to measure the control sample. All 3 just had the exact value that it was "supposed" to get. My lawyer said that there was pretty much no chance that they actually took 3 readings and got the exact same number - it's simply not within the accuracy of the device - but what are you gonna do? You can't prove it.
You have a few that respect and understand technology, and all it can do for the dept, but most resent it and try to deal with it and little as possible.
I can't wait until Ford sends them some USB sticks to update their police cruisers. Criminals will be able to get away on foot.
I don't see how a New Mexican judge can have any power outside of his own state. What you propose is equvalent to a Spanish judge suspending a Polish guy's license (which cannot happen even though both are part of the EU). The judge's authority ends at the border.
Now maybe if the Jersey government has an agreement to honor traffic violations, and extradites me to New Mexico, but that seems very unlikely. Especially since they are separated by over 2000 miles.
Normally I would fight it in court but again, I'm not going 2000+ miles just to fight a ticket. Asshole cops. They can lie (claim I was doing 91 when I was only doing 79) and get away with it.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
But systematic fraud.
Where the aspect of malice comes into play on top of the fraud is whether or not the cops in question knew that the devices were giving consistent results of drunkenness or not.
Check your premises.
Next time someone starts talking about holding programmers legally liable, remember how police officers ruined peoples lives because they were "just too lazy to perform the test."
Also, we all knew that Test Driven Development was going to cause crashes.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Holy crap I'd be pissed off if my lawyer let something like this slide.
I think you're missing the point. The defense attorney's would have asked for proof that the devices had been calibrated. And the falsely filled-out paperwork would have been turned over, showing just that. You're saying that the defense attorney's should have asked for proof that the documentation wasn't fraudulent. Which would have been ... what? Paperwork from a non-existing third party auditor? That's why the cases are in question.
Mind you, most cops know exactly when they're dealing with a drunk. And the drunks know when they're drunk. I would hope that this blunder only impacts very questionable/marginal cases, and not those where the driver was obviously and aggregiously under the influence.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Breathalyzers must be tested every 10 days but airport scanners don't have to be regularly tested for radiation safety.
Liberty of some is at stake for one, health of many for the other.
Shouldn't we reliably test both?
That's a bit of a threadjack, but now I can't help asking - do those scanners actually have the capacity to administer a lethal dose?
Maybe I'm giving the engineers too much credit, but I would hope that would be no more possible than flashlight emitting a lethal dose of visible light.
In the UK, refusing/failing to provide a specimen of blood or breath carries the same punishment as providing a positive sample. This gets around people like you trying to avoid responsibility for their actions.
But at least a new job processing refunds and overturning conviction records will be created, and isn't that what really matters?
no comment
Nearly all of the states have signed onto 2 of the 3 compacts dealing with out-of-state drivers licenses. Each state agrees to honor decisions like license suspensions from another:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_License_Compact
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Resident_Violator_Compact
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_License_Agreement
No Jersey cop is going to see a traffic violation from a city that lies 2400 miles away. It's just a bunch of bullshit that they can claim I was doing 91 when I was not anywhere near that speed.
Damn that fucking cop and his lying. He told me he used to do construction before becoming a cop, well let him go back to it then. Asshole.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The states have gotten together and set up an interstate commission to deal with this kind of stuff. It was passed by the legislatures and signed off by the governors, and the final result is you are screwed. You either plead guilty by mail and pay the fine, or they find you guilty in absentia and screw up your license and registration by remote control. And it's all perfectly legal. In general, a judge is not necessarily part of the process.
You can complain all you want - they don't give a damn. What they want is the money and in the case of AZ and NM, in particular, they don't care whether the result is fair or not.
When you are dancing with wolves, never limp
not stupid, lazy
I wouldn't necessarily trust the vendor further than I could throw them "Yeah, sorry guys, our testing indicates that our product is broken and we need to replace it under warranty". In the context of criminal justice, where we use the 'adversarial' legal system under the theory that the contesting sides provide the best chance of achieving the correct answer, it would seem more appropriate for the testing and calibration of forensic apparatus and technique should really be the job of an independent entity whose performance is judged on the basis of how effectively they represent the 'accuracy interest' of the apparatus and technique...
I'm guessing(and the fact that nobody noticed that the calibration data were eerily perfect and uniform, because individual units were just getting cut-and-paste numbers re-enforces my suspicion) that there is no professional accolade to be had for being 'that guy who is always pointing out problems with the gear' within the police department. Ideally, you'd want the department of exacting assholes to be in charge of testing the stuff, and distinct from the officers in charge of using it...
Police officers are generally polite, respectful, and concerned for your safety.
Police departments are generally corrupt, bureaucratic, and don't give a shit about your safety.
For every asshole, rights-stomping cop there are several good ones. Unfortunately, they're powerless to do their sworn duty and protect you from the asshole cops and the department as a whole.
I think you're missing the point. The defense attorney's would have asked for proof that the devices had been calibrated. And the falsely filled-out paperwork would have been turned over, showing just that. You're saying that the defense attorney's should have asked for proof that the documentation wasn't fraudulent. Which would have been ... what? Paperwork from a non-existing third party auditor? That's why the cases are in question.
What I suspect you will see is that defense attorneys will not stipulate the calibration forms for a while. They will call the officer into court to testify, under oath, that the calibration was done. With any luck that happened in at least some of these cases and the prosecutors can hang perjury charges on the individuals responsible.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Damnit to hell. It pisses me off that I have to pay $100 for a crime I did not commit.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
That, and the tidyness of a ticked conviction box. It looks really bad of a police department has a lot of crimes on record without associated convictions. Someone has to go down to tick that box.
This is the kind of thing that entire FIRMS tend to notice (and its in Cali so they are sue crazy to begin with).
If i was the SF government i would try to buy out/pay off as many of the folks i could just to limit the damage.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
A friend of mine driving a Jaguar XKS was pulled over by a Scottsdale cop who claimed he was doing 50+ in a residential zone. I was working at Phoenix Police at the time and had told him that motorcycle cops were supposed to check their radar guns at the start of every shift, then they were calibrated during routine maintenance once or twice a year and I think a copy of those maintenance/calibration records traveled with the bike. I'd told my friend all of this, and he knew he hadn't been speeding, so he asked for the calibration records. The cop eventually called his supervisor, the supervisor pointed the radar gun at a tree and clocked it at 30 MPH and told my friend to leave.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
You'd have to see a schematic to be know that - and not only will those be considered a trade secret of the manufacturer, but even trying to obtain a copy could lead to you being considered a terror suspect searching for a way to circumvent the scanners. I don't know about backscatter scanners, but conventional xray machines produce their rays via bombardment of a target with an electron stream - the intensity of the radiation depends on the current in that beam, so it's quite plausible that a faulty component could lead to a serious overcurrent and subsequent irradiation of the passangers.
Ya know what else doesn't get calibrated?
The scanners run by the SA at airports. /snip
There's a reason the European Union banned their use. I wish OUR union would wake-up and ban them as well (but of course the CEO of the scanner company has bought the politicians that make those decisions).
Are you sure? Just this month I've traveled through AMS (Holland, a founding member of the EU) twice and was scanned both times - once onto Africa and again back to the USA.
Perhaps they have been banned but nobody is listening.
and all of this will happen again.
individuals who have a minor amount of ethics.
oh, so you DO want cops to do this calibration??
(sorry but you walked right into that one)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The center of New Mexico is actually over 5000 miles from the center of Jersey.
And no, no judge in New Mexico has the right to suspend a license issued in Jersey. It's doubtful that even a judge in London would have the rights to do that. I'm pretty sure any request would have to be passed through the Bailiff of Jersey's office.
tl;dr: New Jersey is not Jersey any more than New York is York.
not knowing the actual devices it is possible that due to using a "standard part" that the xray emmiter itself has a lot more power than would be required FOR THIS USE and it is limited by some sort of "buffer" circuit. all it would take is for the buffer circuit to short out and you have a machine that is cooking folks.
Also don't forget that there is a lot of range between 12X chance of getting cancer and dropping dead at the checkpoint.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
As Oswald already mentioned, it isn't the traffic citation that the Jersey cop will see. When you fail to follow up on the ticket a court date will be set. When you fail to show up for the court date a warrant will be issued for your arrest. That warrant will show up if you are pulled over in your home state because cops generally do a warrant check when they ask you for your drivers license. When they find the warrant outstanding, you will be arrested.
To recap, don't be retarded just pay the stupid ticket or contest it.
With any luck that happened in at least some of these cases and the prosecutors can hang perjury charges on the individuals responsible.
*Could* hang perjury charges on the cops. But won't. The prosecutor/cop relationship doesn't work that way.
Just sayin'
calibration ought to be done by cognizant, technical individuals who have a minor amount of ethics.
So, not by a cop then?
I would hope that would be no more possible than flashlight emitting a lethal dose of visible light.
The GP is right. Take a flashlight, focus the light into a point (into an image of the LED crystal, to be precise) and point into your eye. You'd lose vision in that eye pretty quick.
X-ray scanners are scanning you with a medium power (? no data) beam. Each spot of your skin is exposed to that beam for a fraction of a second; an average exposure is supposed to be low. Imagine that I take a hot soldering iron and slide its tip across your chest. Each patch of the skin under the iron's tip heats up to 450F, but since there are many of those patches the average temperature is only, say, 45F - which is totally harmless. Would you like to lay down here, please, while I heat the iron up?
A catastrophic fault will stop the beam of the scanner. The entire output of the X-ray tube will be directed at a single spot of your body, wherever it happened to be at the time of failure. There could be many causes of that, from mechanical (insufficient grease; plastic gear stripped; motor burned out; the MOSFET controlling the motor is blown; motor's power supply failed) to programming (the software crashed in mid-scan.) That would be analogous to me starting to slide that hot soldering iron across your chest, but then just stopping the movement half-way, leaving the iron's tip on your skin, and going for a dinner. It'll burn a hole all the way through you by the time I'm back...
Nobody knows how reliable the X-ray scanner is. For all I know, it may be controlled by a Windows 95 box. You'd need to be awfully reckless to step inside one of those scanners. Technically illiterate people may see scanners as an opaque magic box and go through them without a second thought. But an engineer knows how dangerous those things are.
Sure the judge's authority technically ends at the state borders, but states have compacts that effectively say: I'll respect your warrants is you respect mine. I'll arrest your criminals for you if you do the same for me. This is not quite the same as crossing international borders, however countries do often have treaties for that sort of thing.
I think you are naive to think that just because New Mexico and Jersey are so far away that they don't have an agreement. I think it is much more likely that all states have agreements with all other states.
For a test person to fill in "sample data" is evidence that (a) these things don't work, or (b) the test person was either incompetent or unethical (and neither of these is acceptable in an industry related to the security of the public like law enforcement).
Well, maybe. But it's well known in the software industry that a large percentage of users of most software will handle "fill in the form" situations by copying the examples in the manual. When you talk to those users, they usually think that the manual was telling them that those were the correct values, so of course they used them. If they make up their own values, chances are they'll get them wrong, but if they use what the manual says, it has to be right, doesn't it?
I was tempted to end that with a ;-), but unfortunately, it's not that much of a joke. What it is, really, is usually an example of how atrocious most of our documentation is. In a few cases of the above, I've checked the "manual", and found that their actions were actually a very reasonable interpretation of what the manual said to do. It's often quite easy to read many examples as "Here's exactly how you should do it." For users who aren't geeks and don't understand half (or more) of the jargon, it can be very difficult to determine what parts of the text you need to copy exactly, and what parts are variable character strings to be filled in with appropriate data. Often the documentation just uses different fonts for literal and variable text, but the fonts aren't consistent, and it's difficult for a user facing a failing system to stop and locate the section saying what those fonts mean in that document. And most of them don't understand that fonts are being used this way, because they don't even know what a "font" is.
So in my experience, the cops in question could easily be total non-geeks who are intimidated by that strange and mysterious computer stuff, and honestly think that the documentation they used was telling them exactly what data to fill in when presented with those forms.
Or they could have just been lazy, knew what they were doing, and thought that they could get away with it. It's hard to know from what we've been told. Maybe the courts will sort it out a deliver an appropriate punishment to the guilty. But I wouldn't bet any amount of money on it. That's not how our "justice" system usually works. Criminals working "inside the system" are rarely punished. The best we can usually hope for is what has been reported here: The victims of the police misbehavior have been set free (but not compensated for their time).
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
No wonder your wife divorced you.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Therac-25 anybody?
Ideally, you'd want the department of exacting assholes to be in charge of testing the stuff, and distinct from the officers in charge of using it...
I like the idea of having detail-oriented assholes doing the testing and big-pictures, cheerful people doing the law enforcement.
It's possible that the PD has just been getting this backwards all these years.
I had my SCAPULA sued once.
So you support justice-by-hunch?
It's happened with hospital devices (mechanical failure leading to lethal doses for patients). It's one of the reasons laws were changed to make sure the devices are checked regularly.
But for some reason the TSA x-ray machines are not subject to those same laws, and as far as I know, never checked. A device could go haywire a year ago and noone would ever know (until they get cancer 10 years later).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Even the highway cops in Super Troopers knew that you have to test your equipment!
Only the (active) x-ray scanners are banned. The other type currently in use uses millimeter waves which should be safe (as the only possible danger would be RF burns, assuming the machine had the power in the first place). There also exist passive x-ray backscatter machines that rely on natural background x-ray radiation rather than generating their own beam (which would make them even safer than the millimeter wave ones) but I don't think those are used for airport security.
DUI is a serious crime and deserving of very serious penalties.
No it's not. You've been emotionally brainwashed to believe this.
0.o
Appropriately graphic analogy... now get the hell away from me with that thing you sadist!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The part that scares me is that if they are uncalibrated, they are unlikely to be cleaned either. I hate the idea of residual vomit breath.
These convictions will be null and void... The units must be calibrated every so often.. Furthermore, their radar guns must be inspected and re-calibrated as well.
Yeah, 2000+ miles is nothing for the long arm of the law to propagate through.
The biggest issue I see regarding this case is that he is now forced to make the decision to accept the ticket and pay the fine (and have points on his license), but 91 in a 75 is getting into felony speeding territory and can impact the rest of his life.
To me, I think if you are from far out of state, you have a right to an expedited trial while you are in that state or while it would be reasonably expected that you could attend without egregious personal financial loss. That way you can force your accuser and be done with the ordeal before you go back home. And ruining a day of a vacation is a lot less worse than forcing somebody to spend lots of money and another trip out of their time to clear their name. Perhaps a law that if they were found innocent then the state would recoup them the travel costs would be a good idea as well, because proving your innocence should not be unduly financially difficult.
How about the other way around? The machines could be off both ways. It would be interesting to see who they pulled over for suspected DUI and later let go. In a city that size I bet a few of them who should have been off the streets later went on to cause an accident or fatality.
"the police officers in charge of testing the 20 breathalyzers used by the Police Department did not carry out any tests on the equipment. Officers instead filled the test forms with numbers that matched the control sample" Wait, that's a mistake? I think headline needs to read "SFPD Breathalyzer test results forged, Puts Hundreds of DUI Convictions In Doubt" I don't see how you can accidentally not do part of your job and buy complete the paperwork that makes it look like you did your job - someone decided to do this, on purpose, and potentially let hundreds of drunk drivers off the hook and/or harm innocent people.
There are different warrants for arrest.
Bench warrants are issued by courts and judges. Last time I checked those do not cross jurisdictional lines, and certainly do not apply to different states.
I have had the same issues with some tickets in the past in different states and I just ignored it and threw it in the trash. Have one that is in debt collection now that is over 10 years old. Good luck.
It's just a game with those bastards. They know they can fuck with you because you are out of state and don't have the time and money to fight it. Glorified tax collectors for their county with guns.
P.S - Before anybody posts to tell me that I am wrong to do so, those tickets were highly, highly questionable. Not a simple 10 mph over the limit type ticket where I know I screwed up. I have always paid tickets where I knew I was wrong and got caught speeding.
Has anyone considered how many drink drivers may have got away with it as a result of faults not picked up? Some could have been breathalized following a fatal accident.
The center of New Mexico is actually over 5000 miles from the center of Jersey.
WTF? Are you driving through Seattle on the way?
That would explain why a cop claimed he measured me at 91,
Yes, a failure to calibrate the breathalyzer would explain this.
even though my cruise control had been set to 79 (plus four over the speed limit).
If you are going to rely on your cruise control, you should be aware that they don't always keep you from going faster than they are set. They will try to accellerate if the car starts to slow, but I don't know of any of them that will put on the brakes if you are going too fast.
You can easily override the speed by resting your foot on the accellerator. The one in my car actually does worse at controlling speed going downhill than just letting the car control itself. I.e., cruise control on, downhill, I can pick up 20MPH, but with it off, the natural engine braking keeps me close to speed.
His equipment was probably not calibrated and giving false readings.
If you are ever stopped for a radar violation, ask to see the equipment calibrated in front of you. It's really easy to do, all they do is hold a tuning fork in front of the antenna. If they refuse, then you have good grounds to claim failure to calibrate as required.
woot! Lazy piggies cost SF a lot of money during a recession!!!!
The person who should be fired, is the Police Chief. He may of not been directly responsible for checking the Breathalyzers, but he is responsible for the Police Department, and since he didn't do his job, or check up on his staff to make sure they were doing his.
The officers in charge of the Breathalyzers should be canned also, and any cop that used the control sample number should be fined and suspended and made to do police training all over again.
Look, the person in charge is supposed to be in charge. It don't fucking matter if he did shit or not, he's the boss, and he should pay. Not sure why we think the people in charge shouldn't ever bear responsiblity for the people under them, but isn't that what we pay them the big bucks for?
Lazy pigs should be cut up for bacon and ham. Just saying.
Be seeing you...
there are many documented cases of xray equipment malfuction and bad software and/or hardware interlocks failing to prevent overexposure in those cases. I'm just waiting for one of these to happen on one of these airport scanners.
Should design a drivber or simply not drink alcohol. If you KNOW you are going to go dangerous near the limit with 2 drink then take only 1 or design a driver or take a FUCKING cab. Is that so ahrd to grasp ? I get the feeling that many of you "grown man" are actually fracking child in your comprehension. Cue the response "I wanna be free to do whatever I want, BAC level are too low *waaaaah* (wambulance)". If you can't be a grown man a REFRAIN to consume alcohol while driving, they you shall eb treated like a child.
In my country breathalyzer is only the first test after which you have to go to the police station and they take a blood sample. A breathalyzer test alone shouldn't be enough.
Damn, my trees don't run nearly that fast.
Instead of fuzzy and non-attributed "laws", how about the specifics?
Gascon's comment that there was "no malicious intent" is simply ludicrous coming from the mouth of the official in charge of prosecuting criminal actions. It's not like someone said, "whoops, got the radar from the un-calibrated shelf by mistake - better make the appropriate report and nullify the incorrectly issued citations." This is a case people tasked with an important duty that rests at the core of investigating and prosecuting drunk driving instead wilfully and intentionally falsified reports for over half a decade. If Gascon were a competent prosecutor he would be familiar with California Penal Code section 118.1. Since he apparently is not, I quote:
"118.1. Every peace officer who files any report with the agency which employs him or her regarding the commission of any crime or any investigation of any crime, if he or she knowingly and intentionally makes any statement regarding any material matter in the report which the officer knows to be false, whether or not the statement is certified or otherwise expressly reported as true, is guilty of filing a false report punishable by imprisonment in the county jail for up to one year, or in the state prison for one, two, or three years. This section shall not apply to the contents of any statement which the peace officer attributes in the report to any other person."
Any questions other than how many counts they are guilty of or how the "miracle never-emptying bottle of calibration gas" went unnoticed by supervisors?
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
"Run, Forrest, run!"
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
A-ha! Ambulatory trees proven by science!
Well, maybe. But it's well known in the software industry that a large percentage of users of most software will handle "fill in the form" situations by copying the examples in the manual.
Yeah, well, in any regulated industry EVERYBODY knows this is unacceptable, a violation of company policy, and illegal. People caught doing things like this in roles like aircraft mechanics, doctors, clinical lab techs, evidence handling, or food/drug testing are almost always immediately terminated and turned over to the relevant regulatory agency. Usually regulations allow people doing such things to be punished personally for them, and of course the company ends up in hot water as well.
In fact, in such industries companies are usually required to prove that they train their employees to be aware of such things. There is no allowance for incompetence where things of this importance are at stake.
In Germany there is no conviction without a blood test. Breath analyzers are seen as way too inaccurate to base a conviction on them alone. You will get very high values after using an alcohol-containing mouthspray, and remaining alcohol in the mouth from drinking shortly before also has a strong influence. But even without that the breath alcohol concentration can differ from the blood concentration.
No, I trust my own nose when someone who is reeking of booze and can't walk straight should be noted as such. Then you take them for a proper blood test. People who are trained for that and see it every day can tell the difference between (literally) stinking drunk and, say, being in a diabetic crash.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Why should anyone believe the SFPD, though, that it was that professional experience and not the fact that the cop in question thought the person being arrested was a royal jackass?
The breathalyzer and blood tests remove the qualitative and moves things into the quantitative domain. And no matter how good the quantitative results can be, they are still inherently weaker than qualitative.
And now that the department has been shown to engage in systematic deception, it weakens the quantitative aspects substantially.
Check your premises.
Do the tests now. If the breathalyzers fail, then let's talk. If they pass the tests, then the convictions should stand.
And how fast was the tree actually going?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now there's green transportation to you. I eagerly await the introduction of the Ford Fir Tree to the market.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
There's no excuse for this, whoever is in charge of that calibration really needs to get their heads handed to them.
Fuel cell based units go out of cal (I used to do hundreds a week), so it is inexcusable they didn't calibrate.
I worked for Phoenix Police
I'm not sure how it works in the USA, but in Australia, police use portable fuel cell based instruments which are accurate to 0.01 BAC when calibrated.
The portable instrument readings cannot be used in court, so are backed up by either a blood sample check at hospital, or an infrared evidential quality unit.
An IR unit will take a pre sample reading from a reference ethanol gas, then the human sample, then the reference gas again which is printed out in front of the subject. You feel really screwed then!
46137
Breathalyzers have quite a few inherent issues, i feel. The first and foremost is that they use some formula to blanket determine the "too drunk to be driving" limit for all people. There is such a thing as functional tolerance with alcohol.
The second thing is that the formula takes the "breath alcohol to blood alcohol ratio" to determine BAC. Perhaps I am being naive here, but what if some alcohol comes out of your mouth and goes into the device... wouldn't that result in a much higher reading?
But mainly I feel that I shouldn't be charged with a crime if I haven't actually done a crime. Sure doing certain things is stupid, but unless it adversely affects someone else or their property, how is that a crime?
Oh, you'll also be paying in points. Those confer, too.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
You don't necessarily have to go there to contest it. Some states/counties have provisions to submit a defense by mail hand have a judge review it and then rule.
I once got out of a speeding ticket from a county in Oregon by writing a not-very-nice letter to the judge claiming the cop was outright lying and the purpose of the stop was revenue generation. The judge replied and was not particularly happy about my choice of wording, but ruled in my favor despite the fact that I was inches from the line between outraged and outright contempt for the behavior of their county's deputies.
minor > none!
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Friend of mine from a police family says "If you get ticketed by someone with a hand-held radar gun, ask them for a reading on a stationary object."
Precision, of course, isn't quite the same as accuracy.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
You forgot Mexico and New Mexico....
Replying to undo bad mod. But I agree with you, wholeheartedly. In fact, I'll take it a step further: criminal charges for those responsible, and if found guilty, incarcerate them with the population they helped put away. This should be the rule for every LEO and judge caught abusing their offices.
Better Call Saul!
Riiiight, you didn't commit the crime. That's why of all the people on the road, you got picked up...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
Yes.. it used to be "driving under the influence".. now it has become "driving with alcohol concentration measured by machine X of greater than Y".
There actually isn't a lot of research to support the current 0.08 standard (in the US). back when, the AMA was asked "what level could we use as an indication of impairment" to save the hassle of developing an actual objective test of impairment. They said "oh, 0.10 sounds like a nice round number, and we know that a lot of people are impaired at that level" (although nobody actually did any "does this affect driving skill" kinds of tests)
For a long time, the 0.10 was a prima facie limit, but subject to rebuttal by other evidence (e.g. you're an alcoholic, and your BAC never goes below 0.15 or you suffer convulsions and withdrawal), or by grilling the officer about the circumstances that led to the stop (they didn't have "sobriety checkpoints" back then): what probable cause did you have: what did you observe (my police officer friends all say, there is NO question about spotting drunk drivers on the road.. it's obvious from inspection when you see them driving, and when you stop them, they are obviously intoxicated.)
Originally MADD was worried about drunk drivers, and did great things with things like encouraging designated driver programs, safe-ride-home, etc. But then, it was taken over by neo-prohibitionists (the original founder quit in disgust). These folks want a no consumption of alcohol, which they feel is best done by gradually lowered zero tolerance programs. They've been able to convince legislatures to follow along (who wants to vote against such a thing? It's like voting to support child molesters).
And there have been significant revenue incentives to start running sweeps and checkpoints. You can get funding to run them (and as long as the cost of the checkpoint is less than the funding increment, you're essentially making a profit).
and --if this story is true-- I am just. fucking. outraged. Processing DUI cases takes a tremendous amount of work. Taxpayers are footing the bill for the courts and the prosecution, and often the defense. These fucking asshole cops, just out of sheer laziness, have wasted the equivalent of several work-years for hundreds of court and DOJ resources. This is landing at a time when the state legislature thinks it's a great idea to slash court budgets further, and San Francisco's trial courts are a particularly bad clusterfuck of poor administration as it is. Of course the public is going to see this as indicative of cops in general, which in turn fucks over the decent, hardworking cops who yes, actually do exist.
Utterly wasting vast amounts of our efforts (and your money, thanks taxpayer) isn't even the worst part. This fraudulent recordkeeping will have undoubtedly resulted in multiple erroneous convictions, and will have put innocent people behind bars.
This is a huge enough problem that a lot of people with the power to do something about it will want their asses in jail. This is a rare case where the police department simply isn't strong enough to stop the people who will want their asses on a platter. Not even if the cop unions get their back. This is the kind of shit that pisses off just about everyone who happens to be in the position to do what it takes to get these cops in jail.
No. Cops know the difference between 90 and 80. Anyone who has been driving for a while does. If he claimed he measured you at 91 and you had your cruise control set at 79, he was simply lying. Cops do it all the time, and get away with it because the judges believe them no matter what.
there are many documented cases of xray equipment malfuction and bad software and/or hardware interlocks failing to prevent overexposure in those cases.
Despite the monkey of the FDA sitting on backs of engineers who designed the thing.
I'm just waiting for one of these to happen on one of these airport scanners.
You will not know it, and even if it was you who got the overexposure they won't tell you. They will just say "step over here, please, for a manual pat-down." No explanations will be forthcoming; a peon has no right to ask for one.
TSA has no duty to tell you anything. Scanner operators are not trained radiologists with diplomas and with their licenses to practice medicine on the line (if not their freedom) if they screw up or if they try to hide the evidence. They are not even trained techs who can tell, if the scanner fails, how exactly it failed and whether any harm was done. They also have every reason to not know any of that, willingly. Ignorance and work instructions are their shield against liability. If an overexposure happens they will keep a poker face and will send the injured passenger away.
For all we know, every scanner that is not in use at an airport may have failed, catastrophically, on someone. That someone was not notified; the scanner operator knows that it will take a long time for the damage to develop - and good luck then associating a malignancy here or there to a specific scanner at a specific airport. TSA will not even allow an investigation; this scanner program is backed by very powerful political interests. TSA already can do to passengers whatever the hell it pleases, and if anyone complains they can have them arrested and fined for financial destruction ($10K is a lot.)
No reasonable engineer would even come close to such a scanner unless there is a sufficient reason to believe that it is safe. Such a reason would have to be pretty extensive, such as design for safety, audits and test reports for everything, periodic calibration, and tests of interlocks. On the design side a safe scanner may have, for example, two independent safety circuits, implemented in different ways (one MCU, one CPLD) and fed from independent sensors. If any of these safety circuits triggers then a fuse inside of a locked, sealed compartment gets blown, the entire scanner turns off, and only a tech with a key and a seal can change the fuse and personally verify that the problem had been fixed. Of course every scanner that I would design would also keep a log, of "black box" style, in an internal EEPROM that can't be erased unless you have a specific crypto key (techs would have those, but not the operators.) Once the EEPROM fills up (or after some preset time elapses) the scanner also shuts off, and a tech must come and perform the periodic inspection and calibration. This is the equipment where a failure endangers safety of people; the system designed by me will enforce the rules.
Offer the people wrongly convicted of DUI well paid jobs doing the calibrations.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
why would the crime lab have a vested interest in accuracy? the convictions pay the bill for the crime lab. maybe your local crime lab is filled with staunch constitutionalists, but more likely just more competent at covering their own asses. just about everyone in the "justice" system has a vested interest in convictions. the current business is nothing but a modern version of the slave trade.
in simplistic terms, it's how the rich convinces the middle class to pay the taxes for the poor. As luck would have it for the oppressors, the lower you are socioeconomically, the more dissatisfied you are with the status quo. unless they can convince you that you're part of the club with imaginary power, etc. although, i do understand that some people are out of control, but that number pales in comparison to our viral gulag population.
as an aside, there is a good chance the field breathalyzer is faulty by design. Companies like intoxalock are allowed to continue defrauding the probated taxpayers because the probationer pays all the associated fees. even though courts will order them replaced with other companies' equipment once your lawyer requests it as they are known to be completely faulty. the state's attorney generals just keep on letting intoxalock operate and intoxolock just pays off all the BBB complaints. if you can't afford a lawyer to get it replaced, then you weren't quite high enough on the ole food chain, so you have violated probation. the deputy who gives the orientation speech to the new probationers will even recommend intoxolock like (s)he is doing you a favor explaining that they are cheaper...
If I were a police officer (or politician, or someone else on the public dime (hell, I currently take this stand in my actual life, not even on the public dime)), I would swear an oath and agree to public suicide if I were to be caught in any sort of fraud. This need not be a judicially enforceable agreement, just having any shred of honor is enough.
Example: I am caught forging calibration documents for the police. I call all my friends and family and have them meet me at town hall at a certain time. In front of everybody I describe my failings, and that I am about to save them the shame of having a failure for a friend, father etc. Then I commit suicide by my choice, hanging, disembowling etc. Nobody forced me, I choose to do the right thing. The only enforcement would be the shame others put on the offender if they do not do the right thing. Exile from family, loss of all friends, having to live on the street, etc.
I call on all frauds in public positions to do the right thing.
Hi, conjecture, this is fact speaking. Laws depend on the wording in your state, and enforcement depends on the officers and their training in your state, and how cases go depends on the local rulings and people selected for the jury.
In other words, you might as well shake the magic 8 ball as opposed to rely on your comment.
If the officer screwed up the test, you are not factually drunk. Once you are ruled guilty, it is a fact. If the conviction (or plea) is thrown into doubt, it is no longer a fact, and must be proven by the prosecution. If the only evidence they have is the Breathylazer result, and that is doubted by undocumented (or explicitly falsified) testing, you are no longer factually drunk. The prosecution must rely on other evidence, which will probably be presented, if it exists, at another trial.
Most juries will be instructed to evaluate the evidence presented, with the Breathalyzer results supressed. Given that, there is no way for you to say how they would likely rule it.
The thing is, if he says he clocked you at 91, and you tell him you were actually only going 79... you've still admitted to speeding, with the exact same fine as if you were going 91 (I'm assuming reckless driving or similar charges comes in at +20 mph like most places).
Not to mention the fact you said your cruise control was set to a speed, rather than actually having looked at your speedometer. If you're going downhill, your car will probably be going considerably faster than your cruise control is set for (unless modern cruise controls actually apply breaks, which I haven't heard of).
It's not just police. This is the sort of thing that people in offices don't understand - this always happens in the field. It doesn't matter how much training you do, people in the field just don't give a damn about this sort of thing. If you give them extra time and resources to make sure that calibration is done correctly, they will take the opportunity to go home early, have a long lunch, or take a nap. I've seen this in the military, in the private sector, and especially with contractors to the government. This is why systems always need to be designed to be much more robust than they technically need to be.
Of course, it goes beyond this: I have had jobs where I received written instructions on how to do the job, but no equipment to do the job with. At McMurdo Station I was given the work order to inspect every electrical panel on the station with a thermal imaging camera to check for overheating. One small problem: we did not have such a camera, the next incoming flight was four months away, and no one was going to send the equipment anyway. So I ended up just going around and manually tightening all the screws on the connections, and looking for scorch marks.
Perhaps this can be an object lesson for the engineers at Slashdot who actually design things.
"Ya know what else doesn't get calibrated?
The scanners run by the SA at airports."
I know that was a typo, but it's a good one (Godwin? ha.) Refreshing my memory, Google gives as the 2nd result: "In 1921 Adolf Hitler formed his own private army called Sturm Abteilung (Storm Section). The SA (also known as stormtroopers or brownshirts)..."
I think we should start referring to the TSA as the " 'SA".
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
The entire output of the X-ray tube will be directed at a single spot of your body
PARENT IS WRONG!
PARENT IS WRONG!
PARENT IS WRONG!
I would like to see this magical xray cathode tube which can focus all of its output in a single spot/beam/line/whateverthefuck. Having been a technician on xray equipment for many years, I can tell you that the tube produces a CONE of gamma energy, and the ONLY way to even make a "collimated" beam, is to use dense plates to BLOCK the scattered radiation from propagating.
To borrow the parent's analogy, this would be like taking a flashlight, placing a piece of cardstock with a thin-slit cut in the center in front of the light, and then sweeping it around the body.
This is not in any way a defense of TSA, because TSA sucks. This is a defense against morons who don't understand how xray cathode tubes produce the radiation, and how it is collimated, and how people are protected by the collimator.
Hi, conjecture, this is fact speaking. Laws depend on the wording in your state, and enforcement depends on the officers and their training in your state, and how cases go depends on the local rulings and people selected for the jury.
In other words, you might as well shake the magic 8 ball as opposed to rely on your comment.
If the officer screwed up the test, you are not factually drunk. Once you are ruled guilty, it is a fact. If the conviction (or plea) is thrown into doubt, it is no longer a fact, and must be proven by the prosecution. If the only evidence they have is the Breathylazer result, and that is doubted by undocumented (or explicitly falsified) testing, you are no longer factually drunk. The prosecution must rely on other evidence, which will probably be presented, if it exists, at another trial.
Most juries will be instructed to evaluate the evidence presented, with the Breathalyzer results supressed. Given that, there is no way for you to say how they would likely rule it.
Yes, laws vary from state to state. Yes, the jury will be instructed to evaluate the evidence presented. Of course, that's how it works.
I'm not sure the fact that a screwed up breathalyzer test causes you not to be "factually drunk" counters anything I said. I was responding to the AC above me that stated it made no sense that someone would be let off the hook if there was a death purely because they weren't factually drunk. I was saying that it absolutely makes sense to me they are not able to present evidence that someone is drunk, they will not be convicted for a murder when they would have been convicted, had they been drunk.
I was simply making an observation about how society looks at drunk driving vs. sober driving, which absolutely has an effect on how juries rule. You act like juries all act completely impartially and unemotional in their rulings when we both know that's not the case (well, if you have any experience, you know that's not the case. That's why jury selection is so important in a trial). I'm sure there are cases where the jury does (I've seen them) and whether or not someone is drunk matters less than whether or not someone would be "at fault" in an accident. However, what I said was that it absolutely makes sense that most juries (again, based on people in America, not based on the law, as that is more important in how it would turn out) would say that in an accident, the drunk person (if they are found "factually drunk" in the court) is at fault the majority of the time. (Again, look at my post again, I didn't speak in absolutes, I said "that's how MOST juries would LIKELY rule it.")
With that said, it follows that there are cases in which people's strong opinions on drunk driving would convict someone if there is an accident that kills someone if the driver is drunk (and thus LOOK more at fault) when they WOULDN'T convict if the driver was sober (as they would not feel the driver was at fault). Hell, I've seen at least one case where that has happened.
Remember, despite the idyllic world you live in where the facts of the case are all that matters, in the REAL world, the jury's beliefs and opinions cloud their judgement to an extent and when a certain type of belief (drunk drivers are terrible and usually at fault if they are in an accident), true or not, is pervasive in our society, it absolutely CAN affect the jury's decision. Welcome to life.
Whoops, apparently wasn't logged in on this computer when I posted. The above comment (starting with "Yes, laws vary from state to state") is me.
Mine ( a Honda accord) certainly DOES put on the brakes.. I noticed it , in fact , when going down a steep incline..
I would like to see this magical xray cathode tube which can focus all of its output in a single spot/beam/line/whateverthefuck.
Then please see here. That was an article from 1996. Any engineer worth his salt would have checked Google when working on this scanner several years later.
Having been a technician on xray equipment for many years, I can tell you that the tube produces a CONE of gamma energy, and the ONLY way to even make a "collimated" beam, is to use dense plates to BLOCK the scattered radiation from propagating.
This is not correct at all. You are limiting the entire world down to specific hardware that you are working with. That hardware likely was designed decades ago, and any changes would require a complex and costly set of FDA tests and approvals. In the larger world there are mirrors for X rays (for certain incidence angles), and there are now lenses. X ray and gamma ray astronomy depends on these things. I would certainly consider focusing if I need to design such a scanner today.
Besides, your statement is wrong when you debate the "entire output of the X-ray tube." It all depends on where you measure it, and since we have no information on density of X rays anywhere in the system, debating the collimator is not very practical, like saying that a nuclear bomb is safe within 10 meters because this here gizmo reduces the radiation a thousand times. You need to know what the radiation level is before the gizmo.
You need to take into account one simple fact. The TSA scanner depends on scattering of X ray photons. This means that the X ray sensor has to be sensitive enough to detect reflections of the beam from the victim's skin. But X rays easily penetrate skin, so you need a lot of incoming photons to get some that bounce back. This translates into higher beam density. Exact numbers are not known; the tube itself may be dangerous, and its narrow beam may be also dangerous - they don't tell and we don't know.
You must not be familiar with the San Francisco Crime Lab. Or how the fallout impacted the people involved.
The revolution will be mocked
it's SanFrisco, for heaven's sakes. and worse, California, simultaneously. this is totally acceptible, and due to the lack of emotional nurturing by the families of the officers involved, society should take the blame for the lack of proper emotional support that resulted in these poor unfortunate drunkards from being snagged for acting stupid with an automobile in public.
I don't see anyone else in the thread bringing it up, so I'm not sure why you're mentioning precision. Precision is the difference between getting a reading of 0.0 or 0.0000 when aiming at a stationary object, while accuracy is the difference between a reading of e.g. 0.0000 and 30.234.
Not a typo. ;-) Ditto the DHS teams that call themselves VIPR and harass people at train terminals, along highways, at post offices, and wherever else they turn up.
I almost always refer to the TSA as the SA.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"