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Connecticut Resident Stopped By State Police For Radioactivity
Okian Warrior writes "A Milford, CT man was pulled over when a state police car radioactivity scanner flagged his car as being radioactive. The man had been given a cardiac exam using radioactive dye, and had a note from his physician attesting to this, but it raises questions about the legality of the stop. Given that it is not illegal to own or purchase or transport radioactive materials (within limits for hobbyist use), should the police be allowed to stop and search vehicles which show a slight level of radioactivity?"
"Radiation Man".
Did they shoot him, claim it was self-defense, and ship his remains to Gitmo? Or did they check out his story and send him on his way?
Seems like a non-story to me.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I am not from USA, but from ex USSR. It's not that we have radioactive waste everywhere lying around,
but there could possibly be some "over the level bolt" lost somewhere in some abandoned base.
So if that bolt happens to end in your car, I would be happy if police stopped me, and checked
why my car was radioactive.
More to the point - if somebody transports nuke, they better get stopped.
What is hilarious and immensely sad is that the poster thinks that police stopping radioactive people is the where the current battle lines over privacy and the first amendment rights are in the US.
Dude...have you been in a coma or something???
The headline makes it sound like the police searched his car, but the article doesn't say that.
Assuming there was no search and the officer simply asked him why the car was radioactive and was satisfied with the explanation, this sounds like an example of the system working.
I'm actually very impressed that these detectors are widely deployed and sensitive enough to pick this up.
Should the police be allowed to stop and search vehicles which show a slight level of radioactivity?
Seriously? What kind of donkey are you?
You're living in a Police State that monitors its citizens and foreigners to an extent that developing countries can only dream of, molests travelers before they can board a plane, hosts a fourth of the world's inmates, locks foreigners for a decade without trial on tropical islands, and recently murdered one of its own citizen without trial... And you're fucking worried about your car getting searched because it's slightly radioactive? How about wondering what kind of turd bought the cop a radioactive detector?
So, basically, some defense contractor bribed a few key state officials and got them to convince everyone that taxpayer money should be used to outfit the police cars with (very expensive and profitable) radiation scanners.
If a nuclear terrorist event occurs under an American President, he'll be seen as a traitor who betrayed the people.
As a result, there's going to be much more intrusion into our lives to prevent this possibility.
We've gone from a world in which five first world powers had nuclear weapons to one in which many powers potentially have the ability to make nukes or dirty bombs.
It's a brave new world, and to avoid those brave new consequences, our police will be getting more intrusive. I think most of us support this because the risk to us is slight, the risk of the power "expanding" (slippery slope) is slight because it's so specific, and the consequences are so awful.
Futurist Traditionalism
All they will do is classify it is under grounds of national security as it could be possible stopping something could be a bomb or something.
In the case of radioactivity i must actually agree with the Gov.
This guy must have been seriously active to be detected from several meters and through the shielding provided by his car. If it was that bad what risk was there to his family and colleagues? If I was a cop and detected radiation I would think twice about making an approach, get the guys in the rad suits.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42134880/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/t/tokyo-flights-trigger-radiation-detectors/ ;)
The system worked as sold the the US gov.
Nothing was done
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-03-17/business/ct-biz-0318-airport-radiation--20110317_1_radiation-detectors-american-airlines-cargo
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
"Police were suspicious, as the note from the doctor was written in red crayon, on a page torn out of a comic book, and contained numerous spelling and grammatical errors. The suspect was also carrying similar notes, allegedly from his mother, claiming that the dog ate his homework, and the cat ate his gym suit."
Well, he had better avoid sex with his wife . . . otherwise they might become the proud parents of a healthy baby Incredible Hulk.
I find this whole situation quite bizarre: "Hey, I just chugged a bottle of water, spiked with polonium! I'm radioactive! But I have a note from my doctor!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The amount of radioactive material used for medical purposes is very small, and noone could do much harm with it. They should only check cars that have radiation indicating large amounts of the stuff.
Stasi used radioactive spray to track dissidents
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1313191/Stasi-used-radioactive-spray-to-track-dissidents.html
Stasi's radioactive hold over dissidents
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1100317.stm
Report: Dissidents Tracked Using Radiation
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=81775&page=1
"The feared East German secret police routinely sprayed suspected dissidents with a radioactive solution as a means of secretly tracking them, according to a new report.
Stasi agents would then wear portable Geiger counters that would activate when a marked suspected dissident was nearby, according to New Scientist magazine.
So that targets would not hear the distinctive clicking of the counter at close range, Stasi secret police agents wore the detector strapped under one arm, while a vibrating alarm was slung under the other arm. The magazine reports that the 30-year-old invention mirrors the technology behind todayâ(TM)s pagers and cellphones. The magazineâ(TM)s article was based on a paper by leading radiation protection expert Klaus Becker."
Sir Bernard Lovell claims Russians tried to kill him with radiation
The veteran British scientist behind Joddrell Bank telescope has disclosed how the Russians once tried to kill him with radiation for tracking the Sputnik satellite.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5362829/Sir-Bernard-Lovell-claims-Russians-tried-to-kill-him-with-radiation.html
Cell Phone Sensors Detect Radiation To Thwart Nuclear Terrorism
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080122154415.htm
Any kid could make a nuclear device that would blow us all to hell. This police officer was obviously just doing his job to protect us.
But that hasn't mattered in American for years now.
> Given that it is not illegal to own or purchase or transport
> radioactive materials (within limits for hobbyist use),
Yes, but if they're sufficiently radioactive to be detected from across the street, and you didn't bother to put them in a shielded container for transport, I don't think getting pulled over and asked a couple of questions is necessarily entirely out of line. It is worth noting that the radiation was leaving the vehicle and having an impact on the external surroundings, which is how the police knew about it in the first place. Now, in the case of the dude who'd just had a medical scan with radioactive dye, that was fundamentally unavoidable (unless he wanted to stay at the hospital until it wore off, which could be rather expensive). Nonetheless, the police didn't stop him out of randomness, or because they were busybodies, or because they had something against him personally, etc. They became interested in him because of radiation that was emanating from his vehicle. That's not (or at least not entirely) a private effect. It's a public effect.
If you're transporting radioactive materials for hobbyist use, and you want them to be private (so that they will not get police attention without a warrant, for example), you could always just keep them in a shielded container, so that the radiation remains private. Frankly, that's probably a good idea even at home (whenever you're not actively working with your hobby). Think of it in the same way as keeping your dog on a leash.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
That is not the right question to ask. The right question to ask is should government be allowed to do ANYTHING trumping citizen's rights that has been granted in 1776 in the name of security or any other names.
The question to ask is whether a country of free men, which US of A declares itself to be, "the most free country in the world", should continue a practice of "preventing" crime, from the one hand, and start fullfilling people's right to think and act within the limits of the law, no matter how close are they to those limits, and, from the other hand, should the aforementioned country start punishing people for crimes swiftly, without any delay, thus enforcing the responsibility of people for their action, which is the other obligatory immanent nondetachable side to the aforementioned rights.
That is the question.
As for the type of questions you have posed, they have been leading the country nowhere. Scratch that, they haven't been leading the country nowhere, they have been leading away from original rights of the people to lesser and lesser rights. They have been leading country away from its original state to 1984 state.
It's time to reverse Martin Noemuller fable back and instead of warning others about "what do you do when they will come for you?" it is time to call people "let's stop them from coming after anyone". It's time for stopping calling for "stopping" the process where it is now, because, face it, the point is rather arbitrary, isn't it? It's time for starting to call for reversal of the process back to the origins of the US
In every persistent ideology, that is the one that had existed for even only slightly longer than 236 years, there always have been restoration/revival movement and if this country wants to claim to have any ideology beside the animalistic ideology "compete and survive", it must prove itself by having this type of movement as well.
Wait... There was a number of people that were doing that all the time, actually, scratch that, I know exactly, what that number is, it is nine at any given time of recent history. Correction: they were supposed to be doing that in our name, on our behalf, but they have been failing to do that miserably and silly us, we made a mistake of giving them a total carte blanche to go with that with impunity by removing any accountability of their actions.
This is all theoretical and rhetorical, because, face it, there is no ideology left in US except the one I characterized.
So stop asking your silly questions like:
and move on. It does not matter if you actually have this local small most likely Pyrrhic victory in this particular case. Without the principle of following the principles, without people who are ready to sacrifice their 401k, their MTV, their suburban houses, and unltimately, and very essentially, their lives for those principles, you will be just going from question to question.
Do you know why people had more rights in the most despotic countries of the past? Of course, not because the despots respected their rights in any way.
People of the past had those rights because government could not technically stomp on them, they did not have the means, the force, the technology. Now the government respect those rights only superficially more than their despotic brethren of the past, in reality it systematically and slowly takes away all rights of people except the right for panem et circenses. Oh, that "right" to circenses is fulfilled on full blown scale. There should be some kind of Moore law for the number of "channels of shit".
Now the
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The police do need a reason ("reasonable suspicion") in order to make a stop and ask some questions. ... a radioactivity detector going off.
Something that might give an officer reasonable suspicion is
However, given that some level of radioactivity is both safe and perfectly legal, it seems unlikely the officer would have probable cause to perform a legal search.
Basically, there are only three things you should say to a police officer:
- "I wish to remain silent."
- "I don't consent to any searches."
- "I would like to speak to my attorney."
There is no need to say anything else. (And, you SHOULD NOT say anything else!)
If the police officer performs an illegal search due to legal radioactives not constituing probable cause, then you file a complaint and a lawsuit for violating your civil rights.
As a cardiac patient who has had isotope stress tests, and as a working chemist, let me state for the record that there is nothing "slight" about the level of radioactivity of a patient after one of these tests. Low level rad wastes, radioactive ores, uranium glass, all are slight levels of radioactivity, and measured as millionths of a Curie. The isotope used for stress tests is injected at 30,000 times higher levels, and the radiation emitted, gamma rays, penetrates through things like clothes, bone, muscle, and car doors.
The isotope used has a very short half-life so that two days after a test, there is very little radioactivity left, Right after a test a patient has a level of radioactivity that would scare the gloves off a rad-safety worker. If you point a Geiger counter at one of us, it doesn't click, it -whines-.
They pulled over a vehicle that was hot, and in other circumstances would represent a substantial safety hazard. More power to them.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
more Slashtardism - seriously, the claptrap on this site is becoming unbearable due to kiddiewink journalist poseurs posting nonsensical rhetoric
Big whoop. Superpowers or GTFO.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Then their scanner are either waaaay too sensible. Alternatively your explanation makes no sense as they mot likely will be flooded by the detection of dude with radioactive dye in teh blood.
Look at it from the bight side... They could have sold them detectors that didn't work :)
My father recently had major surgery, and when he went to the USA, he was pulled over by police due to being radioactive, and had the cops go over the entire car. I assumed this shit was normal.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Hahaha... this made me laugh.
My father-in-law had undergone a medical treatment for colon cancer where they implanted a dozen small pellets of radioactive material around his tumor.
Well he & his wife drove to Canada on a trip and crossing the border INTO Canada was no problem.
However, upon trying to re-enter the U.S. at the Border some radioactive detection system went off, an automatic barrier went up in front of their car and soon a dozen armed police were surrounding their car.
Needless to say a 78 yr old man and his wife were a bit shaken by the experience and my father-in-law was questioned for an hour and their car searched/scanned before they were permitted to continue.
I am grateful that our Border can detect this kind of stuff down to the microscopic levels because a terrorist would certainly have more on them than what was in my relative's butt...
Good thing my father-in-law is a totally funny guy and his retelling of the incident had me in stitches for hours.
The measurement was likely conducted using a GM counter device, and as these devices are reliable.
"Reasonable Suspicion" would mean the Officer(s) was(were) guessing, but that CT State Cruiser was equipped with a "Radioactivity Scanner".
One should say that the "Terry stop" is justified to protect the public good from hazards,
even if unintentional, under "Probable Cause" dur to the on-board detection system on the Cruiser.
It should be good news to hear that these Cruisers are equipped in this way, and the inconvenience of a "terry stop" is a very minor cost to pay
for the greater public safety.
Even if a "hobbyist" is transporting within CFR 40.13, for a detection to occur within a cruiser at a distance means that "something is spilling out"
or "radiating dirty" and that is not suspicion but probable cause.
Bottom line: wow. Police Cruiser Radiation Detection. E911 and Evac Helicopters equipped with GPS-Jamming detection. NOT all GPS-jamming events
are *intentional* and the majority are accidents, or mis-use of foreign jammers, or electronics faults.
Be vigilant and observant, but not paranoid and irrational.
All he has to do is put a few drops of some nuclear medicine on your bumper (or worse, on your person) and you'll be stopped and searched thoroughly, just because he thinks you're guilty.
He doesn't have to. If the stop were actually challenged, all he has to day is that his detector showed radioactivity at that time or more likely, "I don't remember the incident your Honor." Now, all you have to do is prove he's lying. Good luck with that - even if you do.
Black people are pulled over for DWB all the time and how many times do you see court cases because of that?
The only times stops are questioned are when the cops actually find something illegal.
The IRA could built one tonne bombs. A one tonne truck bomb with a few spent fuel rods from a reactor as the payload, and shielding made of cement blocks, could be quite hard to detect and do very significant damage in the wrong place - hundreds of deaths and an inner city uninhabitable for months. The IRA was funded by a few ex-Nazis living in Ireland and wanting revenge after WW2, by protection rackets and bank robberies. I imagine that Islamic terrorists actually have access to more resources and funding than that.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Here in New Mexico this is a way of life. The military checkpoints that the Border Patrol has set up everywhere routinely check for such things as radioactivity. When a chemical stress test is administered in cardiac units in Las Cruces, for instance, the patient is given a document describing the isotope used, the procedure administered, and contact information. The patient is then briefed on what to expect at the military check points. Having gone through such a test I can affirm that the monitoring system works. Alarms go off when you approaching the questioning zone - you are ordered to drive your vehicle to a segregated area - Border Patrol Agents with geiger counters surround your vehicle - if you are lucky, some idiot will babble spanish as you incessantly (as if spanish speaking and radioactivity had something to do with each other) and eventually they will clear you to return to your home. All of this so the people of Kansas and Oklahoma can feel safe - I don't care if the cowards feel safe or not.
was his name Eric Banner?
How about "just a small puffs of anthrax"? Should that pass as well?
Just exactly how do you expect the police to catch the terrorist with a nuke if not deploying such devices?
If this is your level of offense that you take, how are you going to cope with a post-nuclear-bomb-in-NYC security regime that will inevitably be realized?
This is very basic stuff here. I mean a just slightly lateral translation of "A Stitch In Time Saves Nine"
Sometimes I despair of my fellow liberals. Someone they got sold on this anti-government crack. Basically they think because Hoover and Stalin and World Leader In History X created and used the states security apparatus to attack their own people , then it's inevitable any country will follow suit given enough time and power.I guess that's the only lesson a lot of people take away from their history class.There is a danger lurking in too much unchecked power, and we need judicial review and the best efforts of a free press, we really do but wait....but what if they're corrupt too!!
Which brings me to my counter-narrative to the Police State Is Coming meme. The reason you're free as in freedom is mainly because other members of society actually DO value freedom as much as you do.
Judges, cops, the people in the the press and national security apparatus actually view the world in the same way you do. They LIKE their country and government (sorry Ron Paul!) and LIKE their freedoms and civil liberties and want to continue to have them fro everyone. They're patriots in that way. They actively DON'T want a government that sends political enemies to work gulags and all the other stuff that characterizes a repressive of society. The people in our nation who DON'T feel this way really stand out as a lunatic fringe.
I am not saying to just trust your government. I am saying that the reason you can walk down the street isn't because there are laws against murder but mostly because people have internalized the "don't murder" value and don't want to murder each other, and that internalization is what REALLY keeps you safe on a day to day basis and not the laws. The law make it advantageous to internalize it and disadvantageous to fail to do so.
The real thing to worry about is the lunatic right wing historical and social revisionist histories that get people to believes like "This country was founded as a Christian nation" and "Barak Obama is a Islamic communist". As crazy as that shit sounds, it actually does have the potential to create individuals who DON'T share your values- at all. Get enough of those types running around and no law is going to keep you safe .
That's why what you say online matters. It's today's public town hall. A good argument influences people to think and see things differently. That process, of talking to each other and changing minds is the ultimate mechanism through which civilization and freedom and democracy are passed.
What would happen if you got pulled over picking up a Uranium Sample from united nuclear at the post office? If the cop could not relate, or was anti-science, you would be going to jail for sure. How much Uranium is 'hobbyist use'? How would they determine that?
All nature of remote sensing is being used right now to collect data on chemicals you possess, communications you make, people you associate with. What is special about this case is the police disclosed their methods by actually pulling him over and investigating it in a public way. As I have posted elsewhere on this site, we cannot stop the police and surveillance state from becoming fully ubiquitous, but we can demand that unconstitutional and extra legal collection of data to be used for either civil or criminal cases against citizens and other folks operating under our Constitution.
For several years now we have had "visual probable cause" such as for example not wearing seat belts, or talking on a cell phone. This is new. We also have actual checkpoints where everyone is stopped, their papers checked and zero tolerance being enforced. This is new and is clearly a search without probable cause.
Probable cause does not include the "statistical expectation" that a certain percentage of folks passing through the checkpoint may be drunk. In fact the lowering of standards of alcohol impairment itself is a form of prohibition that has caused a massive ramp-up of otherwise legal citizens becoming embroiled in the criminal justice system, becoming felonized, and notably having property confiscated in the name of the state or the "public". Totally unconstitutional.
We need to ramp back what is illegal and how strongly we enforce if we want people to be invested in civil society, otherwise we are just continuing down the long traveled road of making increasingly large segments of the population dependent on the government and "subject to" constant oversight and negative reinforcement.
JJ
Was he driving a Malibu? http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__mokxbTmuJM/ScKc7XzvUAI/AAAAAAAADuM/w2Y3rb1FA9M/s1600-h/a-alex-cox-repo-man-emilio-estevez-dvd-review-pdvd_015.jpg
Repo Man was not meant to be a documentary
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
What if he was exposed without his knowing it. What if he was in a hurry and/or didn't want to talk to the officer. What would have happened then? Arrest, or permanent no-fly? What is their documented procedure?
can do whatever we want, slaves. Stop whining !
If a dog sniffing your car and alerting for the presence of contraband is enough for probable cause, then picking up radiation outside of the car with a detector is no leap at all. You can detect it outside of the auto without a search. Open-and-shut.
One case where an officer is doing his job instead of abusing privacy.
"Officer, officer! Someone's stolen my ions!"
"Are you certain?"
"I'm positive!"
I think what most people are missing here is whether or not the man was actually doing anything illegal. As someone posted above, the summary may be a bit misleading in calling the level of radiation as 'slight.' Still, most people seem to be saying that it was okay because the officer was satisfied with his reason and so didn't... what exactly? Even if he had no reason whatsoever to be aglow with rads, what could the cop have done?
The real question here is whether the man had crossed over a legal boundary by exuding radiation. If the levels weren't high enough to fall under regulation anyway, what the hell was the point in stopping this guy? Would they have searched him and torn apart his vehicle looking for terrorists?
I live within 1/2 hour from the border, and we have Border Inspection stations on all road ways. Since our city is has better medical services than the small towns, many patients come here for similar tests. Even when the doctor's give them signed reports for the Inspectors (because they will set off the detectors), they get the full vehicle inspection, dogs included.
If authorities would pay any attention to the doctor's orders, it wouldn't be the hassle that it is today.
Last time I talked to someone that would have to go through the checkpoint, I suggested taking some snacks to share with the inspectors. Maybe they will remember them the next time, and let them through without the complete search process.
I hate reading comments from the top and then getting to to the bottom and seeing TL;DR:
TL;DR: is the mark of an imbecile to me. It pains me to have wasted time reading the comment of an imbecile.
Me (Marine Corps veteran): Walking across campus, a few feet from the sidewalk, carrying a brown paper sack with cookies inside it. I was accompanied by a friend, an active duty soldier (a medic) in civilian clothes. a black and white rolls to a stop at the curb. "What's in the bag?" (Who me?)... Er.... would you believe cookies? Cop: "Give me the bag." I did, after considering whether I wanted to get beat up for "resisting (authority)." Cop: (disgustingly) Looks in sack at the cookies, hands them back, and drives off.
Hmmmm. Due process? Rights? All just meaningless words. Pap for lawyers.
Driving While Radioactive. I'm so sick of prejudice.
Each of us, as citizens in a participatory government, has the obligation to exert his or her rights. When we don't, we set a new precedent, in effect creating a new law. In this case, that precedent is to allow police to shit on The Bill of Rights and search us without due process. Call me old fashioned, but I believe that's a bad thing.
I would venture to bet that he was over-radiated and would not have hit the threshold otherwise.
I would venture to bet that you have no fucking idea what you're talking about.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Would he have been pulled over if he had a few hundred pounds of rock salt in his trunk instead?
Serenity now, insanity later.
they notice you weaving, driving erratically, speeding, emitting radiation, taking a slug from a Jack Daniels bottle, running a red light, rolling through a stop sign
One of these things is not like the others...
Maybe you can point to the one which isn't illegal, sleuth!
30 years ago, I was stopped by police for jogging at night... on multiple occasions. I've been stopped for not signalling a left turn when I was in the left-turn only lane and the cop was immediately to my right, meaning there was no way he could see my left turn signal. Apparently people have a very unrealistic view of "probable cause", in practice, cops can stop you and question you at any time, just because they feel like it. Compared to "stop and frisk" policies which invariably get applied only to minorities, pulling somebody over because they set off a radiation detector actually sounds pretty reasonable!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
While it may be legal to purchase and even transport radioactivity, I would think most folks would tend to do so in containers that limit exposure, in turn making them not blip on a passing detector. The radioactive man was not contained and blipped on the detector. Unless he was accosted, or otherwise treated incorrectly, I feel the officer stopping him to sort the situation out was perfectly in line and the responsible thing to do.
Hint: There is no amount of radiation that is "healthy" to be exposed to.
http://xkcd.com/radiation/
So terrorists would either shield their payload perfectly or not at all--there's no chance that they'd only shield it down to the level that would be emitted by somebody who recently received an injection of a radioactive dye? That seems like pretty shaky reasoning to stake people's lives on.
And people who have recently received some kinds of radioactive tracers or radioactive implants for cancer treatment can be pretty hot. It is not uncommon for patients to be cautioned to keep their distance from kids and women who might be pregnant. Isotopes used for medical purposes mostly decay rapidly, but particularly early on, they can emit well above background. I knew a scientist who discovered after a test that he could not enter the room with his lab's radiation scintillation counter without screwing up the results.
"Probable cause" does not mean "proof beyond a shadow of doubt." You can legally be detained if a cop notices you driving with bags of white powder in the front seat, even though you may only be a baker transporting powdered sugar to your bakery. Stopping the occasional person who is emitting unusal levels of radioactivity for a benign reason hardly seems an overwhelming intrusion on civil liberty. An unusually high level of radioactivity could be an indication of crimes other than terrorism, by the way--unsafe transport of radioactive materials, for example
If I had mod points, this would be (+1, Informative). The parent poster is right on the money re: typical nuclear medicine scans. I've had a similar experience; where my infant daughter had many similar scans during her cancer treatment. I was told that radioactive iodine in her system would be completely harmless in less than two days, so I thought nothing of disposing of her used diapers in the normal manner.
A few days after a scan, I get a phone call from the state police - apparently a bag of garbage set off a radiation detector at the waste processing center... Someone had to find the right bag, then dig through it (DIRTY DIAPERS!!!) to find a piece of mail or other identifiable information! So they tracked me down and referred it to the state police. I was flabbergasted that someone actually went to that much trouble (this was pre-9/11), but then explained was the source of the radiation was "have a nice day, and don't let it happen again"
I discussed this with the nuclear med. techs at the hospital, and the tip is to leave this kind of medical waste in a trash can, outside the house, for an extra day or two before putting it into a dumpster.
I still wonder what the job title is of the guy that had to dig through those soiled diapers to ID the source!
-Matt
Did it go something like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qljXevEW2W0
After the supreme court decision a few weeks back they can now take him to jail and strip search him ... twice! He thought the cardiac exam was bad?
This could have gone badly wrong. Here's an alternate scenario:
So the conversation probably went:
"Good afternoon sir, I've stopped you because your car seems to be radioactive"
"Yes, I've just had a medical procedure involving a radioactive isotope, here's a letter from the doctor."
( patient reaches for his letter, on the seat next to him)
( Officer suspects the patient is reaching for a weapon, so he shoots him on the spot)
The contents of a "dirty bomb" would be trivial to detect, less deadly than many chemical spills and a lot easier to clean up (eg. Kosmos satellite crash in Canada). "Panic" is likely to be along the lines of real emergency behaviour of people during fires, earthquakes etc and not like a disaster movie where everyone apart from the heroes panics and dies.
If it's industrial or medical grade radioactive material you'll most likely find a few dozen people in your area that can and have dealt with such material. If it's weapons grade you'll need a lot more of it to make a "dirty bomb" thats going to affect more than one small building than you would for a nuke that's going to make a mess of a city. A few physicists wrote about how silly a "dirty bomb" was in the 1970-80s, but unfortunately Reagan era propaganda from PR folk made more noise than the physicists.
It assumes that all the potassium in a banana is a radioactive isotope instead of a very tiny fraction of it. The "banana dose" was part of a misguided bit of nuclear propaganda in an attempt to calm people on the issue of radioactive waste which didn't work but has remained with us. It is a deliberate lie if a somewhat trivial one.
Lead is heavy stuff, and industrial radiographic sources are sheilded enough to cut radiation down to a safe enough level for hand carrying while still being light enough to be carried up ladders.
So what if you light a cigarette and they pull you over because it Could be filled with marijuana... They just wanted to check. They didn't arrest you, just inconvenienced you.
"They can do whatever they want as long as they don't shoot you or do more than affect a temporary arrest." That is what I'm hearing from you.
He didn't have any requirement to give him his story. If he had ONLY presented his license, registration and proof of insurance then they have the choice to charge him with something or let him go. He should have shut his mouth and then sued for violations of his fourth amendment rights.
It is A FELONY. Title 18 U.S.C. Section 242 - Deprivation of rights under color of law, man. They can't legally inconvenience you because something that you are doing that is perfectly legal MIGHT be illegal. That is not probable cause.
Oh, wait, it's 2012 in America. The constitution is a joke. Maybe you are right these days.
If even a tiny fraction of the potassium is the radioactive isotope (that is the case BTW no lie there) the banana has SOME (as in non-zero but just barely) radiation. If NO amount is safe, then the banana is unsafe. So is a granite counter top, our own bodies, etc etc.
You can always tell a Milford man.
If you want to articulate precisely, you would need to reference ionizing radiation, and the amount measured, and reference the normal backround amount in that area, and also note what level above normal is considered remarkable.
And as has been pointed out to YOU over, and over, and over again the percentage of legitimate, non-criminal explanations so far outweighs the extraordinarily unlikely use of radiation in a terrorist or criminal attack that, given no other obvious evidence, this stop was not reasonable by any stretch of the imagination.
Otherwise you are doing the equivalent of stopping completely random cars for speed violations. (Come to think of it, that would be more reasonable, since based on observation 90% of drivers regularly speed.)
You sir, you are unreasonable.
There is always a way to spin any circumstances as reasonably indicating a possible crime. Surely we want our police to be more reasonable than you suggest.
Exactly - background radiation, so yes the banana has some and a childrens sandpit at a childcare centre can have a couple of orders of magnitude more (as measured near me to the great shock of parents when it was well above background but still trivial). I agree that "the eric conspiracy" has made a very misleading statement that show that they are way out of thier depth or lying IMHO, but I just wanted to bring up a bit of trivia about the "banana dose". It's the "no such thing as radar just pilots eating carrots to see in the dark" lie of our generation.
But why aren't people who are given radioactive medicine and told to stay away from children or pregnant women for 24 hours simply quarantined?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This made me think of think of a recent wired article
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/10/ff_radioactivecargo/all/1
TL;DR The dirty bomb scanners at the port of Naples went ape shit over a container from Saudi Arabia. Turns out it was a container of scrap metal that an old radioactive element from a medical scanner had found its way into. Good times.
The apocryphal story is that of my old boss. When he started with my old employer (a medical testing lab) he was in the x-ray lab, and as such had to wear a radiation badge. After a while he began forgetting to take the badge off when he left for the day, and his walk home (always the same route) tended to take him past a couple of the busier streets. No big deal, since he'd just swap out his badge in the morning before starting a new shift. One morning he comes in and the lab is shut down, and everyone has their serious faces on.
Turns out the badge he'd turned in from the day before had come back as hot. Not the "bad badge" type of hot, but the "you were definitely exposed to a pretty solid dose of radiation" type of hot. Per protocol everything had to be shut down, tested, procedures reviewed, yadda yadda. In the end, everything in the lab tested fine, and his was the only bad badge found. Best guess was that a truck that went past him on his walk home that day was (knowingly or unknowingly) carrying something nasty.
There's a lot of pretty foul stuff out there. The boy scout who build his breeder reactor a few years ago used radium paint that he found when his gieger counter tripped when driving past an antiques store. One of the post Fukushima radioactivity scares in Tokyo was caused by stored bottles of radium paint that had been forgotten decades ago. We'll probably see more stories like this, and I don't feel that's a bad thing. When it comes to stuff like this, stuff that causes cancer (actually causes cancer. Not like Cell Phones or wifi.), fuck your civil liberties. Public health & safety wins, even if its getting bought in the name of fighting "the terrrrrer"
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
they notice you weaving, driving erratically, speeding, emitting radiation, taking a slug from a Jack Daniels bottle, running a red light, rolling through a stop sign
One of these things is not like the others...
Maybe you can point to the one which isn't illegal, sleuth!
You would make a poor sleuth.
Three of the above mentioned actions are not illegal: weaving, driving erratically, and emitting radiation.
However, all three of those actions are a good indication of either an illegal OR unsafe condition. And either an illegal OR unsafe condition is a reasonable basis for a police officer to conduct a traffic stop.
For example, weaving could be an indication that the driver is drunk. (illegal) Or that they are simply too tired. (unsafe) Or that they just spilled a beverage in their lap. (probably not safe, but remedied once clean-up is complete.) Emitting radiation could indicate improper transport of radioactive material (illegal) or presence of some sort of destructive device (really illegal) or simply that you recently had a medical test done.
paintball
My first thought was that it's rather cool that police have radiation detectors in their vehicles. I'm not a huge fan of the police, due to me receiving various (admittedly deserved) speeding tickets, but this sounds like them checking unusual circumstances for the public good.
Given that it is not illegal to own or purchase or transport radioactive materials (within limits for hobbyist use), should the police be allowed to stop and search vehicles which show a slight level of radioactivity?
Since when to police care about the legality of stops?
I would say this is mostly trivial if after the stop (and he showed the doctors note) he was told to "Have a Nice Day!" and let go. Now if the officer did something STUPID like cuffed him and hauled him downtown then this would be something to talk about. Or if they tore the car apart looking for "the hidden BOMB".
Does anybody know if these monitors have a reading that tells the difference between "More Glowy than Normal" and OMFG roll the Hazmat truck with the LeadSuit Guys!!!??
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
When they came for the guys that glow in the dark, I said nothing . . .
Yeah, that seems right. Don't care, non-story as most here say.
Now, what if you DIDN'T KNOW you were radioactive and you were hassled about it? Well, seems like a good thing to know.
your bet would be profitable.
I've had a 'chemical stress test' done like the Milford guy (actually I live next door in Shelton) and the cardiologist gave me the same type of notice. UNFORTUNATELY, that was better than a year before I bought myself a [mightyohm.com] geiger counter (now, sadly, a limited edition) so I could check things.
But you can be sure the next time one of my FRIENDS has that stress test I'll have the counter ready! :D
A cop gets a higher than usual blip on his Geiger counter and pulls over a guy...
Then the OP fails to mention anything about what happened next. Still asks if there was legality over it....
Hell yeah there is legality over it. If rad detectors are detecting higher than normal levels of radiation, wouldn't you want to know if the person was just getting chemo or planning to make a dirty bomb? Obviously the guy had a legitimate and verifiable explanation for his nuclear glow. Also there wouldn't be any charges drawn since the guy was going through a medical treatment and no malicious intent was involved.
I don't have to RTFA to know that this wasn't worth being a "News for Nerds" article other than for the science or a "Cool Story, Bro" story.
Cop: Scuse me son, your car is radioactive.
Driver: But it's not illegal to transport radioactive materials. Why are you stopping me?
Cop: *smashes tail light* Scuse me son, did you know you got a tail light out?
Was he driving a Chevy Malibu?
What part of "State Police" did you miss? Or are you not understanding that "State Police" in Milford (Massachusetts) are paid for by the State Government. Seems pretty simple.
So, yes they did say whom did it to him.
So the conversation probably went:
"Good afternoon sir, I've stopped you because your car seems to be radioactive"
"AGGGGHH! HULK SMASH!"