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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?"
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."
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.
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.
Yes, because if we don't stop and search everyone, the terrorists will win.
This is a bullshit argument. People are killed over terrorism, but the level is not significant enough to justify clamping down and restricting the civil liberties of everyone. A police state is not an adequate response to terrorism.
Intelligence services, smart police forces, not supporting oppressive governments, and letting your people continue to be free and productive are more effective deterrents to terrorism than a checkpoint at every block.
If your nuke radiates as much as your body after a medical exam, then you either got ripped off by the arms dealer or should probably get a different doctor.
> 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.
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!!!
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.
Bullshit.
"Reasonable Suspicion" would mean the Officer(s) was(were) guessing,
Reasonable suspicion isn't guessing. Reasonable suspicion is a >50% chance that a crime has taken place.
and the inconvenience of a "terry stop" is a very minor cost to pay
for the greater public safety.
What is the treat to public safety from a low level of radioactive material? Has anyone tried to determine this?
Let me do it then. There is no threat. This is just a useful fear that politicians like to exploit. The real threat is of the police encroaching on the rights of citizens which is occurring today, unlike the myth of radiological terrorism. If you don't feel this is true then please describe the attack vectors and sources of radiological materials that could cause significant damage.
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.
No it doesn't. It could also mean than a citizen who hasn't violated any laws but received radiation treatment is driving down the road. There is no probable cause whatsoever. In fact, there is no case history of hobbyists transporting radioactive materials in such a grossly unsafe manner to set off police detectors. This implies that low setoff thresholds would likely be lawful citizens who received radiation treatment, which argues exactly the opposite direction as probable cause.
Be vigilant and observant, but not paranoid and irrational.
Really? You say that after your paranoid and irrational post?
Nukes are shielded, both for security and reliability reasons, and also for safe-handling reasons. Therefore emissions from a nuke should be minimal.
By contrast, medical radioactive agents are designed to be emit radiation from the body (in the form of gamma rays), in large enough quantity that they can be detected and accurately quantified and localised (with a good signal to noise ratio) within the shortest amount of time possible. In a number of cases, it would be possible to do a medical scan with 10% of the dose, but the scan would require lying on the scanner for 4 hours, leading to motion blurring and poor resolution, as well the radioactive agent getting metabolised by the body which may change is biochemical function (and as the biochemical functions of the dye are what determines the diagnostic information produced, this is a problem), and being ludicrously expensive and inconvenient.
The optimal dose is therefore dependent on the maximum acceptable time (usually 15-45 minutes, depending on the scanner's sensor size and amount of body to be scanned, and the specific type of abnormality being looked for), maximum acceptable radiation exposure, etc. It has been known for some centers (particularly in the US), to use higher radiation doses in order to reduce cost. E.g. a common type of heart scan requires 2 isotope injections - one for "stress" and one for "baseline" - these are then subtracted to give the final result. As the isotope has a half-life of 6 hours, best practice is to leave 24-48 hours between the studies - with a lot of centres giving 2 appointments a week apart for convenience. However, some centres may book the 2 studies for the same day; morning and afternoon. But this requires a "double dose" of isotope for the afternoon study, in order to boost the "baseline" signal over the noise of the residual "stress" isotope.
Unfortunately, there are few suitable isotopes with half-lives well matched to this time scale. Most isotopes have half-lives between 2 and 6 hours, which means that easily detectable emissions will remain for a considerable period after the test is complete.
A low level dirty bomb made from medical grade material would be very effective indeed. All you have to do is spread some radioactive material in a very busy public spot (sports stadium, political building etc) and then call it in. The resulting media and political panic will cause far more "terror" than the situation warrants, and the threat of lawyers in the future will make the cleanup ridiculously protracted and expensive. "Terrorists" don't create the terror these days, politicians and the media do. If the actual threat was in any way related to the fuss made then we'd make a much bigger deal over road safety and a cure for cancer.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
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.
To be fair, those kinds of roadblocks are illegal in certain states. If I stay in the US for much longer I would very much like to move to one of them. Stopping and interrogating people who have done nothing wrong is true police state behavior. An absolutely disgusting human rights violation.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.