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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."
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.
"Up and atom!"
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.
The goggles, they do nothing!
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.
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.
> 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.
That's Radioactive Man, dingus!
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
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.
Dirty bombs aren't much of a threat, the only reason you've ever heard that term was so that it would instill fear in you. A little potassium iodide is all most people in the area would need. About the worst thing a dirty bomb will do is cause an area to be closed off until it can be cleaned up, we're talking single digit casualties.
Except that the guy was curious and actually had nothing to hide in his car. So why not let the police officer search the car an in return ask him to show you the device that spots you to satiate your curiosity? Is that a crime in the eyes of "you must enforce your rights against pigs at all time or else..." crowd?
It's his right to choose whether to forego his rights or not. Not yours or anyone else's.
Big whoop. Superpowers or GTFO.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Except that the guy was curious and actually had nothing to hide in his car. So why not let the police officer search the car an in return ask him to show you the device that spots you to satiate your curiosity?
If you are old enough to get a cardiac stress test with gamma emitters, you are old enough to have a teenager.
Your teenager may have left his baggie in your car by accident. It happens.
--
BMO
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!!!
its not the actual damage that a dirty bomb would cause that would be of interest to a terrorist organisation - its the level of terror and effect on the population that the post bomb clamp down would create.
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.
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.
and actually had nothing to hide in his car. So why not let the police officer search the car
No... You didn't actually just say that if you have nothing to hide, why not let them look... Did you?
It's his right to choose whether to forego his rights or not. Not yours or anyone else's.
The cop forced him to make that choice in the first place, and things may well have gone poorly for him had he tried to enforce his rights. Police have a somewhat dangerous job, and deal with that by acting as total control freaks; they respond to the word "no" with tasers and pepper-spray.
Is that a crime in the eyes of "you must enforce your rights against pigs at all time or else..." crowd?
We either all have rights, all the time, by default, no positive action required - Or none of us do.
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?
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.
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.
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
Driving While Radioactive. I'm so sick of prejudice.
How did you get +2 making posts of this kind?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
No, that is "preponderance of evidence," which is the *standard of guilt* in civil cases. Reasonable suspicion, in contrast, is a low standard of proof in which a reasonable person could reasonably believe that someone has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity, and depends on the entire circumstance. Seeing someone driving down the street emitting radiation from their vehicle, a reasonable person could conclude that something criminal is going on: either the person is transporting radioactive materials unsafely, or their car has been exposed to radiation, in which case the car and its driver could unwittingly pose a public safety risk, or it could be a bomb or other contraband. These are all *reasonable* conclusions one could draw from the fact that there is "a car driving down the highway emitting some nontrivial amount of ionizing radiation," there is reasonable suspicion that a crime may have been committed.
That's enough for a traffic stop, for the officer to investigate. Which he did. And when he stopped the guy, and told him he was setting off radiation detectors, the guy said, "Yeah, I was injected with radioactive dye today for a health test, and I have this letter from my doctor, who actually warned me that this could happen." He provided that letter to the doctor, and he went on his way. Because there was no probable cause for an arrest - no probable cause supporting the conclusion that a crime actually had been committed.
Now, if there was probable cause (like, say, a bunch of wires and what appears to be a remote detonator sitting on the seat, or the police ask him to step out of the vehicle and frisk him and find a weapon), they'd be able to search the vehicle without a warrant and arrest him if they found probable cause to believe he was committing a crime.
After that, he would need to be found guilty by a preponderance of the evidence (irrelevant in this case, but if it were a civil case that would be the burden of proof), or beyond a reasonable doubt (in a criminal case).
Each of these is a *higher* standard of proof than the last. Reasonable Suspicion, Probable Cause, Preponderance of the Evidence, and Beyond Reasonable Doubt.
You do not have to satisfy the standard of evidence for legal trials to make a traffic stop, or make an arrest. You DO have to satisfy that standard of evidence, and even more, show beyond reasonable doubt, that he is guilty to get a conviction.
No, there's reasonable suspicion. Enough to initiate a traffic stop and investigate what's going on. Probable cause would be required for an arrest, which did not happen.
Which would, again, create a *reasonable suspicion* that there is something illegal going on - since hobbyists have always been safe, and there's about a dozen possible reasons a car would be giving off radiation, and only one of them is "the guy may have been injected with a radioactive dye," a *reasonable* person could conclude that there is a likelihood of a crime being committed.
And probable cause is only needed to make an arrest, not initiate a traffic stop. This implies that radiation detected is very uncommon, and so when something very uncommon and known to be unhealthy to humans is detected, it is, in fact, reasonable to be suspicious that something illegal may have occurred, and to investigate the source of the radiation. And that's what happened.
The cop forced him to make that choice in the first place, and things may well have gone poorly for him had he tried to enforce his rights. Police have a somewhat dangerous job, and deal with that by acting as total control freaks; they respond to the word "no" with tasers and pepper-spray.
Stop watching so much TV. In fact, turn the thing off and go on a shift with a couple of policemen. You might learn something on how to deal with human beings.
Yes, there are asshole cops. There are asshole programmers. There are asshole baristas. Yes, there are incidents of policemen doing things they should not. Pretty bad incidents. Yes, you can be tossed in jail for all the wrong reasons (or no reasons whatsoever). But it usually doesn't end up like that. Life in the US isn't nearly the hard edged good vs. evil, libertarian vs. totalitarian than you seem to be trying to make it.
In this particular case, you would not even have to let the officer search your car. You could show him the note from the doctor, he could have accepted it and all go about their lives. Yes, the cop could have called in the Hazmat people, the SWAT team and the big truck from 'Men In Black', but he didn't.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"Dogrape" is not a word. :-P
Currently hooked on AMP
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.
It's as much of a word as wealthychef is.
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!
The problem with that is that there has never been a case where slight radioactivity has been an indication of a crime. EVER. Surely, some articulable thing needs to have at least once in written history been an indication of a crime for there to be reasonable suspicion.
If slight radioactivity causes reasonable suspicion, then so does unmatched socks, a purple tie, breathing, etc.
Your last line is not just nonsense, it shows signs of either severe ignorance of how world works, or schizophrenia. Here's a one out of countless examples why:
I have a right to gain passage when turning right from the car coming against me turning left. By your statement, by being considerate, seeing a lot of traffic behind him waiting to go straight and letting him go first, I'm committing an action which would result in everyone losing their right to turn right first.
Fact is, vast majority of legal rights is something that any person can suspend for himself if he sees it as beneficial. I can decide that if a young kid fell off a bike and landed on me and is genuinely sorry, that I don't have to make a citizen arrest for causing me bodily harm and dragging him to court. I can instead accept the apology, dust myself off, slap a band aid on the scratches and move on. Heck, in my country we have a mandatory payment if we own a TV receiver. I don't have to open the door for the people who come to check for it, but they can ask for police assistance and they do have a right to come and check. That said, since I don't own a TV, I can make it easier for everyone to just invite him in to check for that TV receiver. He gets to see that I have several monitors and zero television sets in my apartment and he can go on with his job and I can go on with doing whatever I was doing.
Heck, I'm saving myself some money in making sure he works more efficiently by catching assholes who actually have TV sets and choose not to pay for them, increasing payment for those that do have one.
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.
You'd be amazed how many people don't understand what you just said.
I've seen plenty of posts in all the Zimmerman stories claiming the reason the cops didn't arrest him (warm gun in hand, corpse at his feet) was because they were afraid of a wrongful arrest lawsuit. They don't seem to grok the hierarchy.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Hint: There is no amount of radiation that is "healthy" to be exposed to.
http://xkcd.com/radiation/
Its good news to hear that the cops have radiation detectors in their cruisers? What a colossal waste of money.
Good-bye
Your last line is not just nonsense, it shows signs of either severe ignorance of how world works, or schizophrenia
Ignoring your generous evaluation of my sanity, I will attribute your failure to comprehend that as a result of your country of residence - As I see from the last part of your post that you live in the UK, you may simply lack a suitable frame of reference as to why we Yanks devoted our ten most sacred laws to "silly" crap like quartering soldiers in peoples' houses.
So... First of all, "right of way" does not even remotely compare to "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" - Any more than eating red meat on Friday compares to murder.
Second, yes, you can certainly choose to give up your rights. You can choose to speak to the police without a lawyer present, you can choose to wave your right to a speedy trial, you can choose not to carry a handgun at all times, and yes, I suppose you can even yield the "right" of way to an oncoming car. All of those involve you and only you making that decision, however - No one has asked you to do so, and more importantly, the government has not asked you to do so.
Do I sound paranoid about this? Quick question - Do I (and you) have a better chance of dying in a terrorist attack, or under "suspicious circumstances" while in police custody? And before you write that off as an American problem, I'd suggest Googling for "Sean Rigg".
Really? Leaking radiation into the environment isn't a public safety risk or a criminal act? Remember, we're not talking about "Hurr he must be a terrorist," he could simply be transporting or improperly disposing of hazardous wastes.
And that... is a crime for which you can find numerous criminal suits as precedent.
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
Yes, REALLY! At that level there is no crime taking place. That's why they didn't charge him (or any other imaging patient) with a crime.
Note that he could also have been mulling a bank robbery, carrying an illegal exotic animal or plotting to rip the tag off of his mattress when he got home but the levels of radiation from his car were not indicative of that.
Yes, because after investigation, they found there was no probable cause to arrest him and charge him with a crime.
But since you don't need either probable cause, or guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, there is no violation of his due process for them to have noticed he was emitting radiation, and investigated the source to determine whether or not a crime appeared to be in the offing.
The only requirement is that a reasonable person could reasonably suspect that the facts of the situation suggest a crime could be happening (or could have happened). Which is a very low standard. Which is why it's completely reasonable for the cop to have stopped him. Try again.
You DO need reasonable suspicion. One might expect that to require that some articulable thing has ever in written history actually indicated a crime. At the very lest it should be necessary to show that logically it was likely to be indicating a crime.
Considering that nobody has ever set off a dirty bomb and there has never been a case of a terrorist in possession of any sort of nuclear device, any innocent explanation at all that has ever happened is the logical conclusion when you detect low levels of radiation.
When a machine you don't understand goes 'buzz' to indicate something you don't really understand is there, the only reasonable suspicion is that someone wasted a lot of money on a buzzer. I don't blame the officer himself, he was quite likely mislead. I blame the id10ts that blew all that money on the terrorist repelling buzzers.
If they would care to re-calibrate the things so they don't go off unless the radiation level is itself a hazard to the public, that would be fine.
Because I don't generally make posts like this :)
FC Closer
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.
"Reasonable Suspicion" would mean the Officer(s) was(were) guessing, but that CT State Cruiser was equipped with a "Radioactivity Scanner".
If ten million people every year get a radioactive isotope medical test capable of setting off that "radioactivity scanner", and none of them are engaging in illegal activity, then that doesn't sound like a reasonable suspicion of a crime.
In some hypothetical examples, it could be a crime, but in reality it has never been a crime. Reasonable?
(BTW, my objection is not on civil libertarian grounds, but on a waste of police resources.)
The colossal waste of money is
(1) not just the radiation detectors, but the equally stupid things Homeland (cost is no object) Security is paying for
(2) The irrational approach that Homeland Security is taking to security, which means that they're not even protecting us from terrorism
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?
Now, if there was probable cause (like, say, a bunch of wires and what appears to be a remote detonator sitting on the seat, or the police ask him to step out of the vehicle and frisk him and find a weapon), they'd be able to search the vehicle without a warrant and arrest him if they found probable cause to believe he was committing a crime.
Why? A bunch of wires is way more likely to be a hobbyest than a bomb. And what does a detonator look like? Do the police know, or do they know what Hollywood says a detonator looks like?
Well, you can start here for examples of how improper storage, disposal, and / or transport of radioactive wastes has resulted in civil and criminal charges. There's quite a few.
Unsafe transport, storage, and disposal of radiological and other hazardous waste *is* illegal. Irradiating your fellow citizens against their will *is* illegal. Regulations suggest that "maximum" emissions on a vehicle transporting radiological waste is 200 mrem / hr at the *surface* of the vehicle. At 2 meters, the emission cannot register more than 10 mrem / hour. What appears to be a standard, vehicle-mounted detector will detect "Low" (1-10 mrem / hr), "Moderate" (10-100 mrem/hr), and High (100+ mrem / hr) levels, as well as a "minimum detectable level" based on current location's background readings, and statistical variation from that background.
Exposure to levels even at the LOW (1-10 mrem / hr) levels in units of days will result in a public health hazard. Higher levels create those same risks in units of hours, or even minutes, depending on intensity.
Average natural background radiation is in the order of 2.4 millisieverts per year, which translates to roughly 0.03 millirem per hour. So, let's say the detector flags as "minimum detectable" for anything between 0.03 millirem and 1 millirem, assuming you're in an area where radiation is roughly "average."
Now... you're in your squad car day in, day out, and that radioactivity detector never issues a peep. Then one day, it lights up, indicating a vehicle is emitting radiation that is statistically unlikely to be random variations in the background radiation levels. It *could*, given that the man was told to avoid close contact with other people, and stay away from his infant son for at least 24 hours, even be into the "Low" category of risk. And you look and see that the vehicle is not a transport vehicle with placards and other signage indicating that it is transporting hazardous materials, but a normal passenger vehicle. And that doesn't trigger even the slightest shred of "what the fuck is going on here?" suspicion?
Because that's ALL that's required, by law: the suspicion of a reasonable person to be aroused. At that point, it is entirely legal and within due process to make a traffic stop to investigate. What are possible crimes being committed? Well:
1) He's transporting radioactive materials illegally, or perhaps intends to dispose of them illegally;
2) He has been the victim of exposure to radiation through someone else's carelessness or deliberate intent, and so is at risk himself, or putting other people at risk;
3) He has a bomb and intends to set it off;
Of these, #3 is certainly the least likely, and of lowest actual concern. But there are other "reasonable" ways you could suspect a crime that don't even involve "terrorism." Given the number of Superfund sites, and the cost of cleanup for radiological contamination, I could certainly see where somebody who has some material they know to be hazardous might just dump it in the landfill on the sly. It happens - this is how some Superfund sites are created in the first place. Number 2 is perhaps less likely, but it's possible that he's been exposed, either knowingly (i.e., poisoned) or unwittingly, i.e., through some contamination of his home, water supply, food supply, work environment, etc., in which case there is a public safety risk.
Do you also advocate for police to only respond to car crashes when a crime is known to have been committed? If I'm a victim of road rage, they'll come help me, but if I experience mechanical failure, and I lose control, and sideswipe a guardrail, throwing debris across the highway and injuring myself (no crime committe
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.
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 danced all around it, but you still haven't solved the problem that a mysterious black box going ping for a level of radiation that low has never indicated that a crime was taking place but can easily trigger for the much more common condition of having had a medical procedure. That's important given how rare the crimes are in the first place.
You have to consider too, what a patrolman is going to do next. He has no training or instrumentation to safely determine what might be illegal radioactive waste. Lots of things make a survey meter click, few of them are a problem. Keep in mind too, we don't want the officer to get a lethal dose opening the wrong container or to spread contamination all over the highway.
As for the rest, I'm all for the public safety aspect of police work, but I'll point out that if you crashed, they don't have to pull you over, do they?
As for the butcher knife, unlike the radiation case, there are PLENTY of cases where someone wandering in public carrying a bloody knife in exactly the way butchers don't has indicated a crime. That makes the suspicion reasonable. Same thing at a fire pit or on a farm, not quite as suspicious.
That brings up a point as well. I doubt the cops have anything like the training needed to actually know how much radiation is 'too much' and how much is reasonable for various innocent situations. The more reasonable thing then is to re-calibrate the machines so they only go off in cases where the amount is certainly too much to have a harmless and innocent explanation OR provide significant training in nuclear physics to the cops that carry the more sensitive instrument.
And you keep ignoring the simple fact that "reasonable suspicion" doesn't require a "most of the time" qualifier. But if you want to approach it that way, "most of the time," that detector doesn't go off at all. "most of the time," people aren't driving around emitting detectable & elevated-above-background-levels of radiation from their cars. You keep latching on to the "he assumed the guy was a terrorist," angle, and I keep repeating myself, but it doesn't seem to be sinking in: the guy need not be a terrorist to be engaged in illegal transport and disposal of radioactive materials. And in fact, as the Superfund site list I sent you demonstrates, there HAVE been crimes committed where these materials have been illegally disposed of.
Right, because his first action after pulling somebody over is going to be to dismantle the vehicle and lick every item he finds to try and find the radiation. I know what a patrolman is going to do, if he makes a stop and finds odd, unmarked containers of strange liquid in the trunk of the car: he's going to cordon off the area, and call in a hazmat team, which is precisely what his training would tell him to do. His detector has warned him that there is something emitting radioactive materials, that's all he needs to know to call a hazmat team in for proper disposal if he finds that there is probable cause to believe there's a crime being committed and makes an arrest.
And there are plenty of cases where somebody transporting hazardous materials illegally has committed a crime by both transporting them illegally, and disposing of them illegally. So how is it "reasonable suspicion" when there's a guy with a butcher knife, but not "reasonable suspicion" when it's an unmarked passenger vehicle emitting detectable levels of radiation? Either incident is very rare, there are obvious cases where both are related to criminal activity.
"how much radiation is too much?" ANY. If you're emitting detectable levels of radiation on top of normal background radiation, you are adding to your own (and others) cumulative radiation exposure. Every bit of it adds up. If you go read any of the links I provided (I know, it's slashdot, we don't bother with facts), you'll see some interesting numbers. 1-10 mrem per hour is the "LOW' level detected by a typical detector. 10 millirem is about the strength of a typical chest x-ray. So, expos
You can always tell a Milford man.
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.
The Sun is leaking radiation into the environment of Earth 24/7, surly the Sun is a threat to public safety.
No, the data you're specifying is *FAR FAR* above "reasonable suspicion." The data you're suggesting is required for reasonable suspicion is data which would be gathered in preparation for a trial. This is like saying, "you can't question a person carrying a bloody knife on suspicion they've harmed someone with it unless you know the blood type of the blood on the blade, and have a specific person in mind that they have harmed, as well as know the precise time and GPS coordinates of the crime you believe they've committed."
One. Last. Motherfucking. Time: "reasonable suspicion" is a yes/no question - it does not require specific chance of likelihood, only that suspicion was "reasonable" based on the evidence that the officer can see. The evidence is that a single car, out of thousands that the officer has seen on a particular day, is emitting radiation significantly above the natural background level of radiation. It has no hazmat identification, and it is a passenger vehicle. It is, indeed, POSSIBLE that the person has been administered a radioactive dye. It is also indeed POSSIBLE that the person is transporting radioactive materials illegally. Therefore, it is REASONABLE for the officer to make a traffic stop and investigate the matter further, to determine whether probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed exists, and if so, to arrest the person.
What officers are not required to do:
1) Have thoroughly investigated the situation before asking any questions in an attempt to investigate;
2) Go through a complex statistical analysis to determine the "most likely" reason the car is emitting detectable radiation;
3) Consider every possible explanation and discard any based on Slashdot's fanciful imaginings about how "common" it is for cars to be driving around emitting radiation because somebody was administered a radionuclide for a medical test;
Stop fixating like a retard on "hurr durr terrorism." Transportation of radioactive waste is illegal, if done improperly. When you are leaking significant, measurable levels of radiation, from a passenger vehicle, with no hazmat identification on the vehicle, there is ample reasonable suspicion to believe that, if nothing else, you are creating a public safety risk by illegally transporting radioactive materials. That alone is sufficient to stop the car for a brief investigation.
No, there isn't. "I witnessed the driver driving down the road, well within safe limits for the conditions, emitting no radiation, and exhibiting absolutely no unusual, suspicious behavior," is exactly the reason why allegations of racial profiling get thrown at police. It is *reasonable* to be suspicious of a car that is not marked as a hazmat transport vehicle that is emitting radiation.
Also, to your Subject:
Which is exactly why these detectors are designed to measure current natural background readings, and only indicate the emission of radiation that is statistically unlikely to be caused only by random natural fluctuations. When there are significant spikes in radiation above the "ambient" levels, it registers as elevated radiation on the device. Do you honestly think that the engineers and physicists who design these detectors have no idea how environmental radioactivity works?
I say again: transporting radioactive materials in improperly shielded containers, such that it's leaking significant radiation into its surroundings, or without appropriate hazmat identification on the vehicle, is illegal.
I say again: it is therefore reasonable to suspect that something illegal might be happening, to see an unmarked passenger vehicle emitting detectable levels of radiation.
I say again: It is therefore reasonable to stop the vehicle to investigate the source of the radiation.
But it's okay, you're not the only one who has no idea how things work. You've got lots of company.
And there's the source of your confusion. Don't feel bad, lots of other people are making the same mistake, and have no comprehension of how the law works.
Reasonable suspicion doesn't require you to say "the most LIKELY explanation for what I'm seeing here is..."
It requires you to say, "There is a reasonable (nontrivial) possibility that something unlawful is happening here..."
I keep saying this, and you all keep shouting back that "but that's not the most likely explanation!" I don't know how else to get across that "the most likely explanation" is not the standard which 'reasonable suspicion' must meet. I'm well and truly stymied by your obstinate refusal to understand that you are absolutely, unequivocally, logically, thorougly wrong in your assertion that only "the most likely explanation for this is that something illegal is happening" is required for any investigation to be made.
Again, if that's the standard, then a man walking down the road, carrying a big old bloodstained butcher's knife would be immune from questioning, because it's far more likely that he's a butcher, or a cook! He probably just was cutting some very fresh meat, and it's way more likely that that's just animal blood, or gravy, or ketchup, or some other food residue on the blade, anyway, amirite?
Who else spent a while trying to figure out what do-graping is?
And you keep ignoring the simple fact that "reasonable suspicion" doesn't require a "most of the time" qualifier.
I never required most of the time, I said even once in written history. Just a wee bit of difference there!
And there are plenty of cases where somebody transporting hazardous materials illegally has committed a crime by both transporting them illegally, and disposing of them illegally. So how is it "reasonable suspicion" when there's a guy with a butcher knife, but not "reasonable suspicion" when it's an unmarked passenger vehicle emitting detectable levels of radiation? Either incident is very rare, there are obvious cases where both are related to criminal activity.
You seem to have skimmed. I explained that there are plenty of cases where the bloody knife has certainly indicated a crime, but not a single example for the radiation detector. there is a huge gulf between mot even once and frequently that you seem blind to.
"how much radiation is too much?" ANY. If you're emitting detectable levels of radiation on top of normal background radiation, you are adding to your own (and others) cumulative radiation exposure
That would be all of us all of the time then. A percentage of the minerals we naturally bioaccumulate is the radioactive isotope.
I did read the link. They basically boast that they are way too sensitive to be useful in this application. It helps a lot to have at least some training so you know that when the detector lights up for grandpa's watch (and it will), you shouldn't panic. Note that the detector you pointed to goes on 'yellow alert' for much less than 1mrem/hr.
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
No... You didn't actually just say that if you have nothing to hide, why not let them look... Did you?
He did, probably because he's not a tinfoil hat-wearing extreme right wing paranoid fantasist, at a guess.
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
It's perfectly cromulent
I thought "quote the fucking cartoon perfectly" was the funny part.
Currently hooked on AMP
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.
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
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?
So the conversation probably went:
"Good afternoon sir, I've stopped you because your car seems to be radioactive"
"AGGGGHH! HULK SMASH!"
"Up and at them!!"
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."