Facebook Won't Take Down Undercover Cop Page In Australia

New submitter jaa101 writes "Facebook has refused a request from Australian police to take down a page with details of undercover police vehicles saying it cannot stop people taking photos in public places. The original story is paywalled and it doesn't give a link to the relevant page which seems to be here . This page for the state of Victoria has 12000 likes but a similar page for the state of Queensland has over 34000, and there are other Australian pages too."

Comments

Re:Don't complain about crime then

[SiriusStarr]

Perhaps that is your experience with the police in the UK (or wherever you happen to reside; making the assumption given what you said), but where I live, it is very different. A friend of mine was ticketed for going 63 in a 60 MPH zone (no erratic driving, no alcohol, no anything). I saw the ticket with my own eyes. While that is exceptional, you can regularly get pulled over for 5 over on the freeway here (Oregon/Washington). And the vast majority of unmarked police cars I've seen around have been pulling over people for driving 5-10 over, not tailing suspect cars or some more justified purpose, as you've said. This is of course anecdotal and YMMV with where you live; just saying what is true for where I am. Don't get me wrong; I am all for police officers doing their job and keeping people safe and certainly people who are clearly driving unsafely, driving while intoxicated, etc. should be caught.

But the fact of the matter is that the focus of the police should be on preventing crime, not on increasing revenue. A clearly marked police car is the most effective thing there is for ensuring that everyone around is driving safely. You stick a cop car in the road and people will drive quite carefully. Unmarked cars are specifically meant to not be observed by people so that they will commit crimes in front of them and thus get ticketed, crimes that potentially would not have been committed if the car had been clearly visible. To me, this is like making the argument that police officers shouldn't wear uniforms so that muggers will beat up people in front of them and get caught, rather than the beatings never happening in the first place. I understand and respect that you can make an argument both ways here, that there is the potential for the mugger to commit crimes later, etc. but in my personal opinion, it is of dubious morality to allow people to be injured today in hopes of avoiding injuring people tomorrow. When I'm being assaulted, I want to be able to look around and run to the nearest cop car, not to miss it 'cause it's unmarked.

Ultimately, my complaint is that the motorists who get "caught" by unmarked cars who wouldn't by marked cars are the 5-10 over motorists. If someone is truly driving dangerously, they're not going to stop because of a marked car. If you're driving 100 on the freeway, you can't slow down fast enough upon seeing a cop car to not get caught. If you're driving drunk, you can't magically sober up because you saw a cop. The people get caught by unmarked cars rather than marked ones are the 5 over motorists, so I fail to see how they provide sufficiently valuable service to outweigh the crimes they fail to prevent.

Anyways, it's all anecdotal, and there are arguments for both sides. YMMV.