Slashdot Mirror
Police Pull Over More Drivers For DNA Tests
schwit1 sends this news from the Washington Times:
"Pennsylvania police this week were pulling people to the side of the road, quizzing them on their driving habits, and asking if they'd like to provide a cheek swap or a blood sample — the latest in a federally contracted operation that's touted as making roads safer. The same operation took place last month at a community in Texas. Then, drivers were randomly told to pull off the road into a parking lot, where white-coated researchers asked if they'd like to provide DNA samples for a project that determines what percentage of drivers are operating under the influence of drugs or alcohol at given times. With uniformed police in the background, the researchers also offered the motorists money — up to $50 or so — for the blood or saliva samples."
I don't think pulling people over for research is a reasonable use of police power. Actual enforcement, maybe, but not for research.
Why don't they just put a spit cup at toll booths?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
If uniformed police officers are pulling you off the road in marked cars with flashing lights, your participation is hardly voluntary.
What happens if you decline to answer the questions of the men in white coats a little too firmly? Well, an officer with badge and gun is right there to show you the error of your ways!
I'm amazed the local chapter of the ACLU is merely "watching the operation closely" (per the article).
"No, I do not consent to any search."
Insufficient.
According to news reports of the stops in Texas, peoples' breath was being sampled by officer-worn "non contact" breathalyzers before they were notified and without consent.
A surreptitious search is still a search. There SHOULD BE lawsuits over this.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/20/texas-cops-force-drivers-off-the-road-to-give-dna-to-federal-contractors/
This is one of those things where LE thinks how easy their job would be and how much more effective they could be if they had everyone's DNA on file and people of course worry about anyone having that kind of power.
We're not Norway (unfortunately by my lights) people. If we dont' trust each other with this level of information,maybe that's because we know each other and we therefore ought to listen to ourselves.
Sure all knowledge and power and everything could *could* be used just totally for good and never for evil. And? And? And your argument is?
Pretending that a corrosive kind of corruption isn't being enabled with these kinds of god-level knowledge of what everyone does, is, thinks, where they go and who they talk to- pretending that this doesn't enable evil (as well as good) or that the evil is just SO unlikely, is just stupid and quite frankly anyone trying to pass themselves off as incensed that I should worry about this , or to paint me as WAAAAY out there, is not even naive in my view, but most likely a manipulative liar.
We know ourselves. We grew up here , went to elementary school here, got our first jobs here and we've seen what we've seen and know what we know about ourselves. Thus the popular resistance to such measures. .
You want some depressing shit?
Read this for a while:
http://fear.org/
A nation FOUNDED on the principle of personal property, and you get this?
THL phish sticks
Let the dogs come. Search without probable cause is illegal, and simply denying consent does not constitute probable cause.
ACLU is likely warming up the cannons over this one already. Still, it comes back to knowing your rights and standing up for them. Cops will intimidate, that's what they do. They are held to standards of legality, not decency. Just because they're scary doesn't mean you have to consent to shit, but once you do they can legally do many things they'd otherwise be prevented from.
Know. Your. Rights.
But you can defend yourself from a "bad guy" with violence. If you use violence to defend yourself from a "bad cop" who is illegally applying force, you get a body bag and some drugs planted on your corpse. I saw a recent show on police training, and it looked more psychologically damaging than military basic training. Drill sergeants screaming opposing commands and berating the trainees for everything. The training camp in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is tame by comparison. "NO!"
I sure don't teach Them to do that. Every defense Lawyer, Prosecutor, and police Officer I have ever spoken with has consistently told Me the same thing: if the Police say They want to talk with You, You give one answer, "Not without My Attorney's approval."
Twenty or thirty years ago there used to be people called "journalists" whose job it was to (a) collect enough data so you could figure out what happened, and (b) write it up in an intelligible story.
Look at the linked story *critically*. How does the "reporter" know DNA was being taken? What is his source for this, or is he just guessing?
This story is basically rumor -- passing along what's on the grapevine. There's no actual reporting here. If there were, that would answer the questions a reasonable person might have. For example: are the researchers collecting DNA or not? And who *are* these researchers? Can we get a name please? Or an institution?
Back in the day a reporter would have identified the researchers and called them up for an interview, or at least a statement from the research institution's public affairs office. He'd look up the grant in the federal records and find out whether or not the researchers had been granted money to collect DNA and what they are being paid to do with it (yes, you can do that!). He'd may even have interviewed people on the institutional review board (required by US law) that approved the project.
But the "reporter" in this case did none of this. She appears not to have done *any* verification or independent research. A story like this would take a real reporter two or three days to nail down, not two or three phone calls.
I'm not saying some horrendous violation of civil liberties could not have taken place, I'm saying the writer of the article didn't do enough work for anyone to decide what did or did not happen. This is not reporting, it's *blogging* under a byline.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I can attest to this, in my younger days I worked assisting glaziers working at a Naval hospital doing some window work. My job was to go before them and clean windows so they could apply solar film (read tint) to the windows. We were required to wear hard hats, what I found was that while walking around the hospital wearing the hard hat no one questioned your presence anywhere including an empty operating theater.
Point is no one really questions anymore.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I know lots of LEOs as well. There is a distinct and poisonous "us vs them" mentality. He is right. You are wrong.
Learn to love Alaska
That may be exactly what the researches are actually looking for. It sounds crazy, but it actually makes much more sense than such a poorly constructed study.
Oh, right, you stupid motherfucker, this Wikipedia article was written just for kicks, right?
I've got multiple relatives in law enfrocement, and they are shitheads. They think tazing people is actually downright hilarious, and no, they never ever report on each other's fuckups. I just had ate Thanksgiving dinner with a couple of them, and you are beyond clueless. They range from podunk local cops to big city cops (and one county deputy thrown in; no state folks). Most of them are prior military (as am I), but the problem is they think they're still in the USMC and the US Army. Everybody else are little people.
They're all bad, and in my mind they're all potential danger to the average law abiding citizen. This is why the Five Seven should be your best friend, along with just about any decent long gun that'll punch the ticket on a punk wearing level II or IIIA body armor.
Oh yes, and this is the norm. One dog was caged (and shot in the cage) and the other was a fucking Corgi.
These are your 'good cops'.
Ask them if they've ever seen a fellow LEO break the law or infringe on someone's civil rights. If they say yes, ask them if they arrested them on the spot or pursued the matter.
Ask any cop if they've ever witnessed another cop doing something that would get a non-cop in trouble. Then ask them what they did about it.
The universal stock answer is that their jobs are hard so they much more leeway.
There's a reason why psychopaths and sociopaths are attracted to law enforcement professions.
How about "totalitarian".
Bad compared to what? To the ideal Officer of the Law? The one that hangs out with the ideal Communist Citizen and the ideal Hereditary Autocrat?
Or bad compared to a gang member, a warlord's soldier, or even security consultant?
I have never lived in a neighborhood where law enforcement dares not thread, or a country where warlords are the only authority. They do exist on this planet, though. On the other hand, I've lived in post-Communist Bulgaria, and saw what happened when the police becomes, for one reason or another, unwilling or unable to enforce the law.
One month, you could spend the night in the park, with your girlfriend, on a blanket.
The next, thugs were dismantling public property and infrastructure (from park benches to power transformers) and crooks were running gambling operations everywhere, beating up everyone who dared explaining their tricks to their marks.
One month later, no house, store, or vehicle was safe unless you were willing to defend it yourself. A lot of people learned that being in right does not make you invulnerable.
A few months later, those who had been successful at defending theirs, started defending other people... for a price. So your property was safe, if it bore a sticker saying "This X is insured by Y until Z." Well it was safe until Y was on the top of the heap, and of course, only until Z. And Y's members were raping, beating up and extorting as much as they conscience allowed them. Some had pretty enabling consciences.
I do not know what had happened since. I left. I know that I will take the worst policeman I've ever encountered in the US, before I trust the best 'security consultant' I've heard of.
We need law enforcement. What we have is less than perfect. We should strive to make it better. It is still in a whole different category than not having law enforcement. And anyway, 'Not having law enforcement' is unsustainable. There's enough people who would pray on others that it becomes inefficient for society's member to defend themselves individually. Soon enough, someone steps up to provide the service, and chances are it's not the one you wish would.
And yeah, it is true that those some of those people end up in law enforcement. At least, many of them have incentives to at least pretend to play by the rules.
No good deed goes unpunished...
As a one time police officer who has been out of that line of work for almost 20 years I have to disagree with you. There are good cops. They are few and far between but they exist. You're on to one thing though and it's something that a lot of people just don't seem to understand. The police (speaking of the whole group and still maintaining that some do not fall into this group) are by and large exceptionally racist, which many people realize but what they don't get is that the police only really see two races. "Blue" and "You". Ok, it's not technically a racial issue but the reason I put it like that is because it's approached the same way by the police. I know because I was surrounded by people like that. If you're blue you're a fellow officer and most of them will tolerate a great deal in another officer. Crossing a line or two is nothing. A police officer has to almost be cornered before he'll hold another police officer to the same standard he'll hold you or I to. Even then it doesn't always end as it should because another officer further up the food chain will head that off if possible once the situation has moved beyond the public eye. I never really thought about it at the time but when I was in law enforcement I rarely kept my registration up to date. I drove one car for over two years without having to get it inspected or paying the registration fee. When I got pulled over I just whipped out "Badge Americard" and was given a pass. I drove as fast as I wanted without a care in the world. That's little stuff but it scales up. I didn't leave the profession out of outrage either. I left because I hurt my back (at home, not work related in any way) and had to move to a less physical career but when I did leave and stepped back I realized that I was part of a system that is almost entirely made up of bad cops. It's just that most of them are bad with a little "b".
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
That goes along with my theory that the TSA exists to trick people who don't like having their rights violated into limiting their travel and associations.